Evangelist Billy Sunday Speaks About “Personal Rights”

Matthew 7:12, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

I ran across this tremendous sermon excerpt today from Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935). He is preaching against the evils of producing, transporting, selling and drinking BOOZE! When people irresponsibly get buzzed and drunk in liquor, they hurt other people...

Personal Liberty
Personal liberty is not personal license. I dare not exercise personal liberty if it infringes on the liberty of others. Our forefathers did not fight and die for personal license but for personal liberty bounded by laws. Personal liberty is the liberty of a murderer, a burglar, a seducer, or a wolf that wants to remain in a sheep fold, or the weasel in a hen roost. You have no right to vote for an institution that is going to drag your sons and daughters to hell.

If you were the only person in this city you would have a perfect right to drive your horse down the street at breakneck speed; you would have a right to make a race track out of the streets for your auto; you could build a slaughter house in the public square; you could build a glue factory in the public square. But when the population increases from one to 600,000 you can't do it. You say, "Why can't I run my auto? I own it. Why can't I run my horse? I own it. Why can't I build the slaughter house? I own the lot." Yes, but there are 600,000 people here now and other people have rights.

So law stands between you and personal liberty, you miserable dog. You can't build a slaughter house in your front yard, because the law says you can't. As long as I am standing here on this platform I have personal liberty. I can swing my arms at will. But the minute any one else steps on the platform my personal liberty ceases. It stops just one inch from the other fellow's nose.

When you come staggering home, cussing right and left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your children suffer. Don't think that you are the only one that suffers. A man that goes to the penitentiary makes his wife and children suffer just as much as he does. You're placing a shame on your wife and children. If you're a dirty, low-down, filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you'll affect all with whom you come in contact. If you're a God-fearing man you will influence all with whom you come in contact. You can't live by yourself with my business?"

If I heard a man beating his wife and heard her shrieks and the children's cries and my wife would tell me to go and see what was the matter, and I went in and found a great big, broad-shouldered, whisky-soaked, hog-jowled, weasel-eyed brute dragging a little woman around by the hair, and two children in the comer unconscious from his kicks and the others yelling in abject terror, and he said, "What are you coming in to interfere with my personal liberty for? Isn't this my wife, didn't I pay for the license to wed her?" You ought, or you're a bigamist. "Aren't these my children; didn't I pay the doctor to bring them into the world?" You ought to, or you're a thief. "If I want to beat them, what is that your business, aren't they mine?" Would I apologize? Never! I'd knock seven kinds of pork out of that old hog. [Emphasis added] —Billy Sunday, 'The Curse Of The Saloon'

I love it! I don't know if you caught what Billy Sunday said: “So law stands between you and personal liberty, you miserable dog. You can't build a slaughter house in your front yard, because the law says you can't.” I'm going to use that in my preaching, “You miserable dog!”

In the same sermon, Billy Sunday called the foolish people of Gergesenes (Matthew 8:28-34) who asked Jesus to depart from their coast, “peanut-brained, weasel-eyed, hog-jowled, beetle-browed, bull-necked lobsters that owned the hogs.” I love it! That's good old fashioned real Bible preaching! Your average deadbeat neo-evangelical twerp for a pastor today, who couldn't preach his way out of a wet paper bag, would have a cow if he heard Billy Sunday preach! They'd get angry to throw a fit at God's man for preaching THE TRUTH!

We need a new generation of in-your-face, fiery, uncompromising, unapologetic, barn-stormin, shingle-pullin', hell-raising, window-rattlin', inspired King James Bible, free grace Gospel, easy-believism, heresy exposing, sinner loving, soulwinning, preaching preachers like Billy Sunday, Steven Anderson, Jack Hyles, Grayson Fritts, Bruce Mejia and other caring fundamentalist truth-tellers. The world is dying for preachers who TELL THE TRUTH without compromise.

The churches are empty today because pastors no longer walk with God (most are not even born again). Consequently, they no longer are bold to preach the truth. Acts 4:13, “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” You hang around Jesus and you'll want to go preach to the whole world!

“The world will go to Hell unless somebody is authoritative!” —Pastor Jack Hyles, “I Shall Not Be Moved”

Dear reader, if you are wise you will abstain from consuming booze. I could show you victim after victim who thought they could handle alcohol, but statistics prove otherwise. Proverbs 20:1, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Look what a drunken fool did to destroy the life and health of this poor girl...

Jaqueline Saburido (1978-2019)

Here is some horrifying information about what a reckless drunken 18-year-old did to ruin Jaqueline's life. Reggie was driving home while intoxicated after a party. The spoiled brat American youth got seven years in prison, but Jaqueline's quality of life ended because of him. Billy Sunday is so right! No one has a right to prance upon the right of others to be safe. ...

On 19 September 1999, after attending a birthday party near the unincorporated area of Lake Travis, Saburido and several of her friends accepted a ride home from a classmate. Shortly into the drive, their 1990 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency was struck by 1996 GMC Yukon owned and driven by 18 year old Reginald "Reggie" Stephey who was a senior at Lake Travis High School who was driving under the influence of alcohol after attending a party with his friends. 

The collision killed the driver and owner of the vehicle who was an 18 year Russian woman named Natalia Chpytchak Bennett and one of the passengers who was a 20 year old Colombian woman named Laura Guerrero, and caused the vehicle to burst into flames. Saburido was trapped inside the wreckage when it caught fire and could not escape. 

Passing paramedics managed to douse the fire and tried to pull the occupants free, but unfortunately lacked the specialized equipment needed to free Saburido from the wreckage, and the fire unexpectedly reignited before they could rescue her. Forty-five seconds later, a fire truck arrived and fully extinguished the fire, after which Saburido was airlifted to the burns unit in Galveston.

Despite suffering second- and third-degree burns across more than 60% of her body, Saburido survived. Her fingers had to be amputated, though surgeons were able to salvage enough bone to construct an opposable thumb. She lost her hair, ears, nose, lips, left eyelid, and much of her vision. Saburido subsequently underwent more than 120 reconstructive operations, including cornea transplants to restore her left eye.

In June 2001, Stephey was convicted for two counts of intoxicated manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison. —SOURCE

I could share literally thousands of similar horrific murders (not mere accidents as they are erroneously called by the ungodly media). Here a tragic story about a wicked drunkard in 1998 who slammed his speeding vehicle into a church bus, murdering 25 children. Sadly, no matter how many people are murdered, ungodly Americans will never stop drinking their booze. One of the saddest days in the United States was on December 5, 1933, when the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment from 1919.

To see liquor legalized again broke Billy Sunday's heart, who had spent his life preaching the Bible against the wicked liquor traffic and thug booze cartel in the United States. Billy Sunday graduated to Heaven on December 6, 1935, two years after the Prohibition Era was overturned by ungodly judges in cahoots with ungodly villainous men who had been made rich selling their Liquid Devil to their victims. GOD HATES BOOZE!!!

1st Corinthians 6:9-10, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Most preachers deliberately leave out the next two verses...

1st Corinthians 6:11-12, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”

I love these Bible verses! The Apostle Paul is teaching that if you have been born again by faith in Jesus Christ, then all of your sins (including drunkenness) have been washed in the blood of the Lamb of God (1st Peter 1:18-19). So, even if you still get plastered drunk as a Christian, you are safe and secure in God's PROMISE of eternal life “to them that believer” (1st Corinthians 1:21b). We are saved solely by God's grace through faith in the Gospel (GOOD NEWS) of Christ crucified, buried and bodily risen (1st Corinthians 15:1-6; 1st Thessalonians 4:14).

Please notice what Paul says in 1st Corinthians 6:12, “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” In other words, drinking booze and getting addicted to alcohol won't jeopardize your eternal life (Acts 13:39), but Paul refused to become enslaved to booze. Dear reader, I don't know about you, but I couldn't agree more with Paul in this matter of liquor.