I just happened to be
visiting near Charlotte, N.C., the other week on Billy Graham’s 96th
birthday. At least one of the local TV channels repeatedly played a birthday salute
to the Carolinas’ favorite son during commercial breaks.
Billy Graham is a lasting
world figure (he is currently the best-read Christian author in numerous parts
of Africa) who goes back in my life for as long as I remember.
Even to this day, I
listen to him on the radio every Sunday morning as he directly follows my
preacher, Richard Jordan, on WYLL 1160 in Chicago.
Just last Sunday Graham included in his usual salvation plea, “But you must be willing to turn
from your sins and repent.”
Of course, I never
got that that was a bad deal and pure heresy when I was a kid. Nobody in my family
ever gave a thought to his doctrine possibly being false, etc. There was just
adoration.
Anytime he had a “crusade”
it was on prime-time local TV and we’d all watch. My dad would tell us kids we
should aspire to one day attend a Billy Graham stadium meeting and be among
those who made the trek down to center field during the “Just as I am” altar
call. He explained that even though we were already saved, it was good to experience “going public” like that and be a witness for others.
One of my grandmother’s
favorite Christian albums to play on her record player when she had Sunday company
for dinner was George Beverly Shea singing, "How Great Thou Art,” among other old-fashioned
hymns.
I didn’t learn Graham
was an apostate preacher until I began attending Shorewood and my friend who
introduced me to the church told me Graham didn’t believe in hell or the need
to believe in the virgin birth for salvation, among lots of other heretical
stuff.
I remember the revelations rocked my mind and became a turning point in my life for truly understanding the exact nature and depth of the apostasy in the
American Christian church.
*****
I was still living in
New York City when Billy Graham made his big “final” crusade there in 2005.
I remember the huge attention given the event, both on TV and in the newspapers (an article
I wrote about it at the time, for my website lisaleland.com, is posted below).
All the endless local
TV commercials for the three-day extravaganza had Graham shouting from the
screen, “God loves you!”
His firm, emphatic declaration made me think of
how another one of our family’s favorite celebrity preachers from my childhood,
Robert Schuller, had for his signature slogan: “God loves you and so do I.”
As a high-schooler,
I’d watch Schuller say that from the pulpit of his grandiose Crystal Cathedral
near Los Angeles and think, “Well, what if somebody like Charlie Manson’s
watching the Hour of Power right now?! How can you really mean that?”
*****
Indeed, it was
attending Shorewood that taught me the very important short little Bible verse
that throws all the “God loves everybody” stuff out the window.
Psalm 5:5 says, “The
foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.”
Jordan explains, “Now
when that verse says ‘God hatest all the workers of iniquity,’ the response
should be, ‘Did you get that?!’ Most people say, ‘Well, yeah, but, uh, uh, uh .
. .’ That’s not the response!
“The
response is, ‘God hates all workers of iniquity.’ That verse doesn’t say simply
that, ‘God hates the sin but loves the sinner.’ Do you see that?
That verse says God hates all workers of iniquity.
Another slam-dunk
little verse is Psalm 11:5: “The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and
him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”
It’s followed by the
assurance, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an
horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous
LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.”
Jordan explains, “You
see, the holiness of God—the integrity of God—will not tolerate sin and it
hates it. Now, that’s something you need to remember because sometimes we
think that God, because of His grace and because of Calvary, will tolerate sin.
He doesn’t.
“The Cross is the
greatest demonstration of God’s attitude toward sin the universe will ever see.
God’s attitude is it took the sacrifice of His Son to put it away. It took the
sacrifice of the most valuable entity the universe could ever possess to put
away sin.
“It is a big deal,
and the Cross answers it, and God commends His love toward us that ‘while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us.’ While we were yet somebody God hated,
Christ made it possible for Him to love you.
“I was reading that
verse in Revelation 13 just yesterday about how He’s ‘the lamb slain from
before the foundation of the world.’ That means God had this stuff planned out
before He created anybody. Mercy! You talk about grace upon grace; and
righteousness and meekness—that’s it!
“Psalm 45 says God
‘lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness.’ If you loved righteousness,
you’d have to hate wickedness. Now, you know, folks, as Believers, if you
love righteousness, there’s no way you can love wickedness. It’s okay to be
intolerant about that.
“This world we live
in, the stupid philosophy of Genesis 3 prevails today. People think like it’s
something new, sophisticated and chic, and all that stuff, but it’s as old as
the Garden of Eden.
“People
get the idea that you can tolerate evil; that everything’s relative and it’s
okay just to put up with it and that’s not at all what the Cross teaches you. The Cross teaches
you God put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
“Jesus Christ had the
same thinking process; the same value system God the Father had. He thought
just like the Father. God’s appointed Him to be His standard-bearer.”
*****
Unsaved people like to argue, “I
don’t believe a loving God would send people to hell.”
Or they ask, “Why would a loving
God cause such pain and suffering in the world?”
Jordan always says, “The answer
to the question of suffering isn’t hard to get; it’s just hard to believe.”
“Why does a loving God allow such
suffering? If He came up and told you what to do, you know what you’d do? ‘Pfffht,
I don’t want to listen to you!’
“We got this thing about doing it
our own selves anyway. We’re going to do it our way. We’re not going to pay
attention to Him. Isn’t that what mankind does? ‘We’ve turned every one to our
own ways.’
“God comes and gives the answer,
‘Here, I’ve set before you life and death; choose life!’ and what does man do? He
chooses death and now we’re mad at God for the guy choosing death—‘Well, why
didn’t He force us to choose life?!’
“If He had, you’d have been
griping about that, wouldn’t you? ‘Well, we want to be free; I want to be my
own man!’ We brag about how, ‘I‘m the captain of my soul and master of my
fate.’ Then we go reap what we sow and go and blame God.
“Any unexplained catastrophe—a
hurricane blows your house away and it’s called an ‘act of God.’ Now, if you
win the lottery, no one says it’s an ‘act of God.’ You know what that is?
That’s a God of your own making. That’s not the God of the Bible.”
*****
The agnostic’s way out is what’s
called “willful ignorance,” and there’s an insidious sin to it. It amounts to a
rejection of anything that conflicts with a person’s own ideas and traditions.
“People say they don’t know, and
then when you show them the truth, they respond, ‘Well, I just don’t know,’ ”
says Jordan. “That’s exactly where the scribes, the Pharisees and the leaders
in Israel were in Luke 20: They knew; they just weren’t willing to say.”
*****
Here’s a great passage from China
missionary R. Dawson Barlow in his 2004 book The Origin of the Races:
“After many years of studying the
Holy Scriptures, I remain categorically convinced that the most effective tool
of the ‘god of this age,’ the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (i.e. Satan),
has had at his disposal, is the allegorical approach to the Bible. It does not
reveal truth. Sometimes the ‘scholars’ seem to be more interested in
impressing other ‘scholars’ than in revealing the truth of the Word of God.
“The American Heritage
Dictionary defines allegory as follows:
Allegory.
1.a. A literary, dramatic, or pictorial device in which characters and events
stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces, so that the literal sense has
or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic sense. B. A story, a picture, or play
in which this device is used. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick are allegories. 2. A symbolic representation.
“. . . Saint Augustine is popularly known as the
‘Father of the Allegorical Method’ of interpreting the Bible. I hate to burst
bubbles, but Augustine is not the ‘darling’ of the early evangelicals as is
commonly assumed. (Charles) Spurgeon, at the dedication of the Metropolitan
Tabernacle, was far too kind when he said (and I quote here from memory), ‘The
gospel preached in this place was not new. It was preached by Calvin and by
Augustine.’
“. . . My study of church history
leads me to believe the deadliest of all the ‘cancers’ infecting the
professing, apostate church of Christendom today, is this ‘Allegorical Method’
of interpretation of the scriptures.”
*****
Here is the article I wrote in July
of 2005:
The day before the
Republican National Convention commenced here in New York City last summer, I
was sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Park Row and Beekman St. (near City
Hall), when I observed a woman next to me using a newspaper reporter's notepad as
she discussed deadline copy with someone over her cell phone.
Upon inquiry, I
learned she was with the Dallas Morning News and had been sent to cover
the convention along with a large corps of reporters, editors and photographers
from her paper. Her assignment was to cover the protests and she showed me a
comprehensive, color-coded typewritten list of planned demonstrations that must
have had 20-30 different names on it. We even talked about the difficulty in
trying to gauge ahead of time which protests would be the most newsworthy.
Examining the local
newspaper coverage of Billy Graham's visit to New York last weekend for his
three-day "crusade" in Flushing Meadows, Queens, I can report there
was little if nothing to suggest to the reader anybody at all organized to
express opposition to the religious agenda of Graham, whom the New York
Times called both "America's spiritual leader" and the
"global ambassador for Christ."
I only know myself
there were organized protesters as a result of a phone call last Sunday morning
from a friend who informed me he had attended the Graham event the night before
and that there was a vocal group of people on the grounds, arguing Graham
"violated the spirit of the Bible," as my friend put it.
For all the media's
rehashing of Graham's civil rights record and his anti-Semitic remarks to Nixon
over the phone, there was not a mention anywhere on how Graham, for decades (at
least since the '60s), has been labeled an apostate teacher by sincere
Bible-believers, some of whom have even written books castigating him and his
bad doctrine.
In fact, in all the
media's endless references to Graham as a friend and "spiritual
advisor" to presidents since Dwight Eisenhower, not once was it revealed
that President Harry Truman actually denounced Graham as a
"counterfeit" and publicity seeker.
The big elephant in
the room, as media-types like to refer to these days, was how Graham, in
interview after interview, avoided any clear gospel presentation even as he
stressed ad nauseam that he wasn't in N.Y.C. to discuss any potentially
divisive political issues but to "proclaim the gospel."
Here's one example
from an exchange last Monday on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris
Matthews" (Matthews, by the way, shamelessly gushes on his show that the
"Reverend Billy Graham, perhaps the best known evangelist in history,
since the Christian era, and he talked to me right before he went on
stage"):
MATTHEWS: If a
person—well, millions of Americans see these movies every night. If people go
to movies like "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," how is
that a stepping stone to appreciating Jesus Christ?
GRAHAM: Well, that
helps them to think about God and right and wrong and the need for something
else, which is found in Christ, I think. I may be wrong, but I think.
MATTHEWS: I wonder,
are we creating false gods? I mean, I—I grew up with movie stars. I love Cary
Grant, but he was a movie star. (Note: Graham had just mentioned that he was a
friend of Grant's)
Is Hollywood today
creating people that are, like, bigger than movie stars? They're almost like
icons, like Madonna, Angelina Jolie and
people like that? Are they distractions?
GRAHAM: To some
extent. There is a lot of furor around Tom Cruise right now and the
Scientology.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
GRAHAM: All of that.
I think that causes people to think and discover for themselves. And I hope
they'll go on thinking and come to the point where they need to realize that
they need Jesus.
MATTHEWS: Do you
think that Scientology is a religion?
GRAHAM: I don't know.
Tom Cruise is trying to explain it to everybody.
MATTHEWS: Well, a lot
of people think it has a lot to do with people's success in Hollywood, is being
into that religion sometimes.
GRAHAM: Well, I don't
know about that.
MATTHEWS: You don't
know.
Obviously even
Matthews is trying to get Graham to say something—anything—in defense of sound
biblical truth as the top Christian spokesman given the national spotlight.
Why Graham would even
bring up Scientology, and then talk about it in such a non-committal fashion,
is extremely telling.
Of course, in one of
his Flushing Meadows' addresses he did the same thing with rock star Madonna, a
renowned adherent of Kabbalah who even opened a school here in Manhattan to
indoctrinate youngsters into her occultic Jewish mysticism steeped in ritual
magical texts.
As someone who lives on the same street only
several blocks west of the Scientology "embassy" here in Manhattan, I
DO know with absolute certainty it's a dangerous religion bent on converting
well-meaning individuals thinking "about God and right and wrong and the
need for something else," as Graham puts it.
They regularly pass
out tracts for Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" in the intersections
surrounding Times Square. Following 9/11, they organized en masse at the World
Trade Center site to distribute water bottles to relief workers as they tried
to play on their grief by pushing Scientology propaganda
Practiced in more
than 100 countries in 30 different languages, Scientology has more than eight
million practitioners worldwide.
According to the
book, "Bruce and Stan's Guide to Cults, Religions, and Spiritual
Beliefs," Scientology is a "mind-science religion" that says the
world's suffering and sickness is an "illusion and merely the result of
bad thinking."
"The mind
sciences are full of compassionate, spiritually sensitive people who want to
feel better about humanity and our world, so they deny the reality of a
personal God and substitute the notion of an impersonal life force,"
explains authors Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. "It's not what you think
that counts, but how you feel.
"It's easy to
see how appealing this belief is in our culture, and you don't even have to be
a member of a mind-science church to buy into it. As an example, just look at
the tremendous popularity and appeal of the Star Wars culture. We're not saying
that George Lucas is an advocate of the mind sciences, but where did the idea
of the 'Force' come from? This is not a personal God, but rather an impersonal,
universal life force that you access by feeling it. Luke Skywalker wasn't
successful until he could 'feel' the force. Only then could he hit the target
and save the world."
Also during Graham's
Queens crusade, he talked affectionately about the time Bono, front man for the
rock band U2, actually composed a song called "Yahoo" while visiting
the Graham household.
Bono, who has
performed live in red horns with his Satan persona he calls Mister MacPhisto,
has "always been fascinated with the dark side of life," according to
an article on the website U2 Sermons. "(The tune) Exit, for example, is so
dark that Bono has difficulty singing it live as it makes him feel so evil. But
even Exit sounds happy beside some of the songs off Achtung Baby."
Just the fact Graham
authorized the 1991 biography, "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham
Story," even asking by name for William Martin as author, readily tells
you where he's at. Any sincere Bible-believer knows there are no prophets
speaking for God today and to refer to yourself as such is an abomination.
In an op-ed column
from last Sunday's New York Times, journalist Kenneth Woodward writes,
"When Mr. Graham invites his audience to 'listen to the voice of God,' it
is his voice they hear reading and interpreting Scripture and thereby making
Christ come alive. Once, while watching Mr. Graham watching himself preach on
videotape, I asked him what he experienced. 'I think of him,' he said of his
image on the screen, 'as another person speaking, because the spirit of God
begins to speak to me through him.' "
There are dozens and
dozens of other alarm-sounding statements by Graham that any newspaper reporter
even slightly interested in a balanced story could unearth without much effort.
In one website alone, Biblical Discernment Ministries at www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/,
I found a gold mine.
Here are just some
examples:
-- In 1966, Graham
was asked in a panel discussion led by the apostate United Church of Christ,
"Do you think a literal belief in the Virgin birth—not just as a symbol of
the incarnation or of Christ's divinity—as an historic event is necessary for
personal salvation?"
Graham's answer:
"While I most certainly believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, I
do not find anywhere in the New Testament that this particular belief is necessary
for personal salvation."
-- In a 1978, Graham,
in an interview with McCall's Magazine, endorses pantheism as a means to
achieve salvation without Jesus Christ. He is quoted in the article as saying,
"I used to think
that pagans in far-off countries were lost—were going to hell—if they did not
have the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that. . .
I believe there are other ways of recognizing the existence of God—through
nature, for instance—and plenty of other opportunities, therefore, of saying
yes to God."
-- In a Time
magazine article from 1993, Graham denies a literal hell. He says in the
article, "The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means
separation from God. We are separated from His light, from His fellowship. That
is going to hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don't preach it because
I'm not sure about it. When the Scripture uses fire concerning hell, that is
possibly an illustration of how terrible it's going to be -- not fire but
something worse, a thirst for God that cannot be quenched."
--In 1985, when asked by a newspaper reporter from
the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, ""What about people of other
faiths who live good lives but don't profess a belief in Christ?" Graham
replied, "I'm going to leave that to the Lord. He'll decide that."
-- In 1993, Graham
said to David Frost in a television interview, "And I think there is that
hunger for God and people are living as best they know how according to the
light that they have. Well, I think they're in a separate category than people
like Hitler and people who have just defied God, and shaken their fists at God.
... I would say that God, being a God of mercy, we have to rest it right there,
and say that God is a God of mercy and love, and how it happens, we don't
know."
-- From a 1998
interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," came this exchange where Graham
suggests not only a belief in reincarnation (I guess, but for sure it's not
biblical since our soul is the only eternal part of humans) but in a heaven
devoted to man's sexual lusts:
GRAHAM: I'll know
Him. He'll know me. He will receive me. I believe the moment I die, an angel
comes and takes my hand and leads me into His presence.
KING: In your body or through a soul?
GRAHAM: Both -- maybe
both, because we have been resurrected. Remember, this body's coming back
together again. Nothing ever disappears ...
KING: All right. You'll
meet Jesus and then what will it be like? What will paradise be like?
GRAHAM: It's going to
be like paradise. It'll be the -- everything that you ever wanted for happiness
will be there. People say that the Bible teaches there's no sex in Heaven. If sex
is necessary for our happiness and fulfillment, it'll be there. And then, if
certain other things that we think are pleasurable will -- it'll be there.
-- In 1993, Graham
attended a prayer breakfast in which President Clinton participated. Senator
John Kerry read from John 3:1-21 in the Bible, but purposefully skipped verse
3:16, which says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
everlasting life." Kerry then explained Christ was speaking of
"spiritual renewal" and that "in the spirit of Christ . . .
Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Christian" were meeting and "there is
renewal . . . with a new President and Vice President. . ."
Graham added, "I
do not know a time when we had a more spiritual time than we've had
today."
-- From published
accounts in 1988, Graham was quoted saying, "Mao Tse Tung's Eight Precepts
are basically the same as the Ten Commandments. In fact, if we can't have the
Ten Commandments read in the schools, I'll settle for Mao's Precepts"
(Gothardism Evaluated, 1988, p. 16).
-- After a five-day
visit to North Korea in 1992, in which Graham praised North Korea's Marxist
dictator Kim II Sung's call for "reconciliation and peace" and said
he had "learned to appreciate Korea's long struggle to preserve its
national sovereignty," Graham appeared on ABC's "Good Morning
America", saying of his trip that the people of North Korea seemed
"relaxed and happy," noting that they were preparing for Kim's 80th
birthday, of whom Graham said was almost like "a grandfather" to his
people. Graham said that Kim had given the Graham party "a very lavish
luncheon" during which he was "very warm and friendly."
(Reported in the 5/1/92 Calvary Contender and the 2/22/93 Christian News.)
--In 1988, Graham
gave the keynote address at the signing ceremony of the Williamsburg Charter
Foundation, "an ecumenical amalgamation of professing Christians,
humanists, atheists, New Agers, Eastern religionists, etc., whose stated goal
is religious tolerance in education, but all the while is promoting a new one
world religion," according to the BDM website. Other
"evangelical" signators and/or supporters with Graham were James
Dobson, Beverly LaHaye and Chuck Colson.
--In 1967, Graham
spoke at the dedication of Oral Roberts University and has appeared on TV
specials with Roberts, never speaking a negative word on Roberts' "wild
visions, faith healing, and shameless money-raising schemes," as the BDM
site reports. At Graham's Amsterdam '83, two of the main speakers were
wacked-out charismatics David Yonggi Cho of Korea and televangelist Pat
Robertson.
On this same website
of Biblical Discernment Ministries' is a great overall testimony from a pastor
who attended a Billy Graham crusade in Long Island in 1990, then wrote to the
publication The Baptist Lighthouse, saying,
"I have read
often of the compromises of Billy Graham, but doubted some of the stories as
exaggerated. Now they have been proven, in my eyes, worse than reported. . .My
conclusion is that Billy Graham is making men twofold more the child of hell. .
. The emphasis was on believing in God, with a little commentary on Jesus
Christ, but very little. . .We were told that the way to take care of the sin
problem is to 'receive Christ, rededicate your life, or renew your confirmation
vows, or whatever you call it in your church.' I could hardly believe my ears.
What do confirmation vows have to do with salvation?. . . No one could have
convinced me of the apostasy of Billy Graham any more than my own experience. .
. .He even had a Rabbi on the platform to show the unity of the religions. . .
. Not having competent counselors is bad enough, but then to have led them to
believe that a church experience is the same as being born again is the height
of apostasy. . . . Billy has not compromised, he has gone kaput!"
Obviously Graham and
the glowing coverage he's received by the media, not to mention the ga-ga
reception from preachers and churches all over the New York City area
(including the Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists Graham has no problems with),
has everything to do with the apostasy leading into the Rapture.
As Hazel Brown, a
missionary in New Mexico, writes in her 1972 booklet, "The
Dispensations,"
"Satan, the god
of this world, manipulates nations, rulers and finances. Through the news
media, TV, schools, apostate churches, and the money situation, he is grooming
and conditioning the world to welcome his masterpiece of deception, the
Anti-Christ. Most of the world is totally unsuspecting of this mind control and
financial maneuvering."