I had arrived home on Saturday, and Sunday I went to the service. The
pastor said, "Now I know why I haven't a message today," and turning to me
he said, "You speak for me." But I said, "No, I did not bring my Bible
along." "Well," someone said, "we can let you have a Bible." I said,
"Soneone else must have the message." There were two other ministers there,
but neither had a message. Finally wife said, "Husband, I get a number of
letters and here's one that reads like this, 'Dear Sister Susag: You should
have been in our service last night. We had a wonderful message and a
wonderful service. Several were saved, and do you know who preached for us?
Your husband preached for us.'" Then she said, "Why don't you give us a
message like that at home?" And they all said, "That's right."
Then I got a text. I looked at my watch and it was eleven o'clock. I knew
the pastor had to be home at 12:30, but I forgot all about it, and not a
person moved, not even the little children, while I preached. When I quit I
thought it would be around 12:10 or 12:15, but on looking at my watch it
was 3:15 in the afternoon. I had preached for four hours and fifteen
minutes and the pastor and audience declared there must be something wrong
with our watches! It seemed as if we must have been pretty close to the
third heaven!
* * * * *
On one occasion while I was in Europe I visited at my wife's request, a
cousin of hers who had been ill and confined to her bed for twenty-one
years. She had become bedfast when she was nineteen. When I first visited
her, as she did not understand anything about divine healing, she got quite
peeved at the instructions I gave her. However her father, my wife's uncle,
got gloriously saved. Two weeks later I got a letter from the woman asking
me to come again and I went. Then she repented and turned to the Lord. I
prayed for her and the Lord raised her up.
* * * * *
Once in a city called Stavanger, Norway, I was asked to come and pray for a
sister who was in the last stages of tuberculosis of the lungs. As some of
the people over there teach that it is witchcraft to heal by the word of
God and prayer, a mob had gathered to stone me, and the folks called me and
asked me not to anoint and pray for fear the people might do me bodily
harm. I told them that I was not any better than the apostles or any other
of God's ministers, and if that was to be my lot I would be willing to die
for the gospel's sake.
I anointed and prayed for the woman and the Lord raised her up to the great
astonishment of the people and no bodily harm came to me.
I met her twin sister several years later who said she had been well ever
since, healthy and strong.
* * * * *
In 1916 while in Denmark I contracted tuberculosis of the throat and head.
I got so weak that while holding a meeting in company with Brother Carl
Forsberg out from Pandrup, Denmark, one evening before the service started
I was suffering so intensely that I went out into the cow barn, sat down on
a milk stool coughing and spitting, praying and weeping until I was so weak
that I was unable to get up when I tried to do so. Time for meeting came,
and the folks did not know what had become of me, so a Brother Madson, a
big strong man, went out to look for me. When he found me he picked me up
and carried me in, laid me on the lounge and the saints prayed for me, and
I got strength to get up and preach. We closed the services that evening.
Brother Forsberg returned to Sweden and I to my headquarters at Hjoring. I
went to a specialist and asked him to write me a permit so that I could
return to America. After he had examined me he said that he could not give
me the permit as I would not be permitted to go aboard ship in the
condition I was in. He said, "You would not live until you got there if you
did start." I told him that I would like to be with my folks when I leave
this world. He replied, "I don't blame you but it can't be done."
Then I got a letter from Brother and Sister Johnson of Jotta, Sweden,
saying that "Brother Forsberg had come home saying that it looked as though
the Lord was through with Brother Susag, he was no near gone. Wife and I
agreed in prayer and the Lord says He is going to heal you and that you are
going to preach to us here many times."
The following Sunday we had services in Hjoring at eleven o'clock, although
I did not seem to be able to stand up, but I thought I might just as well
go to heaven from the pulpit as to go from the bed, if I was going to die
anyway. After I had been speaking about fifteen minutes I quit, as the pain
got so intense in my throat I could hardly speak above a whisper, and the
audience could not hear me. I went up stairs in the chapel where I had my
room, and I lay down on the bed suffering intensely.
Outside my door was a tree and a little bird hopped onto a branch and began
to sing. (I do not know the name of the bird, but the species was like the
birds that used to come to our grove at home in Minnesota and sing. But I
had never before heard one in my travels in Europe). I turned to the bird
and said, "Did my heavenly Father send you from Minnesota to Denmark to
sing for me when I was so troubled?" And the more I would speak to him the
more he would flap his wings and sing and sing until I could forget my pain
and had to laugh aloud. It was nearly four o'clock and that was the time
for the next service. I got up and got ready for the service, and when I
came into the pulpil to preach, to my surprise, I was perfectly healed and
could speak as loud as ever without pain.
The next morning I went to the specialist and asked him to examine me again
to see if I could go home if I wanted to. After examining me he said, "Man,
O man, what have you done? There is not a T. B. germ about you--you can go
or stay as you please." I told him I had done nothing, but that the people
of God had been praying for me, the results of which was a great surprise
to the doctor. This is the way the Lord deals with his unworthy, humble
children that trust and obey Him.
* * * * *
I have generally observed a rule of not eating my evening meal until after
the evening service. One evening in Sweden I ate a little fish out of a can
that had been standing open for some time. After eating a little of the
fish I remembered that the can had been standing open and did not eat any
more. About a half an hour after I had retired and gone to sleep, I woke up
feeling deathly sick with ptomaine poisoning. It seemed as if I was to be
taken out of this world. All through the night Brother Forsberg, Sister
Bettie Miller and others kept praying for me and the next day my life
seemed to hang on a thread, but at five o'clock that evening we got the
victory and I was perfectly healed, and able to speak in the service that
night.
Some years afterwards while at Camp meeting at Anderson, Ind. I was
poisoned in about the same manner. A number of brethren prayed for me
without my getting any relief. Finally, Brother George Green, now pastor at
Hanford, California, a true yoke-fellow of mine who loved me dearly, broke
down and wept and had compassion on me and prayed a short prayer of faith
and rebuked the devil and the sickness, and I was healed instantly. The
Bible says of Jesus, "He had compassion on the people and healed all that
came unto him."
* * * * *
On one ocassion in 1933 I was not feeling very well. I was on my way to
California and stopped in Minneapolis where my three boys live. When they
saw that I was not well, they were determined to take me to a doctor and
have me examined. He ordered me to a hospital where five doctors took six
x-rays. After taking the x-rays, the doctors asked me, "What do you think
you have?" I said, "The same as you think." They said, "What do we think?"
"Cancer!" I said. "No," they said. I said, "Why do you lie, you said it was
cancer and a bad one." They said, "Do you understand Latin?" I said, "I
understand that much." In the evening the doctor called my son Clarence and
said to him, "Shall I tell your dad what the matter is with him, or will
you?" He answered, "It doesn't matter who tells him, as he is ready to live
or to die; we want to know the worst." The doctor said, "It is the worst.
Bring him to my office tomorrow at three o'clock." I heard the five doctors
talking the case over between themselves, stating the position of the
cancer.
On coming to the office the next day the doctor said, "I have good news for
you, Reverend, you have no cancer." I asked him, "When did you lie to me,
yesterday or today?" He said, "Neither, the picture clearly shows cancer.
They forgot to take your food test so you had to go back to the hospital to
have it taken and in the food test there was no cancer." The doctor asked,
"What did you do, once a cancer but none now?" I said, "I did like a little
story we ministers have about a little boy and his sister. They were out
playing, and at eleven o'clock Mary was hungry and went in to ask mother
for a slice of bread, but mother said, it is soon time for lunch, go out
and play now, until lunch is ready. Then Freddy went in and asked for bread
and he came out with a slice of bread with butter on it. Then Mary said,
'What did you do to get it?' 'I cried for it,' answered Freddy," so did I.
The Lord made them forget to take the food test at first in order to verify
the miracle.
* * * * *
One day I was plowing, since I had asked the boys to let me plow for the
exercise it gave me. It was about ten o'clock in the morning and I had
stopped and gotten off the gang plow to let the horses rest and stood
looking south in the field when I saw six or eight feet before me dear
Brother A. G. Ahrendt standing and smiling at me, just as real as if he
were there in the flesh. "Brother Ahrendt is leaving Grand Forks by my
orders," the Lord said to me. "If by your orders he is leaving there,
amen," I replied. I then turned to get on the plow when on the other side
of the plow there stood a lady minister and the Lord said, "Some are
contemplating getting her as the pastor and that will be the ruination of
the work in Grand Forks." (Not because there was anything wrong with her as
a minister but because she would not fit in the place). The vision
disappeared and I went to plowing.
Two or three days later I became so burdened about Grand Forks that I was
almost sick, so I wrote to Brother Ahrendt and asked if anything was wrong
or anyone sick, for I was so burdened. I expected an answer right away, but
didn't get it, so wrote again and still no answer. The next week I wrote
for the third time telling them that I was going through Grand Forks on my
way to Raab for a meeting, and would be in Grand Forks and they could
arrange a meeting for me over Friday night, Saturday and Sunday if he
wanted me. Then a letter came from Sister Ahrendt saying her husband was
away and that they were leaving Grand Forks.
Sunday afternoon, when in Grand Forks, I went by invitation to Brother Lars
Olson's home and there met the four leaders of the congregation: August
Shave, Bertha Gaulke, Lars Olson and Sister Johnstone. They told me that
they had been talking of sending for me; Bro. Shave had proposed sending me
the money for carfare, but Bro. Olson said, "No, we won't do that; we will
ask the Lord to send him here and we will pay his expenses when he comes."
These prayers going up from the dear ones in Grand Forks was what made the
Lord burden my heart before I went there.
They then begged me to be their pastor, and I finally consented to come and
stay with them for a month or three months or until they could get a
pastor. I stayed with them for almost five years.
* * * * *
While holding a meeting in company with Brother Renbeck in a school house
out in the country between Kelly and Manville, N. Dakota and staying in the
home of Bro. and Sister Holman, one afternoon as I was praying the Lord
gave me a message on the judgments of God, and what would happen, even in
this world, if people reject the Word of God. The Lord said to me, "They
will close the school house." Then I asked Brother Holman if we should
close the services tonight, where shall we go if we continue them? He said,
"We surely are not going to close the services tonight; we will continue at
the school house." I said, "The school house will be closed to us tonight."
To which he answered, "Who said so?" I told him that the Lord had told me.
Brother Holman then said, "You are a good Brother, but this time you are
mistaken, for they would not dare close the school house because three of
the saints' families are the biggest taxpayers in the district."
At the beginning of the service that evening, Brother Renbeck got up and
commenced to preach on the subject, "The Church as a House." After speaking
for about ten minutes, he sat down and said, "This is not the message for
tonight." We knelt down and prayed asking the Lord to give a message, and
the Lord said, "I have given you a message." I said, "Lord, that is too
strong," but the Lord answered, "It is the message for this people."
The school house was large and it was filled. It was said that there were
two or three congressmen in the crowd. I got up and spoke for an hour and
fifteen minutes on the message the Lord had given me and when I was through
I said, "Shall we close the services now, or has anyone a place to offer so
we can continue the meeting, as I understand that the school house is
closed against us?" The clerk of the school board (who with his family were
professors of religion) went over to Bro. Holman and asked him who had told
Susag that the school house was to be closed. The Board had only met just
before meeting and decided to close. Brother Holman replied that Brother
Susag told him that afternoon that the Lord had told him that they were
going to close. The man went back to his seat. Then I said, "Is it true or
not that the school house is to be closed?" Brother Holman answered, "It is
true."
One man in the audience sat on the front edge of the bench so deeply
interested in the service that his mouth would be wide open, and after the
meeting was over he stuck a five dollar bill in my hand and said that the
meeting had been worth that to him.
A man in the audience, who was an infidel, said, "I own a store building in
Mechinoch, a few miles away, that these two preachers may have as long as
they please, if some one can furnish a stove and wood to warm up the
building." The stove and wood were promptly furnished, and we went there
accordingly, and continued our services.
I am sorry to say that many who heard the Word of God preached in that
school house rejected it and became real outlaws. The family of the school
board clerk lost their salvation and two of their sons, who had previously
professed salvation, became bootleggers.
At the store building a number of people got saved. One man sat in the back
seat every evening and left as soon as the preaching was over. I saw that
he was under conviction and one evening I got to him before he had left,
and I asked him if he did not want to get saved and he told me, "Yes."
While praying with him I felt a hand on my shoulder and a man said to me,
"Brother Susag, Brother Susag, never mind this man; there are thirty-three
at the altar and this man has not been sober in fourteen years." I said,
"If he has not been sober for fourteen years he surely needs salvation and
I will stay with him until he gets saved." And I did; and as far as I know
he remained a true Christian and lived the life.
The first revival meeting we ever had in our neighborhood was held in our
own house. The house 16 x 24, two rooms down stairs and one room upstairs.
As many as thirty-eight slept in the house; the women and children slept
upstairs and the men downstairs. There was one bed in which the children
slept and the women slept on the floor as did the men downstairs. People
were saved, sanctified and healed. It was salvation the people wanted in
those days.
* * * * *
Our first camp meeting was held in a tent a mile and three-quarters from
our home. Warning was sent around the neighborhood for the people to lock
their chicken coops as the camp meeting was being financed only by two poor
men, who were giving free meals to all who came.
We had a wonderful meeting; many souls were saved and sanctified and devils
were cast out, some were healed. We had some very straight preaching as we
had some very fiery ministers who preached; such as, Brother and Sister C.
M. Tubbs and the Brothers Enos and Elihu Key, Brother Thomas Nelson and
Brother Tilgut.
The country around was stirred and people tried everything in their power
to hinder the meeting. Some business men of our own home town (Paynesville)
hired a team and borrowed a three or four-seated platform buggy from the
implement Company and placed a small cannon on it, drove to within a few
rods of the gospel tent and fired the cannon. The chairman of the town
Board came to me and wanted me to have them arrested. But I said, "No, let
them go."
The Lord "fined" them for us: As they were shooting off the cannon the
horses took fright and ran away into the timber, smashing up the new buggy
and tearing the harness to pieces. That saved us the court proceedings.
* * * * *
The second camp meeting I was in, among the saints, was at Grand Forks, N.
Dakota. I was called there especially to preach in the Scandinavian
language as well as to help in the English preaching. When the first
evening service was over every one who had no place to sleep was to stand
outside the tabernacle near the big oak tree. One by one they got their
place to sleep. Finally I was left standing all alone in the dark. No one
offered me a place so I walked around among the trees. The camp meeting was
held in the timber along the banks of the Red River. While I was looking
for a place to lie down and rest, a man came running toward me and said,
"Don't you have a place to sleep?" I said, "No." He said, "You go to that
covered wagon over there and you'll find a place." As I approached the
wagon I saw six feet sticking out of the wagon, almost to the knees, so
there was no room for me.
I went back to the tent and shoved three or four planks together. These
planks had been used for seats. I put my suit case down for a pillow and
there I slept that night and during the rest of the meeting. When I would
get a little cold in the night I would get up and walk around a bit. A few
days later Oluf Erickson from Belgrade, Minnesota, who had gotten saved in
one of our meetings at home, asked me where I was sleeping. I said, "I have
a good place; another brother and I have a very fine tent with a bed in
it." "Oh yes," he said, "I know where you sleep; you sleep in the
minister's tent." "Yes," I said, "it's a minister's tent all right." But he
didn't give up until he found out the truth. He then said, "My, my, had no
one offered you a place to stay, and you are one of the evangelists?" I
said, "Yes." Then he said, "Well then, I'll come and sleep with you."
In those days it was: "All for Jesus and souls" and not for personal
comfort. We had a wonderful time together in the Lord. We also had a
wonderful camp meeting in seeing scores of souls saved and many miracles
done by the power of God.
Sister Renbeck, who had been bed fast for a long time, was carried in on a
cot and the prayer of faith was offered. Brother E. E. Byrum took her by
the hand and commanded her to arise in the name of Jesus. She arose and
went running around the tent lifting her hands and praising God. I heard
three men talking about it afterwards saying, "I wonder if that is real!
She surely looked poorly and puny, but you can't tell." Another man said,
"I wish my wife had been here; if it had been her we would have known it
was real." (She had been sick for a long while.)
* * * * *
While my first meeting in Grand Forks was in progress, Brother Renbeck came
to me with the request that I would pray over a matter he had on his mind,
and that was that after the meeting was over he and I might go together to
hold a meeting at Whitten, Minnesota. I promised to pray over the matter
and that at the close of the meeting we would talk it over together. And,
accordingly, at the end of the meeting I prayed earnestly to get the mind
of the Lord as to where He wanted me to go.
When Brother Renbeck asked me what I had gotten from the Lord in regard to
the matter I replied by asking whether there were places in North Dakota by
names of Kelly, Grafton and St. Thomas, "Yes," he said, "there are; what of
it?" I replied that the Lord told me I was going to those places. He told
me that just before the meeting here, he had come from those very places
and there would be no use in going. I told him I was going to follow the
leading of the Lord and go, that he could stay here until I came back when
we would go to Whitten. But he declared if I was going he would go, too.
That trip proved to be the beginning of a wonderful work of God. Many
people were saved and many healings and miracles were wrought by the Spirit
of the Lord. In our visiting, the first house we entered at eleven a.m. an
elderly sister, ninety years of age, was sanctified and her husband,
ninety-three years old, was saved before twelve o'clock that day. This
shows that Brother Renbeck had laid a good foundation in these places,
preparing the way for the wonderful evangelistic trips that followed.
Neither of us ever went to Whitten.
While at Grafton, N. Dakota, Brother Renbeck and I had the experience of
holding a number of meetings in private homes. Interest increased and so
did our problems.
One day we wanted to telephone to Brother C. H. Tubbs at Grand Forks. We
went to a telephone office and were told that the cost of a message would
be twenty-five cents. We counted up our change and between us found that we
had only twenty-four cents, and so we had to leave the office disappointed.
Out on the side walk we stood facing each other, one of us said, "Wasn't it
too bad that we didn't have another penny?" I was standing with my back to
the street when I heard the Lord say to me, "Turn around, a penny is lying
right behind you." I turned around and there it was. I picked it up and we
sent the message, but Brother Tubbs was not at home.
There was an old retired Methodist minister attending our meetings right
along, declaring that divine healing died away with the departure of the
Apostles. The next Sunday seven women were saved, one of whom was a young
lady which had a stiff arm and crooked to such an extent that she could
neither dress nor undress herself without assistance. She was prayed for
and I asked her if she believed that the Lord would straighten out her arm
and she replied, "Yes," but did not move it. I happened to be looking at
the old minister and it seemed to be written all over his face: "Just as I
expected." At the beginning of the evening service we gave opportunity for
testimony and this young lady was all on fire to testify. She said, "I love
Jesus and Jesus loves me, and He makes my arm well;" and then she raised
her arm and waved it in all directions. The old minister bowed his head to
his knees.
The next day we were called to the home of a young lady who was suffering
from inflamatory rheumatism. Her entire body was stiff; her legs were
crossed below her knees and her arms were crossed over her breast and were
immovable, except that she could move her hands slightly and also her head
a little. The doctor was coming twice every day to give her a morphine
injection to ease the pain or she would make a disturbance by screaming at
the top of her voice.
When we first visited her, Brother Renbeck began immediately to talk to her
about salvation, for he thought that she must be saved before she could be
healed. However, we did not seem able to get any spiritual help to her at
all. So the next day before going to see her I asked Brother Renbeck
whether people have to be saved before they can be healed. He said that he
did not know. I then mentioned the fact of the ten lepers being healed and
that only one returned to give glory to God; and, moreover, that I believe
if we would pray for her the Lord would heal her and that God would get
glory out of it some way. "All right," he said, "you talk to her today."
We went in to her room and I said to her "Martha, do you believe that God
will heal you if we pray for you?" "Yes, the Lord healed Miss B. all
right." I then said, "Are you willing to throw out all your medicine
bottles and never go back to them again, even if the pain should return?"
She called her father in and asked him to take the medicine bottles and
smash them up. He went out and brought in a bushel basket and gathering
them up, took them out and smashed them into pieces. Then we anointed her
and prayed and while we were still praying she stretched out her hands and
her feet. When we removed our hands she wrapped the sheet around her,
jumped out of bed and ran around the house.
About six or eight months later while I was holding a meeting in Grand
Forks, one evening a young lady of about nineteen years of age came into
the service carrying her younger sister, nine years of age, who could not
walk. I went right to them and asked where they were from and why they had
come. The young lady told me they were from Grafton. She said, "I have not
been well for a year, and about two years ago my sister, with some other
children, was playing on the roof of an old shed and she either jumped or
fell down, her heel struck a stone and her limb became withered. We have
been to many specialists and none of them could help her. We heard that the
two healers that healed Martha Gaulbright were here and we have come to be
healed." I told her those men were no healers; that it was the Lord who
healed Martha. "Well," she said, "the ministers, then." I asked her if Miss
Gaulbright was still well? She answered, "She has never been sick since."
I told the young lady that only one of the ministers was here. The next day
Brother Emil Krutz came and we prayed for a large number of the sick, (39
in all), however, before we got through praying the two girls were gone. On
inquiring whether anyone knew where they had gone, I was told they had
either gone to the Hotel or to the Great Northern Railway station. I rushed
to the station two blocks away as I was anxious to find out whether they
had been healed, but I knew neither their names nor their address. When I
got to the station I inquired about the train to Grafton to find the train
was just pulling out.
The next summer on coming to the North Dakota State Camp meeting at Grand
Forks, I was two days late having come from the South Dakota camp meeting,
a little girl came running toward me as I was coming on the grounds,
saying, "Praise the Lord, Brother Susag." I said, "Amen, who are you?" She
said, "Don't you know me?" I said, "No, I see so many little girls and they
all look alike to me." She said, "I'm the little girl who came to Grand
Forks last winter and could not walk." I set my grip down and wept for joy,
and said, "Please tell me, sister, when you commenced to walk." She
replied, "My sister carried me to the train in Grand Forks; when we got to
Grafton my short, dried up leg was just as long and as natural as the other
one, so I walked home. Now mother is here at the meeting to get saved."
* * * * *
At one of the camp meetings at St. Paul Park as I was coming back from the
baptismal service that we had in the river, I saw a young lady across the
street walking with crutches, one limb seemingly, just hanging helpless. I
felt sorry for her and went across the street and spoke to her. I asked her
if she had been hurt or had had an accident.
She did not answer me at all. I said, "Do not be afraid of me. I am a
minister; I am sorry for you and am anxious to know what your trouble is."
Then she said, "I have tuberculosis of the leg, there are seven holes in
it. I am just out of the Sanitarium at Saint Paul. They tell me that they
can do nothing for me." I said, "Too bad, I am sorry for you." Then I asked
her if she were a Christian; she broke down and wept. "Indeed, too bad," I
said, "A young lady in that condition and yet not a Christian." Then I
said, looking toward the camp grounds, "Do you see that tent over there? We
are holding services in it and if you will come to the service tonight and
get saved, God will heal you." She then left me and I went over to the
tent.
She came to the service that night and when the altar call was given she
went forward to seek salvation. When the altar service was over she was
still there on her knees. Brother C. H. Tubbs had been instructing her and
he said to her, "You can go and sit down now." But she pointed at me and
said, "That man said that if I got saved that I could get healed too."
Brother Tubbs said "alright" and went over to her with his oil vial and let
a drop fall on her forehead. She dropped her crutches and ran down the
aisles before we could pray, but the strength of her limb did not seem to
hold out. So she came back to the altar and prayer was offered, but she was
unable to use her limb.
Her mother was there. They lived in St. Paul and as it was some little
distance to the station and the time was drawing near for the departure of
the train, the mother said to her, "Take your crutches and let us go." But
she answered, "Mother, I'll never touch those crutches anymore." "But if
you can not walk, what are you going to do?"
Two young ladies helped her to the station and her mother carried the
crutches. Two months after the camp meeting I went to Saint Paul Park and I
met this same young lady, Sister Davis, as she came walking along as spry
as any young lady. I said to her, "When did you get your healing and start
walking?" She answered, "When we got to Saint Paul I got up and walked home
and was well!"
* * * * *
Brother Emil Krutz and I were called to pray for Grandma Dahl who was ill
with double pneumonia. There were eight saints in the room and I heard one
ask another, "How old is Grandma?" The reply was, "Seventy-seven years
old," to which someone answered, "If I were that old I would not care to
get well."
We anointed and prayed for the sick woman but she showed no signs of life
or of getting any help. Brother Krutz looked at me and said, "The Lord
heard prayer." We went into another room and closed the door, Brother Krutz
said to me, "You go in there and send the folks out." We went back into the
room and asked visitors to kindly step out of the room; then locking the
door we again offered prayer. When we took our hands off this time the
sister sat up in bed and said, "Call my daughter, Mrs. Umden, and tell her
to bring me something to eat, I am so hungry." She was perfectly well and
lived several years longer.
* * * * *
For a year or more I was having pain in my liver. I was prayed for a number
of times but did not even get relief and my body kept swelling up until I
could hardly wear my clothes. The Ministry advised me to go to a specialist
and find out what the trouble was and said then if I were healed God would
get more glory out of it, so I went to the specialist.
The doctor said that it was not cancer, but worse still, it was enlargement
of the spleen. He then said, "Dear man, there is no remedy for your
trouble; I can only make a harness that you can wear suspended from your
shoulders to help support your stomach, which will be some relief."
When I got home I told wife what the doctor had said and that I had made my
last trip in the ministry. She looked at me and said, "No, you are not
going to die." "Well," I replied, "I have been in this world fifty-six
years and that is a long time, so if the Lord sees fit to take me I will be
satisfied." She went out of the room and when she returned I saw she was
crying and lifting her right hand' she said, "You are not going to die."
"How do you know," I asked? "The saints will not give you up," she
answered.
A short while after this I was thinking that I would like to go to
Arlington, South Dakota, now called Badger, before I died. I had raised up
that congregation and they were very kind and dear to me. So I dropped
Brother Gesselbeck a card asking him to meet me at Estaline on a certain
date. Estaline was thirteen miles from Brother Gesselbeck's home. I arrived
at Estaline about 6 a.m., but there was no Brother Gesselbeck there! I
walked to a restaurant across the street and asked if any one knew Brother
Gesselbeck. Yes, they knew him and why was I inquiring? I then told them my
plight, that I was expecting him to be there to meet me. "Well," the man
said, "Mr. Gesselbeck is an honest man and if he had gotten your card he
would have been here, but yesterday was Washington's birthday, a holiday,
and he will not get your card until after five o'clock this evening!"
Well, here I was in a bad predicament--no money to go back home, no
telephone out there and so ill that I could not walk over a block or two at
one time. I was wearing my heavy winter clothes beside a heavy dog-skin fur
coat. I left my grip at the restaurant and, walking across the street,
found a long pole and started out on a thirteen mile hike. I would walk a
little and then sit down, and even lie down a while and rest in the snow,
and wept and prayed.
It was about five-thirty in the afternoon when I reached Brother
Geselbeck's pasture. It had taken me over eleven hour to walk the thirteen
miles. I was praying and weeping when I saw Brother Geselbeck coming from
his mail box with my card. He looked up and saw me, then lifting his hand
with the card in it, shook his head as if to say, "Poor Brother Susag!" In
order to prove to him that I was not dead yet, I threw away my pole and
jumped as high as I could and when I came down I was perfectly healed and
the swelling was all gone! I had thought that this would be my last trip to
Brother Geselbeck's, but I have made many since then.
* * * * *
Once I was holding a meeting in North Dakota about ten miles in the country
north of Denbeg. The morning after the meeting closed, I woke up and lay
awake a while, then fell asleep again and I had a dream. I dreamed that I
saw Brother and Sister Gaulke driving on the highway south of Grand Forks.
Suddenly I saw the car go up in the air amidst a cloud of dust. Some folks
came and took Sister Gaulke out of the wreck and laid her on a blanket,
then a big black blanket came up between me and Brother Gaulke and the
wreck. When I awakened it was just fifteen minutes past seven. It made such
a vivid impression on me that I said to the family with whom I was staying,
"I will not leave here until the mail carrier comes; I expect a telegram."
I then told them my dream. They went with me to the mail box a mile from
the farm, and when the mail carrier came, he had brought me a message from
Mrs. Johnston telling what had happened at exactly the hour I was having my
dream, and asking me to come at once, so instead of going to my next
appointment I went at once to Grand Forks. On my arrival at the hospital
when Sister Gaulke saw me, she said, "Of all the angels in heaven, how did
you get here?" Sister Gaulke recovered but her husband lingered a few days
and then went home to glory.
* * * * *
I had a dream one time while I was in Europe about my second son who was
working in a store in Superior, Wisconsin. I saw him go to a music store
and buy a special instrument. I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep
again, so got up and wrote to him, telling him that it was all right that
he bought the instrument, for I knew he was interested in music, but I
asked him to please not join an ungodly band as it might lead him into
temptation and into bad things which would "bring down his daddy's gray
hairs with sorrow to the grave."
He wrote back and thanked me for my letter but never mentioned a word about
the instrument. A few days later I came home from Europe and he had
resigned his position and gotten another one. His grips and trunk were
brought to the house. The family were anxious to see what he had in them
for he had been gone several years, so when they finally got to the big
trunk he lifted his hand and looking at his mother and the rest, said
hesitatingly, "I don't know, now...." His mother said, "Clarence, have you
got something in your trunk you do not want us to see?" He answered, "Daddy
knows." I said to him, "It is all right, Clarence; I am sure you obeyed my
admonition." He opened the trunk and there was a new violin! Then he told
us that when he was buying the violin he had intended to join an orchestra,
but when he got home from the store with his violin there was daddy's
letter. This fulfilled the Scripture that "Before they call I will answer
and while they are yet speaking I will hear."
* * * * *
Another time before I went to Europe there was a little difference or
misunderstanding between two ministers, and some other ministers were
called on to help get the misunderstanding out of the way, which we did,
and everything was fine. They were good ministers and I loved them dearly.
They had both been a blessing to me. A year later I dreamed that the
brother mostly to blame got up early one morning and traveled three hundred
miles by train to see the other brother, and on seeing him treated him very
unmercifully. I dreamed this at two o'clock in the morning and could not
sleep any more, so got up and wrote this brother a kind letter telling him
of my dream and that the Lord had shown me that he was now greatly to
blame. I advised him that if the dream did not fit to destroy the letter
and to resist the enemy, and also that I was praying for him. On coming
back to America I learned that the dream did fit exactly as to the time,
both date and hour, in which his unmerciful action took place.
* * * * *
While at the Anderson Camp Meeting one year, I dreamed that I saw the
ministers of the Church of God within a large enclosure, walls four square,
high and very beautiful. I was standing just inside the door, and on the
outside of the door stood one of the leading ministers among us. He had
gotten into some false doctrine, and he and his wife had built a little
shanty just outside the walls near the entrance, where they had twelve to
twenty ministers with them. The room was so small that they all had to
stand up.
The brother was talking to me trying his best to get me to join his group
and accept his doctrine. Then as I looked up the street, to my left as it
were, I saw a troop of cavalrymen mounted on white horses and dressed in
white uniforms, coming toward me. The troop was so long it seemed almost as
though there was no end to it. An officer, who was riding on the side, said
to me, "You stay in there with the rest of them and you will be protected."
Then they went to the shanty, a little hut made of unpainted lumber, and
smashed it up, scattering all the men inside. Then the clock struck two.
At the minister's meeting in the morning I asked if I might tell my dream
and, consent being granted, I told my dream. After I had told it, Bro. E.
E. Byrum got up and said, "I can interpret the brother's dream: We were
dealing with this brother and sister until two o'clock this morning, and we
found it to be an ungodly spirit and doctrine. I warn everyone to stay away
from it." The couple left us and never came back again.
Brother George W. Green and I once came from Pit, a little town in northern
Minnesota. On our way to Grand Forks we stopped at a town by the name of
Steiner, the home of the Koglin family. Quite a number of people were in
the house when we arrived. Grandma had had several strokes and the family
had been looking for my address, as they were expecting she would die and
wanted me to come and conduct her funeral services. We asked if we might
see her and they told us we could. We went into the bedroom and prayed for
her and the Lord healed her. If I remember correctly, she lived for over
ten years longer.
* * * * *
At one time I was holding a meeting in a school house near Warren,
Minnesota. I was staying with a family named Keutzer, three miles from the
school house. In the afternoon previous to the evening service I was
praying, and wrestling with the devil. I asked the brother to start at
least an hour ahead of time to go to the meeting or else give me a lantern
and I would walk over. He asked me why, and I told him that the devil was
mad at me and will not let me ride--that when I get in the car, it will
stop.
The brother laughed at me and said, "I have a new Oldsmobile car," and they
would not let me have a lantern, but when they were ready to go I got the
lantern and told them to go on and tell the folks that I would be coming as
fast as I could. But the brother said, "Get in the car." I didn't want to,
but he took hold of me and almost forced me into the car. I got in and it
ran for a rod or two and then stopped. I jumped out of the car, took the
lantern and ran. After a while they caught up with me and stopped for me to
get in, saying that if I didn't, they would not go. This happened several
times. I would get in the car, it would run a rod or two and stop. Finally
I ran away from them and walked all the way to the school house and they
arrived after I got there. We were so late the people were just getting
ready to leave, as it was nearly nine o'clock.
We all went into the school house and went on with the service. We found
afterwards why the devil opposed me and did not want me there. There was a
bootlegger in the audience, who, when hearing me relate the experience, got
to thinking about it, became convicted and got saved. When we were leaving
to go home, Brother Keutzer asked me how I was going to get home; was I
going to walk? "No," I said, "I am going to ride and we will have no
trouble with the car." The devil had lost his hold on that bootlegger and
we had no further trouble with the car.
* * * * *
The first time I was called to the Koglin home to hold services was in
winter and very cold. The address given me was Thief River Falls, but did
not state the number of the rural route, so there was no way for me to get
to their place that evening, and I had only enough money to take me to
Steiner, which was my destination. I asked at the depot whether I could
stay there, but they said "No," because they closed up over night. So I
left my grips there and went out to see what I could find, for there was no
one in the city that I knew. I saw a light in a chapel and went in,
thinking I might get an opportunity to testify, and that someone might
invite me home with them. I got a chance to testify all right, but no one
invited me to go home with them. I walked around the city and went into a
restaurant, sat down and got warmed up. But soon they closed.
I kept walking the streets to keep warm, and after a while a man caught up
with me and said, "Well, some one else is out walking in this cold weather,
twenty below." I agreed that it was surely cold. He asked me whether I
lived there, and I told him that my home was in Paynesville,
Minnesota. Then he said, "What is your name?" I told him, "S. O. Susag,"
and he then replied, "I used to know a man by that name who was in the
grocery business on Franklin and Minnehaha in Minneapolis." He turned to me
in the darkness and said, "I am Erickson of the firm of Rudda and Erickson
that used to be on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis."
It turned out that he was a good friend of years ago, so he soon found out
why I was there. He asked me whether I had a hotel room yet. I told him,
no, that I was just looking around. Nevertheless, he offered me money to
pay for a room at the hotel. I refused it, but he insisted, saying, "If our
spare room was empty I would have taken you to my home, but we have friends
from North Dakota visiting us today, but you come to our home for breakfast
in the morning before you take the train." He never knew what a blessing he
was to me in the hour of my great need.
* * * * *