Charles Lohrbauer

I was born into a highly respected family in Norway and given every opportunity for a successful life. Yet, by the age of sixteen I was a drunkard, and at twenty-one I was a criminal. I forged checks and bank notes, and defaulted on debts amounting to thousands of dollars in today’s money. When my wrongdoings were discovered, I would have taken the suicide route had my father not snatched the gun from my hands.

I married and, in time, had two sons. Many times I promised my wife that I would leave my sinful life, but I was bound and fettered by the chains of sin. The devil made a football out of me. The day came when I could no longer look into the eyes of my innocent children. I fled from Norway to America, leaving my parents, my wife, and young sons to suffer the humiliation I had brought.

For a time I was a sailor on board one of the old lumber schooners. There, my criminal nature soon asserted itself. When I had a few drinks in me, there was a tiger inside that wanted to fight and make trouble. When I became incorrigible on the ship, they put me in chains down in the hold for a month. Down there I said, “There is no God.” I challenged Him, if He existed, to strike me dead, but in His mercy, He did not. He did not allow the devil to take my life either. Several times I was shipwrecked, and was close to death in sickness, but God preserved my life. He wanted to save my soul.

I joined the army during the Spanish-American War. While in the military, I was imprisoned for threatening an officer and was sent to Alcatraz. The prisons, chain gangs, rock piles, and even solitary confinement failed to make me a decent man. However, in solitary confinement, I would think of my family and of the sorrow I had brought upon them, and overwhelming remorse would eat at my soul.

After I served my three-year sentence, I was given five dollars and set at liberty. For three long years, I had not touched a drop of liquor, and I thought that when I came out of prison I would be free from that habit. Had prison bars reformed me? No! As soon as I saw the saloons, an uncontrollable appetite seized me. Within six hours I was back in the old haunts of sin, the tiger of drink raging within, and my five dollars gone.

I was soon associating with men and women debased in sin—in the Bowery district of New York, and off the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Officers from Canada to Mexico knew me as “Drunken Charlie.” My name became a byword on the streets. I believe I was one of the most demon-possessed men who ever walked the streets. At nearly fifty years old, I was in the gutter much of the time and got my food out of garbage cans. I was lower than the beasts ever become, with my bloodshot eyes and bloated face.

I would have been in Hell, perhaps by the hangman’s noose or suicide, but for the mercy of God.

I would have been in Hell, perhaps by the hangman’s noose or suicide, but for the mercy of God. In Portland, Oregon, I would walk across one of the bridges and look down into the Willamette River and say, “When I can stand it no longer, I will end it all.” But between me and a suicide’s grave came God’s people.

Not many men find their way to a street meeting the way I did. One night, in a hellhole of a saloon, my shirt and shoes were taken for whiskey and cocaine. Then a 250-pound saloonkeeper kicked me through the door and I landed on the muddy sidewalk as the gang laughed and jeered. As I got up on my old bare feet, I heard people singing, “Jesus saves! Jesus saves!” I pressed my way through the crowd to see who was singing and I thought to myself, Is it possible? Will Jesus save a sinner like me–a worthless criminal?

The people who were singing told me that Jesus still wanted men—no questions asked—and that there was still room for my name in God’s Book of Life. They told me that I could find Jesus. I found my way to their mission hall. Because my brain was paralyzed from drink, and I was starving and so weak, I stumbled and fell through the door. That is the way old “Drunken Charlie” came among God’s people for the first time.

That night, I heard the way out of sin. I heard the testimonies of men and women who told of God’s power to break every fetter of Satan and keep them living for God. I heard that it took the power of God to transform a life, that it could not be done by reforms and good resolutions but that Jesus Christ had the power to save us from our sins. I sat in the back, and God Almighty strove with my soul. For the first time in my life, I saw there was hope for me.

After the service, some Christians came back to me with tears in their eyes and said, “Will you let us pray for you?” They did not have to drag me to the altar that night; I rushed there. I had not shed a tear in many years, but that night I cried, and I prayed from the bottom of my heart, “Mercy—have mercy! Jesus, have mercy on me!” God, for Christ’s sake, heard my prayer, and rolled the burden of sin off my heart. I was set free! I had been kicked out of a saloon, thank God, right into the arms of Jesus.

I had been bound by the drink habit for thirty-three long years, but in a moment of time, that habit went out of my life. The next morning found me on the streets with no money, no job, and nowhere to go, but I was not in the saloon. The saloon door swung open, but I went down on the dock where we used to tie our vessels. When I got there, I went down on my knees praising God because I had walked the streets from one end to the other without a single desire for liquor.

I went up the street and met a policeman. Many times I had had to give an account of myself to those officers about where I had been and what I had been doing. I used to shiver with fear as they interrogated me. However, this morning, in rags but with the peace of God in my heart, I could look him right in the face. When he asked, “Where were you last night?” I answered, “I was in an Apostolic Faith meeting.”

At nearly fifty years old, I was in the gutter much of the time and got my food out of garbage cans.

“And now where have you been?” he asked. I said, “I’ve been down on the dock praising God. I haven’t had a drink this morning.” There were tears in that policeman’s eyes as he said, “Go your way, Charlie.”

Never again did an officer have trouble with me. I was a puzzle to the police. One day the old sergeant who used to bring me in was asked, “Where is that old drunk? Has the booze at last killed him, or has he left town?”

“No,” replied the sergeant, “he has good clothes on his back and he is on the street corner preaching about Jesus. I saw him one morning and he walked straight past the saloons.”

These officers had told me I would one day land on the gallows. Now they said, “He’ll be back.” But years went by and I never returned to that old life. I had tasted the pure waters of salvation, and I cared no more for the cup that “biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Proverbs 23:32). I had come into contact with the Christ of Calvary.

My family hadn’t heard from me for years and thought I was dead. After ten years of correspondence, my wife came to America to meet me and to see if what I had told her was really true. She was a woman of refinement and high standing, but when she saw the marvelous change in my life, she soon felt her need for the same salvation. The same God who had saved her drunken husband ten years before, also saved her.

Since then, I have had the privilege of going with Gospel workers up and down the same places where I had been so notorious. I have told my story in the prisons and on the very street corners where the policemen used to snap handcuffs on my wrists. People ask, “Charlie, how do you know this change has taken place in your life?” I answer, “How can I help but know?” How I thank God that I am free and have His saving grace in my heart!

For a number of years, Charles Lohrbauer worked and lived among the people of the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon. His countenance glowed with heavenly grace when he told the story of his finding Jesus and his release from a life of sin. He often began with the words, “Jesus saves! Jesus saves!” Toward the end of his life, Charlie and his wife returned to their native land. There in Norway, he did missionary work until the Lord took him to Heaven at the age of eighty. He wanted all to know that every vile habit was broken and he was redeemed. He never had to be known again as “Drunken Charlie.”