Billy Sunday on cards

“If you’ve got any cards in your home you’d better throw them in the furnace when you get back there or else throw your Bibles in the furnace. The two won’t mix. Oh, you needn’t gasp! I am handing it to you straight!”… “You listen to me! I defy anybody to contradict what I have to say about the matter.”… “When I talk to you about card playing in your home, I am trying to pound through your head that every pack of cards is but another stepping stone to hell. I think the old painted hag or the broken-down roue, hanging around the tables at Monte Carlo, or a down-and-out card sharp bucking a crooked game in a gambling joint at 3 o’clock in the morning a blamed sight more respectable than the church people or the professed Christian who permits card playing in his home.”… “If you can’t see any harm in this kind of thing, why I guess the Lord will let you out as an idiot.”

Billy Sunday, “Dancing, Drinking, Card-Playing” In A Treasury of Great Preaching, Vol. 7 Dallas: Word Books, 1995. 282ff.

Back when preachers were preachers and card playing was damnable. How things have changed. I wonder what tone Billy Sunday would take in preaching to a contemporary church…

Preaching.org

On a personal note my comments made the front page of Preaching.org yesterday. I said:

It as been suggested that preaching is not at heart arrogant because we are not proclaiming our own message but God’s. If people have a problem with what we are saying then they should take it up with God and not blame us for being arrogant. The difficulty with this is that it requires a recognition of God’s right to dictate conditions. This objection can be overcome but only if one presupposes the existence of God. Those who call Christians arrogant no doubt disclaim this. Therefore they can either judge us as arrogant or misguided but they cannot expect their objection to be taken seriously inside a church. Its very existence reflects attendees’ belief in God and their desire to know his will for their lives. Let us therefore preach to his heart’s content!

I think that everyone can agree that within the medium of a church service it is more than appropriate to preach the full Word of God. Preaching.org is run by Dr. Kent Anderson and is worth checking out although to comment you will either need to buy his book Choosing to Preach, which includes an introductory membership, or pay $20 per year.