You will listen to the voice of one of the best known evangelists of the twentieth century, a former baseball player named Billy Sunday. By the time he died in 1935, he had preached to millions of people, and it’s estimated that something like three hundred thousand decided to follow Jesus Christ at his more than two hundred evangelistic crusades. In this rare sound byte, Billy Sunday is preaching on one of his favourite subjects – the evils of alcohol – and he was pretty good at it. Countless people decided to quit drinking as a result of having been to a Billy Sunday meeting.
But that was 100 years ago, and today, you don’t hear much about abstinence anymore. Perhaps the preachers of yesterday were just caught up in the fervour of the prohibition movement – or maybe they were on to something.