Former professional baseball player-turned urban evangelist. Follow this daily blog that chronicles the life and ministry of revivalist preacher William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (1862-1935)
So what’s the nature of a revival? He was praying for a revival. As a nation we are facing the danger of the dominance of the material over the spiritual; we are commercially drunk. Take a bushel of nickels and walk down the street of the average town and you can lead the bunch so close to hell that you can smell the sulphur fumes as it belches from the inferno below.
The biggest coward in America today, the biggest coward we have in the profession of christian religion, who is afraid to come out and declare himself in a campaign like this, is the business man. He is afraid that some saloon keeper, some brewer, some black-leg gambler, some madame of the red light district and others of that kind—they’re afraid they’ll lose their trade by it, and by the eternal God they ought to be punished before the moon changes.
[Cont.]
All Kinds of Revivals.
Listen to me. In the economy of nature God provides for an occasional copious downpour of rain. You would be a fool to growl because it didn’t rain all the time. God has arranged His spiritual kingdom so that He has a copious downpour of spiritual blessings. God is rolling in spiritual wealth as well as material. It is not thought unwise to have a revival in business, oh, no—every town has its commercial club. It is not thought unwise to have a revival in politics—on, no.
Some people are scared to death that somebody might be saved from hell by out-of-the-ordinary methods.
Political leaders will hire leaders, newspaper editors, publishers, and will spend money for voters—in order to get those who are indifferent to the political situation interested—that is nothing under heaven but a political revival and you don’t hear anybody growl about it—you didn’t hear anybody growl about it this last election—that is, nobody but the republicans. Well, I am one myself.
In the business world, listen. In the business world men must make the market as well as the goods for the market. He must make the goods, then he goes into the market. He’s got to do both. You’ve got Chambers of Commerce, you’ve got all these institutions to create a demand for the product—these are business revivals—you have auto shows, they are auto revivals—you have county fairs which are nothing but revivals where they show cows, pigs, chickens, bread, butter, horses, and all the products of the farm. Then what the revival is to business, what the election is to politics, the revival is to religion; what health is to the individual the revival is to religion. Martin Luther saved Europe—a spiritual revival under Martin Luther was the cause of the reformation, nothing, but a revival, and why any Lutheran will snap, snarl, growl about a revival when his church was born of a revival I don’t know.
When Revival is Needed.
A revival is needed when the worldly spirit is in the church of God. It isn’t necessary to do something grossly inconsistent. A ship is all right in the sea, but all wrong when the sea is in her. The church of God is all right in the world, but all wrong when the world is in the church. Some people come to church on Sunday morning and on Monday morning they take a header into the world and the church never sees them again until Sunday morning. They squat and take up a little space in the pew and stay there and put a little money on the plate, but you never see them again until Sunday morning. I tell you, I believe half of the church members could die and the church wouldn’t lose anything of its spiritual force; it would lose them in numbers, but it wouldn’t lose anything in spiritual power. I tell you, my friends, we need a panic in religion, the world don’t need informing, it needs reforming. We are going to the devil over culture clubs, as if the world needed informing. It don’t need anything of the kind. There are people who go to church and go to a certain denomination because their wife goes there. They got their religion and their property in their name. They go to that church.
Must Have Revival.
“I want to say if a public school teacher knew no more about the work and methods of teaching than the average Sunday school teacher knows about the will of God, she would not be on the pay roll 16 minutes.
“Go down to the dance halls, the nickelodeans, the picture shows, the cheap-skate dance halls — there you will find young girls with dresses to their shoe tops. I ask you, why? I’ll tell you: the spiritual destitution of the multitude. Thousands never darken the church doors. A revival is needed when sinners are careless, licentious. * * * A general revival of religion has got to sweep over this country or it will mean the dissolution of the church, the home and of the nation. I don’t care a rap how you fortify your shores; how many ships you build; America has got to have a revival or it means the end of your religion. Wealth and culture never saved Rome, Babylon or Nineveh, and if you have the sins of Babylon, you will have the judgment of Babylon.
“What is a revival? It is a campaign in the name of God against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and against a revival you will find every brewer in this valley; every whiskey seller in this valley; every saloon-keeper in this valley; every black-leg gambler in this valley; every she madam of the red light district; every man and woman that feeds and fattens and gormandizes upon the virtue of men and women so if you want to line up with a bunch like that, God pity you; that is the best compliment on God’s earth.
“Men say the day of the revival is over. Fellows harp on that in the Methodist conferences, in the Presbyterian meetings, in the Baptist associations. In the Congregational associations,—the day of the revival is over. No, it is not. No, only with the fellow who vomits out the sentiment; but it is not over with God.
The day of the revival is over. God Almighty leaned over the battlements of heaven and looked down into the coal mines of Wales and said, ‘Oh, Roberts!’ and out of the depths of the coal mine came that grimy, soiled man, with dirty face, with a little lamp in his cap, and he said, ‘what is it, God?’ And God said, ‘I want you to go and shake up Wales,’ and he gave Wales the greatest revival that ever swept over this land since the days of Pentecost. There was not a college professor or preacher in Wales that God would trust with the job.
Citation (excerpted): The South Bend Tribune. Wed, Apr 30, 1913 ·Page 14, 16
“Angels Hid Rail Splitter Where He Was Undiscovered for Years,” Says Leader of Revivals.
Billy Sunday has written many beautiful things which have attracted widespread attention, among them being his tribute to Abraham Lincoln. This was written and published for the first time about a year ago.
The tribute follows:
“The angels said, ‘Let us hide Abraham Lincoln where the world will never find him,’ and they hid his big kind, generous, humanitarian, sympathetic God-fearing soul in that long, lean, lank, homely, gaunt, ungainly body. They bronzed his cheeks until he looked like an Indian. They hardened his hands with toil. For employment they gave him common work, like poling a flatboat on the Ohio river and clerking in a country store.
“But, while drifting down the stream he was solving problems that would help him up the stream. And while clerking in the country store he was learning whole chapters from the book of human experience which became golden rounds in the ladder of fame up which he climbed to the top.
“For parents, they gave him common people whose names were unknown five miles away for a home, a log cabin in the wilderness. The battle would grow hard. He would grit his teeth, buckle up his yarn galluses a little tighter and determine that he would be somebody, anyway. He would spread the ashes thin on the dirt floor of his log cabin home and, with a hickory log in the fireplace for a light and a hickory stick for a pencil, he solved problems from Euclid and read the life of Washington and other great men.
“Finally, the angels could keep him hid no longer, and so one morning this old sleepy, dreamy, drowsy world rolled out of bed, rubbed her eyes and started on a still hunt for a great man. She struck a new scent and a new trail that led out through the woods into the wilderness and up a hill to a log cabin. She rapped at the door and Lincoln arose—so big, so high, so tall that the logs rolled down the roof and fell off and he stepped forth—a giant among men. Fame has placed him upon a pinnacle so lofty that he looks down upon all who attempt to reach his side.”
Billy Sunday preached 75 times in the tabernacle during the six weeks of his Richmond campaign (April 16 – June 4), and at least another 15 times outside the tabernacle, in surrounding towns close to Richmond. He sometimes preached four times in one day.
As reported in The Richmond Item. Sun, May 28, 1922 · age 7:
NINETY SERMONS TO LAST NIGHT
Old Man Statistics Gives Some Interesting Figures to The Item Reporters
Old Man Statistics dropped into The Item press box, yesterday, and when the reporters were not there, left a bundle of facts. He said Billy Sunday would preach his ninetieth sermon Saturday night, since the day he arrived at Richmond.
That seemed rather too many for the reporter who checked up on it. Yep! Old Man Statistics was all right, it appeared. With the sermon last night Mr. Sunday, has preached 90 at the tabernacle, if one counted the afternoon that Mr. Sunday spoke to the children when the Sunday school convention was held there.
To bring the total to 90, Old Man Statistics, mentioned two sermons at the country club, others at the high school, Earlham college or at the Pennsylvania shops. Then came trips to Portland, Anderson, Greenville, Bradford, O., and the morning sermons each day this week, at Liberty, Hagerstown, Spiceland and Cambridge City.
Evangelist Explains Why He Uses Language of Streets In His Sermons
“Richmond ministers are dead right when they declare that if they said in their own pulpits some of the things I say in mine, it would sound ridiculous,” Billy Sunday admitted yesterday.
“There is a time and a place for all things,” continued Sunday. “Staid old church people, reared in Sunday schools, prayer meetings and churches and familiar with elegant phraseology, do not need to have things told them in the plain language of the street in order to comprehend them. Richmond ministers preach to about the same crowd every Sunday and they understand them perfectly.
Short Over Heads.
“But I speak to multitudes whose fathers never darken a church door. If I put them to the usual pulpit terms it would be clouds over their heads. Some of my hearers never went to school, never received church training. Their vocabulary is often limited to 500 words—many of them idioms of the street and slang, and some of them bordering on cuss words. Now I do not use cuss words, but I use the slang or phrase of the street that I know they will understand and respond to—and they do.
“I saw a man seated in front of me in the tabernacle whose dress and appearance showed he was a sport. He was plainly no church-goer. When I said in my sermon, ‘Don’t pass the buck!’ his face lighted up immediately. He was all smiles and he quickly got the idea I was trying to convey. Had I used highfalutin terms they would have been wasted on him.
Never So.
“When Lincoln used the word ‘sugar coated’ in one of his messages, Secretary of State Seward said he would never do—it was not refined enough.
“All right, you put in a better word,” Lincoln told Seward. Next day Seward came back and said he couldn’t find a better word, and ‘sugar-coated’ remained in the message.
Lincoln said there never would come a time when the American people would not know what ‘sugar-coated’ meant.
The apostle said: ‘By their works ye shall know them’—and when I put it: ‘Show me! I’m from Missouri,’ the man of the street not used to going to church gets the idea in a jiffy.”
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Sun, May 07, 1922 ·Page 6
Say Jesus, bless this great throng that has come here from office and shop and store, our friends, the Friends, our friends, the Lutherans and your friends, the Friends and Lutherans, Baptists and Presbyterian and United Brethren and Episcopalians. Hear us, Lord. We are here tonight to praise Thy name and we are here to know what to do to please Thee and to displease the devil. The devil has never done any good for this old world. May we say to the devil, ‘You have made every jail and every penitentiary. You have been the blight on this earth.’ We do pray that the glory and the power of the Lord may fall upon this audience and upon this community and upon the country round about until God shall have glory and the devil shall be beaten back until heaven shall ring and shout with joy until hell will mutter and grumble and growl. O God, that the people may say with the help of the Lord, good bye to the devil and the devil call a conclave of all the lost spirits, and they say, ‘What can we do to check the great Bible talk, that we may tear the people away from the church, may they fall from the Bible, from Christianity and from truth.’ Hear us, our God, we beseech You, the Friends here and the Lutherans, and all may everybody walk down here and say, ‘Here is my hand, my heart, my pledge to live out and out for God, have family prayer in the home, to do the right, Lord, to be faithful in my attendance, to do everything I can to help the cause of the Lord. O Lord, with Your help, I will put out of my life everything that is a hindrance and a detriment to me. I will take my ground and I will live the way I ought to live.’ Hear us, bless and keep us, our Lord. Can we say, ‘It is well with Thee?’ Not if we are away from God. Is it well with my husband? Not if he is away from Christ. Is it well with thy child? Not if it does not know Jesus Christ. And it does not hear from your lips a prayer and if you do not try to turn it in the way it ought to live. Hear us Our God, for Jesus’ sake.
Cited from: The Richmond Item. Thu, May 04, 1922 · Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Thursday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, this is Thursday, Lord and the third week. Thank You for them, thank You for the great interest of the people. Thank You for their attention, thank You for their gifts, thank You for their contributions which almost total enough for You to pay Your debts Lord, and the treasurer will pay them. We thank You for the hundreds who have pressed down the aisles, whether to renew their vows or take their stand for the Lord, we don’t know which. That is between them and the Lord. That is none of my business. We thank You for the help that has been given by the ministers, the ushers, the doorkeepers, secretaries and all, and the committeemen and the committeewomen and for the delegations that have been here from this city and from the country round about. And Lord tonight here are the Masons, here the Junior Order United American Mechanics and their auxiliary, and our friends down there from Campbellstown. They have been here once before, Jesus. I pray Thee they will come and take their stand. Wouldn’t it be great to have every Mason, Lord, tonight, just walk down and say, ‘Here is my hand. I want to take my stand for Jesus.’ They can’t enter the lodge without acknowledging Christ. They can’t even wear that white plume. They can’t draw that sword, can’t wear the badge of Knight Templar without believing in Jesus Christ and the Cross and the Resurrection and the empty sepulchre without looking heavenward. No sir. Over the threshold and over the entrance to every Knight Templar they say, ‘No infidel can come in here. No unitarian can come in here. Nobody who denies the deity of Jesus Christ or the resurrection of Jesus Christ can come in here. Help them Lord, to take this last degree. Some of them have taken the 32nd degree and some of them have taken the 3rd degree and some of them have taken the 33rd degree, Lord. We meet a few of them here and there, Lord. We have one here that God wants to bestow and when God gives that Lord, then they have the pass-word for heaven. Help them to walk down, even if they are in the church, Jesus, to say, ‘Here is my hand. I want to be the kind of a Christian so that wherever I go people will smile and they will forget their sorrows and their crosses and they will think, O God, that is the kind of a Christian I want to be. I want to come and openly and publicly confess my faith, Lord, because I want to be that kind of a Christian for God.’ Help the Junior order, Jesus, lead with that flag, standing for the principles for which they stand, for the Bible, Lord and for true Americanism, hundred per cent. And our friends from Campbellstown, help them to come. Wouldn’t it be great, God, just to see the members of the Masonic lodge that are here and the Junior order and the Masons, and friends from Campbellstown to walk down here and avow their faith in the Lord, and willing to serve Him and do his will. Help them our Lord, we pray. Hear us for Jesus’ sake.
Cited from: The Richmond Item. Fri, May 05, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Saturday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus, have I made it plain? If I have not I ask your forgiveness and pardon. I have tried hard to do it and tried to make it clear for this audience that have come because I know they wanted to hear. Say, Jesus, I believe I have preached what You have revealed in Your word, too, though there may be some that don’t agree. That is not my fault. There are a lot of people that don’t agree with God. There are a lot of people that don’t agree with Jesus. There are a lot of people say You are not the Son of God. That is not Your fault. That does not change the fact. You are, whether they believe it or not. We have preached Your truth and You have revealed it to the people.
Now Lord, here we are nearly in the closing of this third week. When we go out of here we will say good night for the third week, and on tomorrow, Lord, we will have the beginning of the fourth week with people coming from Columbus, Indianapolis, Dayton, Cincinnati, Charleston and places ’round about and out in the country, Lord, and people here in the city will pour from their homes, old, young, rich and poor, and will flock here Lord, and fill the building and we will try to preach for You three times if You will give us mental and physical strength.
O Lord, I don’t know tonight, there must be hundreds of men and women here who will say, ‘I will tell You what I will do, I will join You in a promise that I will be ready if Jesus Christ comes before I die and I am transformed while I am alive, I will be ready to be transformed. If I am in the grave I promise You that I will so live that I will be among the first that will arise. That when He bursts on the earth that I will have lived so that I will have a part in the first resurrection. I will not live the life so that I will not be left in the grave, for there will be nobody left in the grave but sinners. I will promise You I will pledge You so that I will be transformed if I am alive and I will be resurrected if I am dead.’ Hallelujah to God! Comfort one another with these words. Help us, Jesus, help us, we pray. I will promise, Lord, with all my heart and soul.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Sun, May 07, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Sunday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus, I don’t know what more to say. Lord, I know I haven’t said it all. No, no. But I don’t know what more to say. I don’t know what argument to use, or simile or metaphor. If men and women are not willing to accept this great salvation and this promise of life and mercy when we see all He has done and all He can do for us, and stop to think of His leaning from heaven to look at us, to send the Holy Spirit, to send preachers, to send the tabernacle—O God, what am I going to do? I don’t know. Multitudes of people are here. People have come from this town and ’round about by the thousands—and our good friends here—take them back safe, as You brought them, so help the train despatcher that no flange may break, no side rod, or any trouble, Lord. Help them all along the highway of life from here until heaven, that they may have no breakdown. Help the bridge of salvation to hold when they cross over the river of temptation. Help them, Lord, as they pull into the dark tunnel of death. Bless them, God, that the glimmering eye of God’s love can shine at the other end and say: ‘Come on, I am with you. There are two ends to it, you don’t stop here.’
So Jesus, be with us, we pray, this great throng of men and women who know what the way of death is. Lord, we can write that whole thing and go out of here saying: ‘O know what the end is. It will be heaven, salvation, Jesus Christ, God, angels, wife, mother, the redeemed. Hallelujah!’
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 09, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Tuesday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, I don’t know what more to say. I don’t know but what I should just say, ‘Well now, you let me go, because what more could I do?’ Every sermon I preach, Jesus, I have come to the point where I say, ‘Now are you willing and ready to accept Jesus the best you know how and serve Him and keep His commandments?’
Lord, I believe there are people here tonight, hundreds of them, who will say, ‘Yes, I pledge and I am going to do my best for God.’ As the scriptures saith, ‘Not according to what a man hath not, but according to what he hath.’ The best I can do may not be the best that man out there can do and the best for that man may not be the best I can do, or any other.
We pray for our friends from Lewisville. We pray for our friends, the Spanish-American War Veterans. We pray for the Rotary club. We pray, Lord, for all the delegations that have come. And the Methodists, we pray Lord Jesus, they will all say, ‘I will do God’s will from now on the best I know how,’ in their homes, in their offices, in their stores, wherever the providence of God calls. May they say, ‘I want not only the good, but I want the best, not going to be satisfied with what I have, I want something beyond where I am. I am for you, God.’ So Lord, the great blessing will come to us if we will do Your will.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 10, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Afternoon Prayer
Dear Jesus, I don’t want to lie; I don’t want to swear; I don’t want to steal; I don’t want to get down on my knees to tell you about those things. I want to be positive. Help us today; help them tonight; help the people to walk down here tonight and help us all as long as we are here. Oh Jesus, we are now on the fourth week and we are amazed and staggered at things. Soon we will be talking in the past tense; the tabernacle will not be standing here. Lord bless the Rotary who we spoke to at the hotel today. They will be here tonight with their wives. The clerks will be here and for those who are now present hear and help us. Then the Methodists will be here tonight. And those from all over the country, Lord who have shown such great interest. So many came from so far away. They had a good thing and they wanted to tell the others about it Lord. Lead us all for Jesus’ sake, amen.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 10, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Wednesday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus they have been trying. Bob Ingersoll tried it, Tom Paine tried it, Dideraux tried it, Strauss tried it, Mills, Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, Spencer, they all tried it. There have been millions of them tried it, but none can ever do it, none of them in the world, because there is no fault there. But Jesus, when you look down from the battlements of heaven, You can find fault with us, You can find fault with me, You can find fault with Hirget (of Cincinnati), You can find fault with Rae (Presbyterian minister), You can find fault with Brown (Friends minister), You can find fault with all the bishops, You can find fault with all the presiding elders, You can find fault with the deacons, You can find fault with the elders and stewards. You can find fault with the prudential committee men, You can find fault with the Sunday school officers and teachers, You can find fault with the memberships of the churches, You can find fault with the choir, You can find fault with the ushers, You can find fault with the doorkeepers, You can find fault with Rody, Bob, Mrs. Asher, Rapp, Miss Kinney and Pete, You can find fault with all of us Lord. There is no fault in You, Jesus, not a fault. There never will be. Help this mass of people to be willing to say, ‘Lord, help us to pray. I will be what You want me to be, full of zeal for You, because I believe in You. I believe in God. I believe in salvation by faith in Christ. I believe in the judgment. I believe in a blessed God.’ Say Lord, I want to see men and women saved in the church. I want to see them zealous for the Lord. Wouldn’t it be great, Lord, to see every man and woman, here present, the Presbyterians, whether United, or First or Second, whether they come, Lord, down from Portland or wherever they come from, College Corner, wouldn’t it be great to see them all walk down and say, ‘There is no guesswork in it, I know. You cannot find any fault in Him. I know You can find fault with me because I have sinned. I want to be the best man You can make me, so I give You my heart.’ So, Jesus help us all tonight to pledge ourselves to live for God. We know, that no matter who we may be, if we grudged against, no matter what our sin may be, if we come and are willing to confess, He says, ‘I will forgive it.’ So, Jesus, we can’t ask for anything better than that. You don’t condemn us absolutely. We condemn ourselves. You have forgiven me, You have set me. Now I want to come up and give myself to You and try to get other people to give themselves to the Lord. So, Lord, help us tonight. May many of this throng say, ‘I find no fault in Him.’
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 11, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Thursday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, this is the fourth week of the campaign and it is Thursday. Friday night will be farmers’ night. Help Lord, the different delegations, our friends, the Baptists, the United Brethren, the Disciples and those from Dayton. Help them, Lord, in the office, factory, store and choir. Help them, we pray on the street, the farm, wherever we are. O-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h Jesus, hear us that we may beat the devil to it and when he comes to accuse us we will be able to say ‘Too late it is all fixed up.’
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 12, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Prayer Sunday Morning
Say Jesus, say blessed Holy Spirit, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, here we are in Richmond this beautiful, beautiful May morning that you made especially for us, it seems to me. It is not hot. It is not cold. The sun is shining and everything perfect, Lord. Fine for the farmer, fine for the business man, fine, Lord God, for the educator and for people of all classes.
Oh, God, we all depend upon the sunshine and rain. We depend upon the farmer to plant and to harvest, Lord, and without that we would starve. We depend upon You, Jesus, for all our food.
Lord, keep in check the potato bugs and the blight and the chinch bugs that eat up the wheat and the boll weevil that eats the cotton and help to ward off every insect everywhere, Lord, and the green aphid which will attack the apple. Don’t let the boll weevil destroy the cotton crops of the South and don’t, we pray, the chinch bugs and rust cut down the wheat fields of North Dakota and Minnesota. Don’t allow the insects to come and destroy the corn and grain. We are perfectly helpless. Don’t allow the potato bugs to eat the vines so that when we pull up the vines there will be nothing whatever to eat. Don’t allow the cholera to slay the hogs. Don’t allow the lion jaw, Lord, to carry away the cattle.
We are perfectly helpless and let us say, ‘Don’t allow the devil to carry the manhood and womanhood of Richmond, the young men and women.’ Don’t allow men to damn men with their lies, deceptions and outrage. Oh, God, hear us, we beseech Thee.
It seems to me the devil has dug enough graves. It seems to me he has made enough drunkards. It seems to me he has made enough prostitutes. It seems to me he has made enough whore-mongers. It seems to me he has made enough infidels. It seems to me he has dug enough graves. It seems to me he has carved enough epitaphs on tombstones. It seems to me he has drawn blood enough from human hearts to make another sea.
Oh—h—h—h—h, God, and Jesus, and Holy Ghost, make bare Your mighty arm and break the fires of hell. May the people of the churches say, ‘Me for God, me for salvation. Me for Christian salvation. I intend to be here, Lord, in these last two weeks, afternoons and evenings. Help me, God, to win others to Christ. As members of the Masonic lodge, we will win every man in the lodge. As members of the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and all others, here, the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, the Commercial club, the men and women of society—may we win them all to Christ.’
Hear us, we pray for salvation for the people of the Starr Piano factory, for those of the McGuire lawn mower works, for those of the Atlas Underwear. For all those down at the City Hall, every member of the police department and fire department. We pray for Earlhurst, for every officer and member of the faculty, every student that they will come down here in delegations, and every member of the high school, every teacher, every boy and every girl will be won for Jesus Christ. May we pray every officer at the courthouse until every county official will be won for God.
Hear us, and we will praise Thee forever, in the name of Jesus, whom, having not seen, we love. Hallelujah.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 16, 1922 ·Page 6
Sunday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus, I feel so distressingly inadequate that I just feel like apologizing to You and to this audience for what I have tried to say, because any human being that tries to muster his or her wisdom, or knowledge, or eloquence, or voice, or personality to talk about You and Your plan of redemption, staggers back, and says: “Oh, how weak the combined efforts of man. How far beyond man’s greatest conception is the wonderful love of God to this old world.”
Oh, Jesus, I wish I knew of some argument, some metaphor, some simile, some illustration, comparison, Lord, something that I might be able to say or do that would lead men and women to accept of Jesus Christ, something that I might do that would bring every man and woman off this platform that is not a Christian, that is simply in a church but knows they are not Christians, that are not living for God, and the people down yonder, every usher, every doorkeeper, that everyone of them would walk down and take their stand for Jesus Christ and say, “Here is my life for God, my life for Jesus Christ from now on.”
Hear us, our Father in Heaven, as we swing into the fifth week of this campaign. Lord, You have done great things. This campaign is like a huge magnet. It has pulled thousands of people from the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia and away down in South Carolina. A man said to me today, “I have come 500 miles to hear you.” But I know some people in Richmond that haven’t come five blocks.
So, Jesus, help us for trying to do Your will. We have tried to let the people know of Jesus Christ the Lord, all through our life. We have never preached anything else. They can go back and check up on us, can’t they, Jesus? We have never done anything else but cry for world repentance. We never will do anything else, Lord, but cry for a world repentant until our friends will read in the Associated Press despatches, “Well, Bill has gone to the Lord.” When they do they may know that about the last thing I will know is: “Well, I have played the game of life fairly. I have tried to keep out of the error column. I have tried to make a few sacrifice hits. I have touched all the bases, and now I have reached home.”
Thank You, Lord, for the multitudes that are going to believe before we say goodbye to Richmond and hurry to the mountains of Tennessee to preach Jesus Christ to the people there that are waiting, and they say people have been converted now, already, in anticipation of the coming campaign just three weeks away.
So, hear us, lead us, guide us. Help hundreds of men and women to walk down the aisles tonight and take their stand for Christ, the people inside here. Lord, and the people outside here, every night, the people behind us here, and on the platform, and the people that have stood outside, and didn’t come in because it was a little cooler there. Help them all tonight to take their stand for Jesus Christ and say: “Here is my heart, here is my hand, to serve Him the best I know how from this time on.” Hallelujah.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 16, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Tuesday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, it is true that there is a heaven. There is a hell. It is true that You are the Son of God. It is true that God is God. It is true that the Bible is the Word of God. It is true that we cannot save ourselves. It is true that we must have a supernatural Saviour. It is true You are that supernatural Saviour. It is true that there is a day of judgment. It is true, Lord, that there is a heaven for the saved. It is true that there is a hell for the unsaved. It is true You are revealed to us in this Book we call the Bible. It is true that we have the freedom of our choice of accepting or rejecting You.
Oh God, surely people must be interested or they wouldn’t have come from New Paris in that great delegation and from Winchester, and those who came from Lynn. As we came through it today we looked out and saw the name there on the depot where we crossed that other railroad—I don’t know which one it is—and didn’t think they would be down here tonight. And every one of these other towns, “Eaton, is it Rodey?” “Yes”—(Rodey.) And the young men that came in there tonight, and the delegation of West Side people and those of the citizens of Richmond. Lord, help me pray, Oh God. Help us, we beseech of Thee, for the people here from these different delegations, that they are here to take their stand for God and “Whatsoever things are true.” All these things are true, that the Bible is the Word of God. It is true we must be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. It is true, Lord, so that being true may no man or woman go out, Lord, tonight, blessed God, and not come down here to take their stand. Help them, Lord, to come and our friends from New Paris and from Winchester, help them (and what other town?) Oh yes, Boston, Eaton, Lynn, the students and boys and the West Side and the people here from Richmond. Help them, Lord, that there may be scores of them walk down the aisle and take their stand for Christ and by so doing ally themselves on the side of God, on the side of righteousness, on the side of the church and Jesus Christ, and all that is right, and all that is noble in the world, the best in this world, then the best in the world to come.
Hear us, and we will praise You forever, through Jesus, our Saviour, who said, “Whatsoever things are true, think on these things.”
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Wed, May 17, 1922 ·Page 1
Mr. Sunday’s Thursday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, I wish I could make it plainer. I wish I could make it so plain that not a man or woman, Lord, from the Starr Piano, not a man or woman from any delegation, the farmers, merchants, bankers, school teachers, scholars, not a man or woman here tonight would go out without giving their hearts to Jesus. I wish I could do that, Lord, every time I preach. I try hard to do it, Lord. If I fail it is not because I haven’t the ambition nor desire, Lord, but it is because—well, I don’t know why, Lord. My head may not be equivalent, or my heart, or something, the stubbornness of the minds of men and women and they won’t yield to Jesus. Help them, we pray, to come for we know Thou art here. Though we can not see You, no, but You are here, Lord, in Your power and Your spirit. We can’t see the air but we know it is here. We wouldn’t argue for a minute to convince anybody that air is here, although we can’t see it, we are breathing it. We know, Lord Jesus, it is true that though we can’t see You we know You are here because You have said: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name I am with them.’
We pray for this vast throng that nearly fills the tabernacle and although the weather is threatening and a little inclement, we thank You, Lord, for keeping back the rain, and keep it back until they get home. Before they go home we pray that hundreds may walk down and give You their hearts and give their hands and say: ‘Here is my pledge and my promise to serve God through faith in Jesus from now on the best I know how.’
Alright, it is up to you. The Richmond Item. Fri, May 19, 1922 · Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Friday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus, You have lighted the light by Your sacrifice on the Cross and by Your love and tenderness and Your great big heart. It is big enough for a world to hide in and shelter there, Lord, like the cove in the harbor when the storm drives the ship from her course to the shelter, Jesus, many a poor sinner has rushed in there and found shelter. I found it, Lord. I have hid in there myself. Lots of poor drunkards have crawled in there. Lots of thieves have crawled in there. Lots of men and women of all classes have crawled in there and we have all felt the cleansing power for all. Now Jesus, what can I do for You? You have given me all this. What can I do for You on this Friday night, the fifth week of this campaign? We pray You to bless these business women that have come, Lord, all the delegation. Jesus, help them to take their stand for Thee, so that therefore You will do for them here tonight in Richmond what You did for David thousands of years ago. Lord, if we will cry You will hear us. You will help us, just as You liked to help us of old. We know, God, if we will call to the Lord He will hear us and will take us out of our trouble. Not only that, but He will take us out of all our guilt, hallelujah to God. He will keep us away from what is bad, so that we won’t want to do it any more. Hear us, Jesus, here tonight.
Alright, it is up to you.
The Richmond Item. Sat, May 20, 1922 · Page 6
Evangelist’s Sunday Afternoon Prayer
Say Jesus, here is a wonderful crowd of people from office, shop, store and farm and countryside and village and city and town, from every nook and corner here. What did they come for? To look at Mary Pickford down at the movies? No. To look at Doug. Fairbanks, Bill Brady, Charlie Ray, Tom Mix? No. What for? They came down here to hear Bill Sunday and listen to him. Why? Because he was preaching Jesus Christ and their hearts want to hear the gospel.
We are glad the old gospel has not lost her power and she never will, hallelujah to God. Human beings are anxious and desirous to see and know about the Lord, so help us, Lord, that none of us may neglect this great salvation. You have provided it at the cost of Jesus Christ. It cost, God, Your great big heart of life and love. It cost suffering. It cost all that. You have offered it to us full, free, perfect and eternal through faith in Jesus Christ.
Help the men and women who stand outside, Lord. I have preached so hard, Jesus, I can hardly stand up so my voice could reach out through the open doors and windows and the boards to the men outside, 15 to 20 feet deep, away out yonder in the street in the rear end of the tabernacle that they hear me preach about Christ.
Help them, we pray, Oh God, that scores of them may say, “Here is my hand, I promise and pledge You that I will live for God through Jesus Christ.”
The Richmond Item. Tue, May 23, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Sunday Morning Prayer
Say Jesus, I thank You for Your great love. There are men and women here this morning, who, as they sat or stood and listened to me may say, “Well, God, I am sorry I was ever under the right cross. I am sorry that I was ever in that side that represented meanness, enmity, hatred, lying, adultery, boot-legging, theft, cursing, blasphemy and everything that chill the heart of the Man on the Cross, everything that cheers hell and chills heaven.”
Jesus, I thank You that 34 years ago I was freed, Lord, and that I fell and cried, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus freed me and kissed away the guilt from my soul. I accepted His redemption that He purchased there on that cross.
Now hear us, blessed God, because I am standing here trying to preach the cross to this vast audience who have come here from office and shop and store and home. They have thronged to this tabernacle, Lord, to hear me preach, to hear the story of Christ and to meet one another in worship and adoration of this great, wonderful God, who created the heavens and the earth, and Jesus Christ, the One altogether sinless who opened His veins on the cross and bathed the world with blood that we might be saved from our guilt, and rejoice in salvation here and the hope set before us in the future, Lord.
Bless us this beautiful day. We thank You for it.
Help this people, Lord God, to lay aside everything they possibly can. Certain things need to be done. We have to eat. We have to sow. We have to run the factories and we have to plow the fields. We have to feed the stock. We have to take care of ourselves—things that have to be done, no matter whether we are Christian or sinner,—because we become Christians, that don’t mean that we have got to stop plowing, that we have got to stop eating, that we can not run the store. No, we have to do that, Jesus, and You know that,—for a man that does not provide for his family is worse than an infidel.
Help them, Lord, when that is done to come to the tabernacle at night and help us, Lord, if we can just arrange things to come here in the closing days for these last meetings, and see wonderful things.
Help every man that wears the white plume. Help every Knight Templar to take a stand for Jesus Christ. I know many, Lord, are Christians, but God, it won’t hurt them to again renew their vow, renew their covenant with Thee, and take their stand for the Lord.
Help us, Lord and we will never cease praising Thee, in the name of Jesus, our Saviour.
The Richmond Item. Tue, May 23, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Sunday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, we are swinging into the last week now. I needn’t have told You that. You know that.
I want to thank You Lord, for the five weeks that have become history, and for what I may have been privileged to do in Thy name and for the cause of Jesus Christ. I have pleaded, Lord, and I have preached to the very limit of my physical and mental strength.
I wish I could quit, Lord, when I am through here in Richmond, and go and rest, but I have to go down in Tennessee and preach, Lord, there for a month, then go up to Winona for a few days before I can go out west to rest.
Lord—I know I will get by somehow but I don’t know how, but You have promised to renew my strength as the eagles, so Jesus, I pray that You will help and hear us.
This great crowd tonight, a great many have been here all day long, morning, afternoon and evening and they are planning to drive home, Lord. It would be sad to come and stay all day and then not go home a Christian—to make that journey and go back without Jesus Christ. So, Lord, help men and women to take their stand. People on their way home, when they have grit and courage to drop down into the street, with raiment scintillating in electric light or a million diamonds and with drawn sword uplifted, should stop the automobile and say, “Wait a minute—have you solved the problem, what will it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul? You have been up to the tabernacle and you had your chance and you didn’t accept it.”
Oh God, we pray Thou wilt help us here! It is appointed unto man once to die and after death the judgment. We can all settle it now so that in that time we will not be afraid of the judgment. I am not afraid, Lord, whenever the time comes, but I don’t want it to come any sooner than You have it planned out, Lord and I don’t want to go yet awhile. Let me stay longer, will You, Lord?
I am feeling good, Jesus. I’m hitting on all six, so help me to stay a little bit longer. I want to preach for You and I want to give the devil an awful run for his money, Lord. Let me stay—I don’t know how long, Jesus, and I will go for all the power I have for You, for Your cause.
Hear us tonight and help this crowd. I may not see some of them until next Sunday and I may not see any of them then. I may see their pictures in the newspapers. Then I will begin to wonder, Lord, did they take their stand when they were in the tabernacle. Is that man safe or that woman?
So Jesus, I have done my utmost. Now help them, Lord, tonight. Bless them, Spirit of God. Help them to have grit and courage to get up and come down, come from the platform. Help them to be brave enough to come on time. If any of the men or women in the audience have taken their stand yet, may they do it now, so the last week they can do so much for Jesus Christ. May they come tonight and may all of the ushers and secretaries that want to take their stand but haven’t yet done so, may come tonight.
The Richmond Item. Tue, May 23, 1922 ·Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s Tuesday Night Prayer
Our Father, here we are on Tuesday night of the sixth week and I have been preaching Thy truth; telling how the Pharisees, Lord, committed sin because they rejected all evidence that You brought them and how men and women are doing likewise today because they reject all evidence that God can bring them through sermon and mind and memory and conscience and all the various ways that God appeals to them.
Thank you for this great audience that came from near and far. Men have ploughed all day in the field, Lord, and they come to this tabernacle, some of them 15 or 20 miles. They will take an hour, maybe an hour and a half going home and will have to get up early in the morning while many of you are still asleep. They will go out into the field to plow, or to sow, or to the factory, wherever they go they will remember what I have said and the memory of that will ring through their ears.
Oh Jesus, I don’t know what more I could do. Holy Spirit of God, go up and down the aisles and in and out among the seats. Go to the people that stand. Speak to the heart of that old man. He won’t have many more chances, Lord. It won’t be very long before the sands in the hour glass of time will soon sift for him. Go to that old woman, Lord, go to that buoyant young man and young woman. Go to the business man. Go to the people, Lord, with the dew of youth on their brow in the very noon-tide of their prosperity and health and intellectual faculty and power.
Oh, Spirit of God, go—wait a minute. Don’t go back to heaven yet, because we hope and pray to God that You will take back with You the names of scores and scores of men and women who will accept Jesus as their Saviour and that the angels will be kept until midnight crossing off names from the old book of sin and transferring them to the Lamb’s Book of Life.
I expect there is a mother up in heaven looking down and saying, “Is that my boy standing to his feet?”
“Yes.”
“Is that my girl. Has she a desire? Praise God. If there is anything I can do, Lord, I would fly down from heaven. I would speak to her in my own voice, Lord. If I had that privilege I would do it.”
So, Jesus, they haven’t the privilege and they won’t do that. So help them to believe God and to accept of Jesus their Saviour. Hear us our Father in heaven.
The Richmond Item. Wed, May 24, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Wednesday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, this is Wednesday night. You know that I am in Richmond. You know that. I have been preaching the Truth and You know that, because You have checked up on every word. You have checked up on all I have said and it is written down, and when I get to heaven You will say:
“Bill, did you preach the truth?”
“Yes sir, I did.”
“Did you tell those people that God was God and that Jesus Christ was the Only Begotten Son of God?”
“I did.”
“Did you speak of the Holy Ghost, Bill?”
“I did.”
“That He died on the Cross and that salvation is won by faith in his substitutionary death?”
“I did.”
“Did you tell them there was a personal devil?”
“I did.”
“That he deceives people and is the cause of murder, lying, adultery, corruption and infamy that blight and scourge the world?”
“I did.”
“Did you tell them of the presence of the Holy Ghost to convict the world of sin and of judgment?”
“I did.”
“Did you tell them the Holy Spirit had no blood?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them there was a hell?”
“I did. Yes, Lord, You can check there on me in Richmond and You will find lots of hell in there. I believe there is a hell. I told them they would go to hell.”
“Did you tell them they would get out?”
“No, I didn’t. I told them they would stay there forever.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you tell them if they would think good thoughts, keep good company, do philanthropic deeds, it would save them?”
“No. I told them they were liars, that it wouldn’t save them.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you tell them that matter is non-existent. That there is no such thing in a body?”
“I told them that there is not such a thing.”
“Did you tell them that Christian Science is a fraud?”
“I did.”
“That’s right, Bill.”
“Did you tell them that there was a heaven?”
“Yes sir, and I told them it was a beautiful place that had twelve gates and that each gate was made out of pearls and I told them the foundations of the city were precious stones and I told them that there was a river flowed through and a tree and that the leaves were for the healing of the nations and that the streets were paved with gold. I told them if they ever got there they would never get out, and if they got to hell they would never get out, although if they got to hell they could look over into heaven and see its beauty there.”
“Did you tell them if they would accept Jesus they would be saved?”
“Yes. I told them everything, Jesus. I told them, Lord, all over this country, over these towns and cities, New York, Boston, Richmond, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and in Washington and Baltimore and down in Chattanooga, Tenn., and at Atlanta, Ga., up and down the mountains of Virginia, all through—Richmond, Norfolk. Have preached out there in California. I have preached in Los Angeles, Frisco, Portland, St. Louis, in Dakota, down in Texas, Dallas and Fort Worth. Lord, I have gone up and down. I have preached it in Spartansburg, S. C., and wherever I have gone. I have preached it, Lord, up and down—Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nebraska and Kansas, Lord. I have told them of Jesus Christ. I have preached to a bunch of Mormons out in Salt Lake City. I preached to them Jesus, in Seattle, Billingham and Tacoma and I told them that there was nobody but Jesus Christ could save. But I have never been up in Milwaukee yet. I haven’t told them up there yet. I hope I may get a chance to go up there in Columbus, Lord, and I am going to Dayton and tell them that Christ is God.”
“What can I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
The Richmond Item. Thu, May 25, 1922 · Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Thursday Night Prayer
Say, Jesus, this is Thursday night of the sixth week of the campaign. We all knew it would come if our lives were spared and You didn’t come. We preached about Your coming but You haven’t come and I didn’t tell them You would for I didn’t know anything about it.
Now Lord, we have come to Thursday. Here is a great delegation of men and women, Lord, and they have come from the country and towns round about, from labor in the fields, and labor in the factory, office, shop and store, and college and school—they are here tonight; old and young; rich and poor; black and white; native and foreign born; male and female; aged and decrepit; all conditions, Lord, of servitude of the devil. This man has his trouble. This woman has that trouble; and this one that one. No matter what they are, Jesus, You know all about it. You are able to forgive us our sin. Isn’t it wonderful!
Here are the Odd Fellows tonight, with their cardinal principles of Friendship, Love and Truth.
Say, Jesus, You know all about it. You showed them real friendship. What would the world be if we had no friends, Lord? Wouldn’t it be an awful hell?
Love sent Jesus into the world. Love called Him and caused Him to suffer on the cross. Love caused the hearts of men to turn unto Thee. Oh Lord, what a world we would have without love—wouldn’t it be different?
Then Truth—that is what I am preaching. I am preaching the doctrine of truth—the truth that God is God, and the only God; that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; the truth that the Bible is the Word of God; the truth that there is salvation for the saved and a hell for the lost; the truth of the personality of the devil and of the Holy Spirit.
Oh Lord, it is all there in the Bible—Friendship, Love and Truth. Help them to stand for it, our God. The band across their shoulders exemplifies the spirit of the Good Samaritan, Lord, of David and Jonathan.
Oh Christ, it ought to be that they, believing what they believe, every one of them ought to be in the church.
Why should any man be a member of the Masonic lodge, the Odd Fellows, Woodmen, the Junior Order United American Mechanics, Elks, or any lodge and then not be in the church? Oh God, the great principle of Christianity is what established every one of them.
Where did the Odd Fellows get their doctrine? Only out of the Bible. Where did Masonry if they didn’t get it out of the Bible?
Why not let us all link up our principles with the church and make this world a better world than we have lived in?
Lord, do great things in these last days for Richmond. Isn’t it a beautiful town, Lord? I don’t know if You would open the windows of heaven and tell the angels to jump down on the most beautiful spot in Indiana, the first would be Winona and the second, I think this side Richmond, they would jump down in the middle of Richmond. I think they would land right down here in the middle of this block across the street—I don’t know who lives there, but they would land right in the middle of that. That is a pretty spot.
If they missed that, I think the angels would jump right through the roof of the tabernacle as about the best spot in Richmond.
Help all the people here to take their stand for God and say, ‘Here is my hand and Here is my heart to serve You, Lord, from now to the grace of God.’
The Richmond Item. Fri, May 26, 1922 ·Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Friday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, I don’t know what more I can say. I haven’t said it all. I know that much but I don’t know what argument I can use, or illustration, or metaphor, or simile. I don’t know, Lord, what I could do to appeal to reason, conscience, sympathy, emotion, Lord. I don’t know. I have tried from every angle, every viewpoint, Lord, that I know how. Jesus, if I have failed it is from the head, not the heart. Lord, I feel myself inadequate to the opportunity with this vast crowd in this inclement weather. But Jesus, they must have been greatly interested to leave home because the clouds were lowering and it was just spitting a little rain when they started, and Jesus, I am glad they were not afraid. I am glad they did not allow that to deter them from coming.
Oh, Christ, if there is anybody that ought to be a Christian it is the merchant, it is the banker, it is the lawyer, it is the doctor—the people we trust with our lives, trust them with our savings. Help them, if they are not Christians to turn to Thee.
Help this vast crowd. I don’t know who they are—the nurses and the crowd down here, Lord, in the front. I don’t know where these different delegations are from. (Do you know Rodey?) The business men, Lord, many of whom have been so faithful and helped so much.
Help them all to come, Jesus. Wouldn’t it be a great thing when the meetings are over, Lord, you will find the churches crowded with people who have not only become church members, but who have found Jesus Christ and they have come to back up the church. Help us tonight, our Father in heaven. Help them to come—the business men, bankers, nurses to come, and the other delegations that arose when Rodey asked them.
Be Thou with us, our Father in heaven. Lead us for Jesus’ sake.
The Richmond Item. Sat, May 27, 1922 · Page 6
Mr. Sunday’s Saturday Night Prayer
Say Jesus, this is Saturday night, the sixth week. Yes, six weeks ago tonight. Lord—this afternoon at 3:35 we got off of the G. R. & I. train. The mayor was down to meet us, the chief of police and the citizens, Lord, and our good friends, the American Legion with their band, went down the street and went to the Westcott hotel, where the people stood along the street, and, Lord, they bid us welcome to Richmond, knowing we had come for no other purpose than to hold up the form of Jesus Christ, and for six weeks, blessed God, we have been trying to do it.
If You would so will it I am willing to go to heaven tonight and stand before You and the people of this community and the country round about and tell them then as I tell them now that I have not failed to declare the whole counsel of Thine as I understand it, Lord, for the six weeks that have become history.
Oh, Jesus, there are many things that I would like to have had happen. There are multitudes of people I would like to have seen take their stand for Jesus Christ. There are many, Lord Jesus, that I would have been more than honored to have clasped in the six weeks that have come and gone. There are men and women whose faces I would have been glad to have known, Lord, and looked into.
So Lord Jesus Christ, we come to the closing point of the campaign almost. It, in a few hours now, will become a matter of history; the books of heaven will be closed, the building will be torn down. Earlham college has bought it. They will move it over there, Lord, for a gymnasium for the boys. As the people gather there for the basket ball games, the track meets, and all, Lord Jesus, every board of it will echo with the sermons we have preached and the songs that have been sung, and when the people walk into it, blessed God, they can see all this come back again, and every knot hole will seem to preach a sermon. Every board will seem to be precious, Our God, and every upright and every particle.
So we pray Thou wilt make bare Thy mighty arm, and scores and hundreds may walk down here tonight and take their stand for Jesus Christ and renew their vows and covenants for God, and even now if they have allowed six weeks to go by and haven’t done it, and if by failing to do that they have not been able to help anybody into the Kingdom of God they perhaps have not got so much of a blessing out of this as they might have gotten.
So, Lord, You know I have been preaching with all the power You have given me. I have not spared myself of energy, or zeal or anything to hold up the bleeding form of Jesus, and now Lord, I am standing here on this last Saturday night of the last week. And in the words of my text, ‘And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.’
I have stood here as the representative, as the ambassador of Jesus Christ, to tell them what You can do for them. Well then, we pray that there won’t be a man or woman go out of here tonight unsaved, Lord, but they will all come and say, ‘I will take it. I will accept it.’ Help them tonight that they may not wait until tomorrow night but do it now.
Bless the stewards and the prudential committeemen, vestrymen, and Sunday school teachers, any church official, Lord. Help them all, we pray. Oh God! Help them from the farm, help them from the railroad. Lord God, from the McGuire Lawn Mower company, help them from our good friend, Adam Bartel’s. Adam is a good scout and he has been with us all the way, and our friend, the superintendent of the railroad, Higginbottom, Lord, You know he is a good scout. He has been such a help. Help them from the Starr Piano company, Lord, if any of them are here. Help them from all of these various industries, down here at the Underwear works where Mrs. Asher has been working, down through the George Knollenberg company. They are good scouts. They have been coming in their automobiles and taking us about.
May everyone come in the spirit of enthusiasm for the last day. May they come with open hearts that God Almighty can fill them with the benediction until tomorrow will be a red letter day, and it will be such a day that the devil will stagger back and he’ll be in the hospital and on his crutches saying, ‘I’ve got some solar plexis blows. I am about all in.’
Oh, Lord Jesus, help us that if I have said anything that has not been according to Your will in all of these six weeks, forgive me. If there is anything I should have said that I have not said let me know and I’ll make it up tomorrow.
So help us, and be Thou with us, I pray.
The Richmond Item. Sun, May 28, 1922 ·Page 6
Billy Sunday’s Farewell Prayer
Say Jesus, I am through. I would like to just be starting, Lord, where we are leaving off. Oh, God, You could re-write the history of Wayne county and every county, Lord that joins it. It would reach and spill over, Lord, into Winchester and Portland, away over to Newcastle, Lord, and to Hagerstown, over, Lord, to Eaton, down, Lord to these other towns around; over to Spiceland, down to Liberty, over to Campbellstown and in the country round about where there are people by the hundreds living and the country not saved who would be, Jesus, if we were starting where we are saying good-bye.
But say, Lord, we thank You, Lord, for what we have been privileged to do here. We thank You, Lord, for the honor of preaching Jesus Christ. I have not stood on Indiana soil for years to preach it since I was up in South Bend. Oh Lord, I thank You that I have had the opportunity.
And now, Lord God, help us, we pray, they that will stay and we that will go. Bless the ministers. They have been kind. Surely Lord, as Brown said, they did stand by magnificently and did everything in their power.
Bless our poor friend. Work, Lord, as he is taking his wife to put her in the grave and then come back with two little children without a mother, and he without a wife, to take up the duties of the church. My God, help them not to add to his burdens by being indifferent or critical.
Help us, we pray, and be with us, we beseech of Thee and bless this great audience. They have stood out there, Lord and I have torn my throat with the effort that the fellow out there might hear, with his ear glued against the window and his hand behind his ear, to hear the words as they rang out and clear across the street.
Lord, look at the automobiles, I expect a thousand of them here tonight and on the morning, Lord, as they drive down the street there will be none. Lord, I don’t know that the people will ever live to see so many flock in the town again. I don’t know what it will be, because nothing draws people like the gospel.
So we are about ready to say good-bye. God, we hear it so much. Good-bye, we say it when the children go away to school; good-bye when our friends come to visit us, we say it; good-bye when the ship swings out in the channel and steers for the open sea to lands we have never seen. They on the dock say, ‘Farewell, Bon Voyage,’ and they on the ship say, ‘Farewell, good-bye to you.’ We say it as the hearse goes away. We say it as the bridal carriage takes our boy or girl away. Lord, we say it as the train pulls out, we wave it from the rear, good-bye to those that stand and watch us. Jesus, good-bye, we have to say it, but in heaven we never will say it.
We have reached the point where we have to say it, preachers, secretaries, doorkeepers, ushers, newspapers, the good people of Richmond and the country round about—Indiana and Ohio, where they have all come and by their presents and their gifts to help pay the current expenses and contribute, Lord, to my offering, and whatever they may have given, Lord, bless them.
Help us, Lord. Lead us, guide us. And now, Jesus, in a few minutes before we say good-bye, we want to give them a chance to come and accept of Thee as their Saviour, Lord, in this last meeting tonight.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 30, 1922 · Page 6
Evangelist’s Sunday Morning Prayer
Say Jesus, we have reached the last Sunday morning. Men and women have come from near and far. I saw the names on the automobiles, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas and states round about, and Michigan too. They have come from near and far. Perhaps tourists journeying from New York and Pennsylvania, journeying on the highways, heard about the meetings and stopped to attend them and then hurry away with their wives and children to catch the beauty of this wonderful day, to live under the stars and stripes of liberty and freedom. Oh God, as they go along they will see no team in the fields today. They will see no tractors plowing the ground. They will see the scores of herds in the succulent grass up to their sauce and pepperino, Lord, up to the very last minute and when I macadamized highway of this great land were we live and which Thou hast loved enough to make all these wonderful things for us, and all the materials out of which they are made.
Oh blessed Jesus, perhaps some are here this morning that will not be this afternoon and I am preaching my farewell sermon to some man or woman. It may be the last sermon for them this morning, Lord. I don’t know. It may be that You will close their eyelids and You will stop their heart. The undertaker will come and crepe will flow from the door in the morning. I don’t know how soon it will be, Lord, but I do hope, before it ever comes to anybody, that they will not allow an opportunity like this to pass without accepting Jesus Christ.
I thank Thee, Lord, from the depths of my soul for the co-operation that the ministers have extended to me and the members of my party, for the assistance they have been and they have been good fellows. They have stood by me to the last ditch, blessed God, when it was dark and the clouds were lowering and it was hard and criticism was being hurled and people wouldn’t come, and all that, they have stood by.
Lord God, the people ought to thank You that they have as the pastors of the churches men that are willing to stand by in a cause like this.
Oh God, Richmond has not alone had the opportunity for people within her own borders. She has been given the opportunity to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. The people have come from the country round about, not simply has it been confined within the corporate limits of their own community. There is not a church, blessed God, in any city, village or hamlet within 50, 75 or 100 miles that has not felt the influence of these meetings.
Thank You for the ushers; thank You for the secretaries; thank You for the choir; thank You for all those that have done anything, that have given any help to the tabernacle expenses which are all paid. The bills have been paid. Thank You for it. For whatever they may give to help along Thy cause and to help us to go and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Wilt Thou be near. Bare Thy mighty arm and show Thy power to those who do not know Thee.
It won’t be very long, Lord, till the ventilators will be closed, the doors will be closed, the building will be closed and it will be ance and their prayers and their gifts to help make it a great success a gymn.
Oh, be Thou with us our God, hear us, help us, bless us, we appeal to Thee in the name of Jesus. If we have said anything we should not have said, forgive us, Lord. If we have left anything undone, let us know and we will do it.
Let us all have zeal for Christ, zeal for salvation. I don’t want anything less, Lord. I want to have the same vim, ginger, tabasco my hand to serve God better than I ever have. To do more for God am about ready to go, if you will just give me a little bit more strength, I will jump up and give the devil one more wallop and then stand on the coffin and sing, ‘Hallelujah for Christ.’
Oh Lord, be with us, lead us, and guide us and may there be men and women here this morning who will take their stand for Jesus and give themselves to Him to serve Him and do His will.
Hear us and we will never cease to praise Thee, in the name of Jesus, our Saviour.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 30, 1922 · Page 7
Mr. Sunday’s 2:00 P. M. Service Prayer
Say Jesus, here is a great crowd of folks. They have been good, standing by this campaign, Lord, and I thank them for standing by it until the end. What a great comfort it is to look into the faces of people to know they have given their attendance and their assistance, and say, “Surely God is good,” as they pass along the cess. Lord Jesus, bless them, for it won’t be long until we will hurry home for a little rest, then down to the mountains of Tennessee to preach Jesus, then out to the Pacific coast to have a littl rest, Lord.
Now, hear us Lord, today. There may be someone here today, Lord, that has not yielded to Christ. They have been making up their minds as they have come in time after time and have said, “This is the time, the last day.”
Lord, help us, that the people who stood out there to receive the words as they reached through the windows and doors. I hope they have reached them. I have strained my voice solely for their benefit. I am glad to do it. If they can only hear and heed the gospel. Help them to walk down here and say, “Here is my pledge and my vow to serve God and the Lord in the church. Here is turned over to Earlham college here. They will take it and make it church and the pastor and my neighborhood and community in my life. I am going to be a friend to it and I am going to help it along.
Oh God, hear us, we pray. Lead us, bless us for Jesus’ sake.
Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 30, 1922 · Page 7
In 1922, evangelist Billy Sunday delivered a sermon titled “Americanism,” reflecting his staunch support for traditional American values and his opposition to radical ideologies. In this address, Sunday criticized groups he perceived as threats to the nation’s moral and social fabric, including socialists, communists, and certain university academics. He accused these groups of promoting rebellion and undermining American institutions. Sunday also addressed issues of labor and capital, condemning both dishonest laborers and exploitative employers. Additionally, he expressed his views on racial matters, asserting that social equality between white and black individuals was unattainable, though he acknowledged the importance of civil equality. This sermon was later published as a pamphlet, allowing for wider dissemination of his views.
Country Crowded with Radicals
The cuckoo is a bird that never builds a nest of its own: it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds which it drives away. Our country is crowded with a Socialistic, I. W. W., Communistic, radical, lawless, anti-American, anti-church, anti-God, anti-marriage gang, and they are laying the eggs of rebellion and unrest in labor and capital and home. And we have some of them in the universities. I can take you through the universities and pick out a lot of fellows that shouldn’t draw pay from the people that send their boys there, for they are nothing but black-hearted, Communistic fellows who are teaching that to the boys and sending them out to undermine America. There are a lot of good-for-nothing, assinine, fool preachers that are just as low down as the rest of them.
No wonder the world is going to hell so fast she is breaking the speed limit!
The theory that a man should loaf on the job thereby causing under-production in order to make work for more men is a damnable heresy that came out of Europe. A laborer is a thief if he soldiers on the job and don’t give honest work for the wages that are paid him. An employer is a thief if he pays starvation wages and makes that man and his children live below the hunger line. (Applause.)
This radical element, which you will find everywhere, has gotten into the church. Why, I am a Presbyterian—and we have got Presbyterian preachers that are preaching damnable heresy right in the pulpits with the name “Presbyterian” on the outside of the church. They are preaching a bloodless salvation. They say, “Read good books, keep good company, think good thoughts and you will go to heaven.” You will go to HELL. (Laughter.)
Whites and Blacks
Then the matter of social equality between the white and the black. Talk about social equality! There never will be social equality between the white and the black. (Applause.) The radical characteristics, my friends, are such, to make forever impossible social and political equality, in my opinion. Now you confuse that with civil equality. The black man is entitled to civil equality as much as you. You give him half the road. Why, we have not social equality even among white folks. There are a lot of white people who wouldn’t have me in their home. (Laughter.)
However, when you are out on the highway with your Pierce-Arrow limousine you have got to give half of the road to that darkey with his tin lizzie. (Laughter.) Civil equality is all right. Social equality is another proposition. No decent negro man would want to marry a white woman. No decent white man would want to marry a negress.
Talk about social equality? Never, no: just get that into your nut right straight off….
America for Americans
And I will tell you, Philadelphia, this country is going to be run by Americans, cost what it will. (Applause.) It is going to be run on the basis of government under the Constitution of our forefathers who struck the snow-covered hills of New England with a Bible in one hand and a spelling book in the other, under the Stars and Stripes and not under the red rag of rebellion or Socialism or Communism. (Applause.) …
Socialism is the sulphur. I. I. W.’ism is the niter which the radicals would mix into the TNT of rebellion and blow this government to atoms, and they are trying to tunnel under the capital at Washington with a keg of powder in one hand and a box of matches and a fuse in the other.
Now, sir, efforts are being made against every form of authority, whether that authority is from the church or whether it is from the government or the state — they don’t give a hoot. I will tell you now that we will make our rivers run blood before we ever see the land of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln trampled under the feet of those virulent scabs. (Applause.)
The Lowest Down Scoundrel
… I would not lift my voice nor I would not journey to Philadelphia nor any place else to say anything, my friends, that would prevent the immigration of worthy Europeans. We have got millions of such and they are 100 per cent Americans, (applause) but I tell you what I would do: I would knock into a cocked hat and higher than Gilroy’s kite the theory, sir, that America has got to be forever the dumping ground for foreign filth. (Applause.) I mean the class that no other country wants. The devil himself would not have them. They have got the instincts of a dog without his fidelity. That is the bunch I mean. Say, we have made American citizenship too cheap: we have allowed every creature that calls himself a man and wears whiskers and poses on his hind legs to sway the scepter of American sovereignty and become a factor in framing public opinion. We have made ’er too cheap. I tell you. You are suffering for it right now. (Applause.)
No man, my friends, who swerves in the slightest degree from absolute loyalty to Americanism and the law has any right to ask or claim to be called an American citizen….
That is all we ask, yes, sir: but we can’t compete with this promiscuous importation nowadays. An American has got to have meat once a day and a bath once a week. (Laughter.) You can’t compete with a fellow who takes up his belly-band for breakfast, no; eats spaghetti and hot dog and rye bread for lunch, and sucks in his limburger cheese for supper. No, no, sir.
America Sustains the World
It so happens that America is placed in a position where the fate of the world depends largely on her conduct. If we lose our heads down goes civilization. Woe to the world if this nation wobbles out of her orbit of liberty. The mission of America seems to be to salvage the world from the wreck of war. That seems to be what we are here for. Woe to the man that staggers away from the duty be owes to his God and his country, sir….
Do you know what America needs? She needs a tidal wave of the old-time religion. (Applause.) Without religion we are in a dismal swamp. My friends, religious indifference is always followed by moral decay. You can study the history of the world and whenever people become indifferent to religion you will find low down morals and disrespect for law.
Source: Billy Sunday, “‘Americanism,’ Address by Billy Sunday” (Philadelphia: Law Enforcement League of Philadelphia, April 10, 1922), 22–23, 26–32, 34–37, 41–47.
“Conversion is a complete surrender to Jesus. It’s a willingness to do what he wants you to do.”
“You are on the devil’s side. How are you going to cross over?… Get over the old line.”
“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
“Under the Sun”
“All the gold mines in the world have not given up treasure enough to satisfy the man who has a greed for gain.”
“No fountain under the sun can hold enough to satisfy an immortal spirit.”
“Destroy the Bible and all faith in God, and we might as well eat, drink and be merry and die.”
“The Second Coming of Christ”
“The second coming of Christ is the emphatic doctrine of the New Testament… mentioned more than 350 times.”
“This old world is going to wake up some morning and find that all good men and women have beaten it.”
“God’s chariot of salvation is not marked late by a single minute. Come, Lord Jesus!”
“Teach Us to Pray”
“If you are a stranger to prayer, you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.”
“The man who truly prays ‘Thy kingdom come’ cannot take his heart out of his prayer when he is out of the church.”
“Every man that God has used to halt this sin-cursed world and set it going Godward has been a Christian of prayer.”
“Spiritual Food for a Hungry World”
“Jesus was the chef, not the waiter at this banquet.”
“Other religions have preached good things, but they have no Savior who can take these things and implant them in the human heart and make them grow.”
“It is the personal reign of Christ that brings the millennium. Those who have been the greatest blessing to the world were filled with this hope and preached it.”
“Old Time Religion”
“What we need is the good old-time kind of revival that will cause you to love your neighbors, and quit talking about them.”
“Christianity is more than church membership… Many an old skin-flint is not fit for the balm of Gilead until you give him a fly blister.”
“The church is dying for religion — religion pure and undefiled.”
“Take This Child Away and Nurse It for Me”
“The work is so important that God will not trust anybody with it but a mother.”
“You have no more right to raise your children for pleasure than a bank cashier has to rifle the vaults and take the savings of the people.”
“Every child is put in a mother’s arms as a trust from God.”
Evangelist Insists He Will Resign From Ministry Before He Would Cut it Out of Sermons.
UNIQUE DISCOURSE YESTERDAY AFTERNOON.
Large Crowds Continue to Throng the Tabernacle—Roll of Converts Increased—Revival News Notes.
Sunday believes absolutely that there is a hell and says he intends to fearlessly preach it as long as he remains in the ministry. Last night at the tabernacle in one of his characteristic sermons he said before he would omit the reality of hell from his preaching that he would resign from the ministry. “It’s up to you to accept or reject the gospel; it’s God or nothing,” said Sunday.
Last night the regulation crowd of 5,000 filled the tabernacle and heard Sunday preach on “How Shall We Escape if We Neglect So Great Salvation?” It is remarkable how Sunday attracts the populace. It takes a speaker of more than ordinary ability and power to draw two or three thousand people every afternoon and again each evening five or six thousand people to hear him preach, but Mr. Sunday possesses those qualities. His magnetic personality and peculiar eccentricities as a public orator combine to make up his extraordinary drawing force. After last night’s powerful sermon forty-six persons went forward and made the profession of faith.
The Sermon.
My text tonight assumes the form of a question, and although it seems to be a paradox it is absolutely unanswerable,” said Mr. Sunday. “I could go to the leading merchant in the town and when I would ask him he could tell me the principles by which to build business to success, but if I would ask him the question of my text I would gaze into a face that would give no reply. I might go to your leading physician and he could explain to me all about materia medica, about hygiene, about medical jurisprudence and about obstetrics, but if I would ask him this question I would gaze into a face of blank despair. I might go to the office of your most brilliant lawyer, a man that can interpret the law before the supreme court, a man with brains enough to codify the state laws and that knows all about organic and constitutional law, yet if I would ask him my question-text I would go down the stairs without a reply. If I could go to the lost world and the souls there could cease their shrieks long enough for me to ask this question, I would come back without an answer. If an angel of God would come to the tabernacle and I would ask it the question it would fly back and fold its wings like a tired dove in the presence of God without speaking a word.
“How Shall We Escape?”
“The text is found in the second chapter of Hebrews and the third verse—’How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?’ There is absolutely no escape; there is absolutely no answer to the question.
“Our first thought about salvation is saving from punishment. True, but you are not beginning to live unless you are a Christian. You have been merely existing. The one who lives in sin is driving the dagger into his own heart, for all that is polluting and corrupting and debasing comes through sin, yet men follow it. All that is noble and uplifting comes through Jesus Christ, yet men spurn Him.
God’s Plan.
“God has given us so many things. He knew we needed air—He gave it to us. He knew we needed water—He gave it to us. He knew that we needed eyes and ears and lungs and hands and feet, and He gave them to us. And He has salvation ready if we want it. And I have no patience with any who puts his asinine judgment up against God’s and says that he knows best. Of course there is a hell, the plan of salvation contains it. There would be no good in leaving hell out. I am not the author of the plan of salvation, but I am here to preach it as it is, whether it is pleasant to you or not. Because you do not believe in hell, that doesn’t make any difference. That don’t make you immune. A fact is a fact, whether you believe it or not. Because you don’t believe in God and heaven and hell and the divinity of Christ, don’t change the facts or scheme of salvation because you didn’t have sense and decency enough to believe. You can’t fix God’s word to suit yourself. You can’t blue-pencil His plan of salvation. You have to take it as it is or leave it. I have no doctrine. I preach God’s word. I have no use for a man who has a doctrine. Let him preach God’s.
The Truth of Hell.
“I don’t say that I’ve seen hell and I don’t intend to try and see it just to convince you. I don’t want to find out whether the fire in hell is like that in your stove or whether the word fire is an emblem chosen to represent conditions as bad. I am faithful and true to God’s trust and I never expect to know whether or not hellfire burns.
It is to the class who expect some time to be Christians that I am especially preaching tonight. This is the man who acknowledges that God has a claim on him and who sometimes expects to change and be a Christian. But that man who may be too late and who may find death before him before he has time to change. The church can only answer the question of hell in one way. He that believeth in Christ is saved, and he that believeth not is damned. If there is no hell, preachers are taking money under false pretenses.
“Is There a Hell?”
“In preaching hell and making reference to it I encounter a difficulty. Men and women don’t like to accept it. They think they cannot be happy with a hell, therefore they say there is no hell and think that settles it. Some people think they could be happy if hell was fixed like a big club with an ice chest full of Anheuser-Busch, Schlitz, and Pabst, with a button handy so they could call a servant if they wanted anything, and then could sit down, sip lemonade and puff a twenty-five-cent straight.
“Suppose I met three men walking on a road toward a precipice. To the first I say, ‘This is a dangerous road, and if you go on you will plunge over the precipice to death,’ but he doesn’t thank me.
He just sneers and walks on. The second asks, ‘Have you ever been to the end?’ and when I admit I have not, he says I don’t know what I am talking about, then. The third says that he knows it, but that he intends to turn off just this side of the precipice.
‘I meet three journeying from the cradle to the grave. The first curses and damns me when I speak to him of Christ and tries to show that he knows more than God. He ends in hell. A fellow told me to go there the other day and I told him if he wanted to go he could just pack up, but I wasn’t going. Whatever hell is, I don’t want to test its reality. It must be an awful place or God wouldn’t open a plan of salvation in order to keep us out. The second man asks me if I’ve ever been there to find out, and the third tells me that he believes he is a sinner, believes the bible is the word of God, believes in hell, but that he will repent before he dies.
‘Why put it off? Nearly everybody expects to become a Christian before he dies. Almost nobody wants to spend eternity in hell. I only met two men who believed in a literal hell who said they expected to spend eternity, and they were both converted.
‘How God will damn I do not know. But I do not want to go to hell. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? You can depend on it, there is no escape.
‘What is the use of churches and religion and temples and tabernacles, if there is no hell? Why open up a plan to save you if there is no hell? But, my friends, if heaven is eternal, hell is eternal. Don’t make God out a liar. Just take His word. You can’t find the truth from ethical and philosophical lines. You can’t settle a spiritual truth by scientific revelations. God has set before you an open door. You can accept or reject. God will never have another plan for you. It is accept Jesus Christ or nothing. Don’t shut your eyes to God’s danger signals.
Don’t rush like stampeded cattle to destruction. Don’t try to test the reality of hell.
The Plan of Salvation.
Wonder of wonders is the plan of salvation. So simple it is that a child can grasp it and so complex that scientists are puzzled. You can better afford to neglect anything else than your salvation. Neglect your health, your business, your education, rather than your salvation.
There are multitudes in hell who did not expect to go there, but who waited too long. I have seen men and women in Bloomington grasp the backs of the seats to steady themselves. I have seen them turn pale as I have hurled the truth at them. I have done my part. If you won’t take advantage of a thing when you may, don’t complain when it gets beyond you. A man can’t afford to trifle with God. The greatest calamities of the world have come from neglect—Johnstown, Ashtabula, Martinique—multitudes have had no more intention of spending eternity in hell than you have, yet they waited too long, and they are there. It is not that you have failed to hear, but that you have failed to heed. It is the only salvation; Mother Eddy or any of the rest of the bunch have nothing like it. The scheme of it shows God’s love. If you are damned, you have only yourself to blame. God has provided. You won’t go to hell because you are a sinner, but because you have failed to repent that sin. The bitterest dregs of hell that you will taste will be the thought that you have no one to blame but yourself.
eformation Not Salvation.
Oh, said a wrinkled browed, stoop shouldered, gray bearded old gambler to me. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Bill. I’ll quit gambling.
Good I said. And I booze fight a little, not very much for no gambler can and keep ahead of the game but I booze fight a little, and I’ll cut that out.
Good. And I’ll stop my impure living.
Good. And I’ll quit my cussing.
I said. And what else? Well, I guess that’s about all, isn’t it? he asked.
Won’t you accept Jesus Christ? I said.
Why, I won’t have to, will I, if I live straight? he asked.
Say, and Sunday seized his bible to illustrate his point. Suppose you reach the age of accountability at this point, and he indicated a spot, and you are here when you reform and will be over here when you die. Your reformation counts all right from this point where you reformed to where you die, but what about the sins you committed from the time you reached the age of accountability? Your reformation doesn’t wipe them away and the only way they can be wiped away is through Jesus.
Just Faith.
No matter who you are—no matter how smart you are, you are damned and I tell you in your teeth you are damned. You can talk about salvation by refinement and culture. You can go to hell with all your culture. It is not worth a snap of your finger. By repentance and faith is the only way. If God could do no more than simply pardon a man, it would not be so much. But God pardons and justifies—makes you as if you had not sinned.
Don’t forget the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man was a good fellow. He was not a bad man. He was just too busy to pay attention to God. He was like a lot of business men I met at the banquet at the Illinois the other night—cracking good fellows but too busy for God—and the rich man went to hell and cried aloud there for help. In hell you will carry with you the fact that you had the chance and failed to take it. You will remember in hell—God pity you. You are hurtling back every tender thought—every offer—God pity you.
In the name of my God and my Christ, I hurl to you a life line tonight.
A Sunday Prayer.
The sermon was closed with the following prayer: “Jesus, it seems too good to be true that you would provide salvation for us. But God to see men and women pass it up. That is staggering to me. I could understand why you would not love us; why you would not provide salvation for us, but Lord: to step in and provide salvation, to send prophets and priests, and to send Christian mothers to weep and beg and importune us to receive it and to see men pass it by and shake their heads. Jesus, I do not know what to do; I do not know what to say. Lord, I pray men and women may yield and say ‘I give up; I have neglected it long enough; there is too much at stake. My heart may stop tonight; my lungs may congest; there might be a blood clot on my brain. Lord, I will do it now.’ The trumpet may sound for me tonight and might shake a shroud round me tonight. What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Give me the answer. Give me the answer. Give me the answer. What will it profit you if you gained McLean county and lose your soul?”
—This nation can’t long exist half drunk and half sober.
—Every anarchistic plot is hatched out in a grog shop.
—To license such a dirty incarnation is the meanest thing on earth.
—If I were a devil, I would rather dwell in a good decent body than in some men I know.
—I don’t rate the saloon as a legitimate business; I don’t care a rap if the law does.
—Of the 106 counties in prohibition Kansas, only twenty-five of them have an inmate in their jails.
—If all the whiskey-orphaned children stood hand in hand, they would belt the old globe five times around.
—A banker in Kansas City, Kans., said that after one year of prohibition his bank had over a million of new deposits.
—The food to feed your family well is in the grocery stores, but you spend your money over the bar and your family goes hungry.
—Let the farmers of the United States get a whack at the saloons, and they will send it to hell at the first smack out of the box.
—The saloon is a sneaking coward; it stabs in the back; it works in the dark; it beats out right against every man that it cannot debauch.
—The beef steak your wife and children ought to have are in the butcher shop, but you carry home a load of booze instead of the meat.
—I defy the whole damnable gang (of saloon people) to come up and show anything in my life that is not in accordance with that old book.
—There are three towns in Kansas which openly defy prohibition laws, and the population of those towns is constantly on the decrease.
—It is up to you, men of Bloomington, you men of Normal, men of Illinois, to say that your damnable period of perdition and corruption shall end.
—I have as much respect for the saloon keeper as I have for the man who votes for the business, or the man who rents his buildings for the business.
—The farmers are not such a disgraceful gang that they won’t go to a town to trade unless they can fill their hides with booze like a Comanche Indian.
—To license a business that will take bright American boys and manufacture them into sots, insane patients and criminals is the dirtiest business on earth.
—The saloon could not exist if it wasn’t for the church. When the members of all the churches get ready to act together against them they send it to hell in twenty-four hours.
—It (the liquor traffic) is a thief; it steals the coffin from the dead; it steals the milk from the breast of the nursing mother; it steals the last nickel from the starving child. It’s a dirty thing robbing our land and our homes.
—It (the liquor traffic) has no faith in God; it would close every church; it would hang its sign in every choir loft and from every pulpit. It would wrap the mantle of crepe about our manhood and the virtue of womanhood. Its conversation is polluted with obscenity and corruption.
“Brethren”—that’s what God calls his true followers. No speaking from the loft. If there’s any lesson we need to learn it is that of being “brethren.”
Sinners are not called “brethren” in the Bible. God commands sinners. They are in rebellion. He entreats Christians. When Lincoln called for volunteers he addressed men as “citizens of the United States,” not as foreigners.
The man who is appreciative of God’s mercies will not have much mercy on himself. Don’t stand up and say: “I’ll do what Jesus bids me to do, and go where he bids me to go,” then go to bed. Present your bodies—not mine—not those of your wives; you must present your own. Present your bodies; not your neighbor’s; not your children’s; it is their duty to do that. Do you trust God enough to let him do what he wants to do?
Henry Varley said to Moody, when that great American was in England, that God is waiting to show this world what one man could do for him. Moody said: “Varley, by the grace of God I’ll be that man”; and God took hold of Moody and shook the world with him. God would shake the world with us today if only we would present our bodies as a living sacrifice to him, as Moody did. Are you willing to present yourself? I am tired of a church of five hundred or seven hundred members without power enough to bring one soul to Christ.
At the opening of the Civil War many a man was willing that the country should be saved by able-bodied male relatives of his wife, who made themselves bullet-men, but he didn’t go himself. God isn’t asking for other men’s bodies. He’s asking for yours. If you would all give to God what rightfully belongs to him, I tell you he would create a commotion on earth and in hell. If God had the feet of some of you he would point your toes in different ways from those you have been going for many years. If he had your feet he would never head you into a booze joint. If he had your feet he would never send you into a ball-room. If he had the feet of some of you he would make you wear out shoe leather lugging back what you’ve taken that doesn’t belong to you. If God had your feet he would take you to prayer-meeting. I’m afraid the preacher would have nervous prostration, for he hasn’t seen some of you there in years. If God had your feet you’d find it harder to follow the devil. Some of you preachers have your children going to dancing school and I hear some of you go to dances. He would make your daily walk conform to the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.
Some people work only with their mouths. God wants that part that’s on the ground. Some soldiers sit around and smell the coffee and watch the bacon frying.
If God had your hands he would make you let go a lot of things you hold on to with a death-like grip. If you don’t let go of some of the things you hold so tightly they will drag you down to hell. He would have you let go some of the things you pay taxes on, but don’t own, and he would make you let go of money to pay taxes on some that you do own. Some people are so busy muck-raking that they will lose a crown of glory hereafter. If God had your hands, how many countless tears you would wash away. A friend of mine bought a typewriter, and when he tried to use it his fingers seemed to be all sticks, but now he can write forty-five words a minute. Let God have your hands and he will make them do things that would make the angels wonder and applaud.
“BILLY” SUNDAY: THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE. Ellis: 1914.
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 