The next event in the life of God’s old servant is the one you would have least expected. The wedding bells were not for his young friend, John Calvin, or one of the other young preachers, but for William himself!
At the age of 69 he married a believer, Mary Torel, who had escaped from his own country, France. Mary had taken refuge in Neuchatel and seems to have been a good wife for her elderly husband.
Some of William’s friends were not pleased at the news of William’s wedding. They declared that they were “speechless.” Indeed they were not as speechless as they might have been, for they had a great deal to say about the “youthful folly” of God’s old servant.
William’s marriage did not in any way hinder his work for the Lord, and it was not long before he was off again to preach the Word. In all his many years of labors in Switzerland, Farel had never forgotten his old homeland in the French Alps. Soon he set off with a Bible and a staff in his hand, preaching in those lovely villages in the French Alps.
Old enemies of the gospel were as quick to oppose William now as they had been in the days of his youth. In one village soldiers moved through the crowd and declared that they seized the preacher “with the crime in his hand.” The “crime” was the Bible.
William was thrown into prison, but friends managed to rescue him and sent him back safely to Neuchatel. As usual, this did not stop William, and the next year he was again back in the hills of France. The bishop of Gap, who had long been an enemy, at last listened to William preach in the open air. When the message was over, the old bishop rose up and threw down the mitre, a small bishop’s hat, that he had worn for 35 years. He stepped on it and said, “I will follow Jesus with Farel.”
The good news of God’s Word sown in that area of France grew, and if you should travel there even to this day, you would see that the light has never been put out.