Part 3 (1/2)
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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 compa.s.sion 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 compa.s.sion on the people and healed all that came unto him.”
On one oca.s.sion 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 b.u.t.ter 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, Sat.u.r.day 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.