"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for ChristEllis, William T. (William Thomas)
Religion
"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for Christ
Ellis, William T. (William Thomas)
Baseball players -- United States -- Biography; Evangelists -- United States -- Biography; Sunday, Billy, 1862-1935
Many of the utterances of Billy Sunday are attuned to this note of
valiant witness-bearing for Christ.
"SPIRITUAL POWER"
Samson didn't realize that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from
him; he walked out and shook himself as aforetime; he weighed as much;
he was as strong physically; his mind was as active, but although he
possessed all that, there was one thing that was necessary to make him
as he had been: "He wist not that the Spirit of the Lord had left him."
A man may have a fine physique; he may have strength; he may have
greatness; he may have a beautiful home; and a church may be
magnificent and faultless in its equipment; the preacher may be able to
reason; the choir may rival the angels in music; but if you have not
the Spirit of the Lord you are, as Paul says, as sounding brass and
tinkling cymbals, and the church is merely four walls with a roof over
it.
Nothing in the world can be substituted for the Spirit of God; no
wealth, culture nor anything in the world. By power we do not mean
numbers; there never has been a time when there were more members in
the Church than today; yet we haven't kept progress in the number
of members in the Church with the increased number of people in the
nation. Our nation has grown to over 90,000,000 of people, but we are
not correspondingly keeping pace with the number of church members.
God's Church has not increased correspondingly in power as it has in
numbers; while increasing in numbers it has not increased in spiritual
power. I am giving you facts, not fancies. We are not dealing with
theories. I am not saying anything against the Church; you never had a
man come into this community who would fight harder for the Church of
God Almighty than I would. I am talking about her sins and the things
that sap her power--and by power I do not mean numbers. If you had an
army of 100,000 and increased it another 100,000 it ought to be doubled
in power.
Derelicts in the Church
In the Church of God today you know there are a lot of people who are
nothing but derelicts and nothing but driftwood.
By power I do not mean wealth. We are the richest people on the
earth; nineteen-twentieths of all the wealth or all the money in
the United States today is in the hands of professing Christians,
Catholic and Protestant. That ought to mean that it is in God's hands;
but it doesn't. They are robbing God. I was in a church in Iowa that
had three members who were worth $200,000 each and they paid their
preacher the measly salary of $600 a year, and I will be hornswaggled
if they did not owe him $400 then. If I ever skinned any old fellows
I did those old stingy coots. A man who doesn't pay to the church is
as big a swindler as a man who doesn't pay his grocery bill and he is
dead-beating his way to hell. You let somebody else pay your bills, you
old dead-beat. God hasn't any more use today for a dead-beat in the
church than he has for the man who doesn't pay his grocery bill--not a
bit!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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