Can Deny Bible & Still Be A "True Believer" / Complete Fellowship w/ Rome is Great says Billy Graham

Hello, in this video, we're going to be looking at a clip from Billy Graham, where he seems to say that you can be a true believer and deny the deity of Christ. You can be a true believer and deny the virgin birth or even the resurrection of Jesus.

You don't have to believe that to be a true believer. And I'm going to show you the video. And the reason why I'm showing the video is because some people are going to say, well, Billy Graham never said that.

I don't believe you. I remember years ago, I told a gentleman about the Robert Schuller interview, which I have a complete review of that on my channel. If you haven't seen it, check it out. But I told them what Billy Graham said to Robert Schuller, that there's people out there who have never heard of Jesus.

They've never heard the gospel, Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims, unbelievers. But Billy Graham said, you know, if they do the best they can, essentially, I believe they're saved without hearing about Jesus.

Basically saying, yeah, it's a type of universalism that you don't actually have to believe the gospel. You can still be saved and be part of this other religion or no religion at all. As long as you turn to the only light that you have, you're saved and you'll be with us in heaven.

Anyways, I shared that and, you know, the guy basically said, I was a liar. Billy Graham never said that. And then I showed him the video and then he claimed that the video was doctored, that the video was a fake.

And eventually he had to recognize that, no, Billy Graham did say that. And this is kind of one of those things that really perplexes people because Billy Graham sounded so solid during his crusades when he would preach, he seemed to preach the truth.

But then these other statements he would make to the liberal media or, you know, some of the fellowship that he had with people, clear unbelievers.

Yeah.

Billy Graham was kind of a hard person to figure out for, and that's kind of a best case assessment of the situation. But this Sunday at Morris Corner Church, we're going to be talking about the fundamentalist liberal or the fundamentalist modernist controversy.

It says here in the book, in the 1950s and 1960s, this is the book, Forerunners of the Faith that we've been going through. It says in the 1950s, 1960s, a preacher named Billy Graham, who lived from 1918 to 2018, he emerged as a popular evangelist.

Though Graham grew up in fundamentalist circles, his willingness to partner with theological liberals and Roman Catholics in his evangelistic crusades caused many fundamentalists to separate from Graham.

By contrast, many American evangelicals viewed Graham as a spokesman for their movement. So the fundamentalists, some of them thought Billy Graham was a false teacher. They called him Billy Balaam, you know, some of them.

And then others, probably the majority of people, loved Billy Graham. But here's the thing, I think what happened was the average person, the only thing they knew about Billy Graham was they'd watch his crusades on TV and Billy Graham did usually speak the truth at his crusades.

So they thought he was wonderful and he met with the presidents and I mean, you know, his, his friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, I think bothered a lot of people, but you know, that's, he met with Trump, he met with Mitt Romney, he met with all of them.

So I guess he made the rounds. Of course, he did admit to, well, I'll just leave the political element out of it for now, but just to focus in on these statements by Billy Graham, let's play the interview, at least this clip, and then I'll comment, watch.

Pope John had not yet appeared on the scene. There's a total different attitude on the part of Roman Catholic leadership today toward me and my work and toward the Protestants in general.

Is this price fixing?

No, no, I think it's good. I think we have dialogue, we have understanding, and there are many Roman Catholic seminary students that write me and say, we have prayer meetings for you and your work. They attend our crusades, many priests come.

I can now have a complete fellowship with Roman Catholic people and there are no barriers that existed 10 years ago. I think all of that is to the good.

Okay.

So notice that he can have complete fellowship with the Catholic church, with Roman Catholic people. That's a change because there's this little thing called the reformation where it was understood and by the way, nobody has changed their beliefs.

So the Protestants and evangelicals, they said, you have a different gospel. So the Catholic church held to a gospel of faith plus works. And they said to the Protestants, you're damned because you have a false gospel.

And the Protestants pointed to the Catholic church and said, no, you're damned because you have a false gospel because you add works to the gospel. You add the sacraments, you have a works righteousness system, just like the Pharisees.

And that was the problem that separated one of the problems, the main problem that separated Catholics from Protestants up until really the 1960s where Billy Graham helped to change.

All that.

And that's why this matters. Billy Graham is like the guy who totally changed the landscape of American Christianity. The reason why American Christians are compromising the gospel or fellowshipping with the Catholic church or embracing the Pope, it's mainly because of Billy Graham.

Now, Billy Graham's gone. So now today we have his disciples, men like Rick Warren or Joel Osteen. Billy Graham met with them. He discipled Rick Warren. Rick Warren has said, Billy Graham was like a mentor to me.

So Billy Graham sort of passed the torch to men like Rick Warren and Greg Laurie and Joel.

Osteen.

And now, of course, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen have their own, you know, the next generation of people. And each generation gets a little more liberal and Osteen is a charismatic. So add that stuff in and it's just more, it's more universalism or it's at least headed in a universalistic direction.

And again, if you don't believe me, watch the interview with Robert Shuler, Billy Graham, Robert Shuler, type it in on my channel, watch that, and you'll hear exactly what I'm talking about. But here, Billy Graham talks about full fellowship with the Catholic Church.

Let's continue.

You must understand that within Protestantism, as in Roman Catholic, in the Roman Catholic Church, we have an extreme right wing, we have an extreme left wing, and we have a big center. I identify myself theologically to the right, but in my fellowship in the center.

And I fellowship with anyone who calls himself a Christian.

Okay, so he fellowships with anyone called a Christian. Now would that include Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons? We've talked about this on the channel before. There's evidence to suggest that Billy Graham later in life embraced Mormonism.

Not that he personally became a Mormon, but that he could have fellowship with Mormons. Matter of fact, he said that. I have a clip from Larry King on CNN. Billy Graham went on the program, and I think he said it.

It's on the channel. We've talked about it before. But full fellowship, as long as you say you're a Christian, that's good enough. Even if you deny the resurrection, virgin birth, and deity of Christ.

Let's continue to listen.

And I don't pretend to give everybody that I meet a theological examination to see if you dot every I and cross every T before I have fellowship with you.

Well, but would you grant that it is extremely important to define dogma, and that the dogmas that are slurred over at one particular point in history might be precisely the ones that become extremely important at another point in history?

Oh, very important. If I were compromising, for example, in my preaching, in my public ministry, to the point that I was saying that Christ may be the Son of God, that the Bible may be the Word of God, then I would consider that a compromise.

But I'm standing up night after night and saying the Bible is the Word of God. Jesus was the virgin-born Son of God. I believe that he bodily was raised from the dead. I believe he's personally, literally, coming back to this earth to set up his kingdom.

And that's where the world is ultimately headed, toward utopia, with Christ as the ruler. I believe in all of this with all my heart.

But there are many Christians, true believers, that don't accept all of this, saying the.

Bible is the Word of God. Jesus was the virgin-born Son of God. I believe that he bodily was raised from the dead. I believe he's personally, literally, coming back to this earth to set up his kingdom.

And that's where the world is ultimately headed, toward utopia, with Christ as the ruler. I believe in all of this with all my heart. But there are many Christians, true believers, that don't accept all of this.

They don't accept every point. Well, I'm not going to deny them fellowship.

Okay, so the Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is divine, virgin-born. He's coming back. He rose from the dead. But notice he says there's people who don't accept all that. But he said they're true believers.

So just get this. According to Billy Graham, not only does he have full fellowship with the Catholic Church, he has worked with the Pope, affirmed the Pope. He now says, of course, I say now. This was back in, what, the 1970s?

But again, this has led to this type of attitude being common because Billy Graham made it acceptable. That's the way it works. Some big, big-name, high-profile TV preacher compromises. He can say it's not compromise, but it is.

You know, he does something. He gets away with it. That allows all sorts of other people to. You see, if the leadership can do something, that gives a green light to everybody else. And that's exactly what has happened.

So Billy Graham said that there are people who apparently reject the virgin birth, reject the deity of Christ, reject the scripture as God breathed. They reject the resurrection, but they're still true believers, according to Billy Graham.

So all of that to say this, that's why I'm showing you this clip just to prove that Billy Graham was a modernist. He was, you know, he played both sides. He may say, I believe the right things, but I'm willing to fellowship with people who deny fundamental truths.

And again, that Robert Shuler interview would suggest that Billy Graham, in fact, was willing to, if not deny fundamental truths, because I don't think he ever came out and denied it explicitly, but he was willing to compromise, I think, on the gospel.

If you say somebody is a true believer, even though they deny the deity of resurrection and virgin birth, while they're still true believer, even though they deny this fundamental truth, I mean, that's compromising the gospel.

And of course, one last thing, Martin Luther King Jr. did deny all of those things in his writings. You can just check out his writings at stanford .edu. They're there for everybody to read. Martin Luther King Jr. rejected the resurrection and deity of Christ and virgin birth, and Billy Graham was willing to have fellowship with him.

So yeah, this is a huge problem. If a Bible-believing pastor, if your pastor was doing stuff like this, I mean, the churches I'm aware of would probably, this could cause a local church pastor to lose his job, I think, if he was compromising at this level.

But Billy Graham did it, and it just gave a green light for thousands, tens of thousands of thousands of others to do it. And as Paul said, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. This video is not intended to ridicule Billy Graham.

It's just to show you what happened, what he said. And I want to try to remedy that. I want to try to fix this. I want to, with a lot of help from a lot of other people, try to turn things around and steer it in the right direction.

But we have to confront this. So this is not an attack against Billy Graham. I think Billy Graham did a lot of good. A lot of people heard the gospel because of Billy Graham. I have no doubt people came to saving faith in his crusades.

Yeah, there's a lot of false converts who came forward and, you know, just did something, said a prayer that didn't really mean... But, you know, that's true with anyone. That's true in any ministry. There's going to be false converts.

So I'm not denying that God even used Billy Graham in some ways. God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, but that doesn't make this right. So we need to, what, test all things, hold fast to that which is good.

So if you ever hear me say anything about Billy Graham or whoever it is, I'm not just making it up. I have the receipts. I have the video. I can prove it. So hopefully this will encourage you to stand firm on the gospel.

If somebody denies the resurrection, they're not a true believer, my friends. I mean, a true believer in what? If you deny the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Thanks for watching. Till next time, may the Lord be with you.

Have a great day.

Amen.