Prayer for the USA

 

Today I bear my soul to you. (climbing on the soapbox now)

So, no spiritual leader present at the 10 year remembrance of 9/11? Can't recognize God? No Trade Center cross? 
This is what I'm praying for; God please send along a person who will speak the truth openly.
No matter what.

Perhaps someone like Billy Sunday.
Billy was three months old when his father died, his mother sent him to live in an orphange.

• From 1883 - 1891 he played professional baseball. (BTW he struck out his first 13 times at bat.)
• In 1886 he walked into the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Ill. and was introduced to the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
• In 1891 he set the record for stolen bases for the Pittsburg Pirates.
• His salary with the Pirates grows to $500 a month, he left baseball that year to...  
• Work for the Salvation army for $84 a month. In 1894 the Pirates offer him $2000 a month. He refuses.
• In 1897 Sunday held his first week of preaching services; 100 people accept Jesus Christ as Savior.
• He traveled the eastern part of the USA, preaching Jesus Christ until his death in 1935.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Books,%20Tracts%20&%20Preaching/Printed%20Sermons/Billy%20Sunday/what_shall_i_do_then_with_jesus.htm

The mission in downtown Chicago.

"He attacked preaching with the fierce competitiveness of a turn-of-the-century ballplayer."


My first introduction to Billy Sunday was when Sideline Grandpa and I traveled to Winona Lake, Indiana in the 1980's to bring our oldest son to college.

As we wandered around the lake and adjacent park we discovered an old wooden meeting house called The Billy Sunday Tabernacle. I had never heard of him before that day.
The building had wooden planks as seating, the sides with wooden awning "windows" designed to be propped open for the benefit of the overflow crowd. 
It was built in the early 1900's and truly of a bygone era.

"By his actions he kept the audience transfixed, hanging upon his every word and movement. He jumped on a chair; down on the floor again. He beat out a cadence with his fist upon the platform in order to emphasize a series of points; on top of the pulpit, he tore off his coat and collar and threw them to the stage ...

Detroit built a tabernacle for the Billy Sunday meetings held in 1916.
For the Detroit campaign;
*dime-store king S.S. Kresge moved out of his palatial home so Sunday could use it as his battlefield headquarters.
*automaker Henry M. Leland gave him a new $8,000 Cadillac as a "personal thanks offering."
*ex-governor, Detroit police chief and some pro baseball players appeared with him at the revivals.
*And, merchant J. L. Hudson was a regular at the sermons.

Billy Sunday's Michigan crusade began in early September and lasted until early November. He claimed 2 million came to see him and 200,000 were converted.


Just imagine someone brazenly saying this today;

"The church needs fighting men, Sunday said, not those "hog-jowled, weasel-eyed, sponge-columned, mushy-fisted, jelly-spined, pussy-footing, four-flushing, charlotte russe Christians.
"Lord save us from off-handed, flabby-cheeked, brittle-boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, ossified, three-karat Christianity."

His Detroit revival tabernacle stood on a large field between Woodward and Cass at Forest. His stage held a choir of 5,000 singers. And, from that stage he led a frontal assault on sin.

"He appeared on the platform high above the sea of clean shining faces like a wispy cross between a businessman and an angel. Attired in a light gray suit and white shoes, a white negligee shirt of the finest linen and a white silk tie to match, Sunday feinted, walked and ran, crouched and jumped, from one end of the stage to the other, sweating from his gyrations until he was wet as a rag held under a pump.



Sunday's Detroit crusade tabernacle under construction in 1916.

Sunday's Detroit crusade tabernacle under construction in 1916.



"There is an insidious heresy: the teaching about the universal Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, the teaching that we are all one flesh. But if you are not a child of God, you are a creature of God. We are all creatures of God. (Nobody is a child of God but a Christian.) You are my brother in the flesh; that is, you are human and I am human. But you are not my brother in the spirit unless you are a Christian. God is the Creator of us all, but God is the Father of none but those who believe in Jesus Christ.

There was one way you came into the world--you were born. There is one way you will get into Heaven--you must be born again. You have had a physical birth. You must have a spiritual birth and that must come through Jesus Christ as the Son of God." Billy Sunday.

Praying for this kind of courage in men and women today and a movement of the Holy Spirit on the USA..
Praying for this...
Praying..
S.G....