It's up to you, Repent or go to Hell.

Billy Sunday
Postcard published in 1908

Famed evangelist Billy Sunday was born in 1862 and raised in Ames and Nevada.   During his early years as a professional baseball player (1883 - 1890), he underwent a religious conversion and became the most popular evangelist of his time, supposedly preaching to over 100 million people in his many tent and tabernacle revivals.  - more -

Billy Sunday said, Paul said he would rather speak five words that were understood than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.  That hits me.  I want people to know what I mean, and that's why I try to get down where they live.  What do I care if some puff-eyed, dainty little dibbly-dibbly preacher goes tibbly-tibbling around because I use plain Anglo-Saxon words.

They say to me, "Bill, you rub the fur the wrong way."  I don't; let the cats turn 'round.

It isn't a good thing to have synonyms for sin.  Adultery is adultery, even though you call it affinity.  The seventh commandment is not: "Thou shalt not commit affinity."

A church is not dropped down on a street corner to decorate the corner and be the property of a certain denomination.

Whan a baby is born, what do you do with it?  Put it in a refrigerator?  That's a good place for a dead chicken, and cold meat, but a poor place for babies.  Then don't put these new converts, "babes in Christ," into refrigerator churches.

Don't give a pug-nosed bulldog the love a baby ought to be getting.

I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.

It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.

I'm against everything that the devil is in favor of.

The carpet in front of the mirrors of some of you people is worn threadbare, while at the side of your bed where you should kneel in prayer it is as good as the day you put it down.

Some homes need a hickory switch a good deal more than they do a piano.

The Church gives the people what they need; the theater gives them what they want.

More examples of Billy Sunday's preaching stances

Your reputation is what people say about you.  Your character is what God and your wife know about you.

If you took no more care of yourself physically than spiritually, you'd be just as dried up physically as you are spiritually.

If nine-tenths of you were as weak physically as you are spiritually, you couldn't walk.

The man who lives for himself alone will be the sole mourner at his own funeral.

Character needs no epitaph.  You can bury the man, but character will beat the hearse back from the graveyard and it will travel up and down the streets while you are under the sod.  It will bless or blight long after your name is forgotten.

All that God has ever done to save this old world, has been done through men and women of flesh and blood like ourselves.

Nearly everybody is stuck up about something.  Some people are even proud that they aren't proud.

God likes a little humor, as is evidenced by the fact that he made the monkey, the parrot -- and some of you people.

Yank some of the groans out of your prayers, and shove in some shouts.

Don't look as if your religion hurt you.

If you want milk and honey on your bread, you'll have to go into the land where there are giants.

The Bible was not intended for a science any more than a crowbar is intended for a toothpick.  The Bible was written to tell men that they might live, and it's true today.

First page of the tract Billy Sunday supplied each convert

This building erected in Scranton, Pennsylvania was typical of Billy Sunday tabernacles.  The floor was usually covered with sawdust to deaden the sound. For safety concerns, there was a door at the end of each aisle, and it was said that no board was fastened with more than two nails in case of panic.