The Last of the Giants
How Christ Came to the Lumberjacks by Harry Rimmer, LL.D.
In its early years, Duluth was a gold mine for lumber barons. Men were employed as lumberjacks and worked like beasts, only to be tossed aside like used equipment when no longer needed. The grand forests were raped for their prime timber, the balance burned wastefully. The men were coarse and hard, but they had to be to survive. More than any other people that ever lived in our land, these old-time lumberjacks could truthfully say, “No man cared for my soul.”
That is, until God sent three men to the great Northwoods of our country – Frank Higgins, John Sornberger, and Al Channer. These men blazed new trails of the Spirit and founded an empire for God. They reached a sector of humanity for which no spiritual work had ever been done before, storming the Northwoods with a consuming passion for Christ. And with that passion, they also brought a heart as big as all outdoors, a love for men that burned like a flame, and a desperate desire to see these men saved.
About the Author
Harry Rimmer, LL.D., grew up in poverty in mining and lumber camps in northern California. He was forced to quit school before completion of the third grade and thereafter worked in a range of manual laboring roles, while receiving some informal education from a mining engineer, heavily slanted towards the sciences. At 19, he joined the US Army, serving in the artillery and gaining some fame as a boxer. After the military, he spent two terms at a small homeopathic medical school, supporting himself as a prizefighter, but forced to drop out before completing the third term (and gaining a qualification) due to lack of financial resources.