Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag

by S. O. Susag

* * * * *

For a number of years I had suffered with appendicitis and during a meeting I was holding in company with Bro. Carl Arbeiter at Plum Coolie, Canada, I had a severe attack which lasted two days and two nights. The third night I was so tired and worn out that I went to sleep in spite of the pain. I woke up hearing myself say, "Don't stick that knife into me." The appendix was swollen to about the size of a small hen's egg, and I felt it was going to burst. There was no time to get anyone to come and pray so I laid my own hands on my body and said, "Lord God Almighty, if you do not help me now I am gone." It burst, making a noise like the shot from a small shotgun. I then turned over to my other side and went to sleep at once and have never experienced any bad effects nor had any attacks since. In relating this experience to three doctors later, two of them laughed and made fun of me, but the third one said, "Hold on, hold on; this man has never lied to me yet." He said it could have burst into the intestines, the poison passing out the natural way. And if not, the Lord God could take care of him!

* * * * *

Once I had a stroke. Half the left side of my body down to my knees was affected. I could not sit up, neither could I lie down. I stood on my knees beside the sofa for two weeks. I was prayed for several times but was not healed. And I was to start a revival meeting at Hereford, Minn. the Thursday of the second week that I was sick.

Sister Hedricks came over often and prayed for me. When on the second Friday she came and I was no better, she asked me whether I had sent to Anderson and to the Scandinavian Publishing Company at St. Paul Park to have them pray for me. On telling her I had not done so and explaining to her that I had no faith for my own healing, I said, "I could pray for your healing if you were sick, but I have no faith for myself, and I have always preached that when folks were saved they should have faith to pray for their own healing, so I do not want to bother the folks to pray for me." "Well," she said, "aren't you humble enough to tell them that you have no faith for yourself?" I answered, "All right, you pray for me and I will think it over." The next day I asked wife to write to these two places, and when she had written and sealed the two letters I was instantly healed! Wife sent the letters.

After getting healed I decided to go to the revival meeting at Hereford, but there was no train going there until Monday and it was in the month of November and very cold. And it was at the time when the automobile first came into use. One family in the congregation at Hereford had a Ford furnished with a top and side curtains, another family had a Buick (called a gentleman's car), and it had no top nor even a windshield on it.

I found out later that the owning of these cars had caused some little friction in the congregation. In fact, some had said that nobody could have one of those machines and still be a Christian. But they had decided to leave the matter until the time Brother Susag should come and he would help them out.

When we were leaving my home to drive to town to take the train for there, it was really cold. I said to my wife, "Let's go back in the house and ask the Lord to send a man to meet me at Elbow Lake, with a car having a top on it and side curtains"—for I was still very weak. On arriving at Elbow Lake I went to the post office and wrote a card home—I would have had to change trains there if no one had come to meet me—and as I came out of the post office I saw a man across the street—walking in the direction I was going. He looked at me and I looked at him, wondering, then he came running across the street and exclaimed, "Now I know why I came to town today! I am here to drive you to the meeting. I had left my car in town to have a little work done on it, not intending to use it until after the meeting."

Then he went on to say, "We live six miles from town, and this morning as I was working around the barn the Lord said to me, 'You go to town and get your car.' My wife said, 'John, leave that car alone; don't go to town.' But I told her that the Lord said, 'You go and get the car.' And I came as fast as I could get here."

He took me to the service. Bro. E. G. Masters was preaching, and when he had finished speaking he asked me to come to the pulpit and tell how the Lord had healed me and how it was that I managed to get to the service. I related the whole story, telling how I had prayed for someone to meet me who had a. car having a top to it and side curtains to keep out the cold. I then added that I was so glad the Lord had lots of cars; that as for me, I never expected to have a car of my own for I did not think that I would ever be able to afford anything like that. That settled the car difficulty in the congregation—and I was entirely ignorant of the fact of there having been any trouble! Today I am using my ninth car.