Chapter 10

Three weeks before the note came due I went to see him. My purpose in going was in regard to the loan. "Well," he said, "it is not due yet; we have not sent you a notice." I told him that I was wanting to know whether he would extend the time on the note. He asked me whether I had anything at all to pay on it. I told him I had only $50.00 and the interest. To which he replied, "That's fine." It took me two years instead of eight months to pay off the loan; but I was always on hand ahead of time to get the extension. When I made the last payment he gave me one dollar.

I went to see this banker some years later, and I asked him what it was that had made him so kind to me. Tears came into his eyes, but he did not answer--and my eyes were moist as well. He turned and from a drawer took out a small tract in which was an account of his boyhood life and experiences. His father died when he was eleven years old. He took a job as ship boy on board a ship and went through untold hardships to help support his mother and his six brothers and sisters. When he was about seventeen he came to America and located in Wisconsin.

When the Civil War was on a certain rich man came to him with an offer of several hundred dollars if he would act as substitute for his son in the army--which offer, however, he refused. Some time later he became acquainted with a family in which were seven children who were very good to him. One day word came that the father, who was a soldier, was killed in action and that the oldest boy was to be taken to fill his father's place. Whereupon young Torp stepped up to the boy and said, "You go home and take care of your mother and the family and I will go in your place--free of charge." The Lord was good to him and protected him; very soon he was promoted to the rank of an officer--and so the booklet continued, telling of his life's experiences.

These two incidents remind me, by way of contrast, of the story of another banker and of the way he dealt with a poor man who was in debt to him. When not prepared to meet the payments on his note the poor man would ask for an extension of time. Finally the banker became impatient and refused to grant any further time extension. The poor man begged for mercy--that he would allow him more time. "All right," said the banker, "I have a glass eye; it is such a good one that people cannot tell which one it is; if you can tell which one, I will extend the loan." Looking carefully at the eyes the man said, "It is the left one." "Yes," said the other, "how could you tell?" The man said, "I could tell that eye was more sympathetic than the good one." It is said of Jesus that he "learned obedience through the things that he suffered"--and so with us, we learn how to have sympathy according to how we suffer.

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My first experience of being healed of cancer of the stomach was while I was in Grand Forks in 1922 after that Doctor Weatherstein had examined me and said there was nothing that could be done for me. I was taken to the Werstlein's home where I was staying, and Brother Shave, Sister Gaulke and Sister Johnstone were sent for. They came, and when they saw me as I lay on the lounge, they fell on their knees weeping and calling on God. All at once they arose, and with Sister Werstlein, laid their hands on me and rebuked the devil and the cancer, and I was instantly healed!

In the fall of 1936 I had a number of calls to go to the West Coast, but I did not feel that I could leave unless wife had someone to stay with her. However, she insisted that I should go, saying she was able to take care of herself, but I hesitated about going so far away and applied for a job as an automobile adjuster paying $50 a week and commission. I had everything signed up on Friday, and I was to go to work the following Tuesday. On Sunday the cancer returned again for the third time--the blood running from me and I was very sick. Wife said--not in an unkind way--"Good enough for you." I said, "I know what you are going to say." "Yes," she went on, "but I will check up on you. Do you remember what Brother Dorrity said to you when you were ordained? 'This is not for a day, nor for a week, nor for a month or a year, but for your lifetime,' and you are not dead yet!" To which I replied, suffering and weeping, "All right, you come and pray for me." She came and prayed and I was instantly healed. Needless to say, I did not take the job.

This took place the Sunday before Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving day we were to go by invitation to Willmar to dinner and in the evening we were to attend service and I was to preach. That was the last automobile trip my wife ever took with me.

In the same year we were living on our little farm. On December the first, as I was going to town, wife made out a little list of things she wanted me to buy, but in spite of the list I forgot two of the items I was to get--and they were never purchased for they were never needed. On Monday the 8th I said to her, "Perhaps I had better go to town and get those two articles," but she said, "Never mind, we will wait until someone else goes in."

Being clerk of the district school board and her brother the chairman, when he came over, they talked over some business matters and other affairs that evening. The next morning she got up early. I saw a light in her room and I asked her whether she was getting up. She said she was; so I thought I had better go down and stir up the fire. When she came down she said, "If you want a job you can get breakfast ready." I answered, "Okay, what do you want to eat?" She said, "A glass of milk, a slice of toast and a soft cooked egg." Then she said, "I suppose you want oatmeal!" I said, "Sure."

After breakfast we had our morning worship and then she went to read and write. After I had washed the dishes I said, "I am going to town to get those two articles." To which she replied, "It is up to you. No hurry about it." I went out to the garage to get the car and found I had a flat tire, so I went back into the house and said, "It is cold out there and there is a flat tire." She said, "Never mind."

About eleven o'clock she put her hands up to her ears and said, "I have such pain around my ears." Then she went over to the sofa and lay down, but the pain grew worse. I went to her and knelt down; we prayed and she was instantly made well.

At noon I fixed a little lunch, after which I said, "Now I will go and fix the tire and go to town." She laughed and said, "So now you are going to be a man again."

I jacked up the car but could not turn any of the bolts on the wheel. I walked to the neighbor's and borrowed a coal chisel but still I could not move a bolt even with the hammer and chisel. All at once I heard a rattle as though someone was dying. It startled me. I threw down the hammer and chisel, and ran for the house like a wild man, jerking open one door after another, and slamming them as I went. When I opened the last one, there I saw wife sitting in the rocker reading, and she laughed. I raised my hands and said to her, "You are not dead yet!" She answered, "I should say not! I was wondering what kind of a cowboy had come rattling through the house!"

Then I told her that I could not get the wheel off. After a few minutes she said, "Uncle Carl [her brother] said to me, 'Martha, why don't you take a rest? You are always so busy and you don't have to keep going like that,' so now I am going up stairs to take a rest. You come with me and carry my Bible and a few other things." So I went with her. After I had tucked her in bed I asked her if she was resting comfortably now. She said, "Yes," and looking up at me with a smile, she said, as though she was about to tell me a secret, "And now..."--and she was dead! I raised my hands and said, "O Mama, you are not leaving me, are you?" But there she lay smiling.

I called the doctor and in a few minutes the house was full of people. The first one to come was Sister Hansen. She said, "Brother Susag, Sister Susag is not dead--she lies there smiling!" But she was gone. She had been praying for about two years that she might go that way, and her prayer was answered. (I got a neighbor young man to come and see what he could do with the car. He had no trouble in turning the bolts and was able to fix it very easily.) The feeling I had that I could not leave my wife to go to the West Coast to hold meetings proved to have been quite in order.

* * * * *

On one of my trips I had to change trains at Grand Forks, and having a little time to spare I walked down a certain street of the city and met Brother John Sonden who was standing outside of a doctor's office. He was surprised to see me, but I explained that I was just passing through in making my train connections. He said he was waiting for his son, Brent, who was up in the office consulting the doctor about his health. He wished so much that I could talk to the boy. At his request I went and met him as he was coming out of the consulting room.

He informed me that the doctor had told him he had heart trouble, but as he did not know what kind, he wanted him to go to the hospital for a week when he thought he would be able to locate the ailment. After hearing what he had to say, I said to him, "I'll tell you what your trouble is and how you feel when you are sitting on the gang plow, plowing: You feel you are going to fall off in front of the plow and get killed and that makes you nervous and sick." He said, "Yes sir, that is exactly how I feel." I then said to him, "I can tell you the cure for it: Go home, and falling on your knees, confess your sins to God and call on Him. for salvation. I will be agreed in prayer and I guarantee you will be well--and now, goodbye, Brent, I must run to catch my train."

A year later when driving past his farm with Brother Holman, I saw a man out in the field and asked Brother Holman whether that was Brent Sonden. He said it was, and out of the car I got and ran over to him in the field saying, "Praise the Lord, Brent--did you follow the advice I gave you a year ago?" He answered, "Yes, and I have never had that feeling again since the Lord saved me."

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At one time I went to Hereford, Minnesota to preach for Brother George Green while he went on a trip to Iowa. At the Sunday morning service I learned that Elder Larson had met with an automobile accident the night before, breaking his left arm in two places and had been taken to the hospital at Barrett. His father phoned me that he would call for me and take me with him to the hospital.

On our arrival there, we found three doctors on the spot ready to amputate the arm--they were to take it off between the shoulder and the elbow. But I protested, saying, "That arm is not going to be amputated; those bones have to be set; for if you take the arm off you can never put it back again." But the doctors objected, "That is all we can do." I replied, "If Doctor Phelon of Paynesville had been at home I would have called for him to come and he would have fixed those bones in a jiffy." They replied, "We know him and he is no better than we are."

They turned to the father and said, "Are you going to listen to us or to this old foggy preacher?" "Well," he answered, "The old minister knows something too." At this, two of the doctors picked up their instruments and left. The one remaining said to me, "What are you going to do?" I said, "I am going to Hereford to preach tonight, after which I'll come back and take the young man with me on the train to Minneapolis." "But," he said, "gangrene may set in." I told him that I would pray God Almighty to keep that away. Then he asked me whether I was going alone with the boy, and I told him I was. He said that I was a brave man, but I answered, "No, it is not that I am brave, but that young man would give anything to have his two arms." Then the doctor said, "How would it be if I were to go with you?" I told him that it would be fine. When we were on the train he asked me where I was going to take the young man when we got to Minneapolis. I told him I hadn't thought of that, but in a city of 500,000 people there must be a doctor capable of setting bones. If not, I said, "I'll do it myself." "All right," replied the doctor, "We'll take him to the Fairview Hospital; I know a doctor there who is good at setting bones. His name is Seversen." And this we decided to do.

It was early when we arrived in the city, so we first had breakfast, after which I was introduced to Dr. Seversen. I said to him, "So you are the doctor who is going to set the bones in that arm?" But he said, "It can't be done; the arm will have to be amputated." I said, "That suggestion has been made to me before, and that arm is not going to come off." While we were talking several other doctors had come in--some thirteen or fourteen in all. They said. "We will show you the Xray pictures"--hoping to convince me that I was wrong. But I answered, "Xray pictures or no Xray pictures, that arm is not going to be amputated." However, they protested and argued that gangrene would set in--if it had not already done so. I said, "I will ask God Almighty to not let that happen." Then turning to the doctors, I said, "Shame on you doctors; if you cannot do it, I can, only I have no license...." And to Dr. Seversen I said, "Will you do it? Tell me quick, for if you will not, I will take him away from here." The doctor replied, "I will."

I said to Dr. Seversen, "I would like to go along with you to see whether you know how to do it." Eight doctors were also present. While the doctor was drilling a hole in the protruding bone, red blood spurted out of it, and I said, "Praise the Lord!" One of the doctors standing by said, "How do you know fhat that looks good?" I made no reply, but looked at him with a grin.

During his stay in the hospital I visited the young man from time to time. One day I asked the doctor how he was getting along with Elder, and he answered, "Getting along good only the sore doesn't quit running as rapidly as I would like to have it." Then I ventured, "Have you looked at his back?" He asked, "Tuberculosis of the spine?" I replied, "You had better look."

The next time I was there he said, "There is no tuberculosis about him now; he is well, when did he have it?" Then I told him that five years previous to this time, when a lad of fourteen, he was sick and I prayed for him and the Lord healed him. (Dr. Seversen did a good job on that young man's arm and the Lord did the finishing.) Mr. Larson has a good strong arm today and is employed in a service station in Elbow Lake, Minnesota.

Two years later I visited Dr. Seversen. When he saw me, he stuck both arms up and said, "Here comes the man with the iron nerve." I answered him, "No, here comes the man with a little good common sense and faith in God Almighty." "Yes," he said, "common sense, but I thought it could not be done, when it was in such a mess and had been broken so long." I answered him, "Yes, but a good arm is better than an iron hook on it." He said, "Indeed, but I did not think it could be done." (I have nothing against doctors, but the Lord can do what men cannot do.)

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One time Brother and Sister George Larson's three sons were stricken at the same time with infantile paralysis. Herman was 21 and the twins 18 years. A specialist was called and he brought two doctors with him. He pronounced the cases as very serious, especially Norman who was stricken in the head, and they did not think there was any hope for him. They said it would be a good thing if he would die, for if he lived, he would be crazy. They sent for me. Sister Larson was then pastor of a congregation in Hereford, Minn. They had been praying and we prayed again, and the Lord finished the job and healed all three. Often people say, "It was not so serious and may not have been what they said it was," but this time the devil got fooled. The young man had been going to the University of Minnesota where they had been tapping some blood from them for medical science purposes to use to heal others stricken in the same manner; so medical science acknowledge they had the real thing.

At one of the camp meetings at Hereford, Ole Torgesen got very much under conviction and went home to repair a thrashing machine engine. It did not want to start and he got angry and swore at it. Starting suddenly, the fly wheel struck his left hand and breaking a number of bones. He went to the doctor and had the bones set and the hand taped and the arm strapped to his body. Then he came back to the meeting and wanted to be saved. He repented, and the Lord accepted him. While he was still on his knees he looked up and said, "I hear you men believe in divine healing, and I want to be prayed for that the Lord will heal my hand." So Brother C. H. Tubbs and myself prayed the prayer of faith and he began to unloose his arm and take off the bandage. While he was doing so, the saints were shouting the praises of God. Others told him not to take the bandage off and got angry as he continued removing them. Finally he took off the cotton and cleaned off the iodine and the taping. After doing so, he lifted his arm slowly to move his fingers. Finally he put his hand up and moved his fingers freely, and his hand was healed to the glory of God. Next day we had baptismal services and I asked him if he wanted to be baptized. He said he did, but thought his wife would be saved, too, so wished that both could be baptized together. I said, "All right."

Next day in the morning service she got saved. She was the daughter of a lay minister of a certain denomination who did not believe in baptism by immersion. She asked me if they could be baptized right away. I told her that just as soon as the service was over we would go immediately to the pool. She did not want her parents to know what she was doing, so we kept it quiet, but when we started for the pool, the prairie seemed to be alive with people on horse back and in all kinds of rigs, coming from all directions.

They were blowing horns and making music on circle saws. So when we got to the pool, the banks were covered with people more than in the baptismal service before. While we were singing, I heard the sister say to her husband, "There they come!" It was her father and mother. They came over to them and I said, "Don't say a word to them." The preacher went after them in a great way. Finally the daughter put her arms around his neck, and said, "Daddy, don't go at it this way, please. We are saved now and want to obey the commandments of the Lord." "All right," he said, "You are old enough to know what you are doing." "But this man..." running at me and shaking his fist in my face, and I thought I surely would get a good licking when I said nothing and did not move. He cooled down, and said, "This is a poor man. We better take up a collection for him," and walked away. While I was baptizing the two and a Methodist minister's son, stones and sticks flew in plenty around me but none hit me.

One evening three young men cut the rope of the tent and were caught. When they learned they could get seven years in State prison, and we did not prosecute them--that ended all the disturbance at that place.

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At one time I was holding a revival meeting at Plum Coulee, Canada. One evening there was conviction upon a number of people. I was just going to close my sermon and make the altar call, and the devil said, "Now you swear." It shocked me so, I had to stop for a minute and conviction ceased. Then I had to start preaching again. The devil once more said, "Now you swear." I rebuked him and went ahead and made the altar call, and those under conviction came forward and received help.

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MAN FEAR

I was called at one time to Grand Forks to help in a meeting. Coming there, I saw two or three large, tall ministers whom I had never seen before. I was scared to preach before them, so when we had prayer that evening, I prayed the Lord to deliver me from man fear. The committee asked me to speak that evening and the Lord blessed and gave me victory. Next day one of those good ministers came to me and said, "I want to talk to you. I was so blessed before you came, but since you came, I was afraid of you and my blessing all left. I wonder if you can help me?" "I can," I said. "When I came last night, upon seeing you and Brother H., I got so scared I wished I was not here, so I prayed and it left me and then the devil jumped on you."

This made me think of a Swedish song which says in part:

"Menisko frygtens didlige snaror har bringat Mangen en man paafald."

Which means in English:

"The fear of man the deadly snares Has brought many a man to fall."

In a case like this it may not mean so much, but in many cases good ministers have failed to preach the truth because of the fear of man. What a disaster for themselves and for hundreds of souls!

One Sunday morning I spoke in a chapel for a brother pastor. When the service was over he came to me and in a very tired tone, he said, "Did you mean me this morning?" I answered, "Dear Brother, I surely did not mean you." He said, "Well," and walked away still tired. I did not go for lunch but remained in the chapel and wept and prayed that I might not be a trial to my dear brethren. I said, "I will not go into the pulpit again until you give me more wisdom," but when the afternoon meeting time came, no one else had a message, and I had to go into the pulpit again. The Lord blessed in a wonderful way, and a number of souls got saved. After the service the good pastor came to me and said, "Will you forgive me? You did not mean me this morning."

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HOW THE LORD LEADS

Once on my way to Platte, South Dakota, I got lost. I was driving slowly trying to think of where I had gotten off my route--when suddenly a man in a field on a tractor waved me to stop. He climbed over the fence, and here it was Brother Walter Ratzlaf. He said, "How come you are here?" I answered, "I'm lost." "Turn around," he answered, "and we will drive down to the house."

Going to the house, there was a young lady I had known in North Dakota. He introduced her to me as his wife. The last time I had seen them, they were in North Dakota. Both of them were now members of the committee for the young people's convention of North Dakota, which was to convene the following Friday, Saturday and Sunday. George W. Green of Bertha, Minnesota was to have been the guest speaker, but they had just gotten a telegram from him saying that he could not be there. Brother Ratzlaf said, "The Lord must have sent you here. Could you be our guest speaker?" I answered, "Yes, if you want me. I am on my way home, and Brother Green was expecting to meet me at my place, and I was planning on taking him from my home on to the convention." Again, I could see how the Lord directed many times, unbeknowns to me.