Fetus Refused to Die
By Victor Hulbert
“I’m very sorry”, the doctor told Fusae Suzuki. “Your husband is very young but, unfortunately, he will die tonight or at the most in a few days”.
The news devastated the young Japanese mother. She went to the river to fetch water and, looking into the water, considered throwing herself in. But then two men in black suits appeared.
“Be patient for just a while”, said one.
“Yes, be patient”, said the other.
After those words, the men disappeared from her sight.
Image © Pacific Press
The encounter pulled Fusae back from despair, and she returned home to nurse her husband, Mitsuharu, a farmer stricken with tuberculosis.
Soon she was pregnant with her second child. Mitsuharu could not bear the thought of his wife struggling to raise two children on her own. Finally she agreed to his pleas to terminate the pregnancy. The government supported the decision.
The pharmacist prescribed a strong medicine that, she promised, would work without fail.
“Be careful with the medicine, and don’t exceed the prescribed dose”, she cautioned. “Otherwise, your own life will be in danger”.
Fusae swallowed the first dose, enough to end the pregnancy. Weeping in sorrow, she felt the fetus move. “My baby’s still alive!” she cried out.
The next day, she repeated the dose. Then again on the third day. Yet the fetus kept moving inside her. In desperation, she drained the medicine bottle, but still the baby remained alive.
“It’s totally unbelievable!” she told her husband.
A healthy baby boy was born. Several months later, she and Mitsuharu attended evangelistic meetings, and they were baptized on Akeri’s first birthday.
“Their baptismal date always reminds me that God intervened in my mother’s womb to save my life”, said Akeri Suzuki, a veteran Japanese pastor who retired after serving as executive secretary of the Adventist Church’s Northern Asia-Pacific Division. “My parents became the first Adventist church members in my village”.
Akeri was 30 before his mother revealed his origins.
“When I heard the story of my birth from my mother, I was terribly shocked and felt as if I had been struck by powerful lightening”, he said. “My whole body trembled”.
Overwhelmed by God’s tremendous love, he thought, “I am a very precious gift from God”.
He re-dedicated himself to God at that very moment.
“God intervened in my mother’s womb to save my life”, he said.
Victor Hulbert is communication director for the Trans-European Division.
Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org
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