The husband of Carmen Gonzales

Incident happened in Venezuela

Brother Bender relates the following recent happening: ‘Carmen Gonzales’ was educated in our school in Barquisimeto and also raised in our children’s home. She afterwards returned home to Humo Caro Bajo where there was no gospel work. Having no spiritual help to speak of, Carmen grew cold in her spiritual life. A nice-looking young man began to pay attention to her, and while she was warned by her mother that there could be no alliance with the ungodly, yet the temptation was so great that she yielded and married this young man. He was very worldly and mistreated her many times. Her tribulation drove her into God. Her ungodly husband found her reading the Bible and strongly remonstrated with her. On another occasion he found her on her knees praying, and mocked and scorned.

Carmen’s sister visited us in Barquisimeto and we gave her some literature to take back with her. Among the things we sent was a book which contained many illustrations of the heart of man in sin and the heart of man when converted. Carmen’s husband picked up this book and read it with interest. He asked Carmen to let him have her Bible. She gave it to him and he began to read the book of Job. He read this book through and was deeply impressed by the disease that the devil put on Job.

One night he had a dream that Satan came to the outer court of his house. He noticed that the devil’s limbs were diseased from the knees downward with a red fiery disease. He was continually scratching himself, and when he scratched himself there flew from his legs something like the scales of a fish and sparks of fire. When the man awoke in the morning he found he had the same disease from head to foot that he had seen on the devil’s limbs. For three days and three nights he was so beset with the itch and high fever that on the third night he was given up to die.

He was lying on his back, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling. His wife sat by the side of the bed reading the Bible to him and praying with him. As he lay there he was given a vision. He saw the devil appear again unto him. He said to the sick man: ‘If you will serve me I can remove that disease from you’. The sick man answered: ‘I will not serve you. Jesus Christ will heal me’. The devil said to him: ‘If you will not scratch yourself’, and he specified a certain length of time ‘you will belong to God, but if you scratch yourself in this length of time you will belong to me’. As he lay there his wife noticed that he just twitched and shrugged his shoulders as he suffered in agony, battling against scratching himself. And as he twitched the devil would laugh with glee into his face, believing that he had conquered. This lasted nearly all night long. Toward the morning the devil began to back out of the room. He backed out into the court and then suddenly disappeared. At this moment the man shouted with a loud voice, saying: ‘I belong to God! I belong to God!’

His wife, knowing nothing of what he had been passing through, and expecting his death at any moment, was surprised on examining him to find that he had been entirely healed. All trace of the disease had disappeared from his body and he was a new creature in Christ Jesus, saved and healed at the same moment. He is to this day a faithful witness in that town and in all the region round about, going everywhere and witnessing for the Lord, telling of His great power to save from vice and sin and to cleanse the sinner. I had the privilege of meeting him last August, when he came to Barquisimeto to attend the yearly convention’.

From: Stanley H. Frodsham, With Signs Following, Gospel Publishing House, Springfield Missouri, 1946, pages 198-199

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