"The Old-Time Religion"
I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time
religion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for
two thousand years.--Billy SUNDAY.
INTRODUCTION
Modern to the last minute Sunday's methods may
be, but his message is unmistakably the "Old-time
religion." He believes his beliefs without a ques tion.
There is no twilight zone in his intellectual
processes; no mental reservation in his preaching. He
is sure that man is lost without Christ, and that only
by the acceptance of the Saviour can fallen hunanity
find salvation. He is as sure of hell as of heaven, and
for all modernized varieties of religion he has only
vials of scorn.
In no single particular is Sunday's work more
valuable than in its revelation of the power of
positive conviction to attract and convert multitudes.
The world wants faith. "Intolerant," cry the scholars
of Sunday; but the hungry myriads accept him as their
spiritual guide to peace, and joy, and righteousness.
The world wants a religion with salvation in it;
speculation does not interest the average man who
seeks deliversnce from sin in himself and in the world.
He does not hope to be evoluted into holiness; he
wants to be redeemed.
"Modernists" sputter and fume and rail at Sunday
and his work: but they cannot deny that he leads men
and women into new lives of holiness, happiness and
helpfulness. Churches are enlarged and righteousness
is promoted, all by the old, blood-stained way of the
Cross. The revivals which have followed the preaching
of Evangelist Sunday are supplemental to the Book of
the Acts. His theology is summed up in the words Peter
used in referring to Jesus: "There is none other Name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved."
One of Sunday's favorite sayings is: "I don't know
any more about theology than a jack-rabbit does about
ping-pong, but I'm on the way to glory. That really
does not fully express the evangelist's point. He was
arguing that "theology bears the same relation to
Christianity that botany does to flowers, or astronomy
to the stars. Botany is rewritten, but the flowers
remain the same. Theology changes (I have no objection
to your new theology when it tries to make the truths
of Christianity clearer), but Christianity abides.
Nobody is kept out of heaven because he does not
understand theology. It isn't theology that saves, but
Christ; it is not the sawdust trail that saves, but
Christ in the motive that makes you hit the trail.
The Sermon
"I believe the Bible is the word of God from cover
to cover. I believe that the man who magnifies the word
of God in his preaching is the man whom God will honor.
Why do such names stand out on the pages of history as
Wesley, Whitefield, Finney and Martin Luther? Because
of their fearless denunciation of all sin, and because
they preach Jesus Christ without fear or favor.
"But somebody says a revival is abnormal. You lie!
Do you mean to tell me that the godless, card-playing
conditions of the Church are normal? I say they are
not, but it is the abnormal state. It is the sin-eaten,
apathetic condition of the Church that is abnormal. It
is the 'Dutch lunch' and beer party, card parties and
the like, that are abnormal. I say that they lie when
they say that a revival is an abnormal condition in the
Church.
"What we need is the good old-time kind of revival
that will cause you to love your neighbors, and quit
talking about them. A revival that will make you pay
your debts, and have family prayers. Get that kind and
then you will see that a revival means a very different
condition from what people believe it does.
"Christianity means a lot more than church
membership. Many an old skin-flint is not fit for the
balm of Gilead until you give him a fly blister and get
after him with a currycomb. There are too many
Sunday-school teachers who are godless card-players,
beer, wine and champagne drinkers. No wonder the kids
are going to the devil. No wonder your children grow up
like cattle when you have no form of prayer in the
home.",,
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SUNDAY
What does converted mean? It means completely
changed. Converted is not synonymous with reformed.
Reforms are from without-conversion from within.
Conversion is a complete surrender to Jesus. It's a
willingness to do what he wants you to do. Unless you
have made a complete surrender and are doing his will
it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand
times and have your name on fifty church records.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, in your heart and
confess him with your mouth and you will be saved. God
is good. The plan of salvation is presented to you in
two parts. Believe in your heart and confess with your
mouth. Many of you here probably do Believe. Why don't
you confess? Now own up. The truth is that you have a
yellow streak. Own up, business men, and business
women, and all of you others. Isn't it so? Haven't you
got a little saffron? Brave old Elijah ran like a
scared deer when he heard old Jezebel had said she
would have his head, and he beat it. And he ran to
Beersheba and lay down under a juniper tree and cried
to the Lord to let him die. The Lord answered his
prayer, but not in the way he expected. If he had let
him die he would have died with nothing but the wind
moaning through the trees as his funeral dirge. But the
Lord had something better for Elijah. He had a chariot
of fire and it swooped down and carried him into glory
without his ever seeing death.
So he says he has something better for
you--salvation if he can get you to see it. You've kept
your church membership locked up. You've smiled at a
smutty story. When God and the Church were scoffed at
you never peeped,and when asked to stand up here you've
sneaked out the back way and beat it. You're afraid and
God despises a coward--a mutt. You cannot be converted
by thinking so and sitting still.
Maybe you're a drunkard, an adulterer, a prostitute,
a liar; won't admit you are lost; are proud. Maybe
you're even proud you're not proud, and Jesus has a
time of it.
Jesus said: "Come to me," not to the Church; to me,
not to a creed; to me, not to a preacher; to me, not to
an evangelist; to me, not to a priest; to me, not to a
pope; "Come to me and I will give you rest." Faith in
Jesus Christ saves you, not faith in the Church.
You can join church, pay your share of the
preacher's salary, attend the services, teach Sunday
school, return thanks and do everything that would
apparently stamp you as a Christian--even pray--but you
won't ever be a Christian until you do what God tells
you to do.
That's the road, and that's the only one mapped out
for you and for me. God treats all alike. He doesn't
furnish one plan for the banker and another for the
janitor who sweeps out the bank. He has the same plan
for one that he has for another. It's the law--you may
not approve of it, but that doesn't make any
difference.
Salvation a Personal Matter
The first thing to remember about being saved is
that salvation is a personal matter. "Seek ye the
Lord"--that means every one must seek for himself. It
won't do for the parent to seek for the children; it
won't do for the children to seek for the parent. If
you were sick all the medicine I might take wouldn't do
you any good. Salvation is a personal matter that no
one else can do for you; you must attend to it
yourself.
Some persons have lived manly or womanly lives, and
they lack but one thing--open confession of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Some men think that they must come to him
in a certain way--that they must be stirred by emotion
or something like that.
Some people have a deeper conviction of sin before
they are converted than after they are converted. With
some it is the other way. Some know when they are
converted and others don't.
Some people are emotional. Some are demonstrative.
Some will cry easily. Some are cold and can't be moved
to emotion. A man jumped up in a meeting and asked
whether he could be saved when he hadn't shed a tear in
forty years. Even as he spoke he began to shed tears.
It's all a matter of how you're constituted. I am
vehement, and I serve God with the same vehemence that
I served the devil when I went down the line.
Some of you say that in order to accept Jesus you
must have different surroundings. You think you could
do it better in some other place. You can be saved
where you are as well as any place on earth. I say, "My
watch doesn't run. It needs new surroundings. I'Il put
it in this other pocket, or I'Il put it here, or here
on these flowers." It doesn't need new surroundings. It
needs a new mainspring; and that's what the sinner
needs. You need a new heart, not a new suit.
What can I do to keep out of hell? "Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
The Philippian jailer was converted. He had put the
disciples into the stocks when they came to the prison,
but after his conversion he stooped down and washed the
blood from their stripes.
Now, leave God out of the proposition for a minute.
Never mind about the new birth--that's his business.
Jesus Christ became a man, bone of our bone, flesh of
our flesh. He died on the cross for us, so that we
might escape the penalty pronounced on us. Now, never
mind about anything but our part in salvation. Here it
is: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt
be saved."
You say, "Mr. Sunday, the Church is full of
hypocrites." So's hell. I say to you if you don't want
to go to hell and live with that whole bunch forever,
come into the Church, where you won't have to a&sociafe
with them very long. There are no hypocrites in heaven.
You say, "Mr. Sunday, I can be a Christian and go to
heaven without joining a church." Yes, and you can go
to Europe without getting on board a steamer. The
swimming's good--but the sharks are laying for fellows
who take that route. I don't believe you. If a man is
truly saved he will hunt for a church right away.
You say, "It's so mysterious. I don't understand."
You'll be surprised to find out how little you know.
You plant a seed in the ground--that's your part. You
don't understand how it grows. How God makes that seed
grow is mysterious to you.
Some people think that they can't be converted
unless they go down on their knees in the straw at a
camp-meeting, unless they pray all hours of the night,
and all nights of the week, while some old brother
storms heaven in prayer. Some think a man must lose
sleep, must come down the aisle with a haggard look,
and he must froth at the mouth and dance and shout.
Some get it that way, and they don't think that the
work I do is genuine unless conversions are made in the
same way that they have got religion.
I want you to see what God put in black and white;
that there can be a sound, thorough conversion in an
instant; that man can be converted as quietly as the
coming of day and never backslide. I do not find fault
with the way other people get religion. What I want and
preach is the fact that a man can be converted without
any fuss.
If a man wants to shout and clap his hands in joy
over his wife's conversion, or if a wife wants to cry
when her husband is converted, I am not going to turn
the hose on them, or put them in a strait-jacket. When
a man turns to God truly in conversion, I don't care
what form his conversion takes. I wasn't converted
that way, but I do not rush around and say, with gall
and bitterness, that you are not saved because you did
not get religion the way I did. If we all got religion
in the same way, the devil might go to sleep with a
regular Rip Van Winkle snooze and still be on the job.
Look at Nicodemus. You could never get a man with
the temperament of Nicodemus near a camp meeting, to
kneel down in the straw, or to shout and sing. He was a
quiet, thoughtful, honest, sincere and cautious man. He
wanted to know the truth and he was willing to walk in
the light when he found it.
Look at the man at the pool of Bethesda. He was a
big sinner and was in a lot of trouble which his sins
had made for him. He had been in that condition for a
long time. It didn't take him three minutes to say
"Yes," when the Lord spoke to him. See how quietly he
was converted.
"And He Arose and Followed Him"!
Matthew stood in the presence of Christ and he
realized what it would be to be without Christ, to be
without hope, and it brought him to a quick decision.
"And he arose and followed him."
How long did that conversion take? How long did it
take him to accept Christ after he had made up his
mind? And you tell me you can't make an instant
decision to please God? The decision of Matthew proves
that you can. While he was sitting at his desk he was
not a disciple. The instant he arose he was. That move
changed his attitude toward God. Then he ceased to do
evil and commenced to do good. You can be converted
just as quickly as Matthew was.
God says: "Let the wicked man forsake his way." The
instant that is done, no matter if the man has been a
life-long sinner, he is safe. There is no need of
struggling for hours--or for days-do it now. Who are
you struggling with? Not God. God's mind was made up
long before the foundations of the earth were laid. The
plan of salvation was made long before there was any
sin in the world. Electricity existed long before there
was any car wheel for it to drive. "Let the wicked man
forsake his way." When? Within a month, within a week,
within a day, within an hour? No! Now! The instant you
yield, God's plan of salvation is thrown into gear. You
will be saved before you know it, like a child being
born.
Rising and following Christ switched Matthew from
the broad to the narrow way. He must have counted the
cost as he would have balanced his cash book. He put
one side against the other. The life he was living led
to all chance of gain. On the other side there was
Jesus, and Jesus outweighs all else. He saw the balance
turn as the tide of a battle turns and then it ended
with his decision. The sinner died and the disciple was
born.
I believe that the reason the story of Matthew was
written was to show how a man could be converted
quickly and quietly. It didn't take him five or ten
years to begin to do something--he got busy right away.
You don't believe in quick conversions? There have
been a dozen men of modern times who have been powers
for God whose conversion was as quiet as Matthew's.
Charles G. Finney never went to a camp meeting. He was
out in the woods alone, praying, when he was converted.
Sam Jones, a mighty man of God, was converted at the
bedside of his dying father. Moody accepted Christ
while waiting on a customer in a boot and shoe store.
Dr. Chapman was converted as a boy in a Sunday school.
All the other boys in the class had accepted Christ,
and only Wilbur remained. The teacher turned to him and
said, "And how about you, Wilbur?" He said, "I will,"
and he turned to Christ and has been one of his most
powerful evangelists for many years. Gipsy Smith was
converted in his father's tent. Torrey was an agnostic,
and in comparing agnosticism, infidelity and
Christianity, he found the scale tipped toward Christ.
Luther was converted as he crawled up a flight of
stairs in Rome.
Seemingly the men who have moved the world for
Christ have been converted in a quiet manner. The way
to judge a tree is by its fruit. Judge a tree of quiet
conversion in this way.
Another lesson. When conversion compels people to
forsake their previous calling, God gives them a better
job. Luke said, "He left all." Little did he dream that
his influence would be world-reaching and
eternity-covering. His position as tax-collector seemed
like a big job, but if was picking up pins compared to
the job God gave him. Some of you may be holding back
for fear of being put out of your job. If you do right
God will see that you do not suffer. He has given
plenty of promises, and if you plant your feet on them
you can defy the poor-house. Trust in the Lord means
that God will feed you. Following Christ you may
discover a gold mine of ability that you never dreamed
of possessing. There was a saloon-keeper, converted in
a meeting at New Castle, who won hundreds of people to
Christ by his testimony and his preaching.
You do not need to be in the church before the voice
comes to you; you don't need to be reading the Bible;
you don't need to be rich or poor or learned. Wherever
Christ comes follow. You may be converted while engaged
in your daily business. Men cannot put up a wall and
keep Jesus away. The still small voice will find you.
At the Cross-roads
Right where the two roads through life diverge God
has put Calvary. There he put up a cross, the stumbling
block over which the love of God said, "I'll touch the
heart of man with the thought of father and son." He
thought that would win the world to him, but for
nineteen hundred years men have climbed the Mount of
Calvary and trampled into the earth the tenderest
teachings of God.
You are on the devil's side. How are you going to
cross over?
So you cross the line and God won't issue any
extradition papers. Some of you want to cross. If you
believe, then say so, and step across. I'Il bet there
are hundreds that are on the edge of the line and many
are standing straddling it. But that won't save you.
You believe in your heart--confess him with your mouth.
With his heart man believes and with his mouth he
confesses. Then confess and receive salvation full,
free, perfect and external. God will not grant any
extradition papers. Get over the old line. A man isn't
a soldier because he wears a uniform, or carries a gun,
or carries a canteen. He is a soldier when he makes a
definite enlistment. All of the others can be bought
without enlisting. When a man becomes a soldier he goes
out on muster day and takes an oath to defend his
country. It's the oath that makes him a soldier. Going
to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than
going to a garage makes you an automobile, but public
definite enlistment for Christ makes you a Christian.
"Oh," a woman said to me out in Iowa, "Mr. Sunday, I
don't think I have to confess with my mouth." I said:
"You're putting up your thought against God's."
M-o-u-t-h doesn't spell intellect. It spells mouth
and you must confess with your mouth. The mouth is the
biggest part about most people, anyhow.
What must I do?
Philosophy doesn't answer it. Infidelity doesn't
answer it. First, "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
thou shalt be saved." Believe on the, Lord.
Lord--that's his kingly name. That's the name he reigns
under. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus." It takes that
kind of a confession. Give me a Saviour with a
sympathetic eye to watch me so I shall not slander.
Give me a Saviour with a strong arm to catch me if I
stumble. Give me a Saviour that will hear my slightest
moan.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Christ is his resurrection name. He is sitting at the
right hand of the Father interceding for us.
Because of his divinity he understands God's side of
it and because of his humanity he understands our side
of if. Who is better qualified to be the mediator? He's
a mediator. What is that? A lawyer is a mediator
between the jury and the defendant. A retail merchant
is a mediatdr between the wholesale dealer and the
consumer. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the Mediator
between God and man. Believe on the Lord. He's ruling
today. Believe on the Lord Jesus. He died to save us.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Mediator.
Her majesty, Queen Victoria, was traveling in
Scotland when a storm came up and she took refuge in a
little hut of a Highlander. She stayed there for an
hour and when she went the good wife said to her
husband, "We'll tie a ribbon on that chair because her
majesty has sat on it and no one else will ever sit on
it." A friend of mine was there later and was going to
sit in the chair when the man cried: "Nae, nae, mon.
Dinna sit there. Her majesty spent an hour with us once
and she sat on that chair and we tied a ribbon on it
and no one else will ever sit on it." They were honored
that her majesty had spent the hour with them. It
brought unspeakable joy to them.
It's great that Jesus Christ will sit on the throne
of my heart, not for an hour, but here to sway his
power forever and ever.
"He Died for Me"
In the war there was a band of
guerillas--Quantrell's band--that had been ordered to
be shot on sight. They had burned a town in Iowa and
they had been caught. One long ditch was dug and they
were lined up in front of it and blindfolded and tied,
and just as the firing squad was ready to present arms
a young man dashed through the bushes and cried,
"Stop!" He told the commander of the firing squad that
he was as guilty as any of the others, but he had
escaped and had come of his own free will, and pointed
to one man in the line and asked to take his place.
"I'm single," he said, "while he has a wife and
babies." The commander of that firing squad was an
usher in one of the cities in which I held meetings,
and he told me how the young fellow was blindfolded and
bound and the guns rang out and he fell dead.
Time went on and one day a man came upon another in
a graveyard in Missouri weeping and shaping the grave
into form. The first man asked who was buried there and
the other said, "The best friend I ever had." Then he
told how he had not gone far away but had come back and
got the body of his friend after he had been shot and
buried it; so he knew he had the right body. And he had
brought a withered bouquet all the way from his home to
put on the grave. He was poor then and could not afford
anything costly, but he had placed a slab of wood on
the pliable earth with these words on it: "He died for
me."
Major Whittle stood by the grave some time later and
saw the same monument. If you go there now you will see
something different. The man became rich and today
there is a marble monument fifteen feet high and on it
this inscription :
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF WILLE LEE
HE TOOK MY PLACE IN THE LINE
HE DIED FOR ME
Sacred to the memory of Jesus Christ. He took our
place on the cross and gave his life that we might
live, and go to heaven and reign with him.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, confess him with
thy mouth, and thou shalt be saved and thy house."
It is a great salvation that can reach down into the
quagmire of filth, pull a young man out and send him
out to hunt his mother and fill her days with sunshine.
It is a great salvation, for it saves from great sin.
The way to salvation is not Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, Vassar or Wellesley. Environment and culture
can't put you into heaven without you accept Jesus
Christ.
It's great. I want to tell you that the way to
heaven is a blood-stained way. No man has ever reached
it without Jesus Christ and he never will.