#29 I Will Remember The Works of the Lord, Part 4

I Will Remember The Works of the Lord, Part 4, by Henry Michel

It was always so; the persecution in Jerusalem brought the Gospel to Arabia, to India, and to Europe. The persecution at that time brought the Gospel to other countries, and Samuel Fröhlich received the call to come to France. The call came in a wonderful way. I have to tell you the story; it is too beautiful to leave untold. My family is directly involved. I am not praising my family. No, but you may perhaps understand my zeal for God if you know what history, and how many generations of prayers, are behind me.

My mother’s father, John Diebold, was a young tailor, a very ambitious man. After young men learned their trade, they always wanted to go for a few years, from one village to the next to collect experience. So he left his home country, which was Strasbourg in France, and went to Switzerland, but he was wonderfully guided. He was looking for a job, and he found a job in a small village in the tailor shop of a Mennonite. During the stitching, the Mennonite preached the Gospel till this 19-year old boy was converted and was baptized with the baptism of faith. Then, afterwards, he went back home, and he wanted to see if there were not people of the same faith there. So he was looking, listening and asking, but he could not find anybody. But someone told him, “Go to the next narrow street called Dornengasse, and on the second floor on Sunday, in a small room, they have a very small assembly.” So he went and, really, there was an assembly, old people generally, and an old man was reading the Bible and preaching. After the young man had listened patiently and the preaching was over, he asked the preacher if he could say something. He was ambitious. The preacher said, “Yes.” So the young man said, “I want to praise Jesus, because I found Him,” and he told about his conversion. That made a good impression on all except the preacher. So the next Sunday the young man went again, and he listened patiently, and afterward he said, “Can I say something?” The preacher said, “No.” And this beautiful “No” is the reason that my family came to faith. Because when my grandfather went downstairs, he found a few ladies who were talking together, and they said, “If this preacher does not want to let you speak, then come to our house.” And one of the ladies said, “Come to our farm.” The name of that lady was the same name that I have also, Michel. She said, “Next Sunday come to our farm and preach the way you preached last Sunday.” He said, “Fine,” and another lady said, “I am coming too.” This other lady was mother’s grandmother. So in this first meeting several of my family were there though they were not connected at the time. My father’s grandfather and grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, and my mother’s mother were all in the same room. And it was my mother’s father, John Diebold, who preached in that assembly.

The people listened with joy, and my great-grandfather, Martin Michel, said to him that his father had died in peace a few years before and in his will had said, “I have no money to give you, my children, but I am telling you that I have found Jesus.” He had given his children this message, “Seek Jesus and He will remit your sins, and you will find this wonderful peace that I have found.” That was my great-great-grandfather. Then, his son, my great-grandfather, who gave his farm for the meetings, and his wife were ready to receive the Lord. But there was no one there to baptize them. So through a sequence of miracles, through connections in Switzerland, they heard that a certain Samuel Fröhlich was in Switzerland and that he was being chased out of the country. They gave him an invitation. “Come and see, and be our minister.” So just at that time when Samuel Fröhlich had to leave Switzerland, he received the invitation to come to France. We were all farmers, although I am not a farmer, as you know. He came to Michel’s farm and found a group of people to whom grandfather Diebold had preached. The first baptized were my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, and my grandmother. They had wonderful meetings and many of these books which are printed now are from sermons that were spoken on my great-grandfather’s farm.

They started small. When they had the Lord’s supper for the first time at the end of one year, they were twelve; one year afterwards they were thirty-five, then sixty-five, and they were growing from time to time.

How poor they were and how modest their means can be illustrated by the following story. Every week they had a brother meeting on Friday evening to speak about questions that came up during the week. Once they had a discussion on the following matter: “What should we do on Sunday when we have guests and have nothing to eat?” The brothers decided that the families should fast in order to have enough to receive guests on Sunday. Such was the spirit at the time.

The Gospel went joyfully through all of Alsace from one town to the next. But do you know why? Brother Fröhlich had a rule, “Never more than two preaching brothers in one room on a Sunday, and the others go on the road.” “Where to?” God knows—the Gospel had to be preached—the Spirit of God will guide them. My grandfather Diebold was ambitious; he was young; he was now nineteen or twenty. He was one of the youngest, and he went to work. He was always on the road, and on Sunday evenings, for a rest, he was in jail. Just an example of how they were working: He heard that on a farm seven hours away was a man seeking God. He went there and this man said, “Oh no.” And as he wanted to get rid of him, he said, “I know a man who is more interested than I; go and visit him.” This man was two hours away. All right, he went to this man; that totaled nine hours of walking. When he came to this farm—it was a beautiful farm—the windows were all open and he heard a loud noise. When he looked, there was a large number of guests in the house. The people called out, “This is a new house, and a new barn, and he has invited the whole village because the whole village helped him to build; so now the whole village is here.” What would you do in such a case? He had wanted to speak in secret to this man and now he found the whole village; is that not wonderful? So he came to the house hungry—after walking for nine hours he must have been hungry! The owner was full of joy for this beautiful farm, and he said, “Come in, have a meal with us.” My grandfather went in and enjoyed the meal with them. When he was through and satisfied, this ambitious man said, “Now friends, we had a wonderful meal and we all enjoyed it,” and he started to speak of the meal, and of the invitation to the feast at the marriage of the Lamb. While he was preaching, the wife of this man ran out and fell on her knees and prayed the Lord that this terrible sectarian would be chased out of the house. But he was not chased, and this wife later became a very dear sister. This beautiful farm was just built for a church, and it became a church, and is still a church now.

That is the way they were working at that time. Just another example of Fröhlich: He was hungry at noon and went into a restaurant in a small village to have a meal. So he started to speak with the proprietor, a lady. He spoke of the Gospel, and she said, “Oh, I know somebody who is interested; he lives on the next farm.” He went to the next farm and spoke there, and a church started there. He went to the next village where there was a big restaurant and a big hall for dancing. Did you know that a dance hall is a wonderful place for a church? It became a church. These people became converted and changed this dance hall into a church, and it was too small. But that is the way they were working; that is the reason why we have congregations. They never stayed at home to take it easy; they went on the road, and when they had a call of the Spirit of God, they went long ways in spite of all the dangers. So the Gospel came also to France; the congregations were increasing, and it was wonderful how everything fitted together.

Once a young German shoemaker named Andrew Braun. Came to a Swiss place near the border. The shoemaker was a believer! During the repairing of shoes and the hammering on of the soles, he preached the Gospel to this lad. Andrew was a receptive man, he received the Lord and became converted. He went to Strasbourg and was baptized, and afterwards he went to Germany, his home country, to his home town and after a very short while, a church existed in that town. So the Gospel came to Germany. Is not that wonderful! We can be in a town for fifty years and there is no church. But at that time, when they were somewhere, after a few months believers were to be found there. My grandfather had to go there to baptize, and later Andrew Braun was made an elder at twenty-two years of age because they needed him in that country. He came to Strasbourg and was ordained an elder there. So they went this same evening to my great-grandfather’s farm to have a meeting. This farm was near the Rhine. During the winter, the Rhine was overflowing and the road was covered with water. But the one of them was a very ambitious man and the one elder took the other elder on his shoulders and they went through the water. I am sorry that I was not present with a camera at that time taking pictured of one elder having the other elder on his shoulders. I think that would be a marvelous picture. One of the fellow elders of Samuel Fröhlich and of my grandfather was the grandfather of David Mangold of Roanoke.

It happened that two men, not tailors or shoemakers, but mechanics, came to Switzerland. Their names were Denkel and Kropatschek. Coming into Switzerland, they became acquainted with us and came to the assembly and found peace with God. They went back in 1839; and when they had returned, they found a very ambitious and zealous, young man called Hencsey. As soon as they told him of the Gospel, he received it; and he was the one then who went to all these countries—Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Romania—to bring the Gospel, from one village to the other. Persecution followed—I may say a hundred years of persecution followed—and has still not stopped. That is probably one reason that these churches were always increasing and that in these countries we had a total of 50,000 to 100,000 members in our congregations there before the war.

So the Gospel came to Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania. From one village to the other came the joyful message of Jesus. See how wonderfully the Lord prepared everything! Hencsey himself found another young man whose name was Bela, a very zealous man, and this man had been prepared for you, for America, for the United States! Although Hencsey was not so persecuted, Bela was so fearfully persecuted that he had to leave his country and come to America. He was persecuted terribly day after day. Do you know how he was kept in jail? They bound his hands and feet together, and then hung him up on a ring on the wall, so he could neither sit, nor stand nor lie. That is the way he had to be in jail. He suffered so much that even the authorities said, “We cannot watch this anymore; something has to be done.” So they gave him the license to emigrate to the United States. But before he emigrated, the jail keeper and his wife were converted. That was in 1861. They told him that he could emigrate, but that was just for the sake of the public, to make them think that the authorities were being good to him. But they made arrangements that on his arrival in the harbor of Bremen some wicked people would way-lay and kill him. On the way, by the inspiration of God; just like it was with Joseph, he was warned, and instead of going to Bremen, he went to Hamburg and boarded his ship and went to the United States.

Now let me tell you something about the United Stated. This is interesting, too. The Lord prepared the way wonderfully. He permitted the persecution of Andrew Braun, of Joseph Bela and of a few others, and He prepared in advance a wonderful settlement. It is a very interesting story. Tn the beginning of the 19th century, the Duke of Chaumont, who was a very wealthy Frenchman, emigrated to the United States, and having plenty of money, he bought a large tract of land. At the time, it may interest you, the cost per acre was $1.50. So he bought this very big place and he wanted to find people who would come to work his land, but he could not find people. He tried to convince the Indians, but the Indians were not very good farmers. So he sent his managers to Europe and especially to France, to try to find people and families to come to America, to his settlement. The settlement was called French Settlement and was near New Bremen. This man went to France looking for people. Two of the families he found were the Virkler family and the Farney family. These people were Mennonites. I may mention here that the story of the Virklers is wonderful too. They originated in Switzerland, and because of persecution, they had to leave Switzerland in 1730. They settled in France, because at that time France had a government which was tolerant. They did not have a compulsory military service, so they settled in France in a place which I know very well. Now came the war of Napoleon. The young workers, who came to France to avoid military service, had to go to the service. One of the young Virklers had to go with Napolean, and my great-grandfather likewise also went to Russia, in that terrible winter campaign, where in the middle of winter Napoleon had to go back and where he lost most of his army. The young Virkler came back, and my great-grandfather too, but they did not like it anymore.