The Devil's Boomerangs ! 1

The devil's Boomerangs # 1

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment" (Ecc. 11:9).

You can always get the truth out of the Bible.

Of course you can always find truth elsewhere, but never from so clear a source. Nothing was ever printed more true than "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap."

God will not coerce and attempt to force any man to be a Christian. When he dies, however, he will be judged for his sins. He must face the day of judgment.

Do as you please. Lie, steal, booze, fight, prostitute. God won't stop you. Do as you please until the undertaker comes and puts you in a coffin and then the Lord will have His way. Lives of pleasure shall have an end, the wicked shall not live half their days.

If I sat in the pew and you were up here preaching there are four questions I would ask that you answer satisfactorily before you could win me.

First, Are you kindly disposed to me? Second: Do you want to help me? Third: Do you know what you are talking about? Fourth: Do you practice what you preach?

No man can say I am not kindly disposed to him. I do want to help every man and woman. I have read and studied and everything I preach comes from the Bible. What I say this afternoon is based on indisputable facts. I have no ambition except to alleviate the misery and suffering that comes through sin. I'll not pump you full of hot air, and what I preach I'll practice. If I didn't practice what I preach I'd leave this platform and never try to speak to an audience again.

If sin wasn't so deceitful it would not be so attractive.

The devil doesn't let a man stop to think what he is doing, that in every added indulgence in a drink he grows weaker. Some people think that to be a Christian means to be a weakling sort of a sissified individual. When I played baseball and was serving the devil, I circled the bases in fourteen second from a standing point, and I believe I can do it now. No man has ever beaten that. Han Lobert and some of the rest may have equaled it, but none have ever beaten it. I used to be handy with my dukes, too, before I became a Christian, and I can go so fast now for five rounds you can't see me for dust.

When I was with the Chicago Y.M.C.A, I did the saloon route for a time handing out invitations to men's meetings in Farwell Hall. One day I met a young man I had known in Iowa. He was half drunk and a broken down, drunken bum came along. I told my friend that if he persisted in drinking he would become a bum. He laughed and said he would never be a drunkard. One year later he was down and out, his job gone and his home wrecked.

No man ever started out with the intention of becoming a drunkard. Line up all the drunkards on earth and ask them and they will all tell you they never intended to be drunkards. They all started as moderate drinkers.

Christianity is capital and capital is character. Your character is what you do business with and there's a big difference between character and reputation. Reputation is what people think about you, and character is what God, your wife and the angel's know about you.

For a man to preach and practice the gospel of Jesus Christ makes him trustworthy. There was a time when people wouldn't trust me to hold a yellow dog fifteen minutes.

Many men live only for money. They care for nothing else, but I believe they are in the minority. You cannot measure a man's success by the rattle of the cash register. All some men have is money. Subtract $50,000, booze and women from some men and you have nothing left.

I haven't a word to say against the rich man who got his wealth honestly and is trying to do good with it. The Bible doesn't have a thing in it against a man because he's rich. Look at Solomon. He was worth about $6,000,000,000, according to our standard of gold and silver. Yet he was a Godly man. 

But there's a lot of good-for-nothing lobsters who think they are called by God to go up and down the country harping for a limitation of wealth and cussing and damning the rich man for every dollar he has, while they sit around and cuss and damn and never work.

If you want to use your genius and ability to get all you can and use the surplus over your own needs for the good of humanity, I hope you all will be millionaires. If you want to get all you can, and can  all you get, I hope you'll all go to the poorhouse.

When Commodore Vanderbilt who was worth $200,000,000, died, he called in a minister and asked him to sing for him that old song Vanderbilt's mother used to sing in Moravia, "Come ye sinners, poor and needy!"

~Billy Sunday~

(continued with # 2)