The Privilege, Promise, Power & Peril of Doctrinal Preaching by Nettles Thomas J

Author:Nettles, Thomas J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Grace Press
Published: 2018-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Jack-Rabbits and Creeds

Among the public impressions that gave Billy Sunday such popular appeal was his vigorous support of Woodrow Wilson’s war effort. Wilson asked Sunday personally to raise the money instead of going overseas to speak to the troops. Sunday told Wilson, “Mr. President, your wish is law with me.” He stayed home and “raised one hundred million dollars for Liberty and Victory Loans.” The money, at least it was so reported, that came in from the ten-week New York campaign in 1917 all went to the war to end all wars. In addition, 100,000 conversions were reported. Sunday recalled the last day in New York when “7436 people came forward and grasped my hand pledging to accept Christ as their Saviour” (Sawdust, 75).

Sunday learned to raise money and handle his money well. With the help of “Ma” Sunday, he became highly solvent financially and was never accused of any misdealings with the money. In addition to a large contribution to the war on Germany, sometimes he would give the entire offering from a campaign to some local charity. He dressed well and dressed his family well. His home in Winona Lake, Indiana, was adequate but modest. Nevertheless, his income was many times that of the average person to whom he was preaching, and newspapers often sought to generate disdain for him on that account.

Sunday, though not primarily bent toward political and cultural issues, nevertheless was clear on where he stood on many of the stirring questions of the day. Most noted for his opposition to booze and his support of the eighteenth amendment, he never ceased, even after its repeal, to oppose the liquor traffic and describe the devastating social consequences of drunkenness. Describing himself as “the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the Liquor Traffic,” he described his enemy as a “damnable, dirty, rotten business” and “the sum of all villainies” (Sawdust, 68). With powerful images, graphic words, and compelling statistics he worked to prove that it was “the appalling source of misery and crime in the land.” Giving it license to propagate such misery “is the dirtiest, low-down, damnable business on top of this old earth.”[lxxxviii] Sunday also supported women’s suffrage, trod carefully on racial issues but sought to oppose Jim Crow laws, and, though he had friends that were in big business, opposed monopolies and the tendencies to oppress the poor through price control.

Sunday was known also for his energetic assertion of fundamental biblical truth. He defended the Bible as the word of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, and the cross of Christ as necessarily connected with salvation. He frequently mentioned Robert Ingersoll and that “big brain of his” as the leading skeptic of the day, had read with some attention a number of other rationalistic critics of orthodox Christianity, and in opposition to their basic agnosticism, challenged them to propose something better than the Bible as the word of God and the cross as the way of forgiveness (Ellis, 424).

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