I Will Remember The Works of the Lord, Part 3, by Henry Michel
After a while he received another call to a small town called Leutwil in the
county of Argovy in Switzerland. This is a nice, quiet village, just a few miles
from the village from which my wife came. Having received that call, he went
there. It was a very much neglected congregation. He preached the full Gospel,
preached remission of sins, preached salvation by the grace of God. After two or
three sermons, many were deeply moved and brought under conviction to such an
extent, that sometimes he could hardly continue to speak. There was a wonderful
awakening, and everyone came and confessed his sins and cried to the Lord to be
But the revival was not confined to that village, it spread to the neighboring
ones also. People told their friends, “Come and listen, this is something
different.” So they came from all the neighboring towns, from all the other
churches on Sunday and the church of Leutwil was filled with people hungry for
salvation. You can understand how much jealousy that wrought in the preachers of
the neighborhood. They made complaint after complaint to the authorities of the
church, “Go and see what the trouble is. He is really turning the whole church
upside down, take his license.” So they always sent people who listened and made
notes and brought back notes about the sermon, but generally not correct notes
for they did not know about shorthand at that time.
After a year of his preaching there, nearly everyone in the congregation had
come to repentance and many had found peace in Jesus. On Good Friday, two days
before Easter, it was told him that he had to leave quickly and go to his home
town. During his evening sermon, on the day commemorating the day when Jesus was
crucified, he spoke once more of Jesus, and then said, “I must go; I received
the decision that I have to leave the church.” There followed a lamenting, a
weeping aloud of all, and they asked him not to go. But what could he do? He
left there poor ones who really were afterwards like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he came back to his home town, Brugg, and wondered, “What shall I do?” For
a whole year he was quiet there, sitting, as he said, like Joseph in his prison,
until the Lord let him out. As his diary reports he felt as though he were being
shaken through a screen or sieve, being prepared for his ministry.
He wrote in his diary, “It was never in my mind to create a new congregation. My
goal was to help gather the children of God. If I would not put all my trust in
God, my Lord, that He has called me to preach the Gospel, I would have to regret
to have started something to which He would not grant His blessing and that
would not be according to His will.”
But now the official church had rejected him. They did not allow him to speak.
Shortly afterward, they took his license away, and it was forbidden him to even
preach in homes and to travel across the country.
He cried to God, “What shall I do?” He said, “I am putting everything into the
hand of the Lord that He shall decide according to His good will.” Then
suddenly, he had the fire in his heart again, and he had to go. “A living spring
of water cannot be stopped.” So he went.
The first place to which he went on his missionary journey was to the village of
Leutwil where he had preached, where he had been forbidden to go, where the many
had heard the call of Jesus. He came at night that nobody would see him, but
like a fire the rumor went through the whole village, “Samuel is here.” They all
came, about two hundred, before the house, and he had to go out of the house and
preach in the open air. It was a joyful meeting, and they all thanked the Lord
and said, “Oh, we are so thankful you came back; nobody took care of us in the
meantime.” Evening after evening they had a meeting in the open air, and evening
after evening, he preached of Jesus. The next week he baptized thirty-eight
believers. That was the beginning, the first time he baptized; these were the
first who, as a result of his ministry, received Jesus in baptism.
But you can understand that the authorities were not happy. Complaint after
complaint came, and six weeks after he had returned to this village, the police
came and said that he had to leave within twenty-four hours. He did so. He went
from place to place, from village to village; he was chased from one to the
other. No rest was given and no place where he could go. Everywhere someone who
heard he was there told the police, and he had to go.
One day he was preaching in a small town, and it became known, and the police
came during the meeting and took him away. He had to go for many miles and had
to appear before a judge. The judge asked him, “Who told you to speak, from whom
have you the authority to speak? Where is your license?” He answered, “I have a
license.” The police said, “No, your license has been taken away.” Samuel said,
“I have one,” and the police said, “From whom?” “From Jesus.” Then he said, “Ask
this Mr. Jesus”—he said Mr. Jesus as a joke—“Ask this Mr. Jesus to give you this
in writing.” He answered, “I have it in writing right here,” and showed him his
Bible. The officer wanted to put him in jail, but he could not do it, and the
officer, after mocking and insulting him, released him and allowed him to go on.
That is the way he went from town to town.
In one journey that he took, he had to cross a mountain. A terrible thunderstorm
came up and he had to go seven or eight hours in a most dreadful storm and rain.
He arrived in the city of Bern which is our Capital, shivering from fever and so
sick that he went directly to a doctor. The doctor said, “Poor man, you are in a
terrible condition, I cannot let you go away,” so he put him to bed in his
sleeping room, and he was there for six weeks during which time the doctor took
care of him. This doctor incidentally was a good friend of the President of the
Swiss confederation, the President of the country like your Mr. Truman. Later
on, this doctor was very helpful in time of persecution. So everything that
happened was really a miracle.
Once he came to a beautiful green valley, the valley where the famous Swiss
cheese is made, Emmental.
About five hundred came together at one time. He preached, and do you know how
long? For three hours about John, chapter 16, verse 7! After three hours they
ate supper, and after supper he started again. The result was a movement—an
extraordinary movement—and the church that was then founded still exists here.
But the police came in that evening and gave him twenty-four hours to leave the
country. The old man who had invited him into his place was named Gerber. There
are many Gerbers here. He took him in his carriage to the border of the country.
They took leave and he said, “I am sorry that you have to go.”
On Samuel Fröhlich’s passport, which he had to have, they put red ink in the
remark: “This man is a terrible sectarian, a very dangerous man. Every policeman
who sees this man should put him in jail, or chase him out of the country.” In
one town—it was the town where I started to preach—the preacher said in church
on the Sunday following Samuel’s visit, “A terrible, terrible thing happened to
our town; the most terrible epidemic, sickness or plague could not be worse than
what has happened. This sectarian family called Samuel Fröhlich came to our
town. Behave and be careful; he is a terrible man.” Three days later a big fire
started on one end of the town, and the whole town except two houses
disappeared. Included in the destruction was the church. It was the biggest fire
disaster that ever took place in Switzerland, and the church where it had been
said that the most terrible catastrophe that could happen would be better that
the coming of the sectarian, was gone.
So from one town to the other the Gospel came, and joy came. The papers were
full of this; they spoke of this man as the most dangerous man, and he was
chased from one place to the other. He could never travel in the day time, but
at night, so he would not be seen. But the more they tried to punish him and
persecute him, the more they advertised the cause for which he was striving, and
everybody was speaking and everybody was wondering, “What is the reason of this
persecution?” And, generally, the people who came to see, came and found peace
Just to give an example of what happened: Remember, it was forbidden to preach
in houses. If somebody would preach in the house, the preacher would go to jail,
and the proprietor of the house also. So it happened in one place that he had
meetings for a few evenings. There was an old man who was put in jail and came
before the judge. The judge said, “What is the idea? We have a church; why have
church in your house? Don’t you think it is better to go to church? What is the
difference in the preaching in the church and in your house?” This old man said,
“Oh, certain differences; do you want to know?” “Surely I want to know!” “Oh,
the same difference as between day and night, or between life and death.” “Oh,
you don’t want to say there is such a difference?” “Surely.” “Now explain why.”
“Now you see, I am an old man; see my hair? I went to church all my life and
nothing stirred in my soul. I went in and went out and there wasn’t much change.
So I think that what I heard there was just chaff. Now we had a few meetings in
my house, and I heard the message of this man, and something is stirring,
growing, working in my heart; my whole heart is drastically changed for I think
this man has been casting out good seed; corn, and not chaff.” That is what he
said, and he was sent to jail because he was an offense to the church. So it
went from house to house and village to village, and the number of believers was
Are you interested in knowing how many congregations existed after six years of
this missionary work? Fourteen congregations with a few hundred believers in six
years, in spite of the most terrible persecutions!
It happened then that Samuel Fröhlich wanted to have help. He heard of a society
that was formed in England which called The Baptist Continental Missionary
Society. This Baptist Continental Society wanted to send out missionaries from
England or to appoint missionaries from France and other countries. Samuel
Fröhlich wrote to these people. At the same time, another preacher was driven
out of the church, a man whose name was Bost, and these two came together and
helped each other. It was Bost who had baptized Samuel Fröhlich a few years
before. These two worked in Switzerland under the supervision of the Baptist
Continental Society in London. I do not think that they sent more than $100 or
$200 a year to finance the whole missionary work. In 1833, they asked Fröhlich
to come to London, and he spent four months there. He said that sometimes he was
very unhappy in that city, and he went back. After a while they wrote to him,
“We cannot be of any further help to you because we do not have any more money.”
They had no more funds for missionary work in Europe, and the Baptist
Continental Society disappeared because of lack of funds. So Samuel Fröhlich was
left alone; and being left alone, he started to organize the congregations. He
had the wonderful help of zealous brothers who were appointed as elders; they
were just as joyful as he, and they spent many nights, especially Sunday nights,
in jail. But the Gospel was spread. I know a small village, near where we are
building a church now; it is a village of perhaps 800 to 1,000 people. When he
came there were five hundred who came to listen to his message, and afterwards
the boys of the village were throwing stones at them.
Now in 1840, that is, fifteen years after he started, there were fifty-five
congregations; ten years later there were fifty-five more, that makes one
hundred ten. So in thirty-five years of missionary work, they had built with the
help of God, one hundred ten congregations. Is that not wonderful? Do you not
think it is a wonderful result? They were so joyful although they were terribly
You may perhaps not know the reason for the persecution. There were these
reasons: First, it was forbidden to preach in houses, so the one who preached,
the one who gave the house, and the ones who attended these meetings were all
guilty. Once a brother was preaching. He had a beard. The police came and tore
his beard out, the whole cheek was bleeding, and that is the way he was taken to
jail for ten miles. You have no idea what they suffered, just because they had
meetings, and meetings were forbidden. There was another reason for persecution.
There was not compulsory military service, but one question was capital and that
was the question of marriage. No one had the right to marry people except the
Lutheran church, the Catholic, and the Jews. So if you were not Catholic,
Jewish, or Lutheran, you could not get married; you had to remain single or join
one of these churches. They married anyway, and Brother Fröhlich married, too,
but the authorities would not recognize their marriage. His wife was punished
and fined for each baby she had. They did not have the right to live in the same
house, not even in the same village. He had to live separated from his family
for seven years. Once he received the news that one of his boys was dying. He
wanted by all means to go to sit at the bedside of his dying son, but he
expected to be put in jail at any moment. But God had mercy on him, and on that
night a terrible fire broke out and the police were kept busy at the fire, and
they left this man to sit at the bed of his dying boy. However, he was not
permitted to attend the funeral.
Another reason for persecution was that since the church was considered as the
State Church, everything the church requested was obligatory. The baptism on
new-born children was compulsory. I know of a believing father who was put in
jail so that the police were free to bring the new born child to the official
church where it was baptized. The father was compelled to pay fees and expenses
Attendance at the training lessons for confirmation and the confirmation itself
were compulsory. I know of two girls, who died as faithful sisters, who were put
in jail on Saturday night and then brought by the police the next morning to
Sunday School. At the confirmation ceremony each pupil received a Bible verse as
a dedication. These girls received the quotation: “Depart from Me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire.” Another girl whom I knew well when she was a grandmother
had spent time in jail at the age of thirteen because she had visited our Sunday
Even funeral services were considered an offense. At one funeral the police had
been instructed to arrest Samuel Fröhlich as soon as he would appear. When he
did not come because he had been warned, the police beat the brother who held
The time came that Samuel Fröhlich could not live in that wonderful country
which people call “Paradise,” and in the year 1844 he was told once more that he
had to leave the country. But he did not know where to go. Here comes a
wonderful story, the story why I am here.
