Books: Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag
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S. O. Susag >> Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag
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* * * * *
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.
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