Billy Graham was an evangelical evangelist who preached the gospel and saw many thousands of people come to Christ through his ministry.\u00a0 Though I have not been a supporter of his new-evangelical ecumenicalism, I have always been thankful for many things about his life and ministry.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see how America today handles the memory of Billy Graham and his preaching.\u00a0 It is easy to praise a man after he is incapacitated or has passed away.\u00a0 In many ways today America would not tolerate the evangelical message of salvation only in Jesus Christ, i.e., the Christian message being the ONLY way to God and that through a personal faith in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 But I think we will see them paying lip service to it over the next few days.<\/p>\n
Most evangelicals today would not be able to handle the “old fashioned” style of the Billy Graham Crusade, with its hymn singing and choirs, with George Beverly Shea singing How Great Thou Art, and especially with its public invitation to accept Christ right now, and perhaps even with Graham’s condemnation of sexual and moral sins.\u00a0 It should be known or remembered that Graham was not the inventor of the crusade method that he used.\u00a0 Many of us grew up hearing many evangelists preach in tents and large venues and give public invitations.\u00a0 My own pastor, John Rawlings, who also died a few years ago at 99, preached this way all of his life.\u00a0 As a fundamentalist, I am also reminded that in those days there was a stronger ability to stand against the ecumenicalism of the Graham Crusades and even that was more tolerated among evangelicals and fundamentalists than it would be today.\u00a0 Sadly, we are also seeing that methodology (calling evil good and good evil) bear fruit in the evangelical world.<\/p>\n
But I am also quick to compliment Billy Graham for a number of things for which I am thankful.\u00a0 First, that there are, and will be, thousands of people in heaven because of his message of salvation in Jesus Christ alone.\u00a0 I know many of them personally.\u00a0 I am thankful that he kept himself clean from moral, financial, and other public failures that seems to have plagued many public religious figures of his day.\u00a0 I am thankful that he made the public invitation acceptable, something which helped all of us who give invitations.\u00a0 Many today who will praise his ministry will never themselves give a public invitation.\u00a0 And I am thankful that even today, the day of his death, many television watchers will hear in his preaching again, maybe in old black and white scenes, the message that salvation is only in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 He being dead yet speaketh, at least for the next few days.<\/p>\n
In my life and ministry over the last fifty years, I could not support the ecumenicalism of Billy Graham.\u00a0 But I can rejoice in a message of Jesus Christ and I am thankful for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[233],"tags":[141,149,176],"quote-subject":[],"class_list":["post-8347","musings","type-musings","status-publish","hentry","category-musings","tag-ecumenism","tag-evangelism-outreach","tag-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\n