The service opened with a clip of Lee Strobel, the investigative journalist who set out to disprove Christianity and came away a believer, drawing one distinction. Every faith system he has examined — and he says he has looked at thousands — is spelled D-O. Do something. Turn the prayer wheel, make the pilgrimage, give the alms, and maybe one day you will have done enough. Christianity is not spelled D-O. It is spelled D-O-N-E. On the cross, Jesus said it is finished. The penalty was paid by someone else, and forgiveness offered as a gift, which is what grace means.
Then Edwin Martinez preached, and he has spent about fifty years testing that claim in places where it costs something. He and his wife Evie have ministered across Latin America, partnered with the Billy Graham association, and lately trained and sent missionaries into Muslim countries. Both their children grew up in this church, and he mentioned — with some satisfaction — that he never moved his membership.
Spain, 1993
He was invited to spend thirty days doing evangelistic meetings in Spain. In Latin America he could fill a room with thousands. Europe was different: churches ran fifteen or twenty people, and fifty was a large one. So they met in neutral places, municipal buildings with a baby grand piano, and built the evenings in small pieces. Evie would play a folk song from Latin America. Edwin would speak two or three minutes. She would play again, he would speak again, then she would play Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art. Most of those rooms were not believers, and most had come to hear what a Latin American would say about the five hundred years since Europeans reached the Americas.
What he said was thank you. Thank you for bringing us the Bible. Thank you for bringing us the story of Christmas and the story of Easter. And from there he could walk them slowly into the plan of salvation — that it is only through Jesus Christ.
What he did not tell them that night is the harder half. The Mayan cultures of Guatemala already had their gods. The moon. The sun. An enormous rock, because they believed the rock was God. A great tree. Fire. Salt. And if you go to Chichicastenango today, animal sacrifices are still being made, and all of it is called Christianity. The old tradition was never actually left behind. Some did leave it — those are the people Latin Americans call evangélicos: I follow Jesus Christ and no other god.
Paul walked into the same thing in Athens. I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. You do not know who you are worshiping — and the one you do not know is exactly who I have come to tell you about.
That is Guatemala. That is the Arab world. It is also this country, where the fastest growing religions are not the one we assume.
So here is the answer, and it is not complicated. Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And Peter, before the council: Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.
What happens after you believe
Believing it is the beginning, not the end. Edwin spent the rest of his time in Luke 14, where large crowds are traveling with Jesus and he turns to face them.
If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even their own life — such a person cannot be my disciple. That is not a command to hate your family; Scripture tells you to honor them. It is a claim to first place, and nothing else takes it.
So what is actually first? What do you go to bed thinking about and wake up thinking about? For Edwin, at one point, it was ultra-endurance cycling — and, he said plainly, at the time he thought it was Jesus. For you it might be sport, or work, or the news, which we are thoroughly in love with.
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Picture how that crowd got there. He fed people, and the food was good. He healed people — that man could not walk and now he walks, this one could not see and now he sees — and word spread, and here they all came. Then he climbs the hill, turns around, and asks in effect: why are you following me? Because it will not be easy.
Our version of hard is not the hardest version. Edwin has a pastor friend jailed eighteen times for preaching. Here the challenge is subtler, and he named it materialism — though the Lord is not saying do not make money. Edwin tells his own children that if God does not call them to full-time ministry, make money and give it to the Lord. The cross in question is whatever keeps taking your attention off Jesus.
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost? Lay a foundation you cannot finish and everyone walking past will laugh at you. Edwin's suggestion is that the builder here is Jesus, and what he is building is the church. Nobody will laugh at this builder. The gates of hell will not stop it, and the cost is already settled — he gave his life so that we would not pay for our own sins. It is paid for.
Which leaves one question for us: are we building, or not? Tearing a church down is easy work — one careless word about a person or the leadership undoes what somebody spent years building. James spends a whole passage on the tongue for a reason.
Twenty women in Jalapa
A church in Jalapa, Guatemala, used to have sixty women at its gatherings. After the pandemic it had fifteen or twenty, and they asked Edwin's team to come.
Those twenty each prayed for five unchurched women to come and hear. A hundred and fifty came. That was two years ago, and he still gets WhatsApp messages: two more came to Christ, four more.
It is possible. We all just have to do our part.
