Billy Graham "jumps the shark"

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Postby Pastor Bill » June 3rd, 2009, 7:25 am

That link was much easier to hear, and yes by that it does seem he has compromised his beliefs and turned from truth.
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Postby bibleguy » June 3rd, 2009, 7:44 am

I have heard others also question some of Billy Graham's actions over the years. One of which was a private audience with the pope that typically requires the visitor to kiss the pontiff's ring. Also, several have accused his involvement in the ecumenical movement.

Even if all of this is true (and I think it might even be), "by their fruits you will know them." While imperfect, it looks as though his greatest efforts to reach the lost for Jesus far outweighs a single comment that leaves an open door to the unbeliever. Whatever he said, his actions prove his allegience to Jesus Christ alone.
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Postby rough_rider » June 3rd, 2009, 9:05 am

If he is perverting the Gospel, all he has done in the past will count for not. Christ and only Christ is over the household that we belong, we are to hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
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Postby Pastor Bill » June 3rd, 2009, 9:36 am

While we are known by our works, our works won't save us, if he's turned from relying completely on Christ for Salvation, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, especially with the influence he has had if he is now using that to mislead...

We can't know his heart, but If those things are true, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

Of course this could be very edited still, and he could go on to elaborate further that these would in fact come to a full knowledge and acceptance of Christ, which would make sense in the fashion that I first misheard it, but as it stands on it's own, it's scary.
"Why would God allow Hitler his chapter in history? Why would God send a whale to swallow Jonah or turn a woman into a pillar of salt? Surely there were other ways. But I'll leave the particular methods of God to God."

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Postby paul » June 3rd, 2009, 9:47 am

It never ceases to amaze me at how quick the Christian church is to judge and pass sentence on another believer.

With all the garbage from the internet....the fake post and minipulated images and videos that are posted. The christian church is quicker to believe non believers than one who has worked his entire lifetime for the cause of Christ.
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Postby rough_rider » June 3rd, 2009, 10:32 am

Gerald Creasy wrote:For the sake of discussion:


ASSUMING that the quote stands on it's own, is what is said unacceptable for those who preach the gospel?
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Postby one love » June 3rd, 2009, 11:23 am

paul wrote:It never ceases to amaze me at how quick the Christian church is to judge and pass sentence on another believer.

With all the garbage from the internet....the fake post and minipulated images and videos that are posted. The christian church is quicker to believe non believers than one who has worked his entire lifetime for the cause of Christ.


EDIT for clarity:

Paul I dont see a bunch of Christians ready to judge him! You have judged me (in the past) solely based on the fact that I am in TCOG and what you THINK I may believe...hmm (just a observation)

I see People who had a lot of confidence in him and the work he did hearing him say you can be saved without knowing Christ and discussing it based on his statement (if it was real, I will say it seems to be in context with some previous statements they showed)


If ANYONE says you can go to heaven with out ever knowing Christ they are a deceiver, he is the only way.
Last edited by one love on June 3rd, 2009, 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Postby paul » June 3rd, 2009, 11:31 am

one love wrote:
paul wrote:It never ceases to amaze me at how quick the Christian church is to judge and pass sentence on another believer.

With all the garbage from the internet....the fake post and minipulated images and videos that are posted. The christian church is quicker to believe non believers than one who has worked his entire lifetime for the cause of Christ.



Paul I dont see a bunch of Christians ready to judge him! You have judged me solely based on the fact that I am in TCOG and what you THINK I may believe...hmm (just a observation)

I see People who had a lot of confidence in him and the work he did hearing him say you can be saved without knowing Christ and discussing it based on his statement (if it was real, I will say it seems to be in context with some previous statements they showed)


If ANYONE says you can go to heaven with out ever knowing Christ they are a deceiver, he is the only way.


onelove: how you got all that from my post, I'll never know. I don't see anywhere that your name is mentioned nor your organization. My comment is one of an observation of the christian community as a whole. I stand by my statement.
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Postby dolfan » June 3rd, 2009, 12:08 pm

Ever since I got my new hard drive, my computer won't make a sound. :lol: So, I hear nothing on it. I have no idea what Billy Graham said. I found the purported transcript, though:

I think that everybody that loves Christ or knows Christ, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're members of the body of Christ. And I don't think that we're going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole world to Christ at any time. What God is doing today is 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 hearts they need something that they don't have and they turn to the only light they have and I think they're saved and they're going to be with us in heaven.


Schuller followed up with this question and Graham's answer:

Dr. Schuller: "What I hear you saying is that it's possible for Jesus Christ to come into a human heart and soul and life even if they've been born in darkness and have never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you're saying?"
Dr. Graham: "Yes it is because I believe that. I've met people in various parts of the world in tribal situations that they have never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, have never heard of Jesus but they've believed in their hearts that there is a God and they tried to live a life that was quite apart from the surrounding community in which they lived."
Dr. Schuller: "This is fantastic. I'm so thrilled to hear you say that. There's a wideness in God's mercy.
Dr. Graham: There is. There definitely is."


Y'all, I'm as cynical as anybody can imagine. This interview was 12 years ago. We all know that, as erudite and powerful as Graham has been, he's also been given to some bad choices, bad explanations (i.e., the anti-Jewish remarks to Nixon, for example). I don't think this is one of them. I think this is an inartfully stated description of what missionaries from around the world report about people who have never even heard of Jesus, His name, or the particulars of the Godhead/trinitarian belief or the full gospel in the ways we all got it. Dreams, visions, and just .... an understanding of themselves as corrupt or sinners and just wanting to be set apart. I do believe that people who respond to God's call to them in such circumstances can be saved in that circumstance without formal knowledge of the gospel. I hope and believe it is exceptional, more so because we know the plan of God is to send human messengers with the actual and full message to human people in human misery and to give them human and divine hope. Anything other than that is obviously related in some big-picture way to limitations of time-space-circumstance that believers either cannot or will not conquer in order to get the message to these same people. I'm in no place to conclude that God cannot take matters into His own hands and directly evangelize someone, and I'm in even less a place to dictate how He explains Himself in that process. Suffice it to say, however, that what He does is enough.

Even Schuller didn't read Jesus out of the salvation portrait as some characterize Graham's statement. He follows up with "Jesus Christ ... com[ing] into a human heart and soul and life...." in those circumstances. What they are patently describing is the ways in which Jesus introduces Himself to people in those isolate, desolate places and circumstances. I just don't read this as a denial of anything other than that God has to have us; sometimes God does His own thing to get the Message to those we can't/won't reach. We do have to be very careful, and I mean the kind of careful that avoids judgment on us, in treating these people as something less than people Christ has redeemed. I understand the concerns, I share the dismay at the thought of Graham apparently abandoning the faith, but I am convinced that we should not be concerned and that there is no cause for dismay here.
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Postby paul » June 3rd, 2009, 1:17 pm

Joh 3:17 For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him.
Joh 3:18 He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Joh 3:19 And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

Rom 1:19 because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them.
Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse:

This light does not reveal a great deal, but the light is there nevertheless. This light makes it so that people are without excuse from seeking and knowing God. This light declares that God is; it is an intutitive knowledge that God exist. Therefore man is incurably religious. And God's grace and mercy abound.

In Pauls introduction to the Romans Chapter 1-3 he speaks of how the gentiles fulfill the law without having it and how the Jews with the law fail to fulfill it. So they are in no position to condemn nor judge.
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Postby bibleguy » June 3rd, 2009, 1:46 pm

Make what you want from this quote, Billy Graham preached Jesus Christ as the way of salvation.

Of course I know you can't earn salvation, and you will be judged by every idle word. That is true.

But I'm with Paul on this one. I think we should be careful not to fall under the words of Isaiah, “For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off: That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought” (Isa.29:20-21).

Billy Graham never claimed to be anything more than he was. He never made money his message. He kept the Gospel pure and worked the work that God sent him to do.

Though I don't think he thought it out that far, his statement, in the very least, while not denying the power of the born-again experience, is recognizing something that may be seen in God's statement to Paul in Acts 18:9-11, “Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city. And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.” He is not talking about Christians, but people like Cornelius, who, before he was a Christian, is described in Acts 10:2 as "a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." This was a grace-age phenomenon, a God-fearing man who did not know Jesus, but was one of many whom God had in Corinth, and, no doubt, elsewhere.

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Postby Mike Vande » June 3rd, 2009, 1:57 pm

paul wrote:It never ceases to amaze me at how quick the Christian church is to judge and pass sentence on another believer.

With all the garbage from the internet....the fake post and minipulated images and videos that are posted. The christian church is quicker to believe non believers than one who has worked his entire lifetime for the cause of Christ.


Amen. The man deserves better than this from his family in Christ. Gerald, you should be utterly ashamed of yourself for this thread. It's nothing more than slanderous gossip, and you're passing it on.
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Postby Gerald Creasy » June 3rd, 2009, 3:04 pm

Mike Vande wrote:Gerald, you should be utterly ashamed of yourself for this thread. It's nothing more than slanderous gossip, and you're passing it on.



"Slanderous gossip"!?

Don't be idiotic.

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Postby one love » June 3rd, 2009, 4:48 pm

paul wrote:
one love wrote:
paul wrote:It never ceases to amaze me at how quick the Christian church is to judge and pass sentence on another believer.

With all the garbage from the internet....the fake post and minipulated images and videos that are posted. The christian church is quicker to believe non believers than one who has worked his entire lifetime for the cause of Christ.



Paul I dont see a bunch of Christians ready to judge him! You have judged me solely based on the fact that I am in TCOG and what you THINK I may believe...hmm (just a observation)

I see People who had a lot of confidence in him and the work he did hearing him say you can be saved without knowing Christ and discussing it based on his statement (if it was real, I will say it seems to be in context with some previous statements they showed)


If ANYONE says you can go to heaven with out ever knowing Christ they are a deceiver, he is the only way.


onelove: how you got all that from my post, I'll never know. I don't see anywhere that your name is mentioned nor your organization. My comment is one of an observation of the christian community as a whole. I stand by my statement.



Paul I was making a comparison between the fact you think everyone is judging him and how quick you have done the same to me in the past. It was not meant to be arrogant, I apologize if the analogy came across wrong.

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Postby RamboPreacher » June 4th, 2009, 1:43 am

rough_rider wrote:If he is perverting the Gospel, all he has done in the past will count for not. Christ and only Christ is over the household that we belong, we are to hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
are you saying that the thousands that came to Christ through his ministry are not counted, or are invalidated because of an apparent heretical proclamation?!?! please help me understand here.
Thanks, Brent "RamboPreacher" Hoefling


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