Billy Sunday

When a man starts on a journey he has one object in view – the end. A journey is well, if it ends well. We are all on a journey to eternity. What will be the end? My text doesn't talk about the present. Your present is, or may be, an enviable position in church, club life, or commercial life, lodge, politics; your presence may be sought after to grace every social gathering. God doesn't care about that. What shall the end be? When all that is gone, when pleasures pass away, and sorrow and weeping and wailing take their place, what shall the end be?

Some people deny that their suffering in the other world will be eternal fire. Do you think your scoffs can extinguish the flames of hell? Do you think you can annihilate hell because you don't believe in it? We have a few people who say, "Matter is non-existent," but that doesn't do away with the fact that matter is existent, just because we have some people who haven't sense enough to see it. You say, "I don't believe there is a hell." Well, there is, whether you believe it or not. You say, "I don't believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Well, he is, whether you believe it or not. Some people say, "I don't believe there is a heaven." There is, whether you believe it or not. You say, "I don't believe the Bible is the Word of God." Well, it is, and your disbelief does not change the fact, and the sooner you wake up to that the better for you. I might say that I don't believe George Washington ever lived. I never saw him, but it wouldn't do away with the fact that he did live, and George Washington lies buried on the banks of the Potomac. You say you don't believe there is a hell, but that doesn't do away with the fact that there is a hell.

What difference does it make whether the fire in hell is literal, or the fittest emblem God could employ to describe to us the terrible punishment? Do you believe the streets of heaven are paved with literal gold? Do you believe that? When we talk about gold we all have high and exalted ideas. How do you know but that God said "streets of gold" in order to convey to us the highest ideal our minds could conceive of beauty? It doesn't make any difference whether the gold on the streets in heaven is literal or not. What difference does it make whether the fire in hell is literal or not? When we talk about fire everybody shrinks from it. Suppose God used that term as figurative to convey to you the terror of hell. You are a fool to test the reality of it. It must be an awful place if God loved us well enough to give Jesus to keep us out of there. I don't want to go there.

Preparing for Eternity

I said to a fellow one time, "Don't you think that possibly there is a hell?"

He said, "Well, yes, possibly there may be a hell."

I said, "It's pretty good sense, then, to get ready for the maybe." Well, just suppose there is a hell. It's good sense to get ready, then, even for the "maybe." I don't look like a man that would die very quickly, do I? I have just as good a physique as you ever gazed at. I wouldn't trade with any man I know. A lot of you fellows are stronger than I, but I have as good a physique as ever you looked at. I have been preaching at this pace for fourteen years, and I've stood it, although I begin to feel myself failing a little bit. But I don't look like a man who would die quickly, do I? But I may die, and on that possibility I carry thousands of dollars of life insurance. I don't believe that any man does right to himself, his wife or his children if he doesn't provide for them with life insurance, so when he is gone they will not be thrown upon the charity of the world. And next to my faith, if I should die tonight, that which would give me the most comfort would be the knowledge that I have in a safe deposit vault in Chicago life insurance papers, paid up to date, and my wife could cash in and she and the babies could listen to the wolves howl for a good many years. I don't expect to die soon, but I may die, and on that "may" I carry thousands of dollars in life insurance.

I take a train to go home, I don't expect the train to be wrecked, but it may be wrecked, and on that "maybe" I carry $10,000 a year in an accident policy. It may go in the ditch. That's good sense to get ready for the "maybe." Are you a business man? Do you carry insurance on your stock? Yes. On the building? Yes. Do you expect it to burn? No, sir. But it may burn, so you are ready for it. Every ship is compelled, by law, to carry life-preservers and life-boats equal to the passenger capacity. They don't expect the ship to sink, but it may sink and they are ready for the "may." All right. There may be a hell. I'm ready; where do you get off at? I have you beat any way you can look at it.

Suppose there is no hell? Suppose that when we die that ends it? I don't believe it does. I believe there is a hell and I believe there is a heaven, and just the kind of a heaven and hell that book says. But suppose there is no hell? Suppose death is eternal sleep? I believe the Bible; I believe its teachings; I have the best of you in this life. I will live longer, be happier, and have lost nothing by believing and obeying the Bible, even if there is no hell. But suppose there is a hell? Then I'm saved and you are the fool. I have you beat again.

"What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" What will some do? Some will be stoical, some will whimper, some will turn for human sympathy. Let God answer the question. You would quarrel with me. "A lake of fire" and "a furnace of fire." "In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." "Eternal damnation." "The smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever." Let God answer the question. "What shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?" Will you say, "God, I didn't have time enough"? "Behold! Now is the accepted time." Will you say, "God, I had no light?" But "light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light."

I stand on the shores of eternity and cry out, "Eternity! Eternity! How long, how long art thou?" Back comes the answer, "How long?"

"How long sometimes a day appears and weeks, how long are they?They move as if the months and years would never pass away;But months and years are passing by, and soon must all be gone,Day by day, as the moments fly, eternity comes on.All these must have an end; eternity has none,It will always have as long to run as when it first begun."

"What shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel of God?"

When Voltaire, the famous infidel, lay dying, he summoned the physician and said, "Doctor, I will give you all I have to save my life six months."

The doctor said, "You can't live six hours."

Then said Voltaire, "I'll go to hell and you'll go with me."

A Leap in the Dark

Hobbes, the famous English infidel, said: "I am taking a leap into the night."

When King Charles IX, who gave the order for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, when blood ran like water and 130,000 fell dead, when King Charles lay dying, he cried out, "O God, how will it end? Blood, blood, rivers of blood. I am lost!" And with a shriek he leaped into hell.

King Philip of Spain said; "I wish to God I had never lived," and then in a sober thought he said: "Yes, I wish I had, but that I had lived in the fear and love of God."

Wesley said, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness."

Florence A. Foster said, "Mother, the hilltops are covered with angels; they beckon me homeward; I bid you good-bye."

Frances E. Willard cried, "How beautiful to die and be with God."

Moody cried: "Earth recedes, heaven opens, God is calling me. This is to be my coronation day."

Going to the World's Fair in Chicago, a special train on the Grand Trunk, going forty miles an hour, dashed around a curve at Battle Creek, and headed in on a sidetrack where a freight train stood. The rear brakeman had forgotten to close the switch and the train rounded the curve, dashed into the open switch and struck the freight train loaded with iron, and there was an awful wreck. The cars telescoped and the flames rushed out. Pinioned in the wreck, with steel girders bent around her, was a woman who lived in New York. Her name was Mrs. Van Dusen. She removed her diamond ear-rings, took her gold watch and chain from about her neck, slipped her rings from her fingers and handing out her purse gave her husband's address, and then said: "Gentlemen, stand back! I am a Christian and I will die like a Christian."

They leaped to their task. They tore like demons to liberate her and she started to sing,

"My heavenly home is bright and fair.I'm going to die no more."

Strong men, who had looked into the cannon's mouth, fainted. She cried out, above the roar of the wind and the shrieks of the dying men, "Oh, men, don't imperil your lives for me. I am a Christian and I will die like a Christian! Stand back, men," and then she began to sing, "Nearer, My God, to Thee."

"The End Thereof"

"There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Moses may have made some mistakes, but I want to tell you Moses never made a mistake when he wrote these words: "Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being the judges." He never made a mistake when he wrote these words. I say to you, you are going to live on and on until the constellations of the heavens are snuffed out. You are going to live on and on until the rocks crumble into dust through age. You are going to live on and on and on, until the mountain peaks are incinerated and blown by the breath of God to the four corners of infinity. "What shall the end be?" Listen! Listen!

I used to live in Pennsylvania and of the many wonderful things for which this wonderful state has been noted, not the least is the fact that most always she has had godly men for governors, and one of the most magnificent examples of godly piety that ever honored this state was Governor Pollock. When he was governor, a young man, in a drunken brawl, shot a companion. He was tried and sentenced to be executed. They circulated a petition, brought it to Harrisburg to the governor, and the committee that waited upon the governor, among them some of his own friends, pleaded with him to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. Governor Pollock listened to their pleadings and said, "Gentlemen, I can't do it. The law must take its course." Then the ministers – Catholic and Protestant – brought a petition, and among the committee was the governor's own pastor. He approached him in earnestness, put a hand on either shoulder, begged, prayed to God to give him wisdom to grant the request. Governor Pollock listened to their petition, tears streamed down his cheeks and he said, "Gentlemen, I can't do it. I can't; I can't."

At last the boy's mother came. Her eyes were red, her cheeks sunken, her lips ashen, her hair disheveled, her clothing unkempt, her body tottering from the loss of food and sleep. Broken-hearted, she reeled, staggered and dragged herself into the presence of the governor. She pleaded for her boy. She said, "Oh, governor, let me die. Oh, governor, let him go; let me behind the bars. Oh, governor, I beg of you to let my boy go; don't, don't hang him!" And Governor Pollock listened. She staggered to his side, put her arms around him. He took her arms from his shoulder, held her at arms' length, looked into her face and said to her: "Mother, mother, I can't do it, I can't," and he ran from her presence. She screamed and fell to the floor and they carried her out.

Governor Pollock said to his secretary, "John, if I can't pardon him I can tell him how to die." He went to the cell, opened God's Word, prayed, talked of Jesus. Heaven bent near, the angels waited, and then on lightning wing sped back to glory with the glad tidings that a soul was born again. And the governor left, wishing him well for the ordeal. Shortly after he had gone, the prisoner said to the watchman, "Who was that man that talked and prayed with me?" He said, "Great God, man, don't you know? That was Governor Pollock." He threw his hands to his head and cried: "My God! My God! The governor here and I didn't know it? Why didn't you tell me that was the governor and I would have thrown my arms about him, buried my fingers in his flesh and would have said, 'Governor, I'll not let you go unless you pardon me; I'll not let you go.'" A few days later, when he stood at the scaffold, feet strapped, hands tied, noose about his neck, black cap and shroud on, just before the trap was sprung he cried, "My God! The governor there and I – " He shot down.

You can't stand before God in the Judgment and say, "Jesus, were you down there in the tabernacle? In my home? In my lodge? Did you want to save me?" Behold! Behold! A greater than the governor is here. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and he waits to be gracious.

"What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?"

CHAPTER XXXI

Our Long Home

Don't let God hang a "For Rent" sign on the mansion that has been prepared for you in heaven. – Billy Sunday.

Vivid, literal and comforting, is Sunday's portrayal of the Christian's long home. He is one of the few preachers who depict heaven so that it ministers to earth. Countless thousands of Christians have been comforted by his realistic pictures of "the land that is fairer than day."

"HEAVEN"

What do I want most of all? A man in Chicago said to me one day, "If I could have all I wanted of any one thing I would take money." He would be a fool, and so would you if you would make a similar choice. There's lots of things money can't do. Money can't buy life; money can't buy health. Andrew Carnegie says, "Anyone who can assure men ten years of life can name his price."

If you should meet with an accident which would require a surgical operation or your life would be despaired of, there is not a man here but would gladly part with all the money he has if that would give him the assurance that he could live twelve months longer.

If you had all the money in the world you couldn't go to the graveyard and put those loved ones back in your arms and have them sit once more in the family circle and hear their voices and listen to their prattle.

A steamer tied up at her wharf, having just returned from an expedition, and as the people walked down the plank their friends met them to congratulate them on their success or encourage them through their defeat. Down came a man I used to know in Fargo, S. D. Friends rushed up and said, "Why, we hear that you were very fortunate."

"Yes, wife and I left here six months ago with hardly anything. Now we have $350,000 in gold dust in the hold of the ship."

Then somebody looked around and said, "Mr. L – , where is your little boy?"

The tears rolled down his cheeks and he said, "We left him buried on the banks of the Yukon beneath the snow and ice, and we would gladly part with all the gold, if we only had our boy."

But all the wealth of the Klondike could not open the grave and put that child back in their arms. Money can't buy the peace of God that passeth understanding. Money can't take the sin out of your life.

Is there any particular kind of life you would like? If you could live one hundred years you wouldn't want to die, would you? I wouldn't. I think there is always something the matter with a fellow that wants to die. I want to stay as long as God will let me stay, but when God's time comes for me to go I'm ready, any hour of the day or night. God can waken me at midnight or in the morning and I'm ready to respond. But if I could live a million years I'd like to stay. I don't want to die. I'm having a good time. God made this world for us to have a good time in. It's nothing but sin that has damned the world and brought it to misery and corruption. God wants you to have a good time. Well, then, how can I get this life that you want and everybody wants, eternal life?

If you are ill the most natural thing for you to do is to go for your doctor. You say, "I don't want to die. Can you help me?"

He looks at you and says, "I have a hundred patients on my hands, all asking the same thing. Not one of them wants to die. They ask me to use my skill and bring to bear all I have learned, but I can't fight back death. I can prescribe for your malady, but I can't prevent death."

"I, Too, Must Die"

Well, go to your philosopher. He it is that reasons out the problems and mysteries of life by the application of reason. Say to him, "Good philosopher, I have come to you for help. I want to live forever and you say that you have the touch-stone of philosophy and that you can describe and solve. Can you help me?"

He says to you, "Young man, my hair and my beard have grown longer and as white as snow, my eyes are dim, my brows are wrinkled, my form bent with the weight of years, my bones are brittle and I am just as far from the solution of that mystery and problem as when I started. I, too, sir, must soon die and sleep beneath the sod."

In my imagination I have stood by the bedside of the dying Pullman-palace-car magnate, George M. Pullman, whose will was probated at $25,000,000, and I have said, "Oh, Mr. Pullman, you will not die, you can bribe death." And I see the pupils of his eyes dilate, his breast heaves, he gasps – and is no more. The undertaker comes and makes an incision in his left arm, pumps in the embalming fluid, beneath whose mysterious power he turns as rigid as ice, and as white as alabaster, and they put his embalmed body in the rosewood coffin, trimmed with silver and gold, and then they put that in a hermetically sealed casket.

The grave-diggers go to Graceland Cemetery, on the shore of Lake Michigan, and dig his grave in the old family lot, nine feet wide, and they put in there Portland cement four and a half feet thick, while it is yet soft, pliable and plastic. A set of workmen drop down into the grave a steel cage with steel bars one inch apart. They bring his body, in the hermetically sealed casket all wrapped about with cloth, and they lower it into the steel cage, and a set of workmen put steel bars across the top and another put concrete and a solid wall of masonry and they bring it up within eighteen inches of the surface; they put back the black loamy soil, then they roll back the sod and with a whisk broom and dust pan they sweep up the dirt, and you would never know that there sleeps the Pullman-palace-car magnate, waiting for the trumpet of Gabriel to sound; for the powers of God will snap his steel, cemented sarcophagus as though it were made of a shell and he will stand before God as any other man.

What does your money amount to? What does your wealth amount to?

I summon the three electrical wizards of the world to my bedside and I say, "Gentlemen, I want to live and I have sent for you to come," and they say to me, "Mr. Sunday, we will flash messages across the sea without wires; we can illuminate the homes and streets of your city and drive your trolley cars and we can kill men with electricity, but we can't prolong life."

And I summon the great Queen Elizabeth, queen of an empire upon which the sun never sets. Three thousand dresses hung in her wardrobe. Her jewels were measured by the peck. Dukes, kings, earls fought for her smiles. I stand by her bedside and I hear her cry "All my possessions for one moment of time!"

I go to Alexander the Great, who won his first battle when he was eighteen, and was King of Macedonia when he was twenty. He sat down on the shore of the Ægean sea, wrapped the drapery of his couch about him and lay down to eternal sleep, the conqueror of all the known world, when he was thirty-five years of age.

I go to Napoleon Bonaparte. Victor Hugo called him the archangel of war. He arose in the air of the nineteenth century like a meteor. His sun rose at Austerlitz; it set at Waterloo. He leaped over the slain of his countrymen to be first consul; and then he vaulted to the throne of the emperor of France. But it was the cruel wanton achievement of insatiate and unsanctified ambition and it led to the barren St. Helena isle. As the storm beat upon the rock, once more he fought at the head of his troops at Austerlitz, at Mt. Tabor, and the Pyramids. Once more he cried, "I'm still the head of the army," and he fell back, and the greatest warrior the world has known since the days of Joshua, was no more. Tonight on the banks of the Seine he lies in his magnificent tomb, with his marshals sleeping where he can summon them, and the battle flags he made famous draped around him, and from the four corners of the earth students and travelers turn aside to do homage to the great military genius.

I want to show you the absolute and utter futility of pinning your hope to a lot of fool things that will damn your soul to hell. There is only one way: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Search the annals of time and the pages of history and where do you find promises like that? Only upon the pages of the Bible do you find them.

You want to live and so do I. You want eternal life and so do I, and I want you to have it. The next question I want to ask is, how can you get it? You have seen things that won't give it to you. How can you get it? All you have tonight or ever will have you will come into possession of in one of three ways – honestly, dishonestly, or as a gift. Honestly: You will work and sweat and therefore give an honest equivalent for what you get. Dishonestly: You will steal. Third, as a gift, you will inherit it. And eternal life must come to you in one of these three ways.

No Substitute for Religion

A great many people believe in a high moral standard. They deal honestly in business and are charitable, but if you think that is going to save you, you are the most mistaken man on God's earth, and you will be the biggest disappointed being that ever lived. You can't hire a substitute in religion. You can't do some deed of kindness or act of philanthropy and substitute that for the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Lots of people will acknowledge their sin in the world, struggle on without Jesus Christ, and do their best to live honorable, upright lives. Your morality will make you a better man or woman, but it will never save your soul in the world.

Supposing you had an apple tree that produced sour apples and you wanted to change the nature of it, and you would ask the advice of people. One would say prune it, and you would buy a pruning hook and cut off the superfluous limbs. You gather the apples and they are still sour. Another man says to fertilize it, and you fertilize it and still it doesn't change the nature of it. Another man says spray it to kill the caterpillars, but the apples are sour just the same. Another man says introduce a graft of another variety.

When I was a little boy, one day my grandfather said to me: "Willie, come on," and he took a ladder, and beeswax, a big jackknife, a saw and some cloth, and we went into the valley. He leaned the ladder against a sour crab-apple tree, climbed up and sawed off some of the limbs, split them and shoved in them some little pear sprouts as big as my finger and twice as long, and around them he tied a string and put in some beeswax. I said, "Grandpa, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm grafting pear sprouts into the sour crab." I said, "What will grow, crab apples or pears?" He said, "Pears; I don't know that I'll ever live to eat the pear – I hope I may – but I know you will." I lived to see those sprouts which were no longer than my finger grow as large as any limb and I climbed the tree and picked and ate the pears. He introduced a graft of another variety and that changed the nature of the tree.

And so you can't change yourself with books. That which is flesh is flesh, no matter whether it is cultivated flesh, or ignorant flesh or common, ordinary flesh. That which is flesh is flesh, and all your lodges, all your money on God Almighty's earth can never change your nature. Never. That's got to come by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That's the only way you will ever get it changed. We have more people with fool ways trying to get into heaven, and there's only one way to do and that is by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Here are two men. One man born with hereditary tendencies toward bad, a bad father, a bad mother and bad grandparents. He has bad blood in his veins and he turns as naturally to sin as a duck to water. There he is, down and out, a booze fighter and the off-scouring scum of the earth. I go to him in his squalor and want and unhappiness, and say to him: "God has included all that sin that he may have mercy on all. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour?"