Guerrillas and the Gospel

By Darwin Blandon

I was ten years old when the civil war, and the guerrillas, came to my hometown. My parents were active in our church in Condega, Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas and the dictator, Somoza, started battling for power. In the months before the dictator was overthrown, the Sandinistas were making a final push to the capital, Managua, taking the towns on the Pan-American Highway on the way to the capital. Condega was an important town along this route.

The guerrillas overtook Condega, and my church. They turned Samaria Baptist Church into their northern command center, using the second floor as a strategic location for their machine guns from which they could fire on government targets.

Since the church was taken by force, there was no time to remove anything from the building. There was a lot of Fuente de Luz (Source of Light) material that we used for discipleship in a room at the church. As there was a lot of time of waiting around, the guerrilla soldiers began to read the material.

Some of the guerrillas, men of violence, gave their lives to Christ. After the war was over, several came to give testimony of how God had changed their lives during that time! 

My heart rejoices every time I remember this story. The church in Condega is the church where I grew up and where I came to know the Lord as well. 

What seemed like a terrible thing, having our church overtaken and our town overthrown, God used for good. The guerrillas wanted a strategic location; in our church they found Heaven. They wanted victory over a government and instead found the way to victory over sin and death.

No one is beyond God’s reach.