WWUTT 635 Q&A Remembering Billy Graham?

The Rev. Billy Graham was a man of impeccable character. He preached the gospel with passion, but he had some deeply troubling issues in his doctrine.

Can we learn from his sins and still see him as a man worthy of imitating when we understand the text?

This is When We Understand The Text, teaching through the Bible daily to encourage your time in the Word. Find all our videos and transcripts to those videos at our website www .utt

.com. With today's Q &A, here's Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome.

Unfortunately, we do not have Kosti on the show this week. Yeah, that's so sad. I think we've tried this three or four times.

Yes, that's okay though. Yeah, for whatever reason, we just can't seem to get it to line up. But surely you have heard, maybe you haven't heard.

Maybe not. But yesterday, Benny Hinn made a comment where he sounded pseudo apologetic about the prosperity gospel.

Really? Yes. I did not know. And so because of that development, that's why

Kosti is not on the program today. I wanted to ask him about that. I'm sure he was anticipating that too.

I was like, I get to be the first to ask Kosti about this interview. But no, I probably won't be.

That's okay. But Irrelevant Magazine posted an article and Justin Peters featured this on his

Twitter page where Benny Hinn said that he's guilty of taking the prosperity gospel outside of what the

Bible teaches. However, it's not an apology and it's not repentance. Right.

It's very light. It's more of an acknowledgement? Well, it's just kind of light fare. It's just Benny saying basically,

I may have taken prosperity theology a little bit farther than the Bible intends.

But there's no apology for, I mean, the false prophecies that he's made. Statements that he's made concerning God and the

Trinity. Maybe God's working on his heart. We could pray for that. Let's do.

And certainly ask Kosti about it. Maybe he's able to reach out. And this is, I guess it was Benny doing some reflection following Billy Graham's passing.

And that's because that's kind of the context in which he made the statement. When you always self -reflect.

Unfortunately, we can't receive this as an apology. And I think that Justin Peters really expanded upon that very pointedly when he said that this is not repentance.

He's not repenting of some of the more egregious things that he's done. Especially when you consider that prosperity theology requires of its hearers that they give to the teacher.

And so Benny has literally taken millions of dollars from people who have given to his ministry, expecting to receive some sort of healing or miracle from God and have not gotten anything.

So that's just crazy. So true repentance on Benny's part would be admitting that he's defrauded people and that he would hopefully have like a

Zacchaeus sort of repentance where he's giving back as much as he can to those people as much as it would be in his power to do so.

Giving back to those that he's taken money from. But that's not the heart that we see coming from Benny Hinn. It's just musing.

It's just in light of Billy Graham's passing, him saying something effective, you know what? I may not be teaching right on the prosperity theology, but there's no indication here that his heart is truly repentant.

Let's pray. Let's pray that God is working on his heart. Let's do that. And for Costi as well, because some things that have come up with him and his family as a result of this statement that Benny has made.

So Lord, we do pray that Benny would indeed consider the things that he has said that someone and perhaps

Costi, because of the repentance that's come into Costi's heart, that he might be able to minister to his uncle and convict him of his sin, that he might know what he has done has been opposed to God and to your word and that he would truly experience a deep and sorrowful repentance for the things that he's been teaching for decades.

We pray that your word would truly have an impact on his life as he has been a liar and a deceiver, a deceiver and a twister of the word, but now truly reading the

Bible with a spiritual heart, not as the natural man, but from the spirit of God, may those words penetrate his life and convict him of sin and lead him to the truth of Jesus Christ.

What has started with Costi, may it go through the rest of the Hinn family. And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. All right. So we get to questions on the subject of Billy Graham.

That's what our first question has to do with. Of course, Billy passed away this, I guess it was

Wednesday. I don't remember. It's been a... The whirlwind of a week. I know it has been a long week.

We've had two ice storms in one week, at least here in Kansas. So I know that you got a question from somebody on Twitter who sent you an article about Billy Graham and said, would you and Gabe respond to this?

Joel from Georgia sent this question. He said, hello, Pastor Gabe and Miss Becky. At the time of this email, it's been a while since I heard of the passing of Reverend Graham.

Although I do have a few questions about his legacy. You mentioned multiple times that your grandmother was saved via a

Billy Graham crusade. I mentioned that on Twitter this week. I guess I've talked about that on the podcast before. I think so.

I think you have. Joel is attentive. Was Billy Graham a true believer? I'm somewhat skeptical due to his ties to Pat Robertson and others of the evangelical movement.

Also, he was an advocate for mass conversions, which led to quantity, not quality conversions.

What were his thoughts on reform theology? Did he ever talk to figures such as the late Dr. R .C. Sproul? I hope these questions are valid.

If it does not make the Q &A, I hope that you can respond to this email. Billy Graham was an evangelist who taught a very basic gospel.

I mean, it was the basic message of the gospel. Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, right?

The message of the gospel demands that you respond to it and that you would turn from sin and you would follow

Jesus Christ. And the Bible says that all who believe in him will be saved. I really appreciate something that Douglas Wilson wrote, and he posted this on his blog yesterday.

Billy Graham was greatly used by God in his principal calling, which was as a preacher,

Billy Graham preached the basic gospel. He declared over and over and over again the objective reality of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He preached this message in person, face to face to more people than one man has ever preached to in human history.

He consistently preached for a decision. He never made the mistake that John Newton identified in preaching, where a poor sermon is like a letter sent off but addressed to nobody owned by nobody.

And if a hundred people were to read it, not one of them would think of himself concerned in its contents.

Billy Graham preached for a decision and he summoned men and women, boys and girls to respond to this gospel in a very personal way.

He basically told the world to come to Jesus. And I think that was a good summary of Billy Graham's preaching over the course of his crusades in the decades that he was an evangelistic preacher.

Having said that though, there were some serious problems with his theology.

He was an Arminian. He believed that you make the decision whether or not to follow

Jesus and that God has not predestined those from the foundation of the world whom he means to save.

That was not Billy Graham's doctrine. And he believed in decision evangelism, which is, hey, everybody come forward and pray this prayer and you will be saved.

And because of that, because of the success of the Billy Graham crusade and that they were known for doing that kind of decision evangelism, this is one of the reasons why a pastor could hardly get a job at a church in America today if he did not agree to do altar calls.

Oh. I mean, there are churches that don't do it. Ours doesn't. Right. But if you were to try to get a job as a preacher in most churches and say,

I'm not going to do an altar call, they wouldn't hire you. Right. And that's because of what the, of the influence that the

Billy Graham crusades had. And so I think in that sense that the crusades did great harm.

And there's been a lot of research that is done as to the level of impact that those crusades actually had.

D .A. Carson even posted the results of some of those things in one of his books. I can't remember which one it was now, but also in The Way of the

Master by Ray Comfort. He also talked about the results of those crusades and that only two or three percent of people who made a decision at a

Billy Graham crusade were still attending a church five years later. And so it just goes to show that that the decision evangelism really does not make a significant change in a person's life.

Though thousands of people will come forward and pray that prayer and claim to have made a decision, it is largely contributed to apostasy or false conversion.

And that's one of the great concerns that I've had of the Billy Graham crusades in general. However, I will say this.

I don't really think that's Billy Graham's fault. Oh. I think that people elevated Graham to that sort of position, but it was never really his agenda.

He wasn't trying to begin some sort of ministry that was going to fill up stadiums with thousands and thousands of people.

It was just kind of a perfect storm of events that happened in the 40s and 50s in which Graham kind of became that quintessential character.

Yeah, people cling on to. Right. And followed his method and loved the way that he preached and how basic it was.

Right. But I think that as far as his preaching of the gospel was concerned, he was a faithful minister in that respect.

And there were, even though you're talking about two or three percent of people you could actually attribute to maybe having a genuine conversion, you're still talking about hundreds of thousands of people.

I mean, that's true. I mean, that's - When you consider the numbers. Yeah, that's pretty significant.

And of course, my grandmother was one of them who was singing in the choir at a

Billy Graham crusade. And when she heard him preaching the gospel, she realized, I'm a sinner and I'm headed for hell.

And Graham was unabashedly poignant about the way that he would preach about heaven and hell.

And I listened to a sermon of his from, I believe, back in the 80s, where he described hell and he did like a three -point sermon on hell.

And that was the basic outline of the sermon that he preached at that particular crusade was telling you how to avoid hell by following Jesus.

And so he was very sharp on those basic elements of the gospel. And it was preaching about that very thing back in the 50s that convicted my grandmother and she left the choir loft and came down front and gave a decision to follow

Jesus Christ. So she would have been one of the two or three percent that had a genuine conversion experience because she was one of the godliest women that I ever knew in my life, practically had the

King James Bible memorized. And my wife knew her. Oh yeah, loved her.

And one of my daughter's birthday requests was that we would get to go and see

Mimi. It was her only request. It was her only request, right. And we saw Mimi just, it was two or three months before she passed away.

And anyway, such a wonderful woman she was. And I think that what happened in her life is a reflection of the kind of impact the

Billy Graham crusades did have on many hundreds of thousands of people. Though there were problems in his doctrine and there were problems in the method in which the

Billy Graham crusades were conducted. Nonetheless, you're talking about that kind of impact that he had on that many number of people.

However, and this does not please me to have to do this. Okay. But I think that we do need to pay attention to the problems in Graham's doctrine and that there were times when he was indistinguishable from Joel Osteen.

In one of the last interviews that Billy Graham had with Larry King, I believe this was in 2005.

In fact, I wrote the date down. It was exactly June 16th of 2005. This is a snippet of that interview with King.

But what about those faiths, the Mormons and the others that you mentioned, believe in Christ? They believe they will meet

Christ. What about those like the Jews, the Muslims who don't believe? That's in God's hands.

I can't be the judge. You don't judge them? No. How do you feel when you see a lot of these strong Christian leaders go on television and say, you are condemned.

You will live in hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ. And they are forceful and judgmental.

They have a right to say that. And they are true to a certain extent. But that's not my calling.

My calling is to preach the love of God and the forgiveness of God and the fact that He does forgive us.

That's what the cross is all about, what the resurrection is all about. That's the gospel. And you can get off on all kinds of different side trails.

And in my earlier ministry, I did the same. But as I got older, I guess

I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving. Now, notice that he says he did preach that way earlier in his ministry.

Yeah, I heard that. Yeah. But then he got more mellow and he says he got more loving, which implies that because I tell a person that if you don't believe in Jesus, then at the final judgment, you'll go to hell.

But that's not loving. Right. Graham is essentially saying I'm not loving in the way that I would talk about that. I think more tolerant would have been a better choice of word.

More tolerant like. Yeah, well, I understand. But at the start of that, he said he said he can't judge a

Mormon or a Jew or a Muslim because that's not his place.

His calling is to preach about the love of God, not about the judgment of God.

And again, there was a point in his ministry when he was very clear about the judgment of God.

True, true. But I mean, from the sounds of things, he didn't know the

Bible very deep. He certainly wasn't doctrinally deep, and neither is

Joel Osteen, who sounds exactly the same when he answers the same question with Larry King.

So let me play this clip from Joel Osteen. OK, Phoenix, Arizona. Hello. Hello, Larry.

You're the best. And thank you, Joe, Joel, for your positive messages and your book. I'm wondering, though, why you sidestepped

Larry's earlier question about how we get to heaven. The Bible clearly tells us that Jesus is the way, the truth and the light and the only way to the

Father is through him. That's not really a message of condemnation, but of truth. Yeah, I would agree with her.

I believe that. So then a Jew is not going to heaven. No. Well, here's my thing, Larry, is

I can't judge somebody's heart, you know. I don't know. Only God can look at somebody's heart. And so I don't know.

To me, it's not my business to say, you know, this one is or this one isn't. I'm just saying here's what the

Bible teaches, and I want to put my faith in Christ. And I think it's wrong when we go around saying, you know, you're not going, you're not going, you're not going because it's not exactly my way.

I'm just I'm not going to be your way. I believe my way. I believe my way with all my heart. But for someone who doesn't share it, well, it is wrong.

And well, I don't know if I look at it like that. I would I would present my way, but I'm just going to let

God be the judge of that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. So you make no judgment on anyone.

No, but I'm an atheist. No, I just you know what? I let I let somebody let

I'm going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell. And I just again, I present the truth and I say it every week.

You know, I believe it's a relationship with Jesus. But you know what? I'm not going to go around telling everybody else if they don't want to believe that that's going to be their choice.

God's got to look at your own heart. God's got to look at your heart. And only God knows that. So Joel's answer really didn't sound any different than Billy's.

No, it didn't. Now, here's the thing. That interview with Larry King and Billy Graham was in 2005 when

Billy did his final address to the nation, which was just a few years ago. He he did that basic gospel message again.

And he talked about hell and said that everybody deserves to go to hell. And it's only through Jesus Christ that a person gets to the father.

And he quoted John 14, 6. And so this this kind of creates this this confusion.

So is it like smoke? What do you mean? Like how you confuse people like you, you blow.

You blow smoke up there. I wasn't going for that reference.

Oh, my goodness. No, like smoke covers your truth.

And so you don't know. It's just hazy. Yeah, right. Well, there you go. I mean, it is. It's confused. It's a confusing doctrine.

So it's very difficult for us to be able to. Now, on the on the flip side, when you're talking about Joel Osteen, he never preaches about hell and never says anybody is going to go there.

Right. Whereas Billy Graham has said that. And even in some of the final messages that he gave before he died, he was saying that.

But there's kind of a murky place in there, even in the early parts of his ministry. I've heard some people say

I wouldn't be able to attest to this. But but back in the 50s and 60s, even it just depended on the company that he was in.

Sometimes he would soften the message. Now, back in this was in 1972.

Graham had a meeting with Richard Nixon in the White House, and Nixon started making some anti -Semitic comments about the

Jews. What's that mean? Meaning that they were very hateful, disparaging comments toward the Jews.

And Graham joined in him on some of his condemnation about the Jews. Now, now

Nixon had a little bit more colorful language than Graham was using. I can imagine. But then in 2002, when those tapes became public, then everybody got to hear

Graham make these anti -Semitic comments about Jews. Wow. And when Graham was talked to about it, he was he was very remorseful, just hated that he said what it was that he said.

And even he admitted that he felt like he was just kind of trying to gain Nixon's favor.

And so it was kind of like whatever Nixon said, he was just going to agree with it. And he was he lamented that he ever did that and was sorrowful about it.

And I believe that we should forgive Graham for that because it sounded like he was genuinely repentant.

But it also kind of gives a window into the way that he was doctrinally. It just depended on the company that he was in.

Excuse me. And sometimes he would wane back and forth on different issues. Here with Larry King, you know, very clearly said that it's not his place to be able to say if somebody goes to heaven or goes to hell.

But you can find sermons where he's clearly saying that a person can go to heaven or hell. He did read that in the

Bible. Like, you know, the Bible is so big. So sometimes you don't read it all. And he said his preaching was his calling.

And and so his calling wasn't sending people to hell or telling them they're going to hell, not sending them.

But but it's just I don't know how people can get confused if they know their

Bible. Well, if somebody is going to go to heaven or hell. Right. If you don't follow Christ, you're going to hell.

Right. At the final judgment, Jesus clearly states this in Matthew twenty five. Right.

That those who did not know him, who did not do the will of the father will be sent out into eternal punishment.

But those who did follow Christ and obey the gospel and did the will of his father in heaven are his sheep and will be welcomed into the kingdom of God forever that had been prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

Right. And we're to know who they are because of their fruit. We see the works that they do.

Right. That what is done is in the light and it is a reflection of the Christ whom they follow.

Right. So we not just at face value and right. And there is a responsibility upon us as members of the church to encourage or admonish one another to admonish means to correct with goodwill.

First Corinthians chapter five purged the evil person from among you that we do have a charge that is made to us to determine whether our brothers and sisters in Christ are walking in the faith or not.

And if they continue to persist in this sin and will not repent that they are supposed to be removed from the church, which we have the instructions on how to deal with those matters in Matthew chapter eighteen.

So there are all kinds of instructions about judgment. Jesus saying to his own disciples in John, do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

And yet Graham, along with Osteen, saying that it's not their place to be able to judge anybody.

But but there's also an address. And and Al Muller brought this up this week when he was reflecting upon his memories with Billy Graham.

Graham had an address that he made to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And one of the things that he said in that address is that when we preach, we have to be specific and we have to call things as they are.

We need to call hell hell. We need to preach about the inerrant substance of the word of God, that it is without error and that it is sufficient for all of our every.

See, that just that sounds like a totally different person than the one we listened to. Right. In that interview.

It is kind of like he goes back and forth. And I don't I don't really think that Graham, knowing something about his character,

I don't think that he was the kind of a person that deliberately did that. Right. There just probably was a timidness.

Some might even call it a cowardice about him in which he had a difficult time standing on certain truths in certain company.

And that's that's going to be between him and the Lord on the day of judgment. Do I think that Graham was not a

Christian? Oh, come on. I mean, the guy was very clearly, like you said, you will know them by their fruit.

And there was plenty of fruit in the life of Billy Graham to show that he was indeed a follower of Jesus Christ, especially when if you go by the latest words that he said or the most recent words before he passed, you're still hearing that basic gospel message.

Everyone deserves hell. It is only by Christ that your sins are forgiven. And you must make a decision today to turn from your sin and follow

Jesus Christ. That was in Graham's last message that he gave in his address to the nation just a few years ago.

And like I said, I believe that Douglas Wilson's sort of reflection upon Graham was probably one of the most accurate tributes that I saw.

Now, there were some people who went way out there like I won't say their names.

No, don't. But some one person compared Billy Graham to the Apostle Paul, saying that he was the most important evangelist since Paul.

And then another one who said he was today's Elijah. And no, he wasn't at all.

He was not anywhere close to Elijah or Paul. But I am thankful for what the man did in his ministry.

Right. Although there were doctrinal problems, and I don't think that we should ignore them.

I think that we should learn from them and not repeat them. Right. Just as we would learn from Luther's mistakes in the anti -Semitic comments that Martin Luther made, or just like we might learn from Jonathan Edwards mistakes in the sense that he owned slaves.

So there are great historic, heroic men in the faith who were very faithful to the gospel and the message that they preached, but were still men.

They were still sinful men that made serious mistakes. And one of the things

I think we learned from Billy Graham is how dangerous it is when you elevate a person as much as Graham was elevated.

Right. And just that one person's doctrine takes so much precedence because so many evangelical churches today are the way that they are because of the way that Graham did things.

Right. And yet he was still such a man of principled character. And I wish more pastors would follow some of the disciplines.

Oh, yeah, definitely. That he put in place for himself and everybody else that worked for his ministry. So one of the most popular things that Graham was known for was something called the

Modesto Manifesto or the Billy Graham rule. Okay. Which has also since been called the

Mike Pence rule. Oh, yes. Right. Because Pence just last year, there were people.

Was it just last year? Yeah, it was. Oh, wow. People who were ridiculing him because he said that he would not have dinner with any woman alone who was not his wife.

Right. And he got bashed for that. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And so here was here was kind of the principles of the

Modesto Manifesto. There were some other things that went along with this other than just that Graham would not eat with he would not be alone with a woman who was not his mother, sister or daughter.

So there was that aspect of the manifesto. But there was also he would not write or wife. Yeah, his wife,

Ruth. That's an important element of that. That was very important. So number one, he would be completely transparent with his finances, setting up an independent board to handle the money.

And number two was the appearance of sexual impropriety that he would not ever be alone with a woman who was not his wife.

Yes. Or his mother or sister or daughter. Number three, he would cooperate with local churches in a united evangelism effort.

And I will say, though, unfortunately, that that also included the Catholic church and synagogues.

Right. So it was we're not just talking about Protestant churches there. But nonetheless, he did he didn't want to, you know, like move into an area and act like he was taking over the joint, but that he's with those people who would come forward in some sort of a decision to follow

Jesus. They're turning them in the direction of a church. That they might attend a church there and become a member there.

And one of the things the church to reach out to them. Yeah. One of the things that I think Billy Graham crusades showed is how much more impacting the church is on a person's life than a crusade like this.

The local church will have more influence on the people in that community than a crusade of this kind.

It's so easy to get lost in the crowd. And yet the crusades got all the attention. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. Without rabbit trailing on that point. Number four, they would report the results of the crusades honestly, and they would post those results, including money raised and spent in the local papers where the crusade was held.

I like that a lot. And they were completely transparent in the way that that ministry was handled.

That's honorable. And number five, they would never argue with journalists. So if a journalist from a newspaper came and started ridiculing them about something

Graham said or something that was posted in the paper, some sort of result that was released at the end of a crusade or whatever,

I mean, it was just basically thank you for bringing that to our attention. But there would not be a fight or an argument that would then be engaged with that journalist.

Good. So those were some of the principles of the Modesto Manifesto. And based on that fifth point, also,

I was in a seminar with Mark Dever, and the point of the seminar was how the church should respond in today's culture to a lot of the different social issues that will come up.

And then a newspaper or some sort of local news media will contact a pastor of a church and ask them questions about some of those things.

How should a pastor respond? That really was the point of the seminar. And Mark Dever was leading it. And he said, well, if you're a

Southern Baptist, you can just tell him to call Russell Moore because that's what we pay him for. But then everybody else, you know, here's here's how you and basically what

Mark Dever said is you should say no a lot more often than you should say yes. So if somebody's calling you up and asking you for some sort of soundbite, just tell them, no,

I'm sorry, I don't have a comment on that. And he said, because no matter how good their intentions are, they will misquote you and sometimes take you out of context.

Right. And he said just recently was like within the last two weeks of doing that particular seminar, he had done an interview with a

Christian magazine. And in the interview, when he read the final interview, they took him out of context and misquoted him.

He was upset about that. But he said, even when they have good intentions, they're still human beings.

Yeah. And they will either make mistakes or they will twist your words to mean something that you didn't say. So you should never think that.

Because they're appeasing their readers. Precisely. Right. Or fitting their agenda or whatever else that you should not just assume that a journalist is neutral and they're going to report.

Nobody is neutral. No one's neutral. That's really quite true. And so anyway, this this is just kind of some of those things.

One of the clips that I didn't play, but I think is more well known by most people is the interview that Billy Graham did with Robert Shuler on the

Hour of Power. In fact, I'll go ahead and play that here. And Shuler was a heretic. What you'll hear

Graham say in response to Shuler is that there are people who are Christians who don't know they're

Christians. Tell me, what do you think is the future of Christianity? I think everybody that loves

Christ or knows Christ, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're members of the body of Christ.

And that's what God is doing today. He's calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the

Muslim world or the Buddhist world or the Christian world or the non -believing world.

They are members of the body of Christ because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their heart that they need something that they don't have.

And they turn to the only light that they have. I think that they are saved and they're going to be with us in heaven.

This is fantastic. I'm so thrilled to hear you say that. There's a wideness in God's mercy.

There is. But there's not a wideness. It's the narrow road. Right. So, I'm wondering if he just wasn't that great with the one -on -one.

Like, you know how sometimes you're a people person or you're a one -on -one type of person, and maybe he just got nervous.

Graham wasn't good with questions like that. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Like you said, kind of buckling under pressure or maybe just wanting to please the other person because although he shared a very strong message in his preaching.

Yeah. And I want to conclude with that. Not that we played all the clips of Billy Graham and all of the things that he said that make us go,

I don't know, Billy. That's a little problematic what it is that you're saying there.

I'm starting to question your salvation myself. Right. Because that's definitely not why I presented those things.

I presented them because they're things that we need to take seriously. They are. And as we reflect upon the memory of Billy Graham and a great legacy that he left behind, there are some people who are taking things a little bit too far and some very influential and wonderful names and teachers out there who are saying that Billy Graham was the

Apostle Paul or Billy Graham was Elijah or as influential as those men. And I don't see that at all, especially when you consider how problematic

Graham was in his doctrine. Now, while we see in those interview clips problems with the things that he believed, we didn't hear that in the gospel that he preached at his crusades.

Oh, no. And so as we bring this to a close, that's what I'd like to highlight more of is what it was that Graham actually preached.

And here is something from a sermon of his from the 1980s. Now, you can't change your past, but you can determine your destiny by deciding for Christ.

But Christ can change your past. He died on the cross so that all the sins you've ever committed, all the things you've ever done wrong are forgiven.

What do you have to do? You have to repent of your sins. That means to be willing to change your way of living.

You may have no power to do it. You may not have power to give up some of those habits you know are wrong.

You may not have power to fall in love with your wife again. You may not have power to change your whole life that you know needs to be changed.

But if you surrender to Christ, he'll give you the power. You say, well, Billy, I don't know what else to do.

I've been baptized. I joined the church and so forth. I don't really have peace and joy and power in my life, all that you're talking about.

How do I get it? Jesus Christ said, I am the way. Come to Christ.

He will give you a new strength and a new power and a new joy and a new peace and a purpose for living.

Every person that ever lived has to make the same choice. It's either the world and its pleasures and it's

God's or it's Christ. Which is it for you? Who are you choosing?

Who are you voting for? Choosing rather to suffer the affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

Oh yes, there's pleasure in sin for a short time. But it's soon over.

The hangover comes. And there's nothing you can do about it. It's going to be there.

Choose Christ and there'll never be a hangover except joy and peace. And it's an urgent decision because to delay makes the right decision harder.

Indecision in itself is a choice. Not to decide is to decide not to. If you have a ticket for a flight to Atlanta tonight and can't decide whether to go or not, if you wait past the departure time, the choice will have been made.

The plane will take off without you. Decisions are made whether we make them or not.

Time decides if you will not. And time always decides against you.

There's a lonely arena in the depths of your heart where the greatest battle of life must be fought alone.

That's your decision about Christ. Your parents can't make it for you. The church can't make it for you. Your friends can't make it for you.

Your girlfriend, your boyfriend can't make it for you. You have to make it yourself and you must decide tonight.

There are hundreds of people here tonight that have to decide tonight and your decision tonight, yes or no, will decide where you'll be a hundred years from now.

If you're not sure that you're ready to meet God, if you're not sure you're going to heaven and you're not sure that your sins are forgiven, you come and make sure tonight.

I believe that none of you are here by accident tonight. I believe that you're here on this particular night because this is the night that you are to meet

God in a new way and receive him into your heart. I believe that Billy Graham preached the gospel more clearly and better than most preachers in America do today.

Oh, yeah. So as problematic as he was on some of his doctrine, he was a better preacher than any

Armenian preacher in the U .S. now, any English speaking preacher,

I think we could put it that way. You know, I never met Billy Graham, never personally met him. I attended a

Billy Graham crusade at Williams Bryce Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina in the 80s. And the message that I heard him preach was just like that one.

And my dad, who was one of the organizers of that crusade in Columbia, South Carolina, we were standing in a tunnel area where Graham was kind of going to come walking by.

And I told dad I wanted to see Billy Graham. I was six or seven years old at the time. And so he took me into the tunnel and we're standing there waiting for him to just walk by.

And I got distracted. And when I turned around, he had already walked by. So I'm looking at the back of Billy Graham's head as he's walking by.

You got to see him. I started to cry. So I was like, I missed it. That was the one opportunity I had to see

Billy Graham and I missed it. But I listened to him preach that night. And I remember him preaching about heaven and hell.

And that was the subject of his sermon. Sometime, I think about a year after that, again, about seven years old.

And I sang at The Cove, which was a Billy Graham ministry school that was founded at what used to be called

Ben Lippin School. And my family and I used to go up there. It was a beautiful area in the

Appalachian Mountains. It had at one point been owned by Billy Graham's ministry, but then they sold it to Ben Lippin and then

Ben Lippin sold it back to him. Oh, interesting. And so when the Billy Graham organization took it back over, my dad was invited to speak.

If I remember this right, I'm not totally positive on the chain of events. But my dad was invited to come up and speak.

And I sang. And somewhere when I was in junior college, somehow someone got word of that who worked for the local paper at the junior college that I attended.

And they called me and said, did you sing at Billy Graham's school? Or the way they asked the question, they made it sound like I sang at a

Billy Graham event. And like when I was a little kid, and I was like, no, no, no, it wasn't like that.

And I tried to clarify. I sang at the school that he had up there in Ben Lippin. And they still printed the way they printed it.

It still made it sound like I sang at a Billy Graham event. It was kind of weird. But anyway, so that was an event.

That's the other. Once again, you can't trust the agenda of journalists. Communication is very difficult.

They may actually made it sound better than I really was. But but nonetheless, you know, that's been my experience with Billy Graham's organization when

I was young. And again, like I said, the gospel that my grandmother heard and changed her life for Christ has affected my entire family, generations of my family since.

And Graham saying, you have a decision to make right now. That's absolutely true. It doesn't matter if you're

Calvinist or Arminian. You absolutely have a decision that you are supposed to make responding to the gospel, right?

Are you going to repent of your sin and follow Christ and obey it? Or are you going to continue in rebellion against God and go to your destruction on the day of judgment?

That is that is the responsibility that is placed on every single person that they would turn from their sin and follow

Jesus Christ in response to the gospel of Christ. Most definitely. And so I want to close with Billy Graham saying that very thing.

And and this is how we'll finish the program today. All right. So I'm grateful for Graham and his ministry.

He was a man of principled character who is worthy of imitation. May we learn from the mistakes that he made, especially concerning some of those doctrinal issues, and yet preach the gospel as fervently as he did.

I remember Jason K. Allen, the president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, saying at a for the church event, if we were to preach through Romans nine word for word, it would be difficult to not sound like John Calvin.

But if we were to preach through Romans 10 word for word, it would be difficult to not sound like Billy Graham.

I believe that Billy Graham has met his Lord face to face and has heard him say, well done, good and faithful servant.

One last time. Here is the Reverend Billy Graham. I've seen men spend their lifetime making money, and I know some of the richest men in America, and I know how miserable some of them are.

I've seen men strive all their lives to attain political power, and they get political power.

They get the office they were seeking, but it doesn't bring the peace and the joy and the happiness and the fulfillment they thought it would.

But here's an interesting thing. I've never seen a person give their lives to Jesus Christ sincerely, but what they didn't find what they were looking for.

He satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts and our lives.

I wonder how many more sermons it would take to win you to Christ. How many more warnings will

God have to give you? How many more graves will have to be dug? How many more wars will have to be fought?

How many more earthquakes or tornadoes and floods will have to come before you make your decision?

The thief on the cross took that one moment and said, Lord, remember me. And in that moment,

Jesus said, thou shall be with me in paradise. That quick, you can make your decision and commit.

And remember, God loves you. He has a plan for your life.

You're sinful. You're separated from God by sin, and some of the results of this sin are worry and irritability and lack of purpose in life, as well as some of the gross, immoral sins that we read about.

God has provided the cross as a means for you to be forgiven of sin.

But you must individually receive Christ as your Lord and your Savior.

You and you alone in the quiet arena of your heart will have to make that decision.

The what? No. What? Da bomb diggity.

What's, what's da bomb diggity? Okay, Pietro Famiglia.

I can't say it. How do you say that? Working on your Greek? I don't know what that is. Pietro Famiglia, I don't know.

In Sparks, Nevada is da bomb diggity. Yep. Da bomb diggity.

I just haven't heard that phrase used in a long time. It brought me back memories. I've never heard of Pietro Famiglia, period.

Well, no, but da bomb. Da bomb diggity. Yep, da bomb diggity.

Need to bring, need to bring it back, babe. Yeah. Start using da bomb diggity. That's da bomb diggity.

It was one I was just thinking of the other day. I was like, we got to bring that one back. I don't remember what it was now.

Obviously, it wasn't too important. Wasn't too great. Not going to start a revolution here.