The dead man is Jesús Alberto Puerta Pérez, who belonged to La Antorcha Encendida Church. He earned his living driving a motorcycle taxi. Religious-freedom advocates tracking the case say he went regularly into some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of the Caribbean port city to preach the gospel to men who carried guns.
The trouble began over that motorcycle. Sources told advocates that the gang members wanted to use his bike. Pastor Puerta had been warned that they meant to move drugs on it and had used it for crimes before. He refused. The advocates say the men may have hoped to tie him to a crime through the machine, and that when he said no, they beat him until he died.
Local authorities have named no suspects. Cartagena has seen a string of killings of evangelical pastors this year, among them a shooting in July. Colombia's gangs fight over drug routes and neighborhoods, and ministers who work among them often have nothing between them and the violence but their faith.
A man who would not lend his hands to evil
Look at what this man was asked to do. He was not asked to deny Christ. He was asked to hand over a set of keys. And he said no, knowing what those men were capable of. He had preached to them. He knew their names, I expect, and their mothers' names. He loved them enough to tell them the truth and loved God too much to help them do wrong.
That is a harder thing than it sounds. Most of us can stand firm when the whole world is watching. It is the small refusal, in a dark street, with nobody to applaud, that shows what a man is made of. Pastor Puerta's whole ministry was a refusal to leave lost men alone, and his last act was a refusal to join them.
The Lord told the church at Smyrna, a congregation that knew suffering well:
"Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." (Revelation 2:10)
Notice that the Lord does not promise the faithful an easy road. He promises a crown. The world sees a poor taxi driver dead in a Cartagena street. Heaven sees a servant who was faithful, and that is the only verdict that stands.
Why he went to them at all
Some will ask why a man would put himself in reach of killers. The answer is as old as the gospel. Christ did not wait for sinners to clean themselves up. He said of Himself:
"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10)
A gang member is a lost man. So is a man in a fine house who has never bowed his knee. The ground at the cross is level, and every one of us stood on the same low spot. Those who laid hands on Pastor Puerta did a terrible and wicked thing, and justice belongs to the magistrate, whom God appointed to bear the sword against evildoers. I pray no one reads this and concludes they are beyond reach. The thief on the cross was not.
My friend, there are believers today, in Colombia, in Nigeria, in Sudan and elsewhere, who pay for the name of Jesus with their lives. Their stories rarely make the evening news. Yet the church was built on exactly such blood from the first century on, and the gates of hell have not prevailed against it.
Perhaps you have never been asked to give up so much as a motorcycle for your faith. Then ask yourself a plain question: what would you refuse to lend to sin, and what would it cost you? Pastor Puerta answered that in one hard moment. The Savior he served answered it first, on a hill outside Jerusalem, when He gave Himself for the very sort of men who would one day beat His servant down.
That Savior is alive. He forgives murderers and makes them new, and He receives His faithful ones home. Turn to Him today, while there is yet time.