Billy Sunday

And he wants you to be faithful to those one or two people because one of them may be Billy Graham.

One of them may be a Billy Sunday.

One of them may be the next great theologian that this world has to have.

And you're one of those zeros that has to sit there and hold its place and do its job and make what comes after you much bigger than it would have been if you weren't there.

October 27th, Billy Sunday.

Welcome to 365 Christian Men, where every day we aim to inspire and encourage with real life stories about men.

Billy grew up in a log cabin in Iowa, and 10 members of his family, including his father, died before he turned 10.

By this time, he had already been a Christian for four years.

When he left baseball, he took a two-thirds cut in pay and became a preacher.

Until Billy Graham came along, Billy Sunday preached to more people than any other preacher in history.

He had preached the gospel to millions, leading about 300,000 of them to the Lord.

Not everyone liked him, but he wasn't out to please people.

It's only what Dr. Torrey believed.

It's what Billy Sunday believed and Billy Graham believed.

So Billy was gifted of God to preach to sinners and he doesn't enter this too much because his gift is a bit different and he preaches straight to sinners and wins them.

But it's what Torrey, I insist, believed.

And we do this over and over again as a church, and I'm begging the church, and I'm telling all of you.

Just because some celebrity has declared that they're a person of faith, you know what you should say? Kind of like Billy Sunday said about everybody who claimed that they had a big moment where they were redeemed by Jesus, Billy Sunday would say, well, we will see.

It's okay to stand back and say, boy, they could bring a lot of people to this event, or I can't wait to go hear them speak, and just sit back and take a breath and say, let's see.

Let's watch them grow.

The trial became a media frenzy.

Celebrities attended in droves, including mystery writer Mary Roberts Reinhart, director D.W. Griffith, author Will Durant, evangelists Billy Sunday and Amy Semple McPherson, and many others.

Both defendants had separate attorneys arguing for their innocence.

Ruth's lawyer stated that her husband drove Love out from the house by longing after a departed sweetheart, leaving her no choice but to have an affair.

Every man of God, regardless of how long he has stood in a pulpit, has had a small handful of other preachers that have made a lasting impression upon him, which I like to paint as a preaching Mount Rushmore.

Now, on my preaching Mount Rushmore is Dr. Tom Malone, Billy Sunday, B.R. Lakin, Dr. Shelton Smith.

On October 31st, 1941, Mount Rushmore was completed in Keystone, South Dakota.

It was sculptured by Gutzon Burgum alongside his son, Lincoln Burgum.

Abraham Lincoln represents preservation.

Friend, you and I, those of us that are preachers, need to remember and, yes, regard our preaching Mount Rushmore.

Now, on the broadcast and podcast today, I'm going to deal with the second preacher that's on my preaching Mount Rushmore, and that's Evangelist Billy Sunday.

The three facts about my preaching Mount Rushmore in regards to Billy Sunday that I want to give you.

Then we went through town.

He showed me where a black man was hung from a fire escape, where Billy Sunday hung, beat up a guy when he was here in 1906 in a revival.

where Al Capone used to be, where the KKK used to march, where there was a murder, where the high school was built on an Indian campground, where curses were buried.

And my wife goes, what does that mean? I go, God doesn't show you the spiritual condition of a city unless he's sending you there.

Make sure you're right with God tonight.

And so not just Moody, but people like Ruben Torrey, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham early on were all dispensationalists and really fronted that often in how they preached about the Bible.

So it's one of these things, a lot of my questions when I was coming to the history was, We've talked about it.

This is a pretty fringe idea.