I was a career criminal. I couldn’t stay out of trouble. That story is long and not relevant to this part of my testimony. I was in and out of prison. I was helpless and hopeless. I escaped but they caught me. When I was sent to the Eastham prison after my escape, they put me in the cell blocks to live. This prison has been called “America’s toughest prison.

It was in those cellblocks that late at night I began to suffer some of the most horrific nightmares I had ever experienced in my life. And in that nightmare I would find myself buried alive underground in a casket.  And in that casket it was so dark, and so claustrophobic, and I couldn’t breathe or see anything.  I vividly remember that I would kick and thrash about in that casket trying to force my way out.  I would claw at the lining of this casket just trying to escape, just claw and claw and claw.  But it was no use.  I was trapped! Just buried alive! On one particular occasion I remember kicking and thrashing about and clawing at the top of the casket. I suddenly just bolted straight up.

It was very dark, and I was out of breath, and I felt a wetness on my fingers. I reached over and pulled the string on the light in the cell, and when the light came on I saw there was blood all over my fingers, and on the sheet of my bed.  I glanced up at the wall next to the bunk and there were claw marks in blood where I had scratched my fingers down to the quick trying to escape from the casket.  It was just horrible.  So real and so demonic. Such a blackness had enveloped me to my innermost being.  There was no life in me I knew I was  dead.  Just waiting on my heart and breathing to stop.
 
Medication didn’t help! The nightmares would not stop. I became more aggressive and I was eventually sent to the Ellis III Psychiatric Unit where they stripped me down to a pair of white boxer shorts and placed me in a padded cell. Just a cement slab, with a hole in the floor that served as a toilet. I remember being so cold in that cell.  I had goose bumps all over me.  That cell was so cold!

Once every four hours they would open up the little food slot in the cell door to medicate me. I got so bored. During one my more lucid times, I asked the guard on one of his rounds if I could just have something to read.  When he said “No”, I went into an absolute rage, I eventually passed out on the floor. I had lost my wife, my children, my life, my freedom, now I had a 125 year sentence, I was losing it! I was going crazy! I don’t know how long I was passed out, but when I but when I saw a little pocket bible that had been laid on the food slot of my cell. You know I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.  I just laid there and stared at it.  I opened the bible from the back – God knew what would reach me.  There were 3 words that just jumped out at me. It said,  “GOD LOVES YOU!”

I didn’t think anyone loved me much less God. I hadn’t had a visit in years, and I hadn’t had a letter in years. I hadn’t had anyone just reach out and touch me and tell me “ Ronnie, I love you”, but here it was.  God was telling me He loved me. I fell to my knees right there and just cried out to God.  I said, “God, I have made such a mess of my life.  God, I have hurt so many people.  God, all my great plans and schemes have all crumbled and come to nothing.  I have failed at every thing I have ever tried to do.  God, I am so sorry, make the voices stop. Please make the nightmares go away.  God make the pain stop. God please stop the bleeding.” 
And you know in the corner of that cell, up high near the ceiling, a little light about the size of a pencil just suddenly appeared.  And it was so bright, the brightest light I have ever seen.  And in a fraction of a second it just illuminated and filled the whole cell.  That light pierced me!  It seemed like every cell in my body came alive. I felt a warmth sweep over me and through me, and where I had been so cold, I now began to sweat profusely, and the sweat just literally dropped on the floor until there was a puddle. And I just began to cry and cry and cry.  I couldn’t stop.  You know, the Spirit of the Living God came into that cell, and Jesus just came into my into my heart that day.  I felt stuff leave me, man! It’s like it was just pressed out of me – Whoosh!  Bad stuff.  And Jesus just loved on me and loved on me and loved on me.  I don’t know how long this lasted.

I got better and better and a couple weeks later they transferred me back to the Eastham Unit.  I immediately asked to see the minister there, Chaplin Vance Drum. I told him that I was a nut and that I had just returned from the psychiatric unit, but that I had had an experience with God while I was there. I related to him about the nightmares and the voices. He said, ”Ronnie, when you cried out and asked Jesus to come into you heart he did.  You have been reborn.  You are a new person in Christ, what can I do for you today?”

I don”t want to lose this peace I said, ”Tell me how to keep it!  Tell me how to keep this peace inside of me.  Tell me how to keep this joy.  Tell me how to keep the love of God in my life.” Jesus not only wants to be Lord and Savior of your life, but He also came to be your best friend. you ever had.  He wants relationship with you.“ He advised me to start reading and studying the Word of God, to start coming up to the chapel services and sitting under anointed preaching and teaching.  He told me to get with a group of believers to fellowship and pray together.  He told me to spend quiet time with the Lord every day. And you know, as I began to do all of those things  I began to get grounded and even more healing took place in my life. It just got better and better.
  
We would gather around the benches or table in the day room area everyday for study, worship and prayer. It was always noisy but we would come together as believers the Presence of the Lord would always meet us there.

I never received letters, but one day at mail call they called my name.  People had stopped writing me.  I had burned all my bridges. I had not received a letter in 7 years. I went forward and they gave me a letter, actually,  it was just a piece of paper  that had  been  folded 4 times and stapled.  As I opened it, I noticed the State Seal of Texas and the words “Board of Pardons and Parole”. It said I had been granted parole.  I was  stunned. What a miracle, I did not ask for and I sure didn’t expect it!

It seems like yesterday but now I have been out of prison since 1991. God restored my marriage and my relationship with my 4 children. I have my wife and family back ... I have a life I once thought was impossible. I went to church every Sunday, often many times during the week. As I continued to learn who I was in Christ I began to see that I still had some areas of bondage. I was a heroin addict before I got saved in prison. I didn’t know it, but I would find out through a doctor’s visit in 2004 that I had hepatitis “C”. The doctor gave me five years to live and said the last two years would not be very good. 

I had become a “Gideon” and was so blessed to share my testimony all over the state and eventually the nation. But I still had something inside of me that troubled me. I could just see a commercial on TV about not doing drugs, see a needle or sense a certain smell and it was like my veins would rise up in my arms crying out for the heroin. There seemed to be a pull to certain parts of town and while I didn’t yield it really troubled me that the thoughts and struggles were still there. A friend invited me to go hear Don Dickerman speak...when he mentioned his name I remembered Don coming into the prisons all those years to preach. I knew him and I loved and trusted him. My wife and I attended the meeting. Don was having meetings on a quarterly basis. Meetings at a local community center where the focus was deliverance and healing. He called them Nights of Ministry.

On one of those nights he did a “corporate deliverance” for the entire congregation. I didn’t really feel anything happen at the time, but afterwards my wife and I went to a restaurant. Something started to happen, I could feel “stuff” leaving me, like spirits coming out of the pores of my skin. My wife asked me what was happening and I said “I don’t know but I think we better go home.”  She told me, “Ronnie, you are being delivered, demons are leaving you!”  She was right, it happened for about two hours. It was not painful or anything, things just left, I felt lighter. Heaviness just left me. I began to notice the cravings that came ever so often were gone, completely gone. It was like phase two of a miracle in my life.

A few months after this experience I was getting sicker and sicker but I didn’t know why. The doctor told me I had hepatitis “C”. I didn’t know how bad this was until he told me I only had about 5 years to live. I took the interferon treatments.  I had not told Don about my experience nor about my physical condition. I mentioned it in an e-mail to him and he told me he had seen people healed of hepatitis “C” and that he had found that demons can be responsible for it. I remember telling him that I was responsible, I had done the drugs. He said, “Yes, Ronnie, you opened the door for it. You invited them in. Let’s close the door. All you have to lose is a couple of demons.”

We made an appointment and I came in knowing that Jesus is the deliverer and healer. I confessed all of my involvement in drugs and received God’s forgiveness and cleansing. Afterwards Don began to bind evil spirits in the Name of Jesus and specifically addressed demons associated with disease to my liver. Names of demons came to my mind and I passed those names on to Don, there were five demons who took responsibility for the liver ailment. The evil spirits referred to themselves as “liver beetles”. They were eating the life out of me. Don very simply commanded them to repair their damage and to leave me totally and completely. He commanded them into the abyss. Something happened, spirits did leave me, I felt it. That was in 2004. Since then I have had two blood tests with no hepatitis C detectable.

Did God heal me? I believe he did. Were demons there with an assignment to kill...rob, steal and kill? Absolutely, but they are gone. I guess only time will tell what all took place. Right now, I can only praise Him for all He has done in my life!  I am now able to minister with Don, both in the prisons and in the office doing personal deliverance with others. 
Ron Cummings. 
      

Thanks for your faithful support!
Just for Jesus,

Don

 

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