was called home to the Lord on 21 February. He was 99 years of age; his death was announced globally. The Queen, past US Presidents and scores of eminent men and women paid personal tributes to this man of God. He had preached to over 200 million people in sports fields. huge indoor arenas; his powerful proclamation of the Gospel was relayed to an even greater audience through TV, films, radio, books and the internet. Without doubt, Billy Graham was acknowledged as the best known communicator of the Gospel. On a personal level, he became a trusted confidante to numerous statesmen.
I had the joy and privilege of meeting him on more than a dozen occasions. Our first encounter was in December 1972 at Lausanne, Switzerland. I remembered entering the hotel lift with him. He and 30 other leaders had earlier heard me giving a 15 minute devotion to the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelisation. I introduced myself to him. With a broad smile he said, “I know who you are – the new General Secretary of IFES; your predecessor was a friend of mine. Thank you for expounding Ephesians 6:18 so succinctly. I made full notes of your message on prayer. And I will preach it one day using your “all’s” – all-prayer, all-times and all-saints.” His words took my breath and left me breathless. Billy Graham knew how to encourage younger leaders.
Six months later, we were in Atlanta, Georgia. After lunch, we walked and chatted together for several minutes. Richard Nixon’s Watergate trial was broadcast live on TV. Billy believed the President’s critics and accusers were wrong and his friend Nixon would be exonerated. A year later, I heard him confessed openly before several thousand people, how wrong he was and the danger for Christ’s ambassadors to be partisan in politics. For me, this is the mark of greatness – the willingness to admit mistakes or misjudgments. My respect for him grew.
Billy used to give the closing message at the triennial IVCF Urbana Missionary Convention in 1970s and 1980s. We were both on the “speakers team”. Each convention lasted four days, He attended every daily planning meeting, He always listened attentively and he enthusiastically backed up every useful contribution. He never threw his weight around. His presence lit these “planning” sessions.
Through his Evangelistic Association, Billy released millions of dollars for conferences that forwarded world evangelisation. I was personally involved in three of these. Generous funds were also channelled to many holistic ventures. I am impressed not only by his generosity but by his personal integrity. He did not follow the lifestyles of some TV evangelists who amassed personal fortunes for themselves. He lived on a salary comparable to what senior pastors would earn in USA. In an obituary published by a secular British newspaper, the contributor noted that Billy’s finances were audited by others.
Some papers have referred to Billy’s handsome looks and attractive personality. As he often travelled alone to speak at rallies and conferences, he could be vulnerable to temptations of the flesh. Once, during an Urbana conference, Billy asked me to leave a contact address for him in his hotel letter box. Since his room was a floor above mine, I thought it was safer to send my hand-written note and push it under his room door. Within seconds, I felt a heavy hand on my back. I was petrified. Then I looked up and saw the familiar face of one of his close aides – Grady Wilson. He smiled and said, “Please don’t do that again, my brother. I could have crushed your bones! I weigh well over 200 pounds.” Billy believed in being accountable and transparent, and he wisely had a team of trusted men around him. This is an illustration of the great care Billy Graham took by making his bedroom out of bounds for everyone. It is well known that tabloids are known to get prostitutes in celebrities room and photograph them to compromise them. I learnt from this never to stay in a hotel room alone.
Billy is now in glory.
I had recorded in a notebook, his adaptation of another famous evangelist
“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”
Billy Graham
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CROSS
“It is a glorious phrase – ‘He led captivity captive.’ Psalm 68:18
The very triumphs of His foes, it means, He used for their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements to sub serve His ends, not theirs.
They nailed Him to a tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to His feet. They gave Him a cross, not guessing that He would make it a throne.
They flung Him outside the city gates to die, not knowing that in that very moment they were lifting up the gates of the universe, to let the King come in. They thought to root out His doctrines, not understanding that they were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy.
They thought they had God with His back to the wall, pinned helpless and defeated: they did not know that it was God Himself who had tracked them down. He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it.”
There is wonderful power in the cross of Christ. It has power to wake the dullest conscience and melt the hardest heart; to cleanse the unclean; to reconcile him who is a far off and restore him to fellowship with God; to redeem the prisoner from his bondage and lift the pauper from the dunghill; to break down the barriers which divide men and women from one another; to transform our wayward characters into the image of Christ and finally make us fit to stand in white robes before the throne of God.
God proved His love on the cross.
When Christ hung and bled and died, it was God saying to the world “I love you.”
The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been wrought into being by the cross, and the focus of worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.
Where there is humility, there is majesty.
Where there is weakness, there is might.
Where there is death, there is life.
Outside of Christ, I am only a sinner, but in Christ, I am saved. Outside of Christ, I am empty; in Christ, I am full. Outside of Christ, I am weak; in Christ, I am strong. Outside of Christ, I cannot; in Christ, I am more than able. Outside of Christ, I have been defeated; in Christ, I am already victorious. How meaningful are the words, “in Christ.”
QUOTES
Worship is the contraction of the word WORTHSHIP, which means to ascribe worth and to acknowledge value.
Worship is a rehearsal for heaven, and what can be more important than that?
Heaven was in him before he was in heaven.
Faith unleashes the power and resources of God. Faith is the key. The key in the ignition turns on the powerful engines. The key by itself has no power.
In the real world it is not the smart that get ahead but the bold.
Pharasaism is very tidy. Legalism is extremely neat. When the Spirit comes in power the church is no longer tidy. It’s a season of “blessing in disorder”
How can a bird that’s born for joy Sit in a cage and sing.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds mosquitos in the mind. Blake (He had “reptiles” and I think “mosquitos” is better
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.
This life’s dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole and leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through the eye.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is; more than enough
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little Epicurus
First rate men hire first rate men; second rate men hire third rate men.
David Ogilvy, founder of the Advertising Agency Ogilvy & Mather made the above point clear to his office heads by sending each a Russian nesting doll with progressively smaller figures inside.
He left a message in the smallest doll with these words:
“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of Dwarves. But each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, O & M will become a company of giants.”
Denis Waitley Priorities
FOUR QUOTES FROM OGDEN NASH
(1902-1971) noted writer, poet and humourist
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup.
Whenever you are wrong, admit it,
Whenever you are right, shut up!
You are only young once,
but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Do you think my mind is maturing late?
Or simply rotted early.
O money, money, money,
I’m not necessary one of those who think thee holy.
But I often stop to wonder how thou canst go out so fast
When thou comest in so slowly.
