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

by William T. Ellis

Don't tell God you can't. Just say you don't want to be a Christian, that's the way to be a man. Just say, "I don't want to be decent; I don't want to quit cussing; I don't want to quit booze-fighting; I don't want to quit lying; I don't want to quit committing adultery. If I should be a Christian I would have to quit all these things, and I don't want to do it." Tell God you are not man enough to be a Christian. Don't try to saddle it off on the Lord. You don't want to do it, that's all; that's the trouble with you.

At the Cross

A man in a town in Ohio came and handed one of the ministers a letter, and he said, "I want you to read that when you get home." When the minister got home he opened it and it read like this:

"I was at the meeting last night, and somehow or other, the words 'What shall the end be?' got hold of me, and troubled me. I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got up and went to my library. I took down my books on infidelity and searched them through and searched through the writings of Voltaire, and Darwin, and Spencer, and Strauss, and Huxley, and Tyndall, and through the lectures of Ingersoll, but none of them could answer the cry and longing of my heart, and I turn to you. Is there help? Where will I find it?" And that man found it where every man ever has, or ever will find it, down at the Cross of Jesus Christ, and I have been praying God that might be the experience of many a man and woman in this Tabernacle.

Ever since God saved my soul and sent me out to preach, I have prayed him to enable me to pronounce two words, and put into those words all they will mean to you; if they ever become a reality, God pity you. One word is "Lost," and the other is "Eternity."

Ten thousand years from now we will all be somewhere. Ten thousand times ten thousand times ten thousand years, the eternity has just begun. Increase the multiple and you will only increase the truth. If God should commission a bird to carry this earth, particle by particle, to yonder planet, making a round trip once in a thousand years, and if, after the bird had performed that task God should prolong its life, and it would carry the world back, particle by particle, making a round trip once in a thousand years, and put everything back as it was originally, after it had accomplished its task, you would have been five minutes in eternity; and yet you sit there with just a heart-beat between you and the judgment of God. I have been praying that God would enable me to pronounce those two words and put in them all they will mean to you, that I might startle you from your lethargy. I prayed God, too, that he might give me some new figure of speech tonight, that he might impress my mind, that I, in turn, might impress your mind in such a manner that I could startle you from your indifference and sin, until you would rush to Jesus.

The Judgment of God

What is your life? A hand's breadth—yes, a hair's breadth—yes, one single heart-beat, and you are gone, and yet you sit with the judgment of God hovering over you. "What shall the end be?"

I never met any man or woman in my life who disbelieved in Christianity but could not be classified under one of these two headings.

First—They who, because of an utter disregard of God's claims upon their lives, have, by and through that disregard, become poltroons, marplots or degenerate scoundrels, and have thrown themselves beyond the pale of God's mercy.