Graham centre meets Kim Il-sung in North Korea in The Billy Graham rule. Or, as it is also now known, the Mike Pence rule. Is the Pence rule chivalrous or sexist? It's possible to find hope in the darkest of moments. Everyone could be saved - even a notorious gangster. Cohen did not take up the suggestion. The man they called God's Ambassador. He regretted his involvement in politics. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Billy Graham was close to many US presidents over the decades. It makes learning from others who hold different views almost impossible. It also treats critics of Trump, Christian and non-Christian alike, not as fellow citizens but as agents of Satan.
I believe, too, that they have convinced themselves that they are acting faithfully. In their zeal to defend Donald Trump, they are leveling rash and careless attacks. And they are doing significant, if unintentional, harm to the Christian witness. However admirable these men might be in their personal lives, their portrayal of Christianity to a watching world is of a faith coiled with anger, ungracious and harsh, rigid and resentful, overflowing with grievances.
They speak as if gripped by fear, which gives rise to antipathy toward others, which in turn creates unnecessary divisions and hostility. In , Metaxas described America as facing an existential crisis akin to the Civil War. As a result, they make the job of the so-called New Atheists so much easier than it would otherwise be.
When a close friend of mine who is an atheist hears people like Graham and Metaxas speaking as they do, he thinks Christianity is unreasonable, politically weaponized, and utterly unappealing. Read: How Trump is remaking Evangelicalism. Lewis and J. Tolkien never lost their wonder and enchantment with the world. It seems to me that Christians in public life should make a compelling case for social order and moral excellence.
They should speak truth even when it cuts against the cultural grain—including the cultural grain within their own Christian subcultures—but do so with a generosity of spirit, all the while offering a healing touch, especially to those who are suffering and living in the shadows of society.
Those of us of the Christian faith should do a much better job than we do at modeling listening well to others, learning their stories and struggles, hearing their doubts, welcoming them, and being agents of reconciliation and redemption. Nearly 3 million have responded to the invitation he offers at the end of his sermons.
When America needs a chaplain or pastor to help inaugurate or bury a president or to bring comfort in times of terrible tragedy, it turns, more often than not, to him.
For virtually every year since the s, he has been a fixture on lists of the ten most admired people in America or the world. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a Ladies Home Journal survey once ranked the famed evangelist second only to God in the category "achievements in religion.
Bob's strict rule intolerable. He then followed a friend to Florida Bible Institute, where he began preaching and changed his denominational affiliation from Associate Reformed Presbyterian to Southern Baptist. To round out his intensive but academically narrow education, he moved north to Wheaton College, where he met and married Ruth Bell, the daughter of a medical missionary, and undertook his first and only stint as a local pastor.
In Graham became the field representative of a dynamic evangelistic movement known as Youth for Christ International. In this role, he toured the United States and much of Great Britain and Europe, teaching local church leaders how to organize youth rallies. He also forged friendships with scores of Christian leaders who would later join his organization or provide critical assistance to his crusades when he visited their cities throughout the world.
Graham gained further exposure and stature through nationally publicized crusades in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, and other major cities from to , and through his Hour of Decision radio program, begun in Stunningly successful months-long revivals in London and New York , triumphant tours of the Continent and the Far East, the founding of Christianity Today magazine , the launching of nationwide television broadcasts on ABC , and a public friendship with President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard Nixon firmly established him as the acknowledged standard-bearer for evangelical Christianity.
As Graham's prestige and influence grew, particularly among "mainline" non-evangelical Christians, he drew criticism from fundamentalists who felt his cooperation with churches affiliated with the National and World Council of Churches signaled a compromise with the corrupting forces of modernism.
Bob Jones accused him of peddling a "discount type of religion" and "sacrificing the cause of evangelism on the altar of temporary convenience.
The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love. Graham was a spellbinding presence on the stage, gaining national attention during an eight-week tent crusade in Los Angeles in The intensity of his lanky, handsome frame, pointing his finger, his arms chopping the air, caught the eye of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst.
Graham was on the road to become the world's most famous preacher. From the portable pulpit that accompanied him around the world, Graham talked about a Gospel of grace and forgiveness rather than guilt and judgment. He can forgive you and give you a new life. Calvin Thielman, pastor emeritus of Montreat Presbyterian Church where Graham and his family regularly worship. Thielman, who died in , had been friends with Graham for nearly 50 years, and he never felt intimidated in the pulpit having the world's most famous preacher sitting in the pews.
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