Chapter 2

This goes to prove that the Lord's resources are limitless. The next Sunday night, being the last night of the meeting, after all had left the tent except Bro. Tubbs and myself, and as I was not making any move towards leaving the tent Brother Tubbs asked me whether I was not going home. I answered, "No, those people who threatened to cut me to pieces are coming back to pull the tent down and I want to be here when they come, but you go on home; I want to be here alone." But he said, "No, I will not leave you."

It was about a hundred rods or more to the house where we were staying and there was no other house near by. We put out the lights and sat waiting. A number of times Bro. Tubbs urged that we go home, declaring that no one would come, but at almost midnight a plank was thrown on the tent and out ran Brother Tubbs for home; and then just as I was coming out of the tent a big plank was thrown on me, striking my right shoulder and also hit my head. It might have been quite serious but that I was wearing a stiff derby hat at the time. As it was, I was almost knocked out.

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.

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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.