Part 15 (1/2)
When I went to his house, his wife said, ”What do you think about my husband?” I answered, ”He is pretty low, but I am going back to see him tomorrow morning at nine o'clock.” She said, ”He isn't going to live that long.” I told her he was not going to die, but going to live, and she said, ”Who said so?” I answered, ”The Lord.”
Next morning I went back and eight nurses met me and one said, ”What did you do to that man yesterday? He had one foot in the grave and now he is going to live.” ”Of course he is going to live,” I said. Then they said, ”But what did you do? We have never seen anything like this.” ”Well,” I said, ”I did what they used to do in olden times.” ”What was that?” they asked. ”Prayed,” I said. ”Yes,” they said, ”that helps.”
Going into his room, he was smiling and I began to talk to him about the Lord. Then he said, ”I do not believe in those old women's fables.” I said, ”I am going to get you to believe in G.o.d.” He replied, ”You can't do it.” I answered, ”By G.o.d's help I can, for where you are, I have been, and where I am, you can come. If I can only gain one point with you I can get you to believe in G.o.d.” (He was a professor at the University of North Dakota). I had to come back in the afternoon at three o'clock and the next morning at about nine. When I came in he said, ”You are too late. The doctor was here with two specialists and I told them I wanted to get up and go home; I am well. They answered me, 'You stay in bed; you are a sick man. There are no T B germs about you but we are studying about what kind of medicine to give you.'” He then asked me how I would have answered them, if I had been here, and I said to him, ”I would have said to them, 'The G.o.d of Heaven that you don't believe in, heard prayers and smote those germs and made you well.'”
He said, ”If you had told them that, there would have been a panic.”
The next morning he got up and went home. I was sent to Europe on a special mission the next day by the Missionary Board and the church. After returning in January, one Monday morning I went to the Northern State Bank on business and on opening the door into the bank, who should I meet, but this professor. My hands went up and I said, ”Glory to G.o.d! Here is the man the Lord kept out of the grave last August.” Up went his hands, and he said, ”Bless G.o.d. G.o.d Almighty did something for me.”
I regret that I have not kept a record through the years. The only record I have is for the first eleven months I was pastor in Brookings and White, South Dakota. I preached 272 sermons, made 178 pastoral visits, wrote 202 letters, traveled almost fifteen thousand miles during that time, and in my fifty years ministry, have had a stated salary only about six years. In my first ten to fifteen years, I preached (at intervals) as many as six sermons a day, three in Norwegian and three in English. In all I have preached something over 17,000 sermons, and have traveled over one million miles. I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean seventeen times one way, and preached a good many times on fifteen of those voyages.
Returning to America in the late fall of 1939, many people asked me who I thought was to blame for the war. They named a number of the leading rulers of the warring nations, and then they added, ”The devil.” I said, ”None of them are to blame for the war.” ”Who then?” they asked. ”Backslidden, professing Christians,” I said. Then they asked if I thought America would get into it, and I answered, ”Most a.s.suredly.” However the majority of them said no, and they also said that our American boys would never leave American soil to fight. I told them that our boys would not only go to Europe to fight, but to almost all the Islands of the sea. Then they asked how long I thought the war was going to last, and I told them ”1949.” A goodly number laughed me to scorn. Not long ago, I received a letter from my oldest son who said, ”I have been checking up on you dad and everything that you said would happen, has come true up to the present date.” The actual fighting is over, but thousands of our men are in foreign lands, and no peace. If the Lord does not get an opportunity to perform a miracle, another war will start before any real peace.
I have not built any chapels large or small, but I have started about fifty or more congregations in this country (America) and in Europe. Also I have raised quite a sum of money to build chapels and to help ministers and missionaries in need. I have raised thousands for church and missionary work in general, seventy per cent has come from the brethren of Norwegian descent, fifteen percent from the Danish descent, ten percent from those of German descent, three percent from the Swedish, and two percent from Americans. The percent here mentioned is for the work in Scandinavian countries only.
While holding a meeting in Bowbells, North Dakota, after a few days three families quit coming and I went out to the farm to see them. When I arrived at the first farm, the other two families were there visiting. After conversing a while, I asked them why they had not been out to the services of late. Finally the man who was the head of the house said, ”We did not like it when you said the preacher could not forgive sins.” I answered, ”If you have wronged the preacher, and ask him his forgiveness he can forgive you, but there are some sins that even the Lord cannot forgive. For instance, if you owe ten dollars to your neighbor over the hill, and you are not willing to pay him, you can keep on praying as long as you live, and the Lord could not forgive you if you are not willing to settle with him. Of course, if you didn't know where he was and couldn't find him, the Lord would forgive you all right.” The man answered, ”We will come to the services,” they said, and some of them got saved. Unbeknown to me, he had owed his neighbor ten dollars for four years and was unwilling to pay, but after he became willing he got saved and paid his debt.
One man got saved in a meeting in South Dakota, and the Lord reminded him of twelve ears of corn which he had taken from his neighbor's field to feed his own oxen. As he went by on his way to town, he said, ”Yes, I'll attend to that tonight.” So after dark he filled a bushel basket with corn and took it over and emptied it into the man's hog pen, feeling good that he had done his duty. The next morning after wors.h.i.+p, the Lord spoke to him and said, ”I suppose today you will go over and settle for the twelve ears of corn.” ”Why I took that over last night,” he protested, ”But you took that over to the hogs, and they were already fed.” So he went over and confessed to the man. We can see by this that it was not the corn the Lord was so interested in as his humble confession.
G.o.d WORKS IN VARIOUS WAYS FOR THE PROTECTION AND DELIVERANCE OF HIS CHILDREN
A certain brother who was a farmer needed a thres.h.i.+ng machine badly, and an agent visited him to see if he could make the deal. They were agreed on prices and terms, but when they talked over the time of delivery, the agent acknowledged he could not get it to him in time for fall thres.h.i.+ng, so the deal fell through. Another agent, hearing of it decided he would go and see the farmer. This time the deal went through, with the promise that the machinery would be delivered in time.
The brother mortgaged his farm and the thres.h.i.+ng machine for forty five hundred dollars, but when harvest time came it had not come. He wrote the manufacturers, and they said that as soon as they could get it built and s.h.i.+pped, they would do so. The farmer became desperate. He took the sales contract to an attorney, but he found a clause in it that prevented him from doing anything about it. It looked as if he would lose all his thres.h.i.+ng income that fall as well as the machine and his farm too. Many earnest prayers went up that the Lord would intervene in his behalf.
During harvest time that year, he lost hundreds of dollars in not having the machine.
Finally in January, the machine was s.h.i.+pped from the factory. The freight train that was pulling it got within three miles of the town. It was pulling up grade slowly, and in turning a sharp curve the whole car which was carrying the thres.h.i.+ng machine loosened from the rest of the train, and tumbled down a steep embankment, completely demolis.h.i.+ng the whole thing.
The railroad paid the damages, and the brother was released from all responsibility.
A good many went out to see the wreckage, and none could understand how the car would become disconnected from the train. They did not know our G.o.d, and the way he answers prayer.
When I was holding a meeting at Grand Forks, wife wrote me that an epidemic of small pox had broken out in the neighborhood, but that it was not necessary for me to come home because, she said, ”I put the children and myself into the 9lst Psalm and we will remain there until the scourge is over” and I thank G.o.d, it did not come near our dwelling.
No apology is made for writing this book, recording the incidents and experiences herein found. As Elijah's G.o.d is still the G.o.d of the universe and today He hears the prayers of the humble and delivers them in time of need. The author is acquainted with the persons mentioned herein, and has a personal knowledge of the things related. No doubt some will question the truthfulness of some of the statements made in this volume. But the truth must not be withheld because of a few skeptics and unbelievers. Some doubted the miracles wrought by the apostles. One good minister in California said one time, when introducing me to the ministers at a ministers' meeting, ”This brother can relate more incidents than anyone I have ever known, and if I did not know Brother Susag, as well as I do, I would have said he lied.” I answered, ”If I did not know him as well as I do, I would have said he lied, too.”
Brother C. E. Brown, present editor of the Gospel Trumpet, upon introducing me to a number of ministers at the Anderson Camp meeting, also stated that I could relate more actual incidents and experiences than anyone he had ever met.
Many ministers and the laity as well, have through the years wanted me to write a book of my experiences, even ministers of other movements. But I am afraid I have waited too long to remember hundreds of incidents that have taken place during my ministry. People say that when I am under the anointing of the Holy Ghost when preaching, the incidents flow from my lips like a stream.
My earnest humble prayer is that these incidents and experiences may prove a blessing and an inspiration that will quicken the faith of those in need whose help can come only from G.o.d.