Category: history

The mission conference Susan and I attended a couple of weeks ago was held at The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove near Asheville, North Carolina. This 1,200 acre retreat center is dedicated to God for teaching, prayer, rejuvenation, and fellowship with God and man. In the buildings are many pictures of the Graham family throughout the years.  Russ Busby’s book Billy Graham — God’s Ambassador chronicles with word and picture the life and ministry of a preacher who has been all over the world.

Many have interviewed the evangelist, and newspapers across the world have written their opinions, but I wonder what God might say about one of his servants. I’ll not get it exactly right, but it is good to remember that our Father in Heaven sees each of us clearly. He can evaluate perfectly the lives we live on this earth. As Billy Graham spends his last days in his home state of North Carolina, he continues to echo the humility he often shared with those who judged him: “I am counting totally and completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on Billy Graham. I’m not going to heaven because I’ve read the Bible, nor because I’ve preached to a lot of people. I’m going to heaven because of what Christ did.”

So here’s a proposal of what God might say. In brackets I’ll share facts of his life or quotes from Mr. Graham himself.

I am going to select an ambassador — someone who will represent Me well and communicate My message around the world. There’s a little boy on a dairy farm in a southern state that I’m going to choose. He is learning to work from his daddy as he gets up at 3:00 every morning to help milk their seventy-five cows. He is an energetic little boy who loves My creation and loves to play outdoors.

I am going to let him learn about Me from his mom and dad and Sunday school teachers, but when he is seventeen years old he’ll realize he must make a decision to give his life to Me. [This happened in 1934 during the last verse of the invitation song on the last night of a revival in Charlotte.]

A few years later I am going to call him to preach, and this young man will answer My call. I am going to let him continue his education at Wheaton College near Chicago and there I will connect him to his life partner, a beautiful girl named Ruth. [Billy and Ruth were married August 13, 1943 after they graduated from Wheaton.]

I’ll choose where I want My ambassador to speak and I’ll bring huge crowds to hear his message. I’ll open doors no one would think possible.  People will hear that I love them and that My Son is their hope.

Billy will be criticized often, but he will not shrink back because he knows I am the truth. [His first famous revival was held in Los Angeles in 1949. Meetings were held night after night for eight weeks as Billy preached sixty-five times. In 1950, Billy held campaigns in six other U. S. cities and preached to 1.7 million people. Over the next decades Billy preached to millions of people all over the world. His largest crowd was in Yoido Plaza in Seoul, South Korea where 1.1 million people gathered to hear God’s truth. Billy was even permitted to preach in communist countries where normal religious freedom did not exist. He said, “I have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel on every continent in most of the countries of the world. And I have found that when I present the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with authority, quoting from the very Word of God — He takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart.”]

I will show My heart to the citizens of his land and the world regarding race. I love all people and there should be no discrimination. All people are the same at the foot of the Cross and My message is for everyone. [Billy was a friend to Martin Luther King, Jr. When told he had to segregate his audiences in the 1950’s, Billy said he would not speak unless people of all races could sit where they wanted. In Jackson, Mississippi, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, separating ropes were removed and blacks and whites sat together.]

I will let My ambassador sit with world leaders. I will let My servant encourage them and pray with them. I will let rulers, governors, and presidents know I care about them and that I want them to look to Me for wisdom as they make decisions. [Billy met with all these Presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He encountered other leaders: Winston Churchill, Golda Meir, Queen Elizabeth II, King Hussein, Kim Il Sung, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, the list goes on and on…]

Billy Graham is just one of My ambassadors. Will you be one too? [Billy’s words: “I realize my ministry will someday come to an end. I am only one in a glorious chain of men and women God has raised up through the centuries to build God’s church and take the Gospel everywhere.”]

(Facts and quotes are taken from Billy Graham — God’s Ambassador, by Russ Busby, published in 2007 by Harper Collins Publishers.)

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” II Corinthians 5:20-21

Two of the hippies who became Christians in California during the Jesus Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s were Keith and Melody Green. Keith was a talented musician who started writing songs and playing the piano at a very young age. Both he and Melody were young people searching for truth when Jesus revealed himself as their Savior and Lord in 1975. “We felt we had been shot out of a cannon into another universe,” Melody said. “We knew this was the truth we had been looking for and we wondered how we could share it with others. Keith would bring out his guitar and sing on the street or beach and a crowd would gather and then he’d tell them about Jesus. Not coming from any church background, we were looking at Christianity with very fresh eyes.”

On July 28,1982, Keith and his two oldest children died in a plane crash behind their home near Tyler, Texas. Melody was left with their youngest daughter and was pregnant with their fourth child. Keith Green was twenty-eight years old when he died.

Of course no one knows exactly why such things happen to people, especially young Christians who are on fire for God. Keith was a voice for Jesus in his generation and he spoke boldly to all who would listen. Bob Dylan played harmonica on one of his albums, but Keith had no desire to be a celebrity… he just wanted people to know Jesus. He once said, “If you follow the Jesus who was crucified, the Jesus who called sinners to repentance, the Jesus who requires denial of self as requirement to follow Him, then you can kiss popularity with the world good-bye.”

In 2001, Melody published some of her late husband’s journal writings and concert messages in “Make My Life a Prayer” (published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon). She wrote, “Today, Keith’s words are just as relevant as the day he spoke them – and they will bless, inspire, and challenge you on your journey of getting closer to Jesus. I know how Keith would be amazed at how God has continued to use his few years of ministry and multiply them into this new millennium and into the hearts of a whole new generation. When Keith went to be with Jesus just seven years after meeting Him, the Lord gave me John 12:24 – about a grain of wheat needing to die before it could bear much fruit. I understood it to mean that God was going to take what He had put in Keith’s heart and, like seed, spread it across the land into the hearts of many. I pray that these concert messages will inspire you to rise up and cry out to God for grace and growth in your own life — and for the lost, the poor, and the hurting.”

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant will also be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” John 12:24-26

I asked my wife, Susan, what happened in 1977 besides us both graduating from high school. She answered, “Elvis Presley died.” I was working construction for Susan’s brother that hot August day when we heard the news. We all stopped work and lamented the fact that the King of Rock and Roll was dead at the age of 42. Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was 50 years old when he died. This past weekend Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones (of the Rolling Stones), and Amy Winehouse were all 27 years old when they died. The devil loves bad endings.

Another young king from ancient years started off well and ended poorly. His path of decline, as for most, began while yielding to Satan’s most common temptation: “Don’t worry about what God says; DO WHAT YOU WANT.” King Saul made excuses and justified his decisions with various explanations, but it did not matter. Saul even argued that he had followed the Lord’s instructions, but Samuel communicated God’s thoughts. “‘But I did obey the Lord,’ Saul said. ‘I went on the mission the Lord assigned me…’ But Samuel replied: ‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.’” (I Samuel 15:20-23)

If one rejects God, where does he turn for wisdom and power? King Saul (and some of the artists above) turned to the occult. In disguise, Saul went to the witch of Endor where his future was predicted. He died in battle the next day. (see I Samuel 28)

God cries out with every tragic ending: “Choose my path… don’t choose your own way! Walk in the light… don’t dwell in darkness! Come to Me for answers… don’t seek the world’s wisdom! Come to Jesus for life… He is the King that never fails!” Surely Jesus was tempted to choose his own path, but he trusted and obeyed his Father. He prayed three times that the cup of suffering be avoided, but there in the Garden he taught us all how to finish well: “Nevertheless Lord, not my will, but yours be done.”

“God is light; in him is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” I John 1:5-7

On January 22, 1973 the highest court in our land ruled that a woman has the right to prematurely end the life of an unborn child. By the end of 1973 the highest government officials in our land were engulfed in scandal after scandal. It seemed that each day new revelations of corruption were exposed. As a young teenager, I didn’t  understand the darkness of Roe v Wade or Watergate… but God did.

I became intrigued with Watergate after becoming assistant principal in our high school a few years after graduating from college. So many discipline situations begin with one hidden truth being exposed. The arrest of five burglars at the Watergate hotel a few months before the election of 1972 led to intense investigation of the most powerful men in America. Nixon won 49 states and 61% of the vote in the November election, but little did he know that within two years he would resign the presidency in disgrace. In April of 1973, Nixon’s top aides, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned, as did Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Everyone in governemnt seemed to be scrambling to defend themselves. In October, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned for non-Watergate related scandals. When a relatively unknown aid named Alexander Butterworth revealed that Nixon taped every conversation in his office on a hidden machine, the noose tightened around the President’s neck.

But God loves to shine light into darkness. Of his inner circle, perhaps the man with the worst reputation for ‘playing dirty’ was an ex-Marine named Charles W. Colson. Engulfed in the political turmoil, this lawyer known as Nixon’s ‘hatchet man’ gave his life to Christ in 1973 after a friend named Tom Phillips took the time to share how Jesus had changed his life. The press and political cartoonists had a field day in the newspapers after hearing that Chuck Colson was ‘born again.’ But when he surprised everyone by pleading guilty to wrongs committed, even his harshest critics took respectful note. The judge sentenced the President’s former Special Counsel to one to three years in prison.

While some judged Colson’s motives as impure, others welcomed him into the fellowship of Christ and prayed for him to walk faithfully with a new Master. In prison, Colson read how Jesus chose to leave Heaven and identify fully with man by coming to earth as one of us, enduring hardship and temptation just as we do. “For the one who makes men holy and the men who are made holy share a common humanity. So that he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2:11) Chuck Colson knew he deserved punishment for wrongdoing in government, but now as a ‘new creation in Christ’ he wondered what God planned for his life.

While in prison, Colson discovered a part of God’s purpose for him. Only by being a prisoner can a man really understand what prisoners feel and need. In 1976 after his parole, he established Prison Fellowship to share the light of Jesus Christ with men and women in prison. Over the past thirty-six years, thousands have come to Christ because one guilty man surrendered to God in 1973. Charles Colson knows personally the power of Christ and speaks clear words of truth in the battle between darkness and light.

“All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.” Ezekial 17:24

I was eight years old on April 4, 1968 in Chattanooga, Tennessee when my mom told me to run tell my dad that Dr. King had been shot in Memphis. I remember thinking, “Why would anyone shoot a doctor?” We all watched the news that night and I realized something very tragic had happened in our state. Two months later a Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles. The whole country seemed to be falling apart that year as the war in Vietnam raged and racial hatred spewed. The Democratic Convention produced even more fireworks late in August as Chicago was rocked with protest and violence. In November, Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace to become the 37th President of the United States.

With all the chaos of the year, 1968 came to an end with everyone looking up. As Apollo 8 became the first spaceship to orbit the moon, three astronauts prepared to broadcast a message to the largest listening audience in the history of the world. Nearly a billion people tuned in on Christmas Eve as Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders began with these words: “For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.”

A little over two and a half years earlier, the cover of TIME magazine was filled with a three word question: “IS GOD DEAD?” From their spacecraft beyond the moon, looking at a blue planet called home, Bill Anders, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Commander Frank Borman read the passage below. I think they answered the question.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light and it was good; and God divided the night from the darkness. And God called the light Day; and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear’; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering of the waters he called Seas; and God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:1-10