"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message / With his own words which have won thousands for Christ

by William T. Ellis

John the Baptist wasn't that kind of a preacher. Jesus Christ wasn't that kind of a preacher. The apostles weren't that kind of preachers—except old Judas. John the Baptist opened the Bible right in the middle and preached the word of God just as he found it, and he didn't care whether the people liked it or not. That wasn't his business. I tell you, John the Baptist stirred up the devil. If any minister doesn't believe in a personal devil it's because he has never preached a sermon on repentance, or he'd have heard him roar. Yes, sir. If there's anything that will make the devil roar it is a sermon on repentance.

You can preach sociology, or psychology, or any other kind of ology, but if you leave Jesus Christ out of it you hit the toboggan slide to hell.

I'll preach against any minister who is preaching false doctrines. I don't give a rap who he is. I'll turn my guns loose against him, and don't you forget that. Any man who is preaching false doctrines to the people and vomiting out false doctrines to them will hear from me. I want to say that the responsibility for no revivals in our cities and towns has got to be laid at the doors of the ministry. Preachers sit fighting their sham battles of different denominations, through their cussedness, inquiring into fol-da-rol and tommyrot, and there sits in the pews of the church that miserable old scoundrel who rents his property out for a saloon and is going to hell; and that other old scoundrel who rents his houses for houses of ill fame and is living directly on the proceeds of prostitution, and he doesn't preach against it. He is afraid he will turn the men against him. He is afraid of his job. They are a lot of backsliders and the whole bunch will go to hell together. They are afraid to come out against it.

I'll tell you what's the matter. Listen to me. The Church of God has lost the spirit of concern today largely because of the ministry—that's what's the matter with them. I'll allow no man or woman to go beyond me in paying tribute to culture. I don't mean this miserable "dog" business, shaking hands with two fingers. The less brains some people have the harder they try to show you that they have some, or think they have. I allow no man to go beyond me in paying tribute to real, genuine culture, a tribute to intellectual greatness; but when a man stands in the pulpit to preach he has got to be a man of God. He has got to speak with the passion for souls. If you sleep in the time of a revival God Almighty will wake you up.

There are lots of preachers who don't know Jesus. They know about him, but they don't know him. Experience will do more than forty million theories. I can experiment with religion just the same as I can with water. No two knew Him exactly alike, but all loved Him. All would have something to say.

Now for you preachers. When a man prays "Thy Kingdom Come" he will read the Bible to find out the way to make it come. The preacher who prays "Thy Kingdom Come" will not get all his reading from the new books or from the magazines. He will not try to please the highbrows and in pleasing them miss the masses. He will not try to tickle the palates of the giraffes and then let the sheep starve. He will put his cookies on the lower shelf. He will preach in a language that the commonest laborer can understand.

One of the prolific sources of unbelief and backsliding today is a bottle-fed church, where the whole membership lets the preacher do the studying of the Bible for them. He will go to the pulpit with his mind full of his sermon and they will come to the church with their minds filled with society and last night's card-playing, beer-and-wine-drinking and novel-reading party and will sit there half asleep. Many a preacher reminds me of a great big nursing bottle, and there are two hundred or three hundred rubber tubes, with nipples on the end, running into the mouths of two hundred or three hundred or four hundred great big old babies with whiskers and breeches on, and hair pins stuck in their heads and rats in their hair, sitting there, and they suck and draw from the preacher. Some old sister gets the "Amusement" nipple in her mouth and it sours her stomach, and up go her heels and she yells. Then the preacher has to go around and sing psalms to that big two-hundred-and-fifty-pound baby and get her good-natured so that she will go back to church some day.

By and by some old whisky-voting church member gets the "Temperance" nipple in his mouth and it sours his stomach and up go his heels and he lets out a yell, throws his hands across his abdominal region, and the preacher says, "Whatever is the matter? If I hit you any place but the heart or the head I apologize." The preacher has to be wet nurse to about two hundred and fifty big babies that haven't grown an inch since they came into the church.

One reason why some preachers are not able to bring many sinners to repentance is because they preach of a God so impotent that he can only throw down card houses when all the signs are right! They decline to magnify his power for fear they will overdo it! And if they accidentally make a strong assertion as to his power, they immediately neutralize it by "as it were," or "in a measure, perhaps!"