Evangelist
Billy Graham (AD 1918 - 2018) led a remarkable life. Even the dates of his birth and death are
remarkable. He trusted Jesus Christ as
his Savior in 1934 in a revival led by Evangelist Mordecai Ham (AD 1877-1961). Graham has been known for his evangelistic
work, preaching to millions, his books, personal morality, humility, fidelity in
finances, opposing racial segregation, and always pointing people to
Jesus.
His
son, Franklin Graham is faithfully and ably carrying on the ministry of the
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse.
Below
are a few of many comments about Evangelist Billy Graham.
Ken
Hemphill
“Dr
Graham’s promotion to heaven has allowed those commenting on his death to point
people to JESUS. Clearly he had the gift and calling of the evangelist. Why not
schedule an evangelistic meeting and use a gifted vocational evangelist to
honor Dr. Graham and share JESUS.”
-Ken Hemphill; February 22, 2018; on twitter.com. Dr. Hemphill is past president of Southwestern
Baptist Theological Seminary and now serves as an administrator at North
Greenville University.
George
W. Bush
“God's
work within me began in earnest with Billy's outreach,” Bush wrote in the [Wall
Street] Journal February 23. “His care and his teachings were the real
beginning of my faith walk - and the start of the end of my drinking. I
couldn't have given up alcohol on my own. But in 1986, at 40, I finally found
the strength to quit. That strength came from love I had felt from my earliest
days and from faith I didn't fully discover until my later years.”
Bush,
America's 43rd president, wrote of the 1985 instance when Graham invited him on
a walk around the Bush family estate in Maine and their conversation turned to
spiritual matters.
"I
mentioned something I'd been thinking about for a while - that reading the
Bible might help make me a better person," Bush wrote. "He told me
about one of the Bible's most fundamental lessons: One should strive to be
better, but we're all sinners who earn God's love not through our good deeds,
but through His grace. It was a profound concept, one I did not fully grasp that
day. But Billy had planted a seed. His thoughtful explanation made the soil
less hard, the brambles less thick.
-President George W. Bush, in Wall
Street Journal; BP.
Richard
Land
"I
grew up in a home with a Christian father because of Billy Graham. Dr. Graham
came to Houston’s Rice Stadium for a crusade in the early 1950s. Some of the
men from the local Baptist church in our neighborhood invited my father to go
with them to hear Billy Graham.
It
was there that my father accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior and
became a faithful deacon and Christian father for the rest of his life. Similar
stories have been repeated literally hundreds of thousands of times across the
globe. I am eternally grateful that God sent Billy Graham to us and that he
answered God’s call and became the greatest messenger for the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ since the Apostles."
- Richard Land, president of Southern
Evangelical Seminary and former president of the SBC Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission. BP
Paige
Patterson
"The
eyes of a North Carolina farm boy sparkled as never before this morning when
Billy Graham entered heaven. After nearly 100 years spent largely in an effort
to 'rescue the perishing and care for the dying,' the world's evangelist was
called home to a prophet's reward.
"Never
accused of the hoarding of wealth or of sexual misconduct, his careful
practices of conduct place him in a category of a man whose life was a
proclamation of Christ as well as His message. His faithfulness to the
proclamation of God's plan of redemption - undergirded by his initiatives on
racial justice and his concern for the lost -- set the standard for all who
would attempt to preach the riches of the Gospel. His allegiance to sacred
Scripture was legendary. Never did he allow doubt to shake his confidence in
God's Word."
-Paige Patterson, president, SWBTS
-David
R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, 2-27-AD 2018.
More
articles in lower right margin.
