#27 I Will Remember The Works of the Lord, Part 2

I Will Remember The Works of the Lord, Part 2, by Henry Michel

And now we are coming nearer, and we are coming to the Nineteenth Century. There was a revival in many places, and one of the results of this revival is this wonderful and dear crowd that we have before us. That is the wonderful story that I want to tell! Understand me rightly: I don’t want to praise people; I don’t want to make people higher than they are, but we do have a lot of respect for these people who were persecuted through their whole life, who were full of zeal and full of the Spirit of God, leaving the comfort of their homes and going the way of self denial, bringing the good Gospel and the tidings of peace to the people.

I now have to mention a name that is perhaps going to be mentioned a few times, that of Samuel Fröhlich. This was a French family. Their name was DeJoyeux which is a French word meaning “The joyful”. These people were living in France up to the persecution of 1648. On this date, the Catholic church decided that everyone that is not Catholic should either be killed or leave the country right away. In one night, the terrible Bartholomew night, 40,000 were killed, murdered in a terrible way. In the name of the “holiness” of the church, of the “universal church,” the only church through which, as they pretended, people could go to heaven. Many escaped, and one of the families that escaped was this family of DeJoyeux. They went to Switzerland and settled there in a part of the country that speaks the Swiss German. They changed their name from DeJoyeux to Fröhlich which means “joyful” in German.

This joyful family had a tradition, that one of the family had to be a preacher, had to do something for the Lord. That was something decided; it was not a question whether he likes it or not, if he is fit for this mission or not, he just has to be a preacher, and Samuel Fröhlich was the one who just had to be a preacher. He did not believe; he did not like it; he was not interested; but he was rather mocking. Anyway, that did not matter, he had to be a preacher— that was all. He went to school, he went to college, he went to the theological school of Zurich and in his diary he says, “When I came to the theological school, I had just a little bit of faith, but this little bit of faith, I lost there completely.” When he was graduated from theological school, he was an atheist. He would rather be blaspheming against God than to be praising Him. He was in a terrible state of unbelief, but nevertheless, he was graduated a preacher ready to be ordained.

The Lord was watching this boy and He made him sick. He had a terrible sickness of the lungs, a sickness that was the reason for his early death; the reason why later on he was sick practically two months every year and never recovered completely. He was in such a miserable condition that every doctor had no hopes whatsoever. And in his terror if death, he was asked, “Now how will you present yourself before the Lord in the resurrection of the dead? With your graduation paper, with your diploma and your hatred against God?” He came into a terrible condition, he was not only very sick, but his soul found neither rest nor peace, and was full of “yearning, sadness, and anxiety.” He found out that he was the poorest among the poor, and he came slowly but truly into repentance, crying days and nights for the wickedness of his soul, and he went through weeks and weeks of crying to the Lord, that He would help him. Everybody wanted to help him for the sickness of his body, but there was no one, not a single one who could be of any help—any comfort—for his soul, and he suffered more than can be told. In this misery of his repentance, suddenly he looked to the Bible, the Book he had been studying for years, criticizing it and trying to find what was right and what was wrong; and when he had finished his study, there was nothing right in the Bible anymore, but everything was wrong. He took this Book as much as he could in his weakness, and he found the revelation of Jesus. He found the reason why Jesus died; that Jesus died for him and for his sins. Joyfully, he received salvation by grace and stretched his two hands towards his Savior, and he found a wonderful peace in his heart. As soon as his soul was saved and rescued, the body started to recover and instead of dying as they thought he would, he recovered, not completely, but anyway he was in fairly good health.

Then it was just the time when he should be ordained as a preacher. I don’t know how they do it in this country, but over there when you are to be ordained in the State church, you first had to deliver a sermon, bring a sample of your wisdom, of your ability. The people who listen to your first sermon are not the public who are generally in the church, but just ministers and all the authorities of the church. A church is filled with preachers, old ones and critical ones, and they listen to this sermon, and have to decide whether this man will be ordained or not. He was so joyful about the miracles that he experienced in his sickness that his sermon was a wonderful message of the power of Christ. He told them how he had been; how he went to school; how he lost his faith; how he was sinful as a student, regardless of the fact that he was a theological student, just as sinful as anyone was; and he gave the glory to Jesus. He spoke about the conversion he experienced, about the peace he found, and about the remission of his sins. The more he spoke, the more the people were concerned and when he finished, they said, “Such a man is no good; we cannot use such a man.” They thought that he would turn the whole church upside down, and they did not want such a disturbance. They wanted ministers able to keep the people quiet and silent, and able to keep them coming to church and faithfully paying their dues.

So he waited for one year and then made application again. They thought, “Now let us see if this man has lost his extravagance.” I do not know exactly if his second sermon was so joyful as the first one. He, at least, had a year’s experience behind him, and it certainly had been joyful, but perhaps in a moderate way, and he was ordained “on trial.” It was said to him what is generally said when you receive your license only on trial, “We have a right to withdraw this license on a moment’s notice.” So he was joyful anyway; “Now I can live for my Lord.”

There was a certain Lutheran church near the Lake of Constance, between Switzerland and Germany where there was a very old preacher. He was sick in bed and could not preach anymore. So he always had to have somebody from outside come, and so Samuel Fröhlich was sent as a vicar. He started to give a testimony of Christ, and the result was so marvelous that after the first or second preaching, the whole church was deeply moved and in tears. And not only was the church deeply moved and in tears, but the old preacher in his bed, likewise, was under conviction. He had a whole life of preaching behind him, and yet he did not know about Jesus. He was in his sins, and now he was dying and did not know anything about salvation. Samuel, who was a very zealous man, not only preached in the church, but he preached to the preacher. The Word wrought such a wonderful miracle that the preacher found peace before he died. He died in peace in the arms of Samuel thanking him for what he brought to him, and gave him permission to have the funeral service. So this young man who just had a license on trial had to give the funeral sermon before a big congregation, most of whom were ministers and authorities of the church. They watched this young man, and the more he spoke, he wrote in his diary, the longer the faces became. Afterwards they took him aside and said, “You are discharged.” He had the courage to say at the funeral service that the old preacher had found peace and remission of his sins on his death bed. That was terrible in the eyes of the authorities, but he could not do otherwise. The old man had wanted him to tell, but that was an offense to the church. So he was discharged and had to leave immediately.