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Preaching on Alcohol
Billy Sunday
William Ashley “Billy” Sunday (1862–1935). Born on November 19, 1862, in Story County, Iowa, to a poor farming family, Billy Sunday rose from a hardscrabble childhood to become America’s most famous evangelist of the early 20th century. Orphaned at 10 after his father’s Civil War death and mother’s remarriage, he worked odd jobs before excelling as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings (1883–1890), known for speed despite a .248 batting average. Converted in 1886 at Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission, he left baseball in 1891 to work with the YMCA and study briefly at Evanston Academy. Mentored by evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, Sunday began preaching in 1896, holding over 300 revival campaigns across the U.S., drawing millions with theatrical, plainspoken sermons on sin, salvation, and prohibition. His tabernacles, like those in New York (1917), packed thousands nightly, reportedly leading to a million conversions. He authored no major books but shaped evangelicalism, supporting World War I and opposing evolution in schools. Married to Helen “Nell” Thompson in 1888, they had four children, though three sons’ scandals marred his later years. Sunday died of a heart attack on November 6, 1935, in Chicago, saying, “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist.”
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Sermon Summary
This sermon emphasizes the need for righteousness and the importance of turning to Jesus for true fulfillment and purpose. It highlights the consequences of seeking satisfaction in material things like alcohol, luxury cars, or fame, and the emptiness that follows. The message calls for a shift in focus towards God and righteousness rather than worldly desires.
Sermon Transcription
... or a high school girl has the same effect as when it's sold to an automobile thief or a horse thief. Congress has passed a law putting $2 a tax on whiskey, and they expect to realize $300 million. That means that the American people have not to buy and drink 150 million gallons a year. They have to put $5 a barrel tax on beer. That means the people have not to buy and drink 32 million barrels of beer a year. It doesn't take a lawyer to figure out that if you do that, you take that much money out of the legion of a channel to trade. You spend that much less for food and clothes and boots and shoes and education and automobiles. Oh, America didn't need repeal. She needed revenge. She didn't need wrong. She needed righteousness. We don't need Jags. We need Jesus. We don't need Ward Brock. We need more God. In Winona Lake, Indiana, not far from the tabernacle that bears his name, is his house, a veritable museum of tokens of esteem from the mightiest and the least. On the wall of his study are signed portraits of the great men of his time, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Teddy Roosevelt, Cecil B. DeMille, General Pershing, the Mayo Brothers. And the room is filled with mementos from some of the thousands of people who shed tears at his departure from their town. A clock from the employees of Wanamaker's in Philadelphia. Trophies and loving cups, one given him by the chauffeurs of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Another clock from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Gifts given to Billy Sunday from the people whose language he spoke, the people of the country he loved. Billy Sunday's funeral service was held in the great Moody Church in Chicago. It seats 4,000 people and was crowded in the afternoon, but all through the day, a rainy day, people came, walking through, to look into the face of the man who had meant so much to them, to their families,
Preaching on Alcohol
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William Ashley “Billy” Sunday (1862–1935). Born on November 19, 1862, in Story County, Iowa, to a poor farming family, Billy Sunday rose from a hardscrabble childhood to become America’s most famous evangelist of the early 20th century. Orphaned at 10 after his father’s Civil War death and mother’s remarriage, he worked odd jobs before excelling as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings (1883–1890), known for speed despite a .248 batting average. Converted in 1886 at Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission, he left baseball in 1891 to work with the YMCA and study briefly at Evanston Academy. Mentored by evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, Sunday began preaching in 1896, holding over 300 revival campaigns across the U.S., drawing millions with theatrical, plainspoken sermons on sin, salvation, and prohibition. His tabernacles, like those in New York (1917), packed thousands nightly, reportedly leading to a million conversions. He authored no major books but shaped evangelicalism, supporting World War I and opposing evolution in schools. Married to Helen “Nell” Thompson in 1888, they had four children, though three sons’ scandals marred his later years. Sunday died of a heart attack on November 6, 1935, in Chicago, saying, “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist.”