In April of this year, amid the escalation of attacks against the Catholic Church, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, accused of systematically violating freedom of worship, sought help from evangelical churches and found it. Support led by the evangelical reverend and well-known Sandinista sympathizer Omar Duarte, who stood up for the regime and assured the public that in Nicaragua “there is freedom of worship.”
Exactly on April 27, during a vigil celebrating the 21st anniversary of the Evangelistic Ministry Rivers of Living Water (MERAV), founded by Duarte, and the 31st Anniversary of Radio Maranatha, the reverend, a Sandinista sympathizer, said that they were satisfied with the freedoms given to them by the Ortega-Murillo regime and even assured that they hold evangelizing vigils until five in the morning.
Four months later, the Reverend Duarte will most likely not think the same, because on August 19, the same Daniel Ortega whom the pastor supported in every electoral campaign, asking the people to vote for him; the same Ortega who sought him out to cleanse his anti-Christian image in the eyes of the public, that same dictator ordered his ministry eliminated and confiscated.
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Thus ended the story of an evangelical ministry that became, over its 23 years of existence, a powerful center of worship of Christ and supported the regime that would bury him.
There have been numerous displays of unconditional support from the Reverend Duarte for Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista Front, including days of preaching during the 2006 election campaign, to help Ortega return to power.
Rivers of Living Water and Omar Duarte: Birth and Fall
With a slogan that says: “The blood of Christ has power,” the Evangelistic Ministry Rivers of Living Water (MERAV), led by the Sandinista reverend Omar Duarte, proposed the “vision” of “bringing Nicaragua to its knees before Christ,” but in 23 years that the Church existed, they could not, the dictator Daniel Ortega won the battle and eliminated them, and in the process ordered the confiscation of their assets.
Founded on a vacant lot, four blocks north of the Ivan Montenegro Market, where La Sandak was located, on February 14, 2003, MERAV, according to its official website, managed to organize evangelistic crusades that gathered up to 50,000 people in a single night. And it managed to convert more than 14,000 people to its church during vigils alone.
Duarte, as a preacher and leader of that ministry, managed to attract rich and poor people to his church and did so well in collecting “offerings” that in a short time he managed to have the resources to first acquire a piece of land that cost them 70 thousand dollars.
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They then built a huge roofed temple with capacity for 3,000 people, and founded a home to assist street children, to whom they provided food, health care, clothing and education for years.
They acquired another 10-block property, close to the Sabana Grande temple where they planned to build the “Templo Grande (Coliseum),” with capacity for 9,600 people.
But all those plans will have to be kept by Pastor Duarte. Ortega ruined his mission. The Ortega-Murillo Ministry of the Interior, through ministerial agreement 38-2024, approved the cancellation of “1,500 non-profit organizations,” arguing that they were “in breach of the laws that regulate them.” Among those organizations was Ríos de Agua Viva and Duarte’s closeness and unconditional support to Ortega was of no use.
