A Visit to Billy Sunday’s House

While vacationing in Indiana last week, I visited the home of Billy Sunday (1862-1935) in Winona Lake. At his wife Nell’s request, it has been kept just the way it was when they lived there. I also visited the nearby Winona History Center which houses several exhibits from Sunday’s life and ministry.

Having been a professional baseball player in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, Sunday experienced a dramatic conversion and became consumed with a desire to work for God and see souls saved. He stepped away from his baseball career (taking a drastic pay cut) and began working for the YMCA before traveling as an evangelist.

It is believed that Billy Sunday preached to 100 million people and saw 300,000 converts. Because of the tabernacles that were specially constructed for his meetings, he invited those making a decision for Christ to “walk the sawdust trail.” During a ten-week evangelistic crusade in Boston in 1916, an estimated 1,500,000 heard him preach in the auditorium that seated 18,000 — 65,000 were saved in those meetings.

Billy Sunday died on November 6, 1935, one week after preaching his final sermon. His text was Acts 16:30 — “What must I do to be saved?” 

Quotes by Billy Sunday

“Nowadays we think we are too smart to believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus and too well educated to believe in the Resurrection. That’s why people are going to the devil in multitudes.”

“I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring a dictionary.”

“I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I have a foot. I’ll fight it as long as I have a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I have a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth.”

“Whiskey is all right in its place, but its place is in hell.”

“They say to me, ‘Bill, you rub the fur the wrong way.’  I don’t; let the cats turn around.”

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

“When is a revival needed? When carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep.”

“And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don’t know me yet.”

“More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.”

“The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.”