I love to read the sermons of preachers of days gone by. Maybe it is because some of those stalwart characters were my contemporaries – almost.

There was Mordecai Ham (1876-1959), referred to as the Iron Man of God. He was raised in Kentucky and Arkansas and a great soul winner. Catholics threatened him, thugs threatened to kidnap his son, and on one occasion they knocked him down in the street with a car and dragged him for several blocks on the bumper. A man wielding a .45 pistol once accosted him, but he resisted all the threats on his life and was the man who was preaching when Billy Graham got saved.

Baxter McClendon – “Cyclone Mac” – (1879-1935) was an itinerant Methodist preacher who impacted the western part of North Carolina where I grew up as a boy. His circuit riding days were a few years before my time, but as a lad I could sit for hours and listen to the stories about Cyclone Mac’s revival campaigns.

Rodney “Gipsy” Smith (1860-1947) was born in England, but often came to America to preach. Although he often preached to thousands of people, on his third trip to America he was invited to hold special “drawing room” meetings for some of the elite in one of the largest mansions on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

It was not a public meeting, but personal letters were sent to various aristocratic ladies of New York, inviting them to be present. When he faced Mrs. John D. Rockefeller and her peers, he simply preached on “Repentance.” He said, “I only remembered that they were sinners needing a Savior.”

Sam Porter Jones (1847-1906), described as the South’s most famous preacher in the late nineteenth century, was born in Oak Bowery, Ala. However, he moved with his family to Cartersville, where he grew up and lived for most of his life.

Jones overcame early battles with alcohol, was called to preach the gospel, and began to hone his oratorical skills. A revival in Nashville, Tenn., in 1885 put Jones in the national limelight. Tom Ryman, whose riverboats carried much of Nashville’s river trade and also featured barrooms, gambling casinos, and dancing girls, was converted in that meeting.

Because of Ryman’s newfound religious zeal, he cleaned up his boats and constructed a building where Jones and other preachers could hold revivals. Ryman’s Union Gospel Tabernacle later became the home of the Grand Old Opry.

William “Billy” Ashley Sunday (1862-1935) was the most colorful of the evangelists in those days. Sunday, born in Iowa, was a professional baseball player who became a fiery preacher.

Sunday said, “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I’ve got a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old and fistless and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition.”

Sunday also had a passion for revival. He asked the question, “When is revival needed?”

He also provided the answer to his own question; and his response is as relevant today as it was 80 years ago. He contended that revival is needed “when the members are careless and unconcerned, when the church has degenerated into a third-rate amusement joint, with religion left out.”

Sunday continued, “Revival is needed when carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep, because it is the duty of the church to awaken and work and labor for the men and women of the city as it is the duty of the fire department to rush out when the call sounds. What would you think of the fire department if it slept while the town burned?

“Revival is needed when Christians have lost the spirit of prayer, when the church wants revival and feels the need of it.”

Space will not permit a full disclosure of Sunday’s appeal for revival, but nothing short of revival will restore our nation’s reason and sanity today. I long for revival. I pray for revival. I am trusting God for revival. Maybe a heart-cry for revival is old fashioned in this postmodern culture, but Sunday said something else that made great sense to me.

Sunday said, “I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world’s heart for two thousand years.”

I vote for a heartwarming!