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Friday, March 9, 2018

Billy Graham

Before Billy Graham evangelism was an exercise in strong arming folks with fear. Theological nonsense of course but it worked well enough for its practitioners. His influence was huge and although it is not told, there is an army of evangelists out there because of him and they are steadily building momentum.

When we are told of a million attending a meeting in India, we can thank Billy. I want to also add that when he got rolling our culture accepted Christianity as the norm and his type of work seemed almost unnecessary. Secularism changed all that.

What triggered all this though is that i recalled that I am a member of the Scottish Clan Graham on my mother's side but never indoctrinated in clan lore since my grandfather died as a young man in 1913 in a mining accident and never passed all that down to my mother. I got Clan McPherson instead. So i never really had any affinity to my ancestral clan and never even thought of Billy as a distant member of the same clan at all. Yet it is objectively true without the emotional loading. He even looks like a clansmen.

What is certain is that he did the clan proud and honorably joins Montrose and Bonny Dundee. The clan is famous for exceedingly capable men and Billy found a remarkable path forward. May he rest in peace. These are good men for a young boy to identify with.

Billy Graham Biography

quotes

“Either communism must die, or Christianity must die, because it is actually a battle between Christ and anti-Christ.”

—Billy Graham

Evangelist(1918–2018)

Billy Graham was an evangelist at revival meetings, and on radio and television for over 40 years.

Who Was Billy Graham?

Born
on November 7, 1918, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy Graham was
preaching at an L.A. revival and was a guest on Stuart Hamblen's radio
show in 1949. The publicity made Graham a superstar and he began
broadcasting his sermons globally. Though detractors criticized Graham
for being too liberal, one Time reporter dubbed him "the Pope
of Protestant America." Graham retired in 2005, and later died at his
North Carolina home on February 21, 2018, at age 99.

Early Life

Religious
figure and Christian evangelist William Franklin Graham, Jr. was born
on November 7, 1918, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to parents William
and Morrow Graham. Billy Graham was the first of four children raised on
the family's dairy farm in Charlotte. In hindsight there was little
indication that Graham would one day preach the Christian gospel to as
many as 215 million people in live audiences over 185 countries. Graham
has been credited with preaching to more individuals than anyone else in
history, not counting the additional millions he has addressed through
radio, television and the written word.

While
Graham's parents were strict Calvinists, it would be an unfamiliar
traveling evangelist who would set Graham on a profound spiritual path.
At the age of 16, Graham attended a series of revival meetings run by
evangelist Mordecai Ham. Despite the fact that Graham was a well-behaved
adolescent, Ham's sermons on sin spoke to young Graham. After high
school Graham moved to Tennessee to enroll in the conservative Christian
school, Bob Jones College. However, he felt disconnected from the
school's rigid doctrine and soon transferred to the Florida Bible
Institute. While in Florida, Graham joined a Southern Baptist Convention
church, where he was ordained in 1939.

After graduating from the
Florida Bible Institute with a bachelor's in theology, Graham moved to
Illinois and enrolled at Wheaton College for further spiritual training.
Here he would meet his future wife, Ruth McCue Bell. Ruth was the
daughter of a missionary, and lived with her family in China until she
turned 17. After graduating with a bachelor's in anthropology, Graham
and Bell were married on August 13, 1943. They would eventually raise
five children together.

Superstar Preacher

Graham
briefly pastored the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Illinois,
before leaving to join Youth for Christ, an evangelical missionary
group which spoke to returning servicemen and young people about God. In
1947, Billy Graham became president of Northwestern Schools, a group of
Christian schools in Minnesota. In 1948, he resigned from Youth for
Christ and focused on Northwestern Schools until 1952, when he resigned
to concentrate on preaching.

It did not take long for people to
identify with Billy Graham's charismatic and heartfelt gospel sermons.
In 1949, a group called "Christ for Greater Los Angeles" invited Graham
to preach at their L.A. revival. When radio personality Stuart Hamblen
had Graham on his radio show, word of the revival spread. The publicity
filled Graham's tents and extended the revival for an additional five
weeks. At the urging of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst,
papers around the nation covered Graham's revival meetings closely.

As
a consequence, Graham became a Christian superstar. Sociologically it
is believed that Graham's success was directly related to the cultural
climate of post-WWII America. Graham spoke out against the evils of
Communism—one of the biggest fears threatening the American
consciousness. In a 1954 interview Graham stated, "Either communism must
die, or Christianity must die, because it is actually a battle between
Christ and anti-Christ." With the advent of nuclear weapons and the
demonstrated fragility of life, people turned to spirituality for
comfort, and Graham illuminated their path.

Thus, Graham helped
bind together a vulnerable nation through religious revival. By glazing
over the finer details of Christianity and focusing on more moderate
doctrines, Graham made evangelism enticing, non-threatening, even
easy—and the media made his messages accessible to the masses.

Televangelist

In
order to expand and maintain a professional ministry, Graham and his
colleagues eventually incorporated the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association (BGEA). Graham began broadcasting his sermons over the radio
during a Christian show called Songs in the Night. Once a week he also hosted a program called The Hour of Decision, a program ABC initially transmitted to 150 stations before reaching its peak of 1,200 stations across America.

Eventually
this program was converted into a television show which ran for three
years. The success of Graham's radio and television programs speak to
his role as a Christian media visionary. Graham used the media as a
means for spreading the gospel of Christ, allowing him to access
millions of people around the globe.

With Graham's success, BGEA
opened numerous international offices and started publishing
periodicals, records, tapes, films and books. BGEA also accepted
invitations from religious figures around the world to hold evangelical
"crusades." Scouts would be sent to these cities to reserve a venue,
organize volunteer choirs and arrange speakers. At the end of these
events, audience members would be invited to commit to Christ and meet
with volunteer counselors.

These new recruits would be given
workbooks for at-home bible study and referrals to local evangelist
pastors. BGEA eventually began to air footage of these crusades on
national television with subscriber information. In 1952, the Billy
Graham Evangelistic Association created the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Film Ministry as a means of distributing personal conversion stories to
the public through films. BGEA also acquired several radio stations
around America in an effort to broadcast Graham's radio shows to a wider
audience.

In terms of print media, BGEA created Christianity Today in 1955. This magazine continues to be the leading journal for evangelical Christians. In 1958, BGEA started Decision
magazine, a monthly mailer with bible studies, articles, church
histories and crusade updates. Eventually this magazine was published in
Spanish, French and German. Additionally, Graham himself authored
numerous books including such titles as Angels: God's Secret Agents (1975), How to be Born Again (1979), Death and the Life After (1994) and The Journey: Living by Faith in an Uncertain World (2006).

Impact and Criticism

Graham's
detractors have criticized him for being too liberal and refusing to
play into partisan politics. Fundamentalists wrote him off when he
condemned violence perpetrated by the anti-abortion group "Operation
Rescue." Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr has called him "simplistic," while
evangelist Bob Jones believes Graham has done "more harm to the cause of
Jesus Christ than any other living man." President Truman even went so
far as to call Graham a "counterfeit." Some anti-Semitic comments
between Graham and President Nixon were also caught on tape in 1972.

However, through his long and extraordinary career, Graham has overwhelmingly been regarded in a positive light, one Time reporter calling him "the Pope of Protestant America." Another reporter from USA Today
writes, "He was the evangelist who did not rip off millions (Jim
Bakker) or run with prostitutes (Jimmy Swaggart) or build a megachurch
(Joel Osteen) or run for president (Pat Robertson) or run a Christian
political lobby (Jerry Falwell)."

Graham's integrity has
encouraged millions to heed his spiritual guidance, including Martin
Luther King, Jr., Bono, Muhammad Ali and United States presidents from
Eisenhower to Bush. He has been rated by the Gallup organization as "One
of the Ten Most Admired Men in the World" a staggering 51 times. He is
regarded by contemporaries as humorous, non-judgmental, sincere,
innocent and accepting.

Legacy

Graham
was awarded the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Freedom Award,
the Congressional Gold Medal, the Templeton Foundation Prize for
Progress in Religion, the Big Brother Award, the Templeton Prize for
Progress in Religion, and the Speaker of the Year Award. Additionally
Graham was recognized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews
for promoting understanding between faiths, and bestowed with the
Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

In
1992, Graham announced that he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a
disease similar to Parkinson's Disease. His son William Franklin Graham
III was chosen to take over BGEA upon his father's retirement. Billy and
his wife Ruth eventually retired to their home in Montreat, North
Carolina, in 2005. In 2007, Ruth Graham passed away from pneumonia and
degenerative osteoarthritis. She is remembered by her husband, five
children and 19 grandchildren. Graham turned 90 in 2008.

Graham
went to a celebration for his 95th birthday in Asheville, North
Carolina, in November 2013. Roughly 900 people attended the event.
Around this time, Graham released what was called his final sermon. In a
video entitled My Hope America, he expressed concern for the
spiritual health of the nation. "Our country's in great need of a
spiritual awakening," he said, according to a report in USA Today. "There have been times that I've wept as I've gone from city to city and I've seen how far people have wandered from God."

Death

Graham
passed away at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, on February 21,
2018, at the age of 99. Although his health had been in decline in
recent years, he reportedly died of natural causes.

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18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.