Some Interesting Things About Evangelist Billy Sunday

I have an old book authored in 1936 by Homer Rodeheaver titled, “TWNETY YEARS WITH BILLY SUNDAY.” I am going to share some interesting things about Billy Sunday that you likely have never heard before, and some perhaps you may have. Billy Sunday (1962-1935) was, and still is, considered by many to be the world's greatest evangelist of all time. Mr. Sunday was famous (or infamous based on your perspective) for preaching uncompromisingly against booze, illicit gambling and immoral dancing. Billy Sunday rightly said that the work of a pastor is to comfort the afflicted, but the work of an evangelist is to afflict the comforted. Amen!

On page 10 we read about Billy Sunday:

“Of his outstanding characteristics first place must be given his unreserved consecration to the task of preaching the Gospel, born of an unswerving faith in the infallibility of the Scriptures and belief in God's plan of salvation. He had a positive conviction as to the authenticity of Holy Writ which permitted no question or quibble. He was just as certain of his call to preach. 

Invariably he opened the Bible and placed his sermon notes upon the passage of Isaiah, first verse of the sixty-first chapter, which reads: 'The Spirit of the Lord GOD 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.' 

Many people wanted to posses the Bible Mr. Sunday had used during a campaign. When he granted the request it would be found that these pages in the book of Isaiah were almost worn out.”

SOURCE: “TWENTY YEARS WITH BILLY SUNDAY,” chapter 1 - “THE MAN,” p. 10, by Homer Rodeheaver; 1936

On page 11-13 the following words describe “THE MAN,” Billy Sunday...

“Mr. Sunday fought sin, but not the sinner. He rarely ever attacked an individual. Not “Mayor Brown,” but “any mayor who violates his trust should be put out of office.”

Saloonkeepers admired him for his courage, and many fights started in saloons because the bartender or some customer defended him against lies or personal abuse.

One saloonkeeper said, “You can't talk about Billy Sunday that way in my saloon. He knocks my business, but he's a square-shooter.”

He was the foe of so-called modernism in religious thought and attacked impartially in high and low places leaders whom he believed to be traitors to truthful in interpretation of the Bible. 

Many unprintable stories were told about him. These followed him from place to place and were so similar in form as to suggest a common origin.  The same stories and attacks attributed to Mr. Sunday had been used in attacks on other evangelists many years previously. 

I never knew him to tell a vulgar story, either on or off the platform. He was clean in his thinking and had a wholesome antipathy for anything savoring of suggestiveness. 

Much of his work on the platform gave rise to the impression that he was of a particularly belligerent disposition. Apparently he was ready to fight all opposition at the drop of a hat, giving no odds and asking none. He seemed to delight in stirring up an antagonist and knocking him into a cocked hat; yet off the platform his attitude was far from pugnacious. On the contrary, there were pronounced elements of sweetness and gentleness in his character. When he was in the company of others he had the graces of self-effacement and unaffected modesty—the innate qualities of a gentleman. 

He was not at ease in social gatherings. Likewise when folks sought to ionize him it provoked both surprise and amusement. He had no capacity for trivial conversation. He was a good listener and entertained a constant hope that from each new acquaintance he would gain some fresh idea, fact, or illustration which might be embodied in a sermon. 

He had a terror of social functions. ...”

SOURCE: “TWENTY YEARS WITH BILLY SUNDAY,” chapter 1 - “THE MAN,” pp. 11-13, by Homer Rodeheaver; 1936

That is very interesting information. I'm not that some of my readers, as I do, can relate to some of Billy Sunday's traits. I also feel awkward in social functions, a bit nervous in groups of people. I can also relate to Mr. Sunday in that people often think I am belligerent in my Bible preaching, seeing the uncompromising aggressiveness of my Bible preaching on social media; but if you were to meet me personally, you'd see that I am sweet, humble and a gentleman. 

On page 34-36 the following words describe the prayer life of Billy Sunday...

“Mr. Sunday was a man of prayer. He placed entire dependence upon God. He never set aside a long period of time each day, nor shut himself in a closet to commune with his Maker, but constantly through the day he felt the presence of God. 

...If you were in his room when he was shaving' or bathing, you would have heard him talking to Jesus about his problems. You would hear him say, 'Now, Jesus, this is a hard problem we have here.' I don't know exactly what we ought to do about it or I don't know how it ought to be done; so if it is done at all successfully, you're going to have to help me with it. I'm depending on you, Jesus. Show me what to do and what to say about this, Give me the wisdom I need. Give me the courage, give me the strength I need for this task.' As he would walk from room to room, you'd see his lips moving, even when you could not hear the words, and you would know that he was talking to his God about some of these intricate, serious, important problems.

As he rode in the automobile to his meetings, while others would be talking about things of local interest, you could hear him saying, 'Jesus, I am depending upon you to help me out at this meeting,' and then he would talk intimately and personally about the important, individual problems and the particular task that was lying just before him. 

No one who heard him pray in public could question his sincerity or accuse him of lacking of originality. His approach to God had the same elements of faith and confidence that a little child would have. His intimate conversations with the Lord startled and shocked those of his hearers who were accustomed to stereotyped, dignified form. Yet the manner in which Mr. Sunday did it conveyed not the slightest suggestion of irreverence. The same words from the mouth of another might have seemed almost blasphemous. 

Sometimes he would stop in the midst of prayer and say: 'Rody, What was the name of that fellow who took us through the foundry?—Bill Jones?—O yes, Lord; bless Bill and his family and the boys at the foundry; Don't let them get hurt.'

His prayers were seldom alike. No one knew what to expect when he prayed. One night the whole petition might concern one particular thing. The following night he would race to twenty different subjects. 

Sometimes he would be carried away by flights of imaginative fancy. Lovely illuminating phrases would pour forth in a torrent. Sentences would be models of grace and the climax an example of the finest oratory. Then again words would come out in a sort of machine-gun fire, crisp, snappy, sentences broken and interrupted, or even started and then abandoned completely. His sermons were carefully prepared; his prayers were extemporaneous expressions. 

In the hearts of many of his hearers often there must have been the wish that they could have the same friendly, intimate, affectionate relationship with their God which it was evident Billy Sunday possessed. 

He had an astounding habit of suddenly breaking off his talk with the Lord and beginning a conversation with the devil. When he did this he imagined his Satanic majesty somewhere down below him. He would lean over as if gazing into the pit of hell and fire at the devil all the excoriating, vilifying epithets he could command After he thought he had cleaned up on Satan sufficiently for the time being he would switch back and finish his conversation with the Lord. 

There never was a pattern for Mr. Sunday's prayers. Perhaps they were the most original, distinctive things about all his work.  No one ever prayed publicly in the same fashion that he did, and probably no one ever will.”

SOURCE: “TWENTY YEARS WITH BILLY SUNDAY,” chapter 3 - “PRAYER,” pp. 34-36, by Homer Rodeheaver; 1936

That is amazing information about Billy Sunday. I remember in 1999 when I attended training for my job at the U.S. Postal Service. The training center is still in Norman, Oklahoma today. They also have a 1,000 room Marriott hotel for the trainees. One afternoon I was walking around the outdoor campus and talking outloud to the Lord. I had a heavy heart and was speaking to the Lord as I would to a person walking with me.

Then two younger security guards for the postal service rudely approached and confronted me as I was walking, informing me that a woman said there is some crazy guy talking to himself on the campus grounds. They were rude, insensitive and belligerent toward me over the matter. I kindly replied that perhaps I am a Christian and I'm talking to God, and they and the woman accusing me were misjudging me. One of the guards then rudely said that it would be better if I went up to pray in my hotel room.

That was in 1999,before I truly understood what The Bill of Rights was. I had learned those things back in high school, but at the time it just seemed like boring history. Had I been privileged to have a teacher inspire me about our American rights, I no doubt would have understood the significance of such rights, but no one ever inspired me as such. I didn't learn about the Bill of Rights until after I began my website ministry in April of 2022, at age 35, and my eyes were opened for the first time in my life to the diabolical New World Order.

Thanks be to God, patriotic men like Alex Jones (he was better in the earlier days of his show) helped open my eyes to the evils in this world, and emphasized our duty as free men to stand against the evil, tyranny, corruption in government, and complacency of good men that leads us into Communist slavery. Had I known back in 1999 what I know today, I would have hired the Christian Law Association (CLA) and sued the U.S. Postal Service in Norman, Oklahoma for violating my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom or press.

Those two woefully ignorant thug guards were inspired by demons that day! They committed a legal crime against me, by depriving me of my First Amendments rights to free speech and freedom of religion. I could have sued them. Dear reader, you and I as Americans and as God's children anywhere in this world, have every God-given right to talk and pray outloud to our great God. Prayer is asking. Talking is fellowship with God. Please don't ever let anyone tell you that you cannot pray audibly in public, because you CAN pray and talk outloud for others to hear (but don't do it in a library or you'll be kicked out...lol).

And for that matter, even if you are just thinking outloud and not praying, you still have a legal and biblical right to do so. As a consequence of that horrible injustice in 1999 at the U.S. Postal Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma, I NEVER stepped foot into that hellhole again. I told my boss on Guam that I refused to go, and I didn't go. I refuse to go anywhere that violates my right to free speech and religion. SHAME on the U.S. Postal Service!!!

In the summer of 2009, I was terminated from employment at the U.S. Postal Service, put out of work by their new Employee Reassessment Program, due to a horrible fall at work in 2004 that injured my spinal cord and left me on disability (displaced disks, stenosis and radiculitis). I am very grateful to God for my disability, without which I would be homeless. I tried to continue working for a few years after my injury in 2004, but it progressively got worse to the point that I could no longer function in 2008, because of the intense radiating pain down my arms and legs. The pain is 80% on my right side, 20% left. The whole right side of my body feels half asleep all the time. Both of my arms feel like they are inflated with air. I underwent two major neck surgeries. The first in 2009 at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angels, California, which is one of the WORST and ABUSIVE hospitals I've ever been in, but that's another long horror story.

My second surgery was in 2010 in Long Beach, California at the Pacific Hospital Of Long Beach. I had actually flown to San Diego to get the surgery, but it came to light a couple years later that my surgeon had been an accomplice to a criminal outfit, where the hospital was using unapproved illegal surgical hardware to receive kickback money. The OIG (Office of Inspector General) investigated the hospital and dozens of medical staff, surgeons and CEO's were convicted. Some went to prison. I still have the letter from the OIG, explaining what happened. As far as I can tell, the illegal surgical hardware in my neck didn't hurt me in any way (but still remains to be seen in the future). There is so much evil, corruption and tyranny in this world.

Anyway, I mentioned all of this to relate to Billy Sunday's audibly obvious walk with God. Billy Sunday prayed and talked outloud to God everywhere that he went, having no shame or embarrassment over what others might have thought, and I have been doing the same for most of my adult life. Since I live alone (and have since 2006 when my former wife abandoned and divorced me), I need to talk outload to the Lord each day. Everybody needs someone to talk to, even me. Jesus is the only Friend I have when I am alone at home, which is where I am most of the time due to my chronic neck pain and related bodily discomfort. I am often sad, discouraged and depressed from loneliness. I have tried to meet a Christian woman to marry, but haven't found anyone yet.

I almost found a wife on Guam in 2017, but the ungodly senior pastor of Harvest Baptist Church on Guam (Marty Herron) hated me, and refused to allow me to date his employee (their school nurse) that liked me (and I liked her), because I reproved Harvest's incompetent pastors in 2014 for preaching the Devil's lie of Lordship Salvation, and for promoting Devil's bibles, and for teaching a perverted meaning of repentance (i.e., the heresy that you must turn away from a sinful lifestyle to get to Heaven). Mr. Herron is now further ruining young people's lives as the incompetent vice president of Faith Baptist Bible College And Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa. That ungodly rascal gets paid a much undeserved 6-digit salary.

Marty is a devil, that if I had my way, he would be serving a lengthy prison sentence for his spiritual crimes against God and humanity, and for his cruel abuse toward me as a needy human being. Pastors are destroying America! Jeremiah 12:10, “Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.” Jeremiah 23:1, “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!  saith the LORD.” Despite my pleas for Pastor Herron's mercy, he cruelly threw me under the bus and left me for dead. God will be His only Judge, and damnation his fate for trusting in a counterfeit gospel. Herron is a graduate of the Bob Jones University cult. Take a look at the Satanic heresy that they and Mr. Herron wickedly preach!!! Here are some backup articles showing BJU's damnable heresy.

Like Billy Sunday, I have taken an uncompromising stand against the corrupt Bob Jones cult, exposing their Satanic Calvinist preaching of Lordship Salvation (which is not the Gospel of free grace). I love this simple but effective chart...

The true Gospel always points you to CHRIST;
a false gospel always points to YOU.

I am no Billy Sunday, and that is not my goal. My sincere goal is to PREACH THE WORD. 2nd Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” My goal is to let God's Holy Spirit work through me to help others—to feed Jesus' sheep, to educate and edify believers with THE TRUTH, and to win lost sinners to Christ with a clear presentation of THE GOSPEL.

Dear reader, please never forget:

There's a fine line between badass and dumbass.

There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity.

There's a fine line between faith and foolishness.

I just had to include those greater words of wisdom...lol.

I just want to let God be a blessing to others, by walking in the Spirit so that God can work through me as His humble servant, and in so doing make an impact for God (Galatians 5:22-25). The greatness of Billy Sunday was that he emptied himself of self, and yielded himself to God's Holy Spirit. A brilliant quote comes to mind from Pastor Dwight L. Moody:

“The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him. By God’s help, I aim to be that man.”

In hindsight, we see the mighty impact that God made upon the world through men like Dwight Moody (1837-1899), Harry Ironside (1876-1951), Billy Sunday (1862-1935) and Jack Hyles (1926-2001). They weren't perfect men. Their doctrine wasn't always perfect. They were redeemed sinful men, just like you and me dear friend, but they were yielded to God. May we follow their example, by yielding our spirit, soul and body to be used of God.

These men never sought greatness, but to do the little things greatly. The most important job is the one that doesn't get done. Dr. Jack Hyles taught me that. If you care dear friend, then YOU WILL be diligent to pay attention to the details. I started doing something 20 years ago. I noticed one day that everyone abbreviates the books of the Holy Bible (e.g., Deut., Psa., Jn.). That bothered me a lot. Does not God's Word deserve the utmost respect? Yes, it does. Would you abbreviate your mother's name? Would we refer to President Joe Biden as “JB”? If you do, you shouldn't.

I have heard new-evangelicals refers to Jesus Christ as “JC.” That is taking the Lord's name in vain in my humble opinion. Perhaps you think this matter of abbreviating the books and names of the Bible as something small, but it is important to me. Hence, if you read ANY of my articles, blogs and books that I've written over the past 21 years of my website ministry for Jesus, you won't find any abbreviated books of the Bible. I always spell out the whole name of the book, out of respect for the inspired Word of God. There are many little things like that, which I do because I care about the little things, which is a form of greatness.

When I go to any store, I nearly always grab an empty cart in the parking lot to bring with me into the store. I'm going that way anyway. It helps the store. It sets a good example for others to see. Most of all, it keeps me in the humble spirit of living for others instead of myself. When most people think of greatness, they see Jesus feeding the 5,000 hungry people; but God saw the greatness of the little boy who gave up his lunch so that others could eat. Jesus could have just as easily made the food from the dirt of the ground, as he turned the water into desirable quality wine. But the dear Savior chose to use a little boy's lunch. That is very interesting. Pastor Jack Hyles preached a wonderful sermon based upon this miraculous Bible event, titled: "How Many Loaves Have Ye?"

Lord willing, I am still reading this classic old book about Billy Sunday from 1936, “TWENTY YEARS WITH BILLY SUNDAY,” and plan to write some more articles. Thank you for reading.

Evangelist Billy Sunday
(1862-1935)