Teena Myers

An unshakable name that led me to a story for my Faith, Beliefs, and Spirituality blog occurred more than once. The name of a local minister came to my attention three times in one day.

Rory and I were on the way to the grocery store. I looked up from scrolling Facebook on my phone and read “Anthony Marquize for U.S. Congress District 2”on a billboard. Uninterested, I returned my attention to the phone.

We loaded our groceries into the car and took a different route home. Young adults were standing by the roadside waving signs—Anthony Marquize for U.S. Congress District 2. “Look, Rory, I saw a billboard with that name on the way to the grocery.” Too late. We were past the sign wavers before I finished my statement.

The milk was in the fridge, cereal in the cabinet, and I was seated comfortably in my recliner watching TV when the doorbell rang. My husband answered. I sighed. Whatever they were selling, he’s gonna buy it! He stepped outside and shut the door. Ten minutes later, Rory handed me a business card, “Anthony Marquize for U.S. Congress District 2.”

“What is this, Anthony Marquize Day?”  I flipped Anthony’s card over and read: “For he is the minister of God to thee for good” (Romans 13:4, KJV). I entertained the thought of contacting Mr. Marquize for less than five seconds. I already had ten people waiting for me to write an article about their ministries.  I didn’t need to add another name to the list.

A few days later, I attended a ministers’ fellowship meeting. Need I tell you who was present? Anthony Marquize was running for the House of Representatives in Louisiana’s 2nd District as an Independent against Anh Joseph Cao, the first Vietnamese American elected to the United States Congress, and Obama-backed Cedric Richmond. Need I tell you what I did?

While I set up my camera in Anthony’s office, he told me about his ministry in Russia. Russia abandoned communism in 1991 to become a federal democratic republic, which allows freedom of religion. He has planted numerous churches in Russia. Unfortunately, I did not have time to record two stories. I had promised to write about his salvation and campaign for office.

The conviction that he should run for office came while watching Glenn Beck on Fox News. Beck addressed the warning in Ezekiel Chapter 33. If the watchman doesn’t warn people when he sees trouble coming and they perish, God will hold the watchman accountable for their blood. Then Beck raised his hands and said, “Blood will not be on my hands, because I’m warning the people.”

“At that moment, I felt like the Lord said to me ‘Anthony, stop complaining or get up and do something.’ I stood and said to my wife, ‘Jeannette, I’m running for Congress.’ When I stood, something happened inside me that gave me the resolve to run this race.”

Anthony married Jeannette when he was nineteen. That year, his father suffered a heart attack. Running the family business became Anthony’s responsibility. “When my wife and I had our first child, our marriage was turbulent. I thought Jeannette should be happy with the things I provided. When she wasn’t, I blamed her for all my problems.”

Anthony tried drinking to escape the pressures of life. Alcohol made him sick, so he turned to drugs. Getting high on weekends soon became a daily affair. Meanwhile, Jeannette’s unhappiness increased. One day, she cried to God, “I don’t believe anyone loves me. If you don’t help me, in three days, I’m going to kill myself.”

Three days later, Anthony answered a knock at their door. The man holding a Bible said, “I’m Pastor Savage from the Baptist Mission. I’d like to tell you about Jesus. Can I come in?”

“In my mind, I said, ‘No, I’m Catholic,’ but that’s not what came out of my mouth. He was the most knowledgeable man I’ve ever met. I asked him hundreds of questions about Jesus and the Bible. He answered every question with a scripture.”

The Marquizes attended the pastor’s church the following Sunday. Jeannette accepted Christ, but the radical transformation in her life troubled Anthony. “In the past, I blamed her unhappiness for all my problems. Now that she was happy, I couldn’t blame her anymore. I knew what she felt was real, and I knew that I didn’t have it.”

Anthony stopped attending church when he opened a seafood restaurant. He spent his days at the family business and his nights at the restaurant. His marriage was at the point of divorce when he encountered God while driving sixty miles per hour down the interstate.

Anthony was listening to the book of Matthew when the narrator said, “‘How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye’” (Matthew 7:4—45). At that point, Anthony realized that he could not blame his wife for all his problems.

“I said to God, I’m wrong. The moment I said that, the power of God came into my truck and set me free. I don’t know how to explain what happened next. I raised both hands and praised God. Fifteen minutes later, I put my hands back on the steering wheel. My truck was still going sixty miles per hour on the interstate. As soon as I touched the steering wheel, I heard God’s voice.”

God said to Anthony, “I will give you a high so much greater than drugs, you will never want them again.” Anthony rolled down the window of his truck and threw out more than a thousand dollars’ worth of drugs. Then he reached for a cigarette and heard, “You don’t need anything but me.” Anthony threw his cigarettes out the window, and then he heard God say, “I hate divorce.”

“We’ve hurt each other so much we don’t even like each other,” said Anthony. “But I’ll go back home if you will love my wife through me.” Anthony returned home and felt a supernatural strength to love his wife that healed their marriage. 

Anthony served as an elder at his church for six years before accepting the pastorate at a church. Under his leadership, the congregation grew from five to three hundred. Ten years later, God sent him to Russia, where he lived for three years.  During that time, he planted twenty churches and co-founded the Global Strategy Christian Association Evangelical Faith. Anthony continues to oversee the association, which has grown to sixty-two churches.

“If I hadn’t lived in Russia, I don’t think I would have run for Congress,” said Anthony. “Our government is trying to implement the same kind of socialist ideas that are in Russia.  I’ve seen firsthand the result of a centralized government that controls everything a country produces. Moscow is well maintained, but the rest of the country is one large ghetto. Most of the places we stayed didn’t have running water. The apartments were dilapidated; even the concrete stairs were falling apart. The streets were horrible, but it didn’t matter in some respects because very few people could afford a car. All the stores were government owned. You had to go to a bakery to buy bread, go to another store for meat, yet another store for vegetables, and there were long lines at all the stores.  It took all day to buy a few items from the sparsely stocked shelves. It was eerily quiet to be in a crowd. No one spoke because the people feared what the government might do to them if they complained.”

Anthony ran an ambitious campaign for Congress, hoping to make a difference. He lost the seat to Democrat Cedric Richmond but left us with something far greater. In Richmond’s victory speech, he said, “Pastor Anthony Marquize ran a great race. He is going to be a very valuable asset to this community, and he is a dear friend of mine now. As we got to know one another, we decided that there are more things we have in common than things that separate us.”

Anthony failed to obtain a seat of power in government. His supporters were disappointed. I wasn’t. God gave us something greater in Anthony: a shining light that proves people with different ideologies can be friends who work together for the good of all.