Books: Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag
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S. O. Susag >> Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag
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I said to them--there were between fifty and seventy of them, "Just a
minute men, I am alone here; please do not destroy the tent; it has no
feelings. Take me and cut me in pieces as you said you wanted to do. If I
have done anything wrong I am willing to suffer for it." This I said as I
walked slowly toward them, "But if it is because I have preached the Word
of God to you folks and you do not receive it, you will meet it at the
judgment bar of God," and I continued to walk toward them. They said, "Do
not come so near." "Are you afraid of me?" I asked as I continued preaching
to them. Then they commenced backing up. Finally, it seemed I had no more
to say. One man said, "Give us more of that." At this point Brother Tubbs
appeared with eight of the brethren, whereupon the crowd turned and ran for
their rigs and vanished into the darkness.
About eighteen months later I held another meeting in this same community
and the attendance was very good. A number of the same people who had
claimed that they wanted to cut me to pieces were also there. Eight souls
had gotten saved and the attendance was increasing. All of a sudden, as I
was closing the service, the Spirit of the Lord said to me, "This is your
last service here. You will leave in the morning on the 4 o'clock train for
Grand Meadows, Minn." Saint and sinner alike, said, "You can't close now;
look at the manifest interest and the growing attendance!" "But," I said,
"the Lord tells me to close." They insisted that it could not be that they
all were wrong and I the only one that was right. So I consented to stay,
but had I but left on that morning train I would have escaped the terrible
storm that swept over that part of the country. As it was, I could neither
get away nor continue the meeting. On the farm where I was staying they had
to have a rope extended between the house and the barn for two days in
order to find the way from one building to the other.
* * * * *
I had held a number of revivals for Brother Millar of Racine, Wisconsin.
One time, in this connection, I had a dream that I saw a pasture with green
grass and beautiful sparkling water running through it and as nice a flock
of sheep as I ever saw were feeding in it. But in this beautiful pasture
that should have been utilized for good pasture. I felt impressed to tell
Bro. Millar of my experience so wrote him of what I had seen in my dream.
In his prompt reply he said, "You had better come with your 'stump-pulling
machine' and pull them out."
Some time later, on a very hot Sunday at noon I arrived in Racine, all
tired and worked out. I asked Bro. Millar whether there was to be an
afternoon service. I understood him to say, "No, there would not be." I
said to him, "I want no lunch so please take me to my room." And this he
did. I undressed immediately and was soon fast asleep, but before long I
felt my bed being shaken and heard someone speaking to me but it seemed I
just could not wake up. The shaking increased and I heard a voice saying,
"Brother Susag, Brother Susag." I looked up and there was Brother Millar!
He said, "Why, Brother Susag, have you undressed? The chapel is full of
people who are waiting for you to come and preach." I told him I had
understood him to say that there would be no afternoon service, that he
should go back and that I would follow as quickly as possible.
I had no message. I opened my Bible and from Genesis to Revelation the
Scriptures did not seem to mean anything to me. I prayed and still no
message. Then coming down stairs I met Sister Anna Hanson who was just
starting for the service. I said to her, "Please give me a text to preach
on." She said, "O you will have a text." I told her I was in earnest, that
I could not think of a single text in the whole Bible that meant anything
to me, that I was too worn out to think. Sister Hanson then said, "I have
often wished I might hear you preach on the first text I ever heard you
preach on and that was in Chicago. The text was, 'The Lord weigheth the
spirits.'" Then the Lord opened my understanding and I had a text. At the
close of the service Sister Hanson walked ahead of me to the parsonage and
into the kitchen where Sister Millar was. She asked, "How was the service?"
Sister Hanson answered, "The right message for the right people at the
right time." Sister Millar said, "Well, praise the Lord!" and when Bro.
Millar came in he said, "Praise the Lord," and jumped and shouted and said
that every stump had been pulled--twenty-two of them!
While this meeting was in progress Brother Tiffany Flint from Milwaukee
came down and asked me to come and hold a two weeks' meeting for him, but I
had no open dates. In those days I was, at times, booked ahead as many as
forty-two meetings, so I had to refuse him. But he urged, "Won't you come
just a few days?" So I promised to go for three nights. When I arrived he
said, "I have something to tell you: I have three persons here needing
spiritual help." I replied, "Tell me nothing, on the train the Lord gave me
three texts, one for each night, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which I
am going to preach on." It happened that each text fitted each one of the
three mentioned persons and each one came to service on the very night his
particular text was preached on, and received his special benefit.
I am relating all these incidents because I have always believed in the
leadership of the Holy Spirit; and now, after these fifty years of work in
the ministry I am more firmly grounded in that belief than ever.
Some time later I held another meeting for Brother Millar. One afternoon,
as I sat studying, the Lord said to me, "Here is your text; you go down to
street so and so, such and such a number and preach at 2:30 this
afternoon." After lunch I said to Brother Millar, "Let us take a walk." On
coming out I said, "Is there a street in the city of such a name," stating
the name the Lord had given me? He said, "I think so; what of it?" I told
him that the Lord had given me a text to go down there and preach at 2:30.
Bro. Millar then said, "We will take a street car and go down there and
see, but I will tell you that if there is a chapel at that number you will
not get an opporunity to preach there." We boarded the street car and the
motor-man directed us to the street, and as we approached the given number
we found a chapel and a meeting in progress. We went in and sat in the back
seat. The singing had just stopped and the evangelist took his Bible and
went to the pulpit. Bro. Millar smiled and hung his head, looking at me out
of the corner of his eye, as much as to say, "I thought so." But I was
pretty sober. I took my watch out of my pocket and held it in my hand and
after the evangelist had given out his text and had spoken just seven
minutes, he closed his Bible and said, "This is queer; I cannot speak this
afternoon," and turning to the pastor, asked him whether he had the
message. The pastor replied, "Why no, I haven't even my Bible with me."
Then, looking over the audience, the evangelist said, "There must be
someone here who has the message." Pointing to me, he said, "Haven't you
got the message?" I answered, "Yes." "Then come on up here," he rejoined,
"and take the pulpit."
On taking the pulpit I promptly explained just how it was we happened to be
there at that particular time and proceeded to preach the sermon the Lord
had given me to preach. I announced our services and everybody seemed to be
well pleased with the sermon. I was not acquainted with any person in the
audience, nor did any one know me as far as I knew. A little later a number
of them attended our services and eight of them were saved and took their
stand for the truth.
* * * * *
At one time I received a series of letters from a leader in a certain
Church of God congregation in which the writer earnestly pleaded that I
come and hold a meeting for him.
He said that the Lord had revealed to him that I could be a great blessing
to him and his congregation. I had never been to the place nor did I know
anyone in the congregation that I was aware of. After giving the matter due
consideration I felt that I should go, and wrote the pastor to that effect.
On the day I was planning to leave I received a letter from the brother,
upon the reading of which I began to tremble like a leaf--something I had
never experienced before. I was standing on the floor reading the letter.
Wife ran up to me and asked me if I was sick or whether there was anything
wrong. She took the letter and read it, and said, "There is nothing wrong
with that letter." "No," I said, "but I have a feeling that if I go I will
meet something I have never met before." Wife answered, "Don't let the
devil scare you now; you go, and I will pray for you."
On arriving in the city, as I stepped off the train, a man came up to me
and said, "Are you Brother Susag? I am Brother X--; I have come to meet
you. We certainly are glad that you have come, but I am sorry to have to
tell you that our group is split into two congregations." I quickly reached
to take my suitcase out of his hand, and said to him, "I'm going right back
home; I'm too small a man to attempt to tackle anything like that." But he
said, "No, you cannot go, for we have been praying for you to come and the
Lord has shown us that you are the man to help us out." "All right," I
said, "on one condition I'll stay. Take me to a hotel, and you inform both
parties that I will only stay on condition that all meet together in one
chapel and that no one tell me anything about the trouble, for if the Word
of God will not make you one, I surely cannot do so." "But," said he, "you
surely need to know something about how matters stand." "No," I replied,
"the Lord knows it all and He also knows what messages to give me from time
to time." "Very well," he said, "I'll take you out in the country three
miles to an old couple who knows nothing of the trouble."
Three days later at three o'clock in the afternoon, the brother came to see
me and informed me that my proposition had been accepted; the group had
agreed to the conditions. I preached for eleven days and let them do their
own altar work and the eleventh night there was but one congregation and
all was peace and harmony. For the first eleven days of the meeting there
was not one outsider in any of the services but on the very next night the
chapel was filled, and there were seven ministers of the city present in
the audience.
* * * * *
An Assembly meeting was being planned, soon to be held in Chicago, at the
74th Street Church of God and the brethren in charge wrote to the ministers
of the Scandinavian Publishing work in St. Paul Park, Minnesota, requesting
them to provide an evangelist who should preach in the Scandinavian
languages--either Thomas Nelson, Emil Krutz or S. O. Susag. Brother Krutz
and I were holding a meeting at Hereford, Minn. at the time. We received a
letter from St. Paul Park asking us to pray to find out which one of the
three of us was to go. Then Brother Krutz said to me, "I know you know who
is to go; tell me who it is." But I answered him, that he should go find
out from the same source from which I had found out. He left me and after
two hours returned and said, "It was a little hard for me to find out
because I wanted to go so badly myself, but the Lord showed me that you
were the one to go."
On my way I stopped at St. Paul Park and met Brother D. O. Teasley from New
York. He said to me, "So you are on your way to the Assembly in Chicago." I
said, "Yes, if Brother Nelson is not going." "Why," he said, "he is not
going. When I stopped in Chicago the congregation was praying the Lord to
send you." God works at both ends.
We held the Scandinavian services at the Assembly up stairs in the
Missionary Home. After five days' meeting, quite a few were saved, while
down in the English services in the chapel where there were thirty-three
ministers, none were being saved. Brother Reardon, hearing of our good
services, asked me whether I preached in English, "Yes," I replied, "in my
broken way." "Why, then," he said, "do you not ask the Lord for a message
to preach down in the chapel?" I answered, telling him the Lord had already
given me three messages but someone else gets to the pulpit before me.
(This was the time for the free-for-all in the pulpit). Brother Reardon
said, "Come with me," and he took me upstairs into a room where a group of
the leading ministers were assembled and said to them, "Here is the man who
is holding up the success of the meeting." I said, "How is that possible
when I cannot even get into the pulpit? Somebody rushes in ahead of me, and
one who did so was not saved." To this they said, "We have already attended
to that person," and told me that I had better get another message from the
Lord, but I said, "No." Then they said, "Will you preach it if the Lord
gives you another message?" I said, "I will, if I can get into the pulpit
and you will pray for me."
The second day following, the Lord gave me another message. My text was the
last clause of the second verse of Proverbs 16: "... the Lord weigheth the
spirits." After I had spoken a few minutes Brother Cole spoke up and said,
"Please stop a minute, Bro. Susag, do not talk so fast; we do not
understand a word you say." I said, "Please pray for me." Then again,
realizing I was going quite fast, I stopped, when Sister Cole said, "Do not
stop now, go ahead, Bro. Susag, we can understand you well enough." I
seemed to be full of the Holy Ghost which seemed to be pressing me on. When
I said, "Amen" there were forty-two at the altar crying for mercy.
Listen folks, this was not because of my good preaching, for they could not
understand me, but they understood when the Holy Ghost spoke. When I went
to the altar to pray with the seekers a man came running on his hands and
feet, barking like a dog. He was taken out to another room to be prayed
for. He was helped, and the devils were cast out.
After the altar service was over I asked Brothers Reardon and Ebel to go
with me to the basement. As soon as we got there I fell on my face to the
floor weeping, and saying to the brothers, "I need help, I am in serious
trouble. It seems as though devils were tearing my very body to pieces."
Thank God for good brothers who are able to help a person in time of need.
Brother Reardon said to me, "Get up quick, Bro. Susag, don't lie there and
cry for the devil." But I said, "You don't know what trouble I am in." But
they said to me, "There is nothing the matter with you. Get up and rebuke
the devil, get up and sit on that chair and we will talk to you." Then Bro.
Reardon said, "The Lord used you to break the spell in the meeting and
there were seven possessed with devils at the altar. The devil became
enraged at you and was determined to ruin you." Then I resisted the devil
and was free.
We will soon find out when we let the Holy Ghost have His way with us there
are seemingly two equally great powers in the world. But thank God, we also
find that He is the Omnipotent Ruler over all things.
Brother Tubbs and I once held a meeting at Portland, North Dakota. The wife
of the man with whom we stayed professed to be saved and one of the saints.
Her husband, as far as I knew, made no profession but was a very fine man
and one of the leading business men of the town.
One day, as we were looking through the bookcase, we found a lot of fine
looking books of Russellite teaching. We asked the sister who had bought
them. She told us that she had bought them--"had bought over a hundred
dollars' worth of those good books." We informed her that they were
unsound, that they taught erroneous doctrine and should not be read nor
handed to anyone.
Our taking this stand made things look as though we would be without a
place to stay. But that evening the Lord changed the situation. The
two-year-old child of this couple was suddenly taken violently ill. The
mother asked us to pray for the boy. Bro. Tubbs plainly told her that the
Lord would not heal her boy as long as she had those books in the house.
When we were just starting to go to the service that evening, the father,
who was holding the child in a blanket in his arms, said to us, "Will you
guarantee healing to my child if I place it in your hands? Otherwise I
shall have to get a doctor before it is too late." Bro. Tubbs answered, "We
can guarantee nothing," and we started for the service.
Bro. Tubbs was already outside the door of the house when the mother of the
child said pleadingly, "Won't you pray?" The Holy Ghost came upon me and I
said, "Yes, on one condition, if you will promise to take all those books
over to the meeting place tomorrow and burn them up before the eyes of the
audience, I'll pray and guarantee healing for your child." She said, "I
won't do that; they are good books and cost $100." "All right," I said, and
stepped out of the door. The father said, "Just a minute," and then to his
wife he said, "Isn't the life of our child worth more than one hundred
dollars?" She said, "But they are good books." He replied, "The ministers
say they are no good. I know nothing about them, whether they are good or
not, but I do know one thing that my child's life is worth more than one
hundred dollars." "All right, then, I'll do it," she said.
I stepped back in the room, threw my hat on the floor, went over and laid
my hands on the child and prayed the prayer of faith and the Lord healed
the child instantly, and the books went up in smoke the next day.
I have seen bookcases and book shelves in many homes that need just such a
purge in order that the glory of God may dwell in the home, and sometimes
even in the churches.
* * * * *
In the years 1915-16 I spent almost thirteen months in Denmark helping the
few faithful workers there to raise up eight congregations and many books
were burned during the time.
One old mother in Israel, when she heard of the books being burned, said,
"I've got only one book and it's a good one." She brought it to me and
said, "If you say this is not good, my salvation goes too." I asked her if
I might mark with a pencil in her book and she said I could. After reading
it a while I laid it aside having marked it here and there. She asked me
what I thought of her book. Not to discourage her, I said, "There are some
good things in that book." She took it and began to find the places which I
had marked, finally closed the book and said, "This book is no good; the
Bible says thus and so and the book speaks to the contrary." Then she said,
"Why have I been blessed many times when reading this book?" I answered,
"Because you were honest and did not know any better."
We pioneer ministers had many things to meet. On getting home one time, I
found that a runaway team had pulled our windmill down so that we had to
have a new one. The well was 204 feet and was hard to pump. After we got
the new one, a neighbor came over and said to my son, Oswald, "See, your
father has been out preaching and so you are able to have a new windmill."
Yes, he had been gone seven weeks and he was eleven cents short on his
expenses. The following year I was gone nine months and five days and I
fared real well--I had $76.76 above my expenses that time.
* * * * *
Sometimes I got to thinking about little Charlie Brown, who I believe was
about eleven years old at the time. When his father asked him if he got
tired, he said, "Yes, I get tired of this walking preaching." So they went
into a grove and prayed and his father said to him, "We will go to the next
town and you preach on some street corner and if no one gets saved, we will
quit and if some get saved we will keep on. What do you think of that?"
Young Charlie agreed to that and a number of souls did get saved. Now
"young Charlie" is Editor in Chief of the Gospel Trumpet.
Then it was empty pocketbooks, empty stomachs and sore feet, but that did
not stop the preaching. Yes, in those days it was souls we were after, and
not money and honor.
* * * * *
I did not have a new suit for sixteen years; wife had only one new dress in
eighteen years. Although we lived on a farm we could not eat butter. We had
to sell that in order to be able to buy more necessary things.
One year wife and the children were raising twenty-two hogs while I was out
preaching in the gospel field, and we had a payment of $500 to make on our
home, or move. When I arrived home in the fall wife met me with tears in
her eyes as she told me that the hogs were all ready for the market when
the price dropped from $6.00 per hundred weight to $2.75. "And," she
continued, "the only reason I can find for it is that we have not given
enough." "But," I replied, "I feel that we have given enough: Our gross
income has been a little over $500.00." She then brought two pencils and
two pieces of paper and said to me, "Come on." We knelt down and asked the
Lord to bring to our minds what we had given, and in our check-up we found
we had given $252.50. Then, almost scaring me, my wife, with tears
streaming down her face, lifted her hand toward heaven, and said, "Lord, we
have done our duty and you will have to pay our bills."
Two days later the cattle buyer came back and said that if he could get our
hogs he would have enough for two railroad carloads. I told him he could
not have them at that price. He said, "They are the nicest looking hogs I
ever saw and if I can get them to mix in with the others I may get top
price for all." "And," he added, "I will give you the old price: Six
dollars ($6.00) per hundred weight." To which I replied, "They are yours."
One of our neighbors had twenty-two hogs born the same week as ours. The
day they were brought into town people said, "Susag's hogs are the nicest,
but P----'s hogs will weigh 1,000 pounds more than his." They weighed them
and found that our hogs weighed almost eleven hundred pounds more than
P----'s. They took them off the scales twice to examine the scales to see
whether they were correct, but the hogs held their weight, almost eleven
hundred pounds more than the neighbor's hogs. So once more, the Lord
honored his faithful, humble people. There was enough money for the $500
payment and some to spare.
Two years later we had another $500 payment to meet, and when we started to
seed in the spring, I said to the twins, "Let us kneel down right here in
the field and ask God to give us a large enough crop to pay the notes which
will be due in the fall." That year crops, generally, were very poor,
average wheat being from 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 bushels to the acre (of screenings,
or Number Four, as it is called). But the Lord gave us eighteen bushels to
the acre on one piece and on the other, twenty-two bushels to the acre of
Number One wheat. One old lady said, "I can't understand such a thing--only
a fence between."
* * * * *
One time I had a dream of a scene taking place in the chapel at St. Paul
Park, Minn. Brother Nelson, who had just finished his sermon, was standing
by the pulpit with his left elbow on the pulpit and his hand on his chin,
looking at the audience. Then I saw a woman, about two-thirds down the
aisle, get up and shake her fist toward Bro. Nelson. The Lord said to me,
"Do you see that woman?" I answered, "Yes." "You see she is not right with
me in shaking her fist at my servant?" "Yes," I said, "I can see that."
Then the scene changed in my dream. I was sitting on a chair right between
the dining room and the front room at the Workers' Home of the Scandinavian
Publishing Company, and there was a minister sitting behind me leaning his
hands on the back of my chair. This minister I had met once before, and the
Lord said to me, "You had better look out for that man; he is not right
with me. He will get you into trouble."
Some days later I received a telephone message to come to St. Paul Park,
Minn. at once. I went accordingly. On my arrival I found services were
going on in the Workers' Home and very soon I was sitting exactly as I saw
myself sitting in my dream. All of a sudden I saw the woman I had seen in
my dream coming in from the kitchen. I had never seen her before, nor had I
ever heard of her, but recognized her from the dream. Then I almost got
scared. What if that preacher was sitting behind me resting his hands on
the back of my chair, I thought. What's up, anyhow? I did not dare to look
back to see!
The brethren asked me to preach, and when I got up and faced the audience,
sure enough, there sat the very minister I had seen in my dream! I spoke on
the twenty-third Psalm. I'm generally long winded in the pulpit but this
time I cut it short. When I closed, Bro. Nelson said, "Is that all you are
going to give us?" And I said, "Yes."
"Old men shall have dreams and young men shall see visions."
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