Raised as a simple farm boy in the south....he would have had his future mapped out for him had it not been that he was...."saved"....at revival services. I know the feeling....I hope that you know the feeling....he had to share the gospel....he just had to. He went to school to be a preacher.....and he seemingly had all the tools necessary. His would just be a name locally in North Carolina that some people would recognize....'Oh yes....I remember Billy Graham....fine young preacher.....whatever happened to him?"
The day and the age suited him well....as revival tents were common in the South....but in Los Angeles....well Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple was still flourishing....but would a Baptist fundamentalist/evangelical preacher draw crowds? God had plans. Famed publisher William Randolph Hearst saw something in Graham that he liked. Maybe it was the stance on anti-communism? Whatever....he put out the order to all of his newspapers to...."Puff Graham"....in other words.....make this guy look good.Well that was the beginning....and Billy Graham would travel the world with his crusades....visit with kings....rub elbows with celebrities.....and be friends with presidents. His crusades were not perfect. One survey said that only 3% of those that went forward stayed with their belief. It was more likely the findings of another survey where 12% or thereabouts of those were brought to Christ in those crusades. Over the decades the numbers added up to multitudes that were brought to Christ through that farm boy!
Billy Graham wasn't perfect. Who among our heroes was....not Luther....not Calvin....not the Puritans....not Edwards....maybe Spurgeon? I'm kidding of course....all of them up to and including today were and are mere men touched by God's Holy Spirit....capable just as we are of even major mistakes. As wonderful as was the intellect of C. S. Lewis....his theology at times was terrible. R. C. missed a couple of important things....and John MacArthur fell into the slough of politics. And as for me? I hope I get some things right.
Well Billy Graham also made some doozies. He got way too tangled up in politics...way too tangled up! His overall ministry changed somewhere in the 80s. He warned America again and again and again....and he even questioned if his previous evangelistic gospel messages were as strong as they should have been....but he gave something else to America and the church. He was our national pastor....and a good one....with a profound effect of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the whole world!
We all know most of this....but what we might want to consider is his last decade. He didn't appear in public all that much....staying around the old homestead at Montreat. What went through his mind as he saw Obama and Trump take center stage in American politics? I tend to think he might have been like Daniel....who had a glimpse of what the end would be like....and it made him physically ill. I think that he may have been stricken with grief at how bad things were....but along with that he would have remembered his own words....a few of them that were...."America....prepare to meet thy God."
Billy Graham's last official book was from 2015 titled....Where I Am....Heaven, Eternity, And Our Life Beyond. He was saying in that title that if he dies....that this is where he'll be! It is one of my favorite Billy Graham books and can almost always be found on a Barnes & Noble shelf.
Age doesn't guarantee anything as far as wisdom in a Christian....but on the other hand....as a rule of thumb....you might want to at least consider what greyheads or greybeards say....for as I wrote in a 2016 post on this same Billy Graham book....alluding to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress....and the river that has to be crossed at the end...."I see that river today and can faintly hear the rejoicing emanating from the beautiful city beyond; this simply because the more one walks toward the light of the Celestial City, the less one hears the barkers and minstrels of Vanity Fair."
