George Whitefield ---- 1714 - 1770
William Carey ---- 1761 - 1834
Adoniram Judson ---- 1788 - 1850
Charles Finney ---- 1791 - 1875
D.L. Moody ---- 1837 - 1899
Hudson Taylor ---- 1832 - 1905
John Hyde ---- 1865 - 1911
C.T. Studd ---- 1860 - 1931
Billy Sunday ---- 1862 - 1935
J. Frank Norris ---- 1877 - 1952
Jack Hyles ---- 1926 - present
Billy Sunday was born on November 19, 1862. His father died as a soldier in the civil War. His mother, desolate, decided to send him to the Soldier's Orphanage at the age six.
He grew up with a love for the game of baseball and was a very fast runner. Cap Anson of the Chicago White Sox heard of him decided to give him a tryout. Anson asked Sunday to race Fred Pfetter, the fastest man in the National League. Barefooted, Sunday beat him by 15 feet in 100 yards. During his career, he stole 94 bases in 116 games and became the first player ever to be able to run the bases in 14 seconds. He was one of the most exciting players in the game.
One evening in 1887, after a few drinks at a saloon, Billy Sunday and five of his teammates sat on the curb of Van Buren Street in Chicago when a group of Christian workers appeared, they listened to their music and testimonies. The song reminded him of the Gospel songs his mother had sung. The workers invited him to the Pacific Garden Mission. As he listened to the preacher there the Lord convicted him of his lost condition and a lady named Mrs. Clark asked him to go forward and receive Christ as Saviour. He did and that night Billy Sunday was saved.
He told his teammates that night, "I'm going to Jesus Christ. We've come to a parting of the ways." That night he couldn't sleep as he believed his teammates would make fun of his decision but the next day, one by one, they came and congratulated him.
He began to help at the Pacific Garden Mission and then began travelling with Evangelist Wilbur Chapman. When Chapman left his evangelistic campaigns to become a pastor, Billy Sunday didn't know what to do. He enjoyed giving his testimony but he didn't know how to preach.
A telegram from Garner, Iowa, arrived asking him to come and hold an evangelistic meeting. He only had his testimony and eight sermons he borrowed from Dr. Chapman, so he wrote back and said he would come and hold an eight day meeting. No one was more surprised than he was when 268 people were saved. But he was already practicing something he would later challenge Christian workers to do: "It is not necessary to bi in a big place to do big things." He never intended on having large meetings in the biggest cities in the United States. He had not even planned to be an evangelist. He simply did his best when the opportunity came to preach.
Word spread that God was using him and before long he had so many invitations to hold meetings, he couldn't accept them all. As he prepared more sermons he increased the length of his meetings. Some meetings lasted nearly three months and he would preach as much as four times a day. The Lord used Billy Sunday to preach to over 100,000,000 people; a remarkable feat considering he did not use a microphone! He would personally shake the hand of nearly all the estimated 1,000,000 converts in his meetings.
He worked tirelessly. His meetings were organized and managed with the greatest of care and detail. One professor of economics ranked his organization among the top five most successful businesses in the USA along with Standard Oil, US Steel, National Cash Register, and one unnamed company. However, Billy Sunday knew that the real power came not from his hard work and organization, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. It did not matter what the title of his message was, he always began his preaching by opening his Bible to Isaiah 61:1
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound."
He preached with all his might. He walked an average of one and one half miles (over 2 kilometers) as he walked back and forth on a 30 foot platform during each sermon. It wasn't simply walking, it was running, sliding, jumping, falling, and throwing himself around the platform. He usually did not remain in one spot or one position for 30 seconds. When he was not pounding the pulpit, he would stand, one foot on the pulpit, and one foot on the top of the back of a chair. Then at the right moment he would leap down onto the platform. Frequently he would pick up the chair and bring the chair down, breaking it into many pieces in order to express his outrage at the liquor traffic. My mother remembers heating Billy Sunday preach as a young girl. She said it was so long ago and she was so young that she doesn't remember anything he said, but she does remember that he threw a chair!
During the course of his most exciting sermons, Sunday pealed off first his coat, then his tie and collar, and finally he rolled up his sleeves. In this matter he would double up his fist in a boxer's stance, challenging the devil to a fight.
Using only a sounding board, a crowd of 20,000 or more could hear him. Without whispering or talking, the crowd would keep their eyes fixed on Sunday.
Perhaps the outstanding quality of his preaching was its simplicity. Unlike the clergy of the day who tried to impress the people with their vocabulary, intellect, and educational attainments, Billy Sunday would say:
"I want to preach so plainly that men can come from the factory and not have to bring a dictionary."
"When the consensus of scholarship says one thing and the Bible says another, then the consensus of scholarship can go to hell."
"Thousands of college graduates are going as fast as they can to hell. If I had a million dollars, I'd give $999,999 to the church and $1 to education.
Preachers were not preaching with power because they were afraid of offending people with the truth. He declared:
"Some ministers say, 'If you don't repent, you'll die and go to a place, the name of which I can't pronounce.' I can. You'll go to hell!"
He preached hard against churches that were either filled with unsaved members, or who lost their compassion for the unsaved. Sunday cried:
"You Methodists can talk about infant baptism and the Presbyterians can how about perseverance and half of your members will persevere in hell, and Baptists can howl about water and half of your members are going where you can't get a drop."
No one in his day preached against sin like Billy Sunday did. He didn't preach against it only because the Bible commanded it. He had a deep hatred of sin and was passionate in his fight against it. He would say:
"I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, and I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist. I'll butt it as long as I've got a head. I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old and fist less and footless and toothless I'll gum it 'till I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition."
In 1916 he went to Baltimore and built a tabernacle called the Salvation Shed. It seated 15,000 people and 5,000 more would stand during the services. On the last day 24,000 people filled the building four times so billy Sunday preached to about 96,000 people during that one day. More than 23,000 people received Christ as Saviour. On the closing night baseball star "Home run" Baker, and four other New York Yankees were saved.
In Kansas City, 40,000 people came in the rain to the opening service. In Pittsburgh, over 26,000 conversions were recorded. In Columbus, Ohio, 18,337 were saved. In Sycaruse, New York, 22,299 received Christ. This was what happened nearly every place he went..
One of his most fruitful meetings was held in Philadelphia. For months preceding the meeting, Billy Sunday asked the Christians to hod prayer meetings, where they would confess their sins and pray for revival. Each night about 5,000 prayer meetings were held with about 100,000 Christians praying for revival. The record showed that 41,724 people were saved during the meeting. With so many praying for revival Sunday said, "Anyone could come to a city and preach and have good results." More than two million people attended the services at the tabernacle. Another one million people attended meetings conducted by other staff members. No baseball series or political campaign stirred the hearts of the people like his campaign.
To give you an idea of the size and organization of his meetings, in Boston he had the following groups of workers organized;
8,000 Choir members
200 door keepers
2,000 ushers
1,000 women to organize the city's businesswomen
7,000 prayer meeting leaders
700 secretaries
5,000 personal workers
1,000 women to help hold meetings in factories, hospitals and hotels
500 women to care for children under four as small children were not permitted in the tabernacle.
In the New York City Campaign it was estimated that over 50,000 workers were involved. He demanded that his staff work very hard. But, he got along with them and also the multitude of volunteer workers. He was friendly, easy going, generous, and had a boyish sense of humor. He loved to play practical jokes. About his only fault in dealing with people was the fact that he lost his temper easily, but his anger never lasted long.
Newspapers widely reported on his meetings. Some were very critical and others praised his effect on the community. Sunday was even thankful for the criticism as he believed it only added to the crowds that would come. Some newspapers would print his sermons in full each day. Other drew cartoons mocking his work.
Newspapers would have quotes each morning in columns they would call, "Sizzler's from Sunday's sermons" or "Hot Shots from Billy" or "Nuggets". Quotes includes one like these:
"Most of the forces of hell are led by names on the church register."
"I'm sick and tired of hearing Jesus pictured as a sort who allowed himself to be a cupidor or a doormat. Jesus Christ was the bravest man who walked on the face of the earth."
"I have more respect for the devil than some preachers I have met: the devil believes the Bible is the Word of God."
"Whiskey is all right in its place--but its place is in hell."
"I have no doubt that there are men looking into my face tonight that have '1914' carved in their tombstones."
"They take a woman and put her on the stage with clothes enough to make a pair of leggings for a hummingbird. If I wanted to put what I thought about such shows in the newspapers, I would have to print my thoughts on asbestos."
His New York City Campaign began on June 17,1917, and lasted for ten weeks. The first night the crowd was so great, Dale Carnegie himself could not get in the tabernacle he had helped to build. Sunday would always use sawdust to cover the floors and the New York Times declared that converts responded:
"...until the aisles were packed and the lights were dimmed by the sawdust cloud thrown up from the trail by thousands of feet directed toward salvation."
On one day alone, more than 40,000 people were turned away because of lack of space. He preached at the Plaza Hotel to 1,000 millionaires and 221 of them were saved.
Over 100,000 people were saved in the New York City Campaign, the most of any of his meetings. On the final night he closed his meeting with prayer and this farewell at the invitation:
"...I hope New Yorkers, that we'll all go tramping together up the hill toward Zion where Gabriel blows the trumpet. Goodbye newspaper boys and girls. You've been great. Goodbye preachers! If I've said anything that hurt your feelings,well, you probably deserved it. Goodbye choir. You've been wonderful. Goodbye everybody. And now come and give me your hand for the last time. Do it now. For there won't be any tomorrow."
There was a rush to the platform and 3,326 precious souls received Christ as Saviour that night. (7,238 were saved in the four services that day). With tears in his eyes he said: "I didn't want to go." God have moved the hearts of so many and New York had seen its greatest and perhaps last revival.
In the meetings he held, not only were souls saved, but homes were reunited. Thousands of these converts were young men whose mothers and fathers had prayed for them to be saved. Those who criticized Sunday's methods or messages would have a hard time convincing the parents of these young men who had become clean living Christians. Businessmen found out that a Billy Sunday revival meant their business would be run honestly. Bars were closed, and cities benefited by the drop in crime.
One source of criticism was the prayers which Sunday delivered at the conclusion of his sermons. Moody, when praying from the platform, always said, "Let us pray" and bowed his head. But Sunday scarcely changed his tone of voice, and when he began, "Now Jesus you know..." or "Well Jesus, isn't this a fine bunch here tonight?..." audiences did not even realize that he had began to pray.
Sunday's critics said that he was overly familiar with the Deity--a charge also leveled against Moody, Who answered it by saying that he was not one tenth as familiar with Him as he would like to be. Many clergymen not only disliked his tone of voice and his failure to use "thee" and "thou" but also objected to his interrupting the reverential attitude of prayer to call attention to his own activities: "We had a grand meeting last night. Lord when this crowd came down from Dickson ville, or what was the place, Rody? Dickson City? Dickson City, Lord, that's right. It was a great crowd."
"Oh say, Jesus, save that man down at Heron Lake that wrote that dirty black lie about me! You'll have a big job on your hands to do it Lord, I'll tell you that before you begin--but go ahead. Better take along a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant, but if you can save him, Lord, I'd like to have you do it."
In the winter of 1918, he was in Washington DC and was ask to pray at the opening session of Congress. World War I had started and the US was a part of the war. The prayer made history, not only because it was unorthodox prayer ever preached in the House of Representatives, but because it was interrupted by applause three times!
Billy Sunday had much opposition, especially from the liquor business, which spared no expense to destroy him. The brewers even enlisted preachers to fight him. One opponent said, "It would be worth $1,000,000 a day to put Billy Sunday out of business."
He hated the liquor business. America passed a law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drink due primarily to the preaching of Billy Sunday. The vice president of an iron company said that he could pay $250,000 more in wages because Sunday's campaign had sobered up his employees and they had become so much more productive. In West Virginia, he preached from town to town and he was credited with the 90,000 vote margin of victory in voting the state dry. He would say:
"I'm going to fight the liquor business till hell freezes over, and then I'll put on ice skates and fight it some more."
One amazing fact was that many of those who fought him ended up coming over to the side Billy Sunday was on; the Lord's side. One such opponent was Al Saunders. He said, "I was tied up with the liquor business in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I said if Sunday came there I'd run out of town."
He came to Sunday's meeting to cause trouble but was surprised when Sunday (evidently knowing his plans) called out "Hey there! Old Scruff! You're going to hell so fast they can't see you for the dust."
The next night he came back with some of his friend, most with bloated beer bellies. As Sunday entered from the side door he had to pass them on the way to the platform. Seeing Saunders and his friends, he pointed to one beer-inflated belly: "It cost a lot to build." he remarked, "What do you have to show for it?"
Al Saunders said, "Nobody else heard him. That was just for us a sermon in one sentence. It make me think."
That night Al Saunders hit the "sawdust trail" to the front and received Christ as Saviour. He left his old friend and word began to spread. Al Saunders began to give testimony. He felt guilty because up until his conversions he had done all he could to hurt Billy Sunday's campaign. He went all the way to Trenton, New Jersey to apologize and found a way to sneak into Billy Sunday's house. Sunday was upset to see someone got by his security. He had to be carefully protected. Al Saunders tells the rest of the story:
"He stormed out; 'Who are you and how did you get here?'
"I said, 'I've come to apologise to you for the hard things I've said about you,' and I told him what I said.
"He said, 'Let's tell it to the Lord. Kneel with me.'
"We knelt and he placed his arm around me. Mind you, there was no audience, and no reason to be dramatic with me. I was nobody.
"He began to pray: 'Lord Jesus, this is Billy. You know why Al Saunders is here...' just like that!
"When he was through he asked what he could give me for a remembrance. We thought of a photograph. So he got out his pen to autograph his picture. His tears fell down into the ink.
"'Oh come!'he said, 'You don't want that!' and threw the smeared picture away. 'Rody' he called, 'Let me have your pen. I've spoiled the picture.'"
Billy Sunday was controversial, sensational and dramatic. But, he was something else: he was real. He truly loved people and walked with God. We might not all be able to be as sensational and dramatic as Billy Sunday, but we all can love people and God like Billy Sunday did.
Home
George Whitefield ---- 1714 - 1770
William Carey ---- 1761 - 1834
Adoniram Judson ---- 1788 - 1850
Charles Finney ---- 1791 - 1875
D.L. Moody ---- 1837 - 1899
Hudson Taylor ---- 1832 - 1905
John Hyde ---- 1865 - 1911
C.T. Studd ---- 1860 - 1931
Billy Sunday ---- 1862 - 1935
J. Frank Norris ---- 1877 - 1952
Jack Hyles ---- 1926 - present
