Kitabı oku: «Billy Sunday», sayfa 19

When may a revival be expected? A revival may be expected when Christian people confess and ask forgiveness for their sins. When you are willing that God shall promote and use whatever means or instruments or individuals or methods he is pleased to use to promote them. Yes. The trouble is he cannot promote a revival if you are sitting on the judgment of the methods and means that God is employing to promote a revival. The God Almighty may use any method or means or individual that he pleases in order to promote a revival. You are not running it. Let God have his way. You can tell whether you need a revival. You can tell if you will have one and why you have got one. If God should ask you sisters and preachers in an audible voice, "Are you willing that I should promote a revival by using any methods or means or individual language that I choose to use to promote it?" what would be your answer? Yes. Then don't growl if I use some things that you don't like. You have no business to. How can you promote a revival? Break up your fallow ground, the ground that produces nothing but weeds, briars, tin cans and brick-bats. Fallow ground is ground that never had a glow in it. Detroit had a mayor, Pingree, when Detroit had thousands and thousands of acres of fallow ground. This was taken over by the municipal government and planted with potatoes with which they fed the poor of the city.

There are individuals who have never done anything for Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt there are preachers as well, who have never done anything for the God Almighty. There are acres and acres of fallow ground lying right here that have never been touched. Look over your past life, look over your present life and future and take up the individual sins and with pencil and paper write them down. A general confession will never do. You have committed your sins, one by one, and you will have to confess them one by one. This thing of saying, "God, I am a sinner," won't do.

"God, I am a gossiper in my neighborhood. God, I have been in my ice-box while I am here listening to Mr. Sunday." Confess your sins.

How can you promote a revival? You women, if you found that your husband was giving his love and attention to some other woman and if you saw that some other woman was encroaching on his mind and heart, and was usurping your place and was pushing you out of the place, wouldn't you grieve? Don't you think that God grieves when you push him out of your life? You don't treat God square. You business men don't treat God fair. You let a thousand things come in and take the place that God Almighty had. No wonder you are careless. You blame God for things you have no right to blame him for. He is not to blame for anything. You judge God. The spirit loves the Bible; the devil loves the flesh.

If you don't do your part, don't blame God. How many times have you blamed God when you are the liar yourself. You are wont to blame him for the instances of unbelief that have come into your life. When should we promote a revival? When there is a neglect of prayer? When your prayers affect God? You never think of going out on the street without dressing. You would be pinched before you went a block. You never think of going without breakfast, do you? I bet there are multitudes that have come here without reading the Bible or praying for this meeting.

You can measure your desire for salvation by means of the amount of self-denial you are willing to practice for Jesus Christ. You have sinned before the Church, before the world, before God.

Don't the Lord have a hard time? Own up, now.

Persecution a Godsend

There are a lot of people in church, doubtless, who have denied themselves – self-denial for comfort and convenience. There are a lot of people here who never make any sacrifices for Jesus Christ. They will not suffer any reproaches for Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I love to suffer reproaches for Christ." The Bible says, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." "Blessed are you when your enemies persecute you." That is one trouble in the churches of God today. They are not willing to suffer reproach for God's sake. It would be a godsend if the Church would suffer persecution today; she hasn't suffered it for hundreds of years. She is growing rich and lagging behind. Going back.

Pride! How many times have you found yourself exercising pride? How many times have you attempted pride of wealth? Proud because you were related to some of the old families that settled in the Colonies in 1776. That don't get you anything; not at all. I have got as much to be proud of as to lineage as anyone; my great-grandfather was in the Revolutionary War, lost a leg at Brandywine; and my father was a soldier in the Civil War.

Envy! Envy of those that have more talent than you. Envious because someone can own a limousine Packard and you have to ride a Brush runabout; envious because some women can wear a sealskin coat and you a nearseal.

Then there is your grumbling and fault-finding. When speaking of people behind their backs, telling their faults, whether real or imaginary, and that is slander. When you sit around and rip people up behind their backs at your old sewing societies, when you rip and tear and discuss your neighbors and turn the affair into a sort of a great big gossiping society, with your fault-finding, grumbling and growling. There is a big difference between levity and happiness, and pleasure, and all that sort of thing.

Make up your mind that God has given himself up for you. I would like to see something come thundering along that I would have more interest in than I have in the cause of God Almighty! God has a right to the first place. God is first, remember that.

Multitudes of people are willing to do anything that doesn't require any self-denial on their part.

I am not a member of any lodge, and never expect to be, but if I were a member of a lodge and there were a prayer-meeting and a lodge-meeting coming on Wednesday night, I would be at the prayer-meeting instead of at the lodge-meeting. I am not against the lodges; they do some good work in the world, but that doesn't save anyone for God. God is first and the lodge-meeting is second. God is first and society second. God is first and business is second. "In the beginning, God!" That is the way the Bible starts out and it ought to be the way with every living being. "In the beginning, God." Seek you first God and everything else shall be added unto you. Christianity is addition; sin is subtraction. Christianity is peace, joy, salvation, heaven. Sin takes away peace, happiness, sobriety, and it takes away health. You are robbing God of the time that you misspend. You are robbing God when you spend time doing something that don't amount to anything, when you might do something for Christ. You are robbing God when you go to foolish amusements, when you sit around reading trashy novels instead of the Word of God.

"Oh, Lord, revive thy work!"

I have only two minutes more and then I am through. Bad temper. Abuse your wife and abuse your children; abuse your husband; turn your old gatling-gun tongue loose. A lady came to me and said, "Mr. Sunday, I know I have a bad temper, but I am over with it in a minute." So is the shotgun, but it blows everything to pieces.

And, finally, you abuse the telephone girl because she doesn't connect you in a minute. Bad temper. I say you abuse your wife, you go cussing around if supper isn't ready on time; cussing because the coffee isn't hot; you dig your fork into a hunk of beefsteak and put it on your plate and then you say: "Where did you get this, in the harness shop? Take it out and make a hinge for the door." Then you go to your store, or office, and smile and everybody thinks you are an angel about to sprout wings and fly to the imperial realm above. Bad temper! You growl at your children; you snap and snarl around the house until they have to go to the neighbors to see a smile. They never get a kind word – no wonder so many of them go to the devil quick.

CHAPTER XXIV
An Army with Banners

The man who is right with God will not be wrong with anything that is good. – Billy Sunday.

The oldest problem of the Christian Church, and the latest problem of democracy, is how to reach the great mass of the people. Frequently the charge is made that the Church merely skims the surface of society, and that the great uncaring masses of the people lie untouched beneath it. Commonly, a revival reaches only a short distance outside the circumference of church circles. The wonder and greatness of the Billy Sunday campaigns consist in the fact that they reach to the uttermost rim of a community, to its greatest height and its lowest depth. There can be no question that he stirs a city as not even the fiercest political campaign stirs it. Sunday touches life on all levels, bringing his message to bear upon the society woman in her parlor and the humblest day laborer in the trench.

This does not come to pass by any mere chance. Organized activity achieves it. The method which produces the greatest results is what is called the Delegation Idea, whereby detachments of persons from various trades, callings and organizations and communities attend in a body upon the services of the Sunday Tabernacle.

By pre-arrangement, seats are reserved every night for these visiting delegations. Sometimes there will be as many as a dozen delegations present in one evening. As the campaign progresses towards its conclusion real difficulty is experienced in finding open dates for all the delegations that apply. At the outset, Mr. Sunday's assistants have to "work up" these delegations. Later, the delegations themselves besiege the workers.

In variety the delegations range from a regiment of Boy Scouts to a post of old soldiers; from the miners of a specified colliery to the bankers of the city; from the telephone girls to the members of a woman's club; from an athletic club to a Bible class.

Not only the community in which the meetings are being held furnish these delegations, but the surrounding territory is drawn upon. It is by no means an unknown thing for a single delegation, numbering a thousand or fifteen hundred men, to come a distance of fifteen or twenty-five miles to attend a Sunday Tabernacle service. Almost every evening there are lines of special cars waiting for these deputations who have come from afar, with their banners and their badges and their bands, all bent upon hearing and being heard at the Tabernacle.

The crowd spirit is appealed to by this method. The every-day instinct of loyalty to one's craft or crowd is aroused. Each delegation feels its own identity and solidarity, and wants to make as good a showing as possible. There is considerable wholesome emulation among the delegations representing the same craft or community. Of course, the work of making ready the delegation furnishes a topic for what is literally "shop talk" among working men; and naturally each group zealously watches the effect of its appearance upon the great congregation. Delegations get a very good idea of what their neighbors think of them by the amount of applause with which they are greeted. Thus when the whole force of a daily newspaper appears in the Tabernacle its readers cheer vociferously. Every delegation goes equipped with its own battle cry, and prepared to make as favorable a showing as possible.

All this is wholesome for the community life. It fosters loyalty in the varied groups that go to make up our society. Any shop is the better for its workers, led by their heads of departments and by their employers, having gone in a solid phalanx to a Tabernacle meeting. Every incident of that experience becomes an unfailing source of conversation for long days and weeks to follow.

Naturally, too, each delegation, delighted with the showing it has made at the Tabernacle, and with the part it has borne in the meeting, becomes one more group of partisans for the Billy Sunday campaign. Men who would not go alone to the Tabernacle, cannot in loyalty well refuse to stand by their own crowd. So it comes to pass that the delegation idea penetrates every level and every section of the community. A shrewder scheme for reaching the last man could scarcely be devised. Thousands who are impervious to religious appeals quickly respond to the request that they stand by their shop-mates and associates.

Participation in the meetings makes the people themselves feel the importance of their own part. They are not merely a crowd coming to be talked at; they share in the meetings. The newspapers comment upon them even as upon the sermon. All are uplifted by the glow of geniality and camaraderie which pervades the Tabernacle. For the songs and slogans and banners of the delegations greatly help to swell the interest of the meetings.

All this is wholesome, democratic and typically American. This good-natured crowd does not become unreal or artificial simply because it is facing the fundamental verities of the human soul.

Outspokenness in loyalty, a characteristic of Sunday converts, expresses itself through many channels. Taught by the delegation idea, as well as by the sermon, the importance of standing up to be counted, the friends and converts of the evangelist are always ready for the great parade which usually is held toward the close of the campaign. The simple basis for this street demonstration is found in the old Scripture, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." The idea of the Roman imperial triumph survives in the Billy Sunday parade. It is a testimony to the multitudes of the loyalty of Christians to the Gospel.

Beyond all question, a tremendous impression is made upon a city by the thousands of marching men whom the evangelist first leads and then reviews. A street parade is a visualization of the forces of the Church in a community. Many a man of the street, who might be unmoved by many arguments, however powerful, cannot escape the impression of the might of the massed multitudes of men who march through the streets, thousands strong. Some twenty thousand men were in the Sunday parade at Scranton. Nobody who witnessed them, be he never so heedless a scoffer, could again speak slightingly of the Church. Religion loses whatever traits of femininity it may have possessed, before the Sunday campaign is over.

Those most practical of men, the politicians, are quick to take cognizance of this new power that has arisen in the community's life. They know that every one of these men not only has a vote, but is a center of influence for the things in which he believes.

The heartening effect of such a great demonstration as this upon the obscure, lonely and discouraged saints is beyond calculation.

The great hosts of the Billy Sunday campaign are returning to first principles by taking religion out into the highways and making it talked about, even as the Founder of the Church created a commotion in the highways of Capernaum and Jerusalem. These marching men are a sermon one or two miles long. The impression made upon youth is not to be registered by any means in the possession of men. Every Christian the world around must be grateful to this evangelist and his associates for giving the sort of demonstration, which cannot be misunderstood by the world at large, of the virility and the immensity of the hosts of heaven on earth.

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!

By power I do not mean culture. There never was a time when the people of America were better informed than they are today; they have newspapers, telephones, telegraphs, rural delivery, fast trains. You can leave home and in five days you are in Europe. If something happens in China or Japan tonight you can read it before you go to bed. The islands of the sea are our neighbors.

A stranger once asked: "What is the most powerful and influential church in this town?"

"That big stone Presbyterian church on the hill."

"How many members has it?"

"I don't know, my wife is a member."

"How many Sunday-school members?"

"I don't know; my children go."

"How many go to prayer-meetings?"

"I don't know; I have never been there."

"How many go to communion?"

"I don't know, I never go; my wife goes."

Then the stranger said: "Will you please tell me why you said it was the most powerful and influential church in the community?"

"Yes, sir; it is the only church in the town that has three millionaires in the church." That was why he thought it was a great church. The Church in America would die of dry rot and sink forty-nine fathoms in hell if all members were multi-millionaires and college graduates. That ought not to be a barrier to spiritual power. By power I do not mean influence.

I'd hate to have to walk back nineteen hundred years to Pentecost. There were 120 at Pentecost who saved 3,000 souls.

Some of the most powerful churches I have ever worked with were not the churches that had the largest number or the richest members. Out in a town in Iowa there were three women who used to pray all night every Thursday night, one of them a colored woman. People used to come under her windows at night and listen to her pray. She murdered the king's English five times in every sentence, but oh, she knew God. They had 500 names on their list for prayer and when the meetings closed they had checked off 397 of them. Every Friday I would be called over the telephone or receive a letter or meet those women and they would tell me what assurances God gave them as to who would be saved. I have never met three women that were stronger in faith than those three. That town was Fairfield, Iowa, one of the brightest, cleanest, snappiest little towns I ever went into.

The Meaning of Power

Samson wist not the Spirit of the Lord had departed. So might we have money, so might we have members, so might we have increase in culture; but we have not increased in power. I mean spiritual power; power to bring things to pass by way of reform. What do I mean by power? I have told you what I did not mean.

By power I mean when the power of God comes upon you and enables you to do what you could not do without that power. That comes to you through confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There was a time when the Church had more spiritual power than she has today; there never was a time when she had more members than she has today; there never was a time when she had more money than she has today; more culture; but there was a time when she had more spiritual power than today.

And when she had more spiritual power she was a separate institution. She was not living for the devil as she is today. And the Church had not become a clearing house for the forces of evil. We are told that at Pentecost tongues of fire came upon the expectant worshipers.

I don't mean this gabby stuff they have got today that they call the things of the spirit; I don't mean that jabbering and froth and foaming at the mouth when you can't understand a word they say. Try the Spirit, whether it be of God, and in all ages when the Church has stood for something she has had power.

So few of us dream of the tremendous power at our command. At the World's Fair at Chicago the door to one of the great buildings was without doorknob or latch, for these were not needed. There was a great mat at the entrance, and as you stepped upon it your weight would cause an electrical connection to be made and the great doors would swing open. I take this old Book and stand upon it, and all the wonders of life and eternity are opened to me. The power of the Holy Spirit is at my command.

Church Needs Great Awakening

Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ. We need a Pentecost today. The Church needs a great awakening. Now, I'll not stand anyone's saying anything against the Church as an institution; but I will rebuke its sins and point out its shortcomings. Nobody who loves the Church can be silent when so much needs to be said. I love the Church. I want to explode that old adage that "Love is blind"; I tell you, love has an eagle's eyes.

Lots of churches are wrong in their financial policy. It is a wrong that the churches have to resort to tricks that would shame the devil in order to filch a quarter out of a fellow's pocket to help pay the preacher's back salary. There is hardly a church in this country that couldn't have abundant funds if the people would only give of their means as they are commanded by God.

Then, too often you put the wrong men in places of authority in the church. You elect some old fellow who would look better in a penitentiary suit, just because he had a "drag" somewhere. We must quit putting such men in church offices.

When I was a boy I was taught how to put glass knobs on the feet of a chair and charge the chair with electricity. So long as I didn't touch anything but the chair I was all right, but if I touched the wall or something else I got a shock. The power passed through and from me. As Christians we cannot come into touch with defiling things without suffering a loss of spiritual power. You can't go to the dance and the card party and the cheap-skate show without losing power. Yes, you can do those things and be a church member. But you can be a church member without being a Christian. There's a difference.

I read in the Bible that Lot first pitched his tents near Sodom. Next I read that Lot moved right into Sodom, and lived there for twenty years. He lost his power there, too. When God warned him to get out of the city he went and told his sons and daughters, but they wouldn't heed him. He had lost his power over them. He warned his sons-in-law, but they wouldn't heed him. He even lost power over his own wife, for he told her not to look back as they fled, and she rubbered.

If you have lost spiritual power it is because you have disobeyed some clear command of God. Maybe you're stingy. God requires tithes. He commands you to give one tenth of your income to him, and maybe you don't do it. It may be your temper. It may be that you have neglected to read the Bible and haven't prayed as you should.

The Church is a failure because she is compromising with the men that sit in the seats and own saloons whom she never rebukes; she is compromising with the men who rent their property for disorderly houses, and whom she never rebukes. They are living off the products of shame and if they buy food and clothes for their wives and children from such money, they, too, are living off this product of shame. We have lost our power because we have compromised.

When I played baseball I used to attend every theater in the country. Since I was converted I have not darkened a theater's door, except to preach the Gospel. We've lost our power because we've lost our faith.

Our leading members are leaders in nothing but card parties and society; they are not leaders in spiritual things. A man comes to me and says, "Mrs. So-and-So is one of my leading members."

I ask: "Does she get to prayer-meetings?"

"No."

"Does she visit the sick?"

"No."

"Does she put her arms around some poor sinner and try to save her for Christ?"

"No."

And I find she is a leader in nothing but society, card parties, dances and bridge-whist clubs. I don't call that kind a leading woman in the church; she is the devil's bell-wether. That is true. I tell you people what I call your leading woman: She is the one who gets down on her knees and prays; she is the one that can wrap her arms around a sinner and lead her to Christ; that is a leading church member. You have it doped out wrong.

Did Martin Luther trim his sails to the breeze of his day? If he had, you would never have had a Reformation. I will tell you why we have lost our power; I have told you what I don't mean by power.

Lost Power

We have lost our power because we have failed to insist on the separation of the Church from the world. The Church is a separate body of men and women; we are to be in the world, but not of the world. She is all right in the world, all wrong when the world is in her, and the trouble with the Church today is that she has sprung a leak. The flood tides of the world have been swept in until even her pews are engulfed, yes, even the choir loft is almost submerged. We have become but a third-rate amusement bureau. The world has got to see a clean-cut line of demarkation between the Church and the world. So I believe.

If there's anything the Church of God needs it's to climb the stairs and get in an upper room.

Come out from the things of the world. When you hand out a pickle and a bunch of celery for the cause of good, then will my Father not be glorified; nor will he be glorified when you sell oyster soup at twenty-five cents a dish, when one lone oyster chases around the dish to find his brother. It doesn't require much power to do that, for two dollars would hire a girl to dish up ice-cream. That does not get you spiritual power.

There is deep heart hungering in the Church today for the old-time Pentecostal power.

Now, I do not know that the Spirit will ever come to us as he came to Pentecost, for you must remember that he came to usher in the new dispensation, or the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. It is true he was present in the Old Testament. He was in Abraham and Moses.

You'll have power when there is nothing questionable in your life.

You'll have power when you testify in a more positive manner.

Do as the disciples did, believe and receive the Holy Spirit by waiting. The Holy Spirit is ours. He is the promise of Jesus from the Father as a gift to the prayers of the Son. God can no more fill you with the Spirit if you are not right, willing and waiting to receive Him, than he can send the sunshine into your house if you have the blinds and shutters all closed. You can pray till you are black in the face and bald-headed, but you're wasting your time unless you agree with God. There can be no wedding unless two parties are agreed. If the girl says "No," that ends it. Don't think you are walking with God just because your name is on a church record. Walk in the path of righteousness even if it leads to a coffin and the graveyard.

Jesus gave his disciples power to perform miracles. That same power can be delegated to you and me today. He always spoke of the Holy Spirit in the future. He was not there. He didn't have to be. They had Jesus, but the Church needs him today. It needs a baptism of the Holy Ghost. There are no substitutes. You can organize, prepare, hire the best singers and preachers in the universe, but you'll get no power. No matter what Scriptural knowledge he may have, no matter if he prays so that it reaches the stars, no matter if his sermons sway the congregation with their word pictures, no matter if the singers warble faultlessly and to beat the band – the preacher and the singers will produce no more effect than the beating of a drum or the running of a music box. The preacher who murders the king's English four times to every sentence and has the Holy Ghost will get the revival.