February 23, 2018 Show with Brad Gsell on “Speaking the Truth in Love: The Legacy of Billy Graham & The Accommodation of Truth to Error in the Evangelical Church”

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Friday on this 23rd day of February 2018. Just two days after the death of Billy Graham, this is a program that I was not looking forward to conducting and it's not because I wasn't looking forward to having another conversation with a former guest of mine, Brad K. Zell, but it's because it's a very uncomfortable thing to criticize a man that is a great hero to many across the globe, a man who in many regards lived an exemplary life, a man whose record on many issues may be a lot more spotless than my own, a man who is in an age of celebrity where there is rarely a celebrity that you can find that hasn't been caught up in a scandal whether sexual or financial or otherwise, and Billy Graham was a man who seems to have a spotless record on a human level that is, a human perspective in regard to those things, but because of the fact that there are very, very serious and theologically dangerous and theologically heretical things that Mr. Graham has said and even placed into policy with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in regard to the Crusades and so on, I believe that this program is a necessary one especially since you are probably not going to hear it anywhere in the media with the exception of some isolated fundamentalist broadcasts or internet commentary and perhaps some of those of my own background and the conservative reformed and calvinistic circles that I have fellowship with, and not all of that I think is going to be helpful.

Billy Graham’s Legacy and the Need for Careful Criticism

I think that there is going to be unnecessarily and unfortunately some who go way overboard in their condemnation of Mr. Graham and perhaps even whether consciously or unconsciously enter into the realm of slander and unnecessary mockery and so on, and we want to first of all have you all pray that the Graham family in this season of mourning are brought peace that only can come from the Holy Spirit, that they are brought closer to the Lord as a result of this, and that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, as they are at a crossroads now, that they are guided by God and his word into decisions they make, into the directions they take in the 21st century.

But today we have to talk about Billy Graham. Brad K. Zell, who is an elder at the Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina. He's the president of the International Council of Christian Churches, president of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, editor of Redeeming the Time quarterly magazine.

He's a member of the executive committee of the American Council of Christian Churches and stated clerk of Faith Presbytery, Bible Presbyterian Church. Today we are going to be discussing specifically a booklet that he wrote 20 years ago, but is probably more necessary to be read today than it ever was before, The Legacy of Billy Graham, The Accommodation of Truth to Error in the Evangelical Church.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio after a long absence, Brad K. Zell. And Brad, if you could just give us a little bit of an explanation as to your background.

Tell us something about the Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina. And if I'm not mistaken, I think that is the very congregation.

Where Billy Graham was raised. Am I wrong on that? So tell us something about specifically the.

Bible Presbyterian Church, what sets it apart from other churches and even Bible Presbyterian.

Churches. And it's interesting, I'm sure that a lot of folks, especially from more conservative.

Backgrounds and perhaps even especially from fundamentalist backgrounds, when they read the name of some of these organizations like the International Council of Christian Churches or the American Council of Christian Churches, they may have a knee-jerk reaction and on incorrectly connect those organizations with the very liberal and in fact even apostate organizations that have similar sounding names.

Perhaps you could explain in more detail so we can alleviate that apprehension and anxiety. Tell our listeners about the International Council of.

Christian Churches and also the American Council of Christian Churches. Yes, I happen to know that.

A local congregation here in Carlisle, Faith Chapel, recently had some of their leaders attend an event where you were present. Something involving the Bible Presbyterian Church denomination, even though this church that I'm speaking of is not in that denomination.

Yes. Great. Well, I am going to right away, just because I know that especially some folks who do not know the information that we are going to be providing, they may be already boiling over with anger and resentment, might mentally tune out to things that we are going to say today because they cherish Billy Graham as a great hero of the faith, a man who has become known as America's president, a man who has even been described as the conscious of America, the conscience of America.

And I'm going to play a clip of an interview that Robert Shuler had with Billy Graham in the Crystal Cathedral. And even though this occurred many years ago, to this day when I play this for people, they are stunned.

It's amazing how people can cherish a man as deeply as they cherish Billy Graham and be ignorant of a lot of these things because these were not secretive things. These are very publicly declared and proclaimed things on nearly every interview that he had, or at least as early as the 80s.

But I'm going to play this for you without further ado. And then after I play this, I do want to begin a discussion of Graham going back to the days before there was any known departure from biblical faithfulness or orthodoxy.

And I do want to start the program with as much positive things that we can say. Not that we will exhaust a list of great things to say about Billy Graham in this program, but what I mean is say as many things as time will allow us to say before we get to the heart of our discussion.

But here is Robert Shuler having a discussion with Billy.

Graham in the Crystal Cathedral. 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.

And 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. There definitely is.

Well, before we go on, as I said, to discuss some of the positive things about Billy Graham's legacy and his life, we have to just comment on that. It may have gone over people's heads if they weren't listening carefully, because, of course, God is calling people from the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhists and the atheists to himself, but he is calling them out of those religions and those false belief systems.

He is regenerating them and converting them and giving them the gift of faith. They are conscious that they are falling in love with and following Christ. This is not something that they are oblivious to, while they either worship the Muslim understanding of Allah or the multitudes of gods worshipped by Hindus or the pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps that the atheists might be involved in, and who might even be doing good charitable deeds but reject the existence of God, because Mr. Graham seemed to include those of the unbelieving category.

What he has said there is that these people will remain in these false religions and ideologies and will be in heaven. Am I correct in that assessment? Now, I don't know if Mr. Graham ever became friendly with some of the primitive Baptists.

I don't know how familiar you are with them, and I have to be very careful not to broadbrush, because they are not all identical, but there is a belief that is common amongst primitive Baptists that is very hyper-Calvinistic.

You and I are Calvinists, but we are historically accurate and biblically faithful Calvinists. There are primitive Baptists who believe that there are men, women, and children among God's elect who will never on this earth come to faith in Christ.

They so far separate the necessity of faith or faith's involvement in one's regeneration that they come to the heretical conclusions that faith is not an essential for one to enter into heaven. I have no idea if Billy Graham got this concept from them, but I always wondered that because it seems similar.

Do you have any idea how this understanding in his mind developed? He seems to be clear, and this is commonly called pluralism, that nobody is saved by false gods. It seems from everything he has said that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, and that Jesus Christ is necessary, and that his death on the cross is necessary, and his resurrection is necessary, and his sinless life, his perfect obedience to the Father, and all these things are necessary, but they are not necessary for us to know them.

And believe them. If you could comment on what I said. Although he was raised in the Bible.

Presbyterian Church, he, from what you know, was not a Calvinist, at least in his adult ministry,.

In any way, even in the early days? Right. About what age was he when he became a Southern Baptist?

And of course, Southern Baptists are a mixed group. They began exclusively and entirely as a Calvinistic denomination, but today the Calvinists are a minority, but they do exist. There are Calvinists who are Southern Baptists, but today it seems the majority are Arminian, although they most likely would not call themselves that.

Right, right, correct. Now, but Billy Graham is known to have been a fiery, bold, powerful preacher of the gospel in his early years. I even saw a clip that I think it was Laura Ingram played on Fox News after they made the announcements of Billy Graham's death.

They played a clip of a sermon that I'm actually surprised they played because of its political incorrectness. He actually said that unless you have an encounter with Jesus Christ, your Lord, God, and Savior, and I'm paraphrasing, but these elements were involved in his statement, unless you have an encounter and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, your religion means nothing.

And that seems to be 180 degrees different from what he began to preach later on in his life, but if you could, before we go into the departure from biblical orthodoxy that sadly was a hallmark of his legacy, if you could tell us some more about the good, positive things that you could say about Billy Graham.

I mean, it seems that he was, for quite a while, a very faithful preacher. I mean, he even had a stance against Catholicism in his early days, even in the 60s, that I don't even take as strong as a stance that he did in this regard.

He did not want John F. Kennedy to run for president because he was a Roman Catholic. Now, as much as I am opposed to Roman Catholic theology and think that it is a false church and a false gospel, I don't even think that I would deny a vote to a political candidate because he was Catholic.

But he had some very sound views and very controversial views that were courageous in the sense that he seemed fearless about public criticism at one point in his life in those regards. And as I reiterated in the beginning of the program, Mr. Graham, although he reached the level of being a global celebrity, he seemed, as far as we could tell what his heart and mind believed, he seemed to be an extraordinarily humble man in spite of this level of celebrity.

And unless you know something that I don't know, he did maintain a sexually pure life. In fact, he had that rule that, in fact, many have mocked our vice president for, to never be seen anywhere in a room, not in a restaurant or anywhere, alone with a woman.

He seemed to have a stellar reputation with his marital faithfulness. I don't know of any financial scandal that he was involved in and things like that. I mean, there are a lot of things that even the best of Christians might be weakened by the fame and fortune that he had.

They might be weakened and have been far less stellar examples of integrity and morality than he was. I mean, we do have to give him some credit in regard to some of these amazing things, especially one who lives to 99 years old.

Yes, absolutely.

Billy Graham’s Early Ministry and Public Reputation

We have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a.

Question about Billy Graham, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back with Brad Zell and more of the legacy of Billy Graham, the accommodation of truth to error in the evangelical church.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than 90 minutes to go, is Brad K. Zell, elder at the Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina, president of the International Council of Christian Churches, president of the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions, editor of Redeeming the Time quarterly magazine, member of the executive committee of the American Council of Christian Churches, and stated clerk of Faith Presbytery Bible Presbyterian Church.

We are discussing the legacy of Billy Graham, the accommodation of truth to error in the evangelical church, which is also the title of a booklet written by Brad over 20 years ago that has more importance today, I believe, than when he first wrote it.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Well, before we take any listener questions, why don't you tell us more about something that you hinted at earlier in regard to a conscious decision by Billy Graham to when he was conducting his crusade ministries.

He made that decision when he was at a crossroads on which direction to take, instead of involving the fundamentalist churches that would have been his circle of fellowship prior to the mid 50s, going back to the earliest days of his ministry.

And decided in favor of involvement with Roman Catholics and liberal Protestants, if you could tell us about that pivotal occurrence in history in Billy Graham's legacy.

Main read the famous state.

Yeah. So I guess I'm assuming what you're saying is that instead of preaching to the choir, by having the involvement of people that were like minded with them, at least like minded with his ideology and theology prior to the mid 50s, he thought that it would be best to use his friendships and associations as platforms to evangelize the very ones that he was associating with.

But as I have said to people even today, or I can remember when Billy Graham back in the 1990s, I guess it was, when he came to New York for a crusade, when I told people of my strong disapproval of his having Roman Catholics and liberal Protestants and even non-Christian rabbis, I'm not talking about messianic Jews here, we're talking about those rabbis that reject Christ as Messiah, to have them involved on the podium on the platform was something that was absolutely unacceptable and dangerous and even heretical.

And people would say, in response, Christians would say, but what better way to draw in those people to those crusades than to have those kinds of people associated with him on the platform? And my answer has been to them, why would they want to leave the religions, the false religions that they're in, if they see representatives, key figures who represent their false religions up there on the platform seemingly having an equal voice of truth with Mr. Graham?

It makes no sense. Am I confusing in my language here? Am I babbling?

No, that's correct. Now, there are two biblical texts that appear to be in tension with one another.

One would be a text that closer resembles something to commend Billy Graham for, and that text is 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 7, speaking about elders, that they must be well thought of by those outside the faith, so that they may not fall into disgrace and be caught by the devil's trap.

But then you have the text that seems to be in tension with that, Luke chapter 6, verse 26, woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.

I'm not saying that the Bible contradicts itself, I'm just saying that on the surface those two texts seem to be at least a tension with one another, and Billy Graham seems to have been exemplary on one side of that equation, but has miserably failed on the other side.

Am I correct in that assessment?

I believe so.

The Drift Toward Ecumenism and Public Approval

Well, before we continue, I want to take another, or should I say take our first listener question. We have Joe in Slovenia. Dear brother Chris, thank you so much for having the conviction and courage to address the legacy of Billy Graham in an objectively balanced manner.

My question is about the all-too-common drift that we see in evangelical leaders. We all know that but for the grace of God we could all easily do the same. It is known that the pull is always to drift away from the pristine truth of God's word and fidelity to the gospel.

Biblical and church history is replete with leaders who ended poorly from the standpoint of doctrinal purity. In our own day we see many formerly dependable teachers and preachers who have or are now drifting into apostasy.

What are we to make of this? How does it happen that men of firm biblical faith drift away from the truth? What is the cause and process? How should we help ourselves and others avoid this shipwreck? Well I'm glad that this question is being asked to a Calvinist like you are because some of our brethren outside of the Reformed faith might answer that very differently.

But if you could address that. I think even...

And I know that since you are a fellow believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace that you would agree with me that if somebody actually enters into apostasy where they are denying the gospel or the God of the gospel, that person was never regenerate to begin with.

He may have believed he was and those around him may have believed he was, but we don't believe that a true regenerate individual can lose his salvation.

That is...

Well Joe in Slovenia you have won a free copy of the booklet The Legacy of Billy Graham, The Accommodation of Truth to Error in the Evangelical Church. Thank you for giving us an American address where your daughter lives in Georgia so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com can ship that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron.

And we want to thank Brad Zell for providing these free copies of The Legacy of Billy Graham to give away today.

And I might just...

Oh great. And where could they order that in Spanish and in English? For those of our listeners who don't get the opportunity to win a copy today, how could they order that booklet? And if anybody wants to email me, I will get that information to you later.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I'm assuming the website of Redeeming the Time will also have some kind of contact information. I know that's rttpublications .org.

And they are also...

RedeemingtheTime at BellSouth .net.

Correct.

Well, thank you, Joe. And we also have... Let's see here. We have Tony with an I. A lady, Tony, in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She has a question for us today. And I have to enlarge the font on her email because it's very microscopic.

So here we are. Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina says, Mr. Zell is an elder at the church I attend. So hi, Brad.

Oh, wow.

She travels all the way from South Carolina to Charlotte, huh?

Yes.

There seems to be an awful lot of people concerned about excessive, unnecessary criticisms of Billy Graham. I don't see that it is possible to overreact to a professing preacher in the Lord's Church. Who claims that there will be Muslims and Hindus in heaven.

Because the covering of Christ is not necessary. Not to mention the long list of other heretical statements available from his own writings and interviews. People continue to talk about Graham's seemingly faithful preaching, early profession of Christ's squeaky clean life and humble nature.

As proof that he was a true believer. But I ask, could it not be the sheep's clothing the devil uses to win the trust of believers, thereby elevating his messengers to prominent influential positions?

Once these men develop a stellar reputation and influence, they can then begin to lead the church into apostasy. Well, one thing that I just have a right now anyway, a word of correction that Tony has stated.

I don't think that Billy Graham would have denied that every lost person needs the covering of Christ. I think where he was very heretically flawed was in his pluralism. Where he believed that sinners need Christ to be saved, but they don't need to know that.

If you follow what I'm saying. And if you want to respond to the other things that she said. I mean, obviously you can overreact if you use viciousness and unnecessary ad hominem remarks and mockery and even exaggerations.

Which are in fact, if they are exaggerations, they're slanders. You have to be careful that you're not reporting false things about him. Even if you have a serious problem with his heretical teachings.

Right.

I remember him saying at one point he met a man in Asia. I don't know if it was China, but I think it was China. An elderly man who believed in God. But he did not know and had never heard of the Christian faith.

And Billy Graham said, I believe that that man was in love with Jesus and didn't know it.

Yeah, and that's where.

Right. In fact, why bother putting people's lives in jeopardy as they have been doing. As Christians have been doing all the way back to the first century. Why put a family, men, women, and children in the jeopardy of being executed as they were in the first century.

And as they are today in Muslim countries and other lands. If they could love Jesus without making that a public publicly known fact. And even without leaving the religion that they were part of.

And we have to go to our midway break right now.

It's a longer break than normal. It's about 12 minutes. Because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a 12 minute break between our two segments. So be patient and send in your emails with your questions to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Thank you, Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina. You're also going to win a free copy of the book by our guest today. The Legacy of Billy Graham. And we also want to plug the books that you have recommended.

I know of one of them. Ian Murray's Evangelicalism Divided. And Tony also recommends Dr. E .S. Williams' Ecumenism, Another Gospel. I'm not familiar with that one. Another one that I could include that unfortunately is out of print.

But you could still get used copies of it. And I'm hoping somebody reprints it. Errol Hulls, who I have had the privilege of hearing preach on Long Island, New York. When he was visiting from Leeds, England.

To preach at the Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville. Where I was saved and baptized. But he wrote a book called Billy Graham, The Pastor's Dilemma. And that was coming from someone who actually worked as a volunteer for the Billy Graham Crusades.

But then became convicted that it was a heretical approach that they were taking. And in fact, I'm not 100 certain. But I believe the late Errol Hulls may have even been led to Christ through a Billy Graham Crusade.

And there are people who were saved as a result of God using Billy Graham as an instrument. But who later, even though they knew that God used him to bring them to salvation. They knew that they had to expose the dangerously heretical aspects of his ministry when they became aware of them.

Out of the need to honor and obey God and his word rather than man. But we're going to our midway break right now. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Hi, I'm Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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