Part 2

We then moved to the farm and one afternoon a young man came to our home and asked me to attend a service with him that evening. In answer to my query as to what kind of service it was to be, he informed me that two women evangelists were conducting the meeting. I replied that I was not in favor of women preachers but I would go with him as I was not afraid the women would hurt me. As a matter of fact, it was through these women that I was partly awakened spiritually, but did not yet give up my infidelity.

One evening I was very tired and sleepy and went to bed at precisely nine o'clock. I went to sleep at once and had a dream. I dreamed that I had become a minister of the gospel and that I was traveling all over the United States and Canada, as well as in a number of European countries. Hundreds of souls were turning to the Lord in the meetings and many healings and miracles were performed. It would take a long life to accomplish all that I saw done in my dream. I awakened and felt so refreshed and rested, that I thought it was morning and put on the light but found I had been in bed JUST TEN MINUTES! I did not sleep anymore that night but spent the time in meditating on my dream which convinced me that there must be within the human body a positive something that would continue to live forever and my infidelity vanished.

A few months later (March 12, 1895), the Lord spoke peace to my wife and me at the same time in our own home, and called us into the ministry. He brought us out of darkness through three visions and showed us the evil of all sectarian division. All this was giving us light on the beautiful Church of God without our having heard any preaching on the subject, nor did we know anyone who believed as we did.

We commenced preaching at once and our first convert was a lady who was saved in our home. (Sister Hendricks, now Myhre, who is a minister). Our first case of healing was when the Lord healed me of blood poisoning in my left arm, caused from the scratch of a rusty nail. I caught cold in it and it swelled so fast that when I got into the house I could not get my clothes off and they had to be cut off with scissors. My wife and a young brother prayed for me, but I did not get immediate relief. My entire arm turned blue and yellow and soon my sides began to turn the same way. I had read in the Bible that the sick were to be anointed with oil. The young brother anointed me accordingly, and the swelling began to go down immediately, insomuch that the next morning there was no symptom of any thing wrong whatever.

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The next experience of healing was of the restoring of my hearing to my right ear. My wife had gone to services and I stayed home to take care of the children. I had laid down beside them to get them to sleep and had dropped off to sleep myself, and dreamed that I saw Jesus standing beside the bed. He said to me, "Do you know John Pederson?" "Yes," I replied, "he is my neighbor." And Jesus said, "Isn't he a blacksmith and does he not make sleighs? And," he continued, "if he were to make one for you and you were to break it, wouldn't he fix it for you?" "Why, certainly," I replied. "Well," Jesus continued, "I made your ear in the first place and don't you think I can fix it?" "Yes," I said. Then He stepped up to me and touched my ear with two fingers and I jumped out of bed and MY HEARING WAS PERFECT! I shouted glory to God.

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The youngest of our twin boys, who was nearly five years of age, was taken with double pneumonia and suddenly passed away. My mother-in-law prepared him for burial. As I was preparing to drive to town to get a permit from the doctor to bury the little one, the Lord said to me as I was on my way to the barn to get the team, "Why do you not go back and pray again?" I immediately turned around and went to the little corpse and laying my hands on him prayed and wept, and after a little while he came to life. He was not only alive, but also perfectly well. When I knelt down to pray my family did not dare to speak to me; they thought I had lost my mind.

About three years later our baby daughter, some ten months old, was sick and I was planning to leave home on Friday expecting to be gone over Sunday. The little one grew steadily worse and at eleven o'clock on Sunday night she passed away. There was great consternation in the family. The oldest boy fainted when his grandmother laid her out. After everything had quieted down and all had retired, except my wife who remained up, she went to the little body, held it in her arms as she knelt beside the bed until she was tired, then, laying the baby on the bed and laying her hands on it, prayed until life came back into it. When I returned Monday the child was as well as ever. In both cases grandmother prepared them for burial.

A little while after this experience the twins were out in the barn feeding the horses. Somehow in their actions one boy accidently stuck the tine of the pitchfork right into the eyeball of the other boy. Wife hearing their screams, ran out and brought them into the house. She washed the blood from the injured eye and laid the boy on the bed; then she and the twin brother laid their hands on him and prayed the prayer of faith. He went to sleep and slept untill morning, and all that remained on the eyeball was a small white spot in the center which disappeared after a day or two, and his sight was not in the least impaired.

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A similar case happened at Bruce, South Dakota, while I was pastor at Brookings and White. The little three year old daughter of Brother and Sister Hi Tellinghuisen was playing in the yard with an old rusty sewing machine oil can. She fell on it, the spout striking right into the center of one eyeball. She was taken at once to a physician who ordered her to be taken without delay to a specialist to have the eyeball removed. The parents then called me over the telephone to come at once. When I arrived and saw the eye, it looked to me like a dried up prune stone. I anointed the child, but could find no words to utter in prayer. I could only groan, but the Lord witnessed to the healing. (I think this took place on Saturday at 11 o'clock a.m. and the next day, Sunday, she was brought to the services perfectly well.) (At this writing she is teaching school).

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On March the 20th, 1904, wife was taken with quick consumption. Her fever was so high that she was delirious. As long as I remained beside her praying, she would be rational but as soon as I ceased praying her mind would wander. Over a week later, on Saturday, Brothers O. T. Ring and Carl Forsberg came to visit us. We then had agreement in prayer for the healing of my wife, and from that time on her mind was clear, yet she continued to go down. A number prayed for her but she grew weaker and weaker, until in the month of August. When the neighbors would come in to visit her, they would say to me on leaving, outside of the house, "We are sorry to say it, but we do not expect to see your wife alive again."

One day she said to me, "We have done everything we know to do except to send to Brother E. E. Byrum for an anointed handkerchief." I asked, "Do you want me to send for one?" to which she assented, and I sent for one. We received it by mail August the 23rd at 1 o'clock. I placed the handkerchief upon her and kneeling beside her laid my hands on her and prayed. She was so weak that it seemd as if she would pass away before I could remove my hands, so I soon said "Amen." She remarked, "This does not look very encouraging, does it?" I answered, "No, it does not." Then she drew one of her hands from under the covers and said, "Do you believe that any flesh is ever coming to these hands?" "Dear," I answered, "I do not know." Then she said, "I believe that it will happen." I asked, "Why do you believe it?" She told me that a scripture had come to her while I was praying. She said that it was the one about Naaman: "His flesh came again like the flesh of a little child and he was clean." 2 Kings 5:14.

Two hours later she was perfectly well, but weak, of course.

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On one occasion I received an urgent call to come to Norway Lake to pray for Mrs. John Evenson who was ill with tuberculosis. While on my way there I battled with devils, it seemed as though my buggy was full of devils, whispering to me and saying, "You are going to be arrested and put in jail." However, after driving sixteen miles, the Lord assured me that He was going to raise Sister Everson up, even if she were dead when I got there.

As I drove into the driveway I saw a number of men by the barn. It was the Constable and others. Jumping out of the buggy, I proceeded to unhook my team when Mr. Everson appeared, and said, "The hired man will take the team; come along with me." We went into the house and into the room where the sick woman was. Mr. Everson sat down in a chair beside the bed, taking his watch out, he then took his wife's hand in his to count the pulse. She was unconscious. I spoke to her two or three times but she did not hear me. I knelt down and asked the Lord to restore her to consciousness. Then I arose and spoke to her again. After a bit she opened her eyes and I said, "Brother Susag is here. What do you want him to do for you?" She replied, "I want you to anoint me and pray for me." I immediately proceeded to do as she requested, following which she sat up in bed and asked for something to eat.

The constable, with others, was waiting outside the house to arrest me if the woman had died. Mr. Everson went out to them and they asked him how things were going. He told them that before I prayed for her, her pulse was 124, and when I took my hands off, her pulse was 82--which is normal!

Thirteen years later she was taken sick again. Mr. Everson, not being saved, called for the doctor they had previously employed. The doctor refused to come, saying that Mrs. Everson "had lived for thirteen years on something more than human. I can do nothing for her. If she has faith, she can live another thirteen years." Then they telephoned me. I drove two miles in my automobile and was taken seriously ill and had to return home and go to bed. I was very sick for two days. Mrs. Everson died in the meantime, and I was well.

On one occasion Brother C.H. Tubbs and myself held a meeting at Bowbells, N. Dakota and a number of people were saved. We were to have a baptismal service. It was the month of February and we would have to go three miles to the nearest lake in which to baptize the candidates. There was no place there for the changing of clothes and it was slow traveling as we rode in a lumber wagon. Sister Stolsy, who wanted to be baptized, had been in poor health for five years and had a baby five weeks old. The Constable, on hearing of it, came to us and said, "If you put that woman through that hole in the ice, I'll be there with a warrant for your arrest." So Bro. Tubbs said, "We better go see Sister Stolsy," which we did. He said, "Sister, it does not look reasonable for you in your condition to be baptized." She wept and said, "I have wanted to be baptized for some time and now that I have the opportunity I am denied the privilege." Then I said to her, "Sister Stolsy, save your tears for something else. I will baptize you if I have to spend the remainder of my life behind the bars," and she was baptized. The constable witnessed the baptizing and saw that when she came out of the water she looked the very picture of health. Three days later the constable and his wife were baptized in the self-same place.

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I have baptized hundreds of people from Canada to San Antonio, Texas; from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, in every month of the year, in the lakes of Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as in the North Sea, in all kinds of weather--once in the Red River at Grand Forks, N. Dakota, in a snow storm in zero weather, and I have never yet heard of one person having taken cold from being baptized, but on the other hand, MANY HAVE BEEN HEALED!

It pays to obey the commandments of the Lord. While I was pastor in Grand Forks, N. D., from December, 1919 to November, 1925, I baptized over two hundred persons.

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Once in company with Thomas Nelson, C.H. Tubbs and my wife, we held a tent meeting in the country northwest of Colfax, Wisconsin. Several people were saved and some were healed. This stirred up great opposition so that on a couple of nights an angry mob was on the spot throwing stones, sticks and lumber and bottles on the tent, demanding that we come out and they would cut me to pieces. One night a minister of that community was in the tent, and as he saw the stones come rolling through the tent, he became badly frightened and said to me, "This is worse than in a heathen land." "Yes," I replied, "but are they not your people?" He said, "Yes," and then getting down on his hands and knees crawled out the back way from under the tent and escaped to the woods.

The reason for this unseemly tumult was because I had preached that baptism was by immersion and other truths. The situation was that two grown young people, the son and daughter of a minister in the community, were among those who were to be baptized. But the fact that there was no water nearby in which they could be immersed seemed to give the opposing element great satisfaction. However, we continued to advertise that there would be baptismal services on the coming Saturday afternoon. Friday night it rained heavily and near the tent there was a low place covered with green grass where the water settled and the water was deep enough in which to baptize the new converts.