The Life and Sayings of Sam P. Jones - Mrs Jones - ebook

Samuel Porter Jones was born on October 16, 1847 in Oak Bowery, Alabama following in his father’s footsteps becoming a brilliant lawyer, after a spell in the Union Army. But he became well known, not for his profession, but for his alcoholism! At one point his drinking took him down-hill rapidly, losing his job and finally reducing him to shoveling coal for twelve hours a day.

After his father died, in a drunken state he saw his pitiful reflection in a bar-room mirror, smashed his glass and fell to his knees, crying to God for mercy. Right there he experienced a dramatic conversion to Christ. After a few days of thorough alcohol withdrawal he returned home to rebuild a relationship with his wife and child. She was a believer and had prayed for this to happen for years.

One week later he preached his first sermon and in a short time set out as a Methodist travelling preacher, later becoming one of Southern Methodism’s most popular evangelists. He is well-defined as a revivalistic evangelist who won an estimated 500,000 people to Christ in the South while Moody saw 750,000 converts in the North. In the last years of his life, he preached almost daily to audiences of 10,000 and more in churches, public halls and camp-meetings.