Fr. Dwight ponders the message of Billy Graham

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Pondering Billy Graham

Today as I drove from a funeral to the cemetery I turned on the car radio and they were broadcasting live from Billy Graham’s funeral service in Charlotte.
His son, Franklin was preaching, and he was preaching the old, old story. It was his father’s only tune and he played it over and over again. Later at the parish fish supper someone asked me why everybody thought Billy Graham was so great. I said it was because he preached the simple message of a human race locked in sin and in need of a savior, and that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son so that all who believe in him might have everlasting life.
That’s it. That’s really it, and there wasn’t anything more.
And I wondered today what would happen if another Billy Graham came along and preached that message and nothing else. I expect the reaction would be the same today as it has always been. Intellectuals would sneer, the self righteous religious people would dismiss it as naive. The theologians would say it was too simplistic. Sinners would scorn it and laugh and turn away.
But many, many ordinary people still long to hear that simple message.
Furthermore, our Catholic churches would also be stronger if we took a lesson from Billy Graham. Oh, yes I know he’s not a Catholic. Yes, I know his theology is faulty. I realize we do not preach that simple, easy message of eternal security–“Just say yes to Jesus and you can know you are going to heaven.” I realize that we stress the sacraments and membership in the church and being a Catholic is more complicated and full and abundant than the reductionist Christianity of the Baptists.
But. But. But, on the other hand, isn’t the core message still the same? Do we not call sinners every Sunday at Mass to repent of their sins and come forward in an altar call to accept Jesus? Do we not call sinners to come to confession, get down on their knees and say they are sorry for their sins and accept the forgiveness of Jesus, and if we do not say that they can know today that they are going to heaven, we can certainly say that they can know today that they are on the road to heaven if they say “Yes” to him and strive to live in a state of grace.
And I reckon the main reason our churches are full of hypocrites who win prizes for humanitarian efforts while they vote for the dismemberment of unborn children, and while our churches are full of people who are more concerned to save the planet than to save their souls, and our churches are full of vain, greedy, ambitious and shallow prelates and people–I reckon the main reason our churches (and I mean Catholic and Protestant alike) are full of such people is because we have all taken our eye off the ball. We’ve missed the target. We’ve forgotten what it is all about.
And what it is all about is that same old, old story. It is Billy Graham’s message of a sinful humanity in need of a savior.
I reckon if, underneath all the other religious stuff you're doing and underneath all the peace and justice stuff you’re doing and underneath all the liturgical stuff you’re doing and all the wonderful fund raising you’re doing and all that great educational and social work you’re doing– if that is not your message, then you’re in the wrong business and you ought to be honest and get out and go get another job.

Louisiana's infamous Angola prison where inmates made Billy Graham's casket

Billy Graham's casket was hand made by inmates at Angola Penitentiary

Posted: Feb 21, 2018 05:33 PM CST

Updated: Feb 21, 2018 05:35 PM CST

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ANGOLA, La. (WAFB) Inmates at one of the country's most well-known prisons will have a hand in laying Reverend Billy Graham to rest.
At his request, Angola inmates built his casket back in 2006.
Louisiana State Penitentiary is known as the "Alcatraz of the south." It’s home to the state's most notorious criminals, but is also home to a renowned prison ministry.
“I feel there is a great outpouring of the holy spirit behind bars at this time,” said Clifford Bowman.
Bowman is in bible college at Angola. He was selected to be part of a special team on a special mission: to build a casket. It’s a regular casket for a not so regular man: evangelist, Billy Graham.
“We of course prayed before we started and that's something that does not happen every day when they are doing it in the regular work. Where God is working the devil's gonna’ be there working, so he's gonna’ try and get his licks in too,” said Bowman.
“This was a great honor. Because this is a great man of God and he wants him an inmate to build his coffin and get the inmate preachers involved and its mind boggling it sends a great message,” said Burl Cain.
Richard Liggett constructed the casket for Graham with a couple of modifications from his usual work and it’s ready. “I respect the man. I've listened to him. I know what he preaches. You know, but other than that, I just wanted to do the best job I could,” said Liggett.
Angola first began building their own caskets about 18 years ago. Inmates before then were buried in cardboard boxes, which often fell apart or caved in from the weight of the dirt.
“It’s so symbolic, even though the prisoners have committed horrible crimes... God loves them too,” said Cain.
And so did Reverend Billy Graham.
       

USCCB President on death of Billy Graham

USCCB President Offers Condolences on the Death of the Rev. Billy Graham

 

February 21, 2018

WASHINGTON—His Eminence, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has issued the following statement on receiving the news of the Rev. Billy Graham's death:

"Today, we pray for the soul of the Rev. Billy Graham to the Lord he so dearly loved and offer our condolences to his family. Billy Graham was a preacher of God's Word not only in his sermons, but also in the very life he lived. His faith and integrity invited countless thousands around the world into a closer relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for the ministry of Billy Graham."

A great story of Rev Billy Graham respect for Catholics and friendship woth Saint JPII

The Extraordinary Friendship of Rev. Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II

by ChurchPOP Editor - February 21, 2018

BGEA

Evangelical Protestant preacher the Rev. Billy Graham passed away today at the age of 99.
He preached Jesus Christ in-person to hundreds of millions of people in nearly every country in the world. He fought for Civil Rights and against Communism. He befriended every U.S. president from Eisenhower to Obama. And he was a friend of Catholics, especially Pope St. John Paul II.
When Graham started preaching his “crusades” in 1947, relations between evangelical Protestants and Catholics were far different than they are today, filled with deep suspicion and distrust on both sides – which made his friendship with Catholics so important.
Already in 1966, one year of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council and it’s calls for renewal and ecumenism in the Catholic Church, Graham said, “I find myself closer to Catholics than the radical Protestants. I think the Roman Catholic Church today is going through a second Reformation.”
And after hearing John Paul II preach in Canada in 1980, Graham lauded the Pope’s preaching: “I’ll tell you, that was just about as straight an evangelical address as I’ve ever heard. … He gives moral guidance in a world that seems to have lost its way.”
He first met Pope John Paul II in 1981, but didn’t talk about it until 1990, due to ecumenical suspicions in the Christian community. They chatted like “long-lost friends,” exchanged gifts, and John Paul II held Graham’s hand as they talked.
Then, just before Graham left, there was a pause in the conversation. “Suddenly the pope’s arm shot out and he grabbed the lapels of my coat,” Graham later recalled. “He pulled me forward within inches of his own face. He fixed his eyes on me and said, ‘Listen Graham, we are brothers.‘”
When John Paul II died in 2005, Graham’s statement read: “It was my privilege to meet with him at the Vatican on various occasions, and I will always remember his personal warmth to me and his deep interest in our ministry.”

As Catholics, let us pray for the repose of the soul of Rev. Billy Graham!

The death of Christian evangelist Billy Graham, rest in peace

REAKING NEWS: Renowned evangelist Billy Graham has died at age 99. Watch live coverage ...

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Billy Graham, preacher to millions, adviser to presidents, dies at 99

Reuters

© Robert Padgett/Reuters Evangelist Billy Graham speaks at the dedication of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, May 31, 2007. (Reuters) - U.S. evangelist Billy Graham, who counseled presidents and preached to millions across the world from his native North Carolina to communist North Korea during his 70 years on the pulpit, died on Wednesday at the age of 99, a spokesman said.
Graham died at 8 a.m. EST at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, according to Jeremy Blume, a spokesman for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

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With his steely features and piercing blue eyes, Graham was a powerful figure when he preached in his prime, roaming the stage and hoisting a Bible as he declared Jesus Christ to be the only solution to humanity's problems.
According to his ministry, he preached to more people than anyone else in history, reaching hundreds of millions of people either in person or via TV and satellite links.
Graham became the de facto White House chaplain to several U.S. presidents, most famously Richard Nixon. He also met with scores of world leaders and was the first noted evangelist to take his message behind the Iron Curtain.
"He was probably the dominant religious leader of his era," said William Martin, author of "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story." "No more than one or two popes, perhaps one or two other people, came close to what he achieved."
In a rare trip away from his home in his later years, Graham had celebrated his 95th birthday on Nov. 7, 2013, at a hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, where some 800 guests, including Republican politician Sarah Palin, business magnates Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump and television hostess Kathie Lee Gifford paid tribute.
The celebration featured a video of a sermon that his son Franklin said was Graham's last message to the nation. Graham had been working for a year on the video, which was aired on Fox News. In it, he said America was "in great need of a spiritual awakening."
In his prime Graham had a thunderous, quick-burst speaking style that earned him the nickname "God's Machine Gun." Through his "Crusades for Christ," Graham sowed fields of devotion across the American heartland that would become fertile ground for the growth of the religious right's conservative political movement.
His influence was fueled by an organization that carefully planned his religious campaigns, putting on international conferences and training seminars for evangelical leaders, Martin said.
Graham's mastery of the media was ground-breaking. In addition to radio and publishing, he used telephone lines, television and satellites to deliver his message to homes, churches and theaters around the world.
Some 77 million saw him preach in person while nearly 215 million more watched his crusades on television or through satellite link-ups, a Graham spokeswoman said.
Graham started meeting with presidents during the tenure of Harry Truman. He played golf with Gerald Ford, skinny-dipped in the White House pool with Lyndon Johnson, vacationed with George H.W. Bush and spent the night in the White House on Nixon's first day in office.
George W. Bush gave Graham credit for helping him rediscover his faith and in 2010, when it was difficult for Graham to travel, Barack Obama made the trip to the preacher's log cabin home in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains.
Graham's ties to the White House were mutually beneficial. His reputation was enhanced as preacher to the presidents, while the politicians boosted their standing with religiously inclined voters.
"Their personal lives - some of them - were difficult," Graham, a registered Democrat, told Time magazine in 2007 of his political acquaintances. "But I loved them all. I admired them all. I knew that they had burdens beyond anything I could ever know or understand."
Graham's reputation took a hit because of Nixon after the release of 1972 White House tapes in which the two were heard making anti-Semitic comments. Graham later said he did not remember the conversation and apologized.
In the early half of his career, Graham often spoke his mind on social and political issues of the day, including his strong anti-communist sentiments. He dismissed Vietnam War protesters as attention-seekers and, while he eventually refused to hold segregated revival meetings, he did not take an active role in the 1960s civil rights movement.
But Graham's politics were not as overt as those of some religious leaders who came after him, such as Pat Robertson, who ran for president in 1988, and Jerry Falwell, co-founder of the Moral Majority, an organization whose purpose was to promote Christian-oriented politics.
As he grew older, Graham said he felt he had become too involved in some issues and shifted to a middle-of-the-road position in order to reach more people. He did, however, dive into the gay marriage issue in 2012 when he came out in support of a state amendment to ban same-sex marriages in North Carolina. He also met with Republican Mitt Romney in October 2012 and told him he supported Romney's run for the presidency.
FROM FARM TO PULPIT
William Franklin Graham was born on Nov. 7, 1918, into a Presbyterian family and was known as Billy Frank while growing up on a farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. As a teenager, he said he was mostly preoccupied with baseball and girls until he was moved by God after hearing a fiery revivalist in Charlotte.
After attending Bob Jones College, Graham ended up at a Bible school in Florida, where he would preach at his first revival, and was ordained in 1939 by a church in the Southern Baptist Convention. He received a scholarship to Wheaton College near Chicago, where he met Ruth Bell, whose parents were missionaries in China. They married in 1943.
Rather than work from a home church, Graham went on the road, preaching in tents and building a following. His breakthrough came with a 1949 Los Angeles tent crusade that was scheduled for three weeks but extended to eight because of the overflow crowds he attracted.
The success of the Los Angeles campaign and the fame it brought Graham was attributed to media magnate William Randolph Hearst, who had liked Graham's style and anti-communist stance so much that he ordered his newspapers to give Graham a boost.
Graham eventually outgrew tent revivals and would preach at some of the most famous venues in the world, such as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden in New York and London's Wembley Stadium. He delivered sermons around the globe, including in remote African villages, China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Liberals accused him of giving credibility to abusive governments while fundamentalist Christians criticized him for going to godless countries and promoting peaceful relations with them. Graham said he simply saw the trips as apolitical opportunities to win souls for Christ.
Graham concluded his career of religious campaigns in June 2005 in New York with a three-day stand that attracted more than 230,000 people, his organization said. He turned over his evangelical association to his son Franklin. Graham's other four children were also evangelists.
REPUTATION
Graham managed to maintain his public integrity even as other TV star evangelists such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart were hit in the 1980s by financial and sex scandals. To keep his reputation pristine, Graham had a policy of never being alone with any woman other than Ruth.
Graham's closest presidential relationship was with Nixon, who offered him any government job he wanted - including ambassador to Israel. It turned out to be a painful relationship for Graham, who said Nixon and his circle misled him on the Watergate scandal.
Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman first mentioned Graham's anti-Semitic remarks in a 1994 book, which Graham strongly denied. But when audio tapes from the Nixon White House were released in 2002, Graham could be heard referring to Jews as pornographers and agreeing with Nixon that the U.S. media was dominated by liberal Jews and could send the United States "down the drain."
Graham, who had a long history of supporting Israel, apologized again after the tapes' release and said he had no recollection of the conversation.
"If it wasn't on tape, I would not have believed it," Graham told Newsweek. "I guess I was trying to please. I felt so badly about myself - I couldn't believe it. I went to a meeting with Jewish leaders and I told them I would crawl to them to ask their forgiveness."
The author of more than two dozen books with titles such as "How to Be Born Again," Graham also ran the weekly "Hour of Decision" radio program broadcast around the world on Sundays for more than 50 years.
Graham helped bring religion into the television age. He first put together a television show, which was eventually syndicated, in 1951 and began live broadcasts of his revival meetings in 1957 from New York's Madison Square Garden.
In a 2011 Fox News interview, Graham was asked what he would do differently in his career.
"I would study more. I would pray more, travel less, take less speaking engagements," he said. "I took too many of them in too many places around the world. If I had it to do over again I'd spend more time in meditation and prayer and just telling the Lord how much I love him."
In addition to suffering with Parkinson's disease for many years, Graham's health problems in his later years included a broken hip, a broken pelvis, prostate cancer and installation of a shunt in his brain to control excess fluid. He was hospitalized in 2011, 2012 and 2013 for respiratory problems.
Graham and his wife, Ruth, who died June 14, 2007, had two sons and three daughters.

Billy Graham celebrated on occassion of 95th birthday

Evangelist Billy Graham feted by hundreds at 95th birthday party

By John Peragine 8 hours ago

 

       

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Evangelist Billy Graham celebrates 95th birthday

By John Peragine

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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - U.S. evangelist Billy Graham, who helped transform Christianity in America during seven decades in the pulpit, marked his 95th birthday on Thursday with a rare public appearance among close to 900 people who gathered to celebrate his life.
Graham, who is frail but mentally alert, received a standing ovation as he was wheeled into a huge ballroom at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, a mountain town near the home of the minister.
"He so positively impacted people," said former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who attended the party along with real estate tycoon Donald Trump, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren and hundreds of other Graham admirers.
"His is the message of truth," Palin added.
Trump sat by Graham's side as singers including Michael W. Smith, Ricky Skaggs and Kathie Lee Gifford serenaded him with "Happy Birthday."

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Billy Graham gestures while attending a book signing for former U.S. President George W. Bush's new  …

Graham, dubbed "America's Pastor," is considered one of the most important figures in modern Christianity.
In his prime he counseled U.S. presidents and preached to more people in live audiences than anyone else in history, including being the first noted evangelist to take his message to countries living under Communist rule, according to his organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Though widely admired, he was not without controversy. In 2002, he apologized after the release of secretly recorded tapes from 1972 in which he and President Richard Nixon agreed that liberal Jews dominated the U.S. news media. Graham was heard saying the Jewish "stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain."
Graham has not preached publicly since 2006 and spoke only briefly to the crowd that feted him with dinner and cupcakes for about two hours on Thursday.
He thanked his longtime music director, Cliff Barrows, who traveled with Graham to religious crusades and rallies around the world. He also praised the Army service of a grandson sitting at his table.

View gallery."

Former Republican governor of Alaska Sarah Palin and her husband Todd arrive for a celebration for e …

Graham's wife, Ruth, with whom he had five children, died in 2007.
The birthday event kicked off with the screening of a new public message Graham filmed as part of the largest-ever evangelism effort by his organization.
The video, titled "The Cross," could be Graham's final sermon. In it, he calls for a spiritual awakening in America.
Several speakers at the event noted Graham disliked having attention focused on his works, instead wanting the focus to be on God.
"God never calls us to be famous, but if we are faithful he may grant it to us," Skaggs said. "(Graham) is so simple and down to Earth."

(Reporting by John Peragine; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Lisa Shumaker)