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Billy Graham

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Life is short, and every day is a gift from God.

William Franklin Graham, Jr. (November 7, 1918 - February 21, 2018), better known as Billy Graham, was an Evangelical Christian and an evangelist.

For the wrestler of this name, see Billy Graham (wrestler).

Quotes

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  • Many Indians seem to have the idea that Christianity is a western religion. That is wrong. There were Christian churches in India before America was discovered.
  • God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with.
  • Either communism must die or Christianity must die because it's actually a battle between Christ and anti-Christ.
    • "Satan's Religion" in American Mercury (August 1954), p. 41
  • Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
    • "A Time for Moral Courage", Reader’s Digest (July 1964)
  • Commitment to great causes makes great men.
    • "A Time for Moral Courage", Reader’s Digest (July 1964)
  • I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality.
    • "A Time for Moral Courage", Reader’s Digest (July 1964)
  • I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.
    • Parade (February 1, 1981); cited in Thy Kingdom Come : How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America (2007)
  • In my travels, I have found that those who keep heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life.
    A friend told me about stopping on a street corner in London and listening to a man play the bagpipes. He was playing "Amazing Grace" and smiling from ear to ear. My friend asked him if he was from Scotland, and he answered, “No sir, my home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world.”
    • Hope for the Troubled Heart: Finding God in the Midst of Pain (1991); the last statement of this anecdote has often become quoted as if it originated with Graham: "My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world."
  • [S]ome people do hope God will reward them for their generosity (or for some other good deed they’ve done), either by blessing them right now or by granting them eternal life. Lurking in the back of their minds is the idea that at the last judgment, God will weigh their good deeds against their bad deeds, and if they have more good deeds than bad deeds then God will let them into heaven. This, however, is a serious misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches. The Bible says that God is absolutely holy and pure, and even one sin — just one — would be enough to keep us out of heaven.

Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

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Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (1997, 2007)
  • "What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?” a university student asked me several years ago.
    "Its brevity" I replied without hesitation. … Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4). … Life is short, and every day is a gift from God.
    • Just As I Am : The Autobiography of Billy Graham (1997), co-written with Cliff Barrows
  • I don’t know the future, but I do know this: the best is yet to be! Heaven awaits us, and that will be far, far more glorious than anything we can ever imagine. I know that soon my life will be over. I thank God for it, and for all He has given me in this life. But I look forward to Heaven. I look forward to the reunion with friends and loved ones who have gone on before. I look forward to Heaven’s freedom from sorrow and pain. I also look forward to serving God in ways we can’t begin to imagine, for the Bible makes it clear that Heaven is not a place of idleness. And most of all, I look forward to seeing Christ and bowing before Him in praise and gratitude for all He has done for us, and for using me on this earth by His grace — just as I am.
    • Just As I Am : The Autobiography of Billy Graham (1997), co-written with Cliff Barrows
  • Billy Graham details his 1972 trip to India and his meeting with Indira Gandhi during that trip in his autobiography. About his mandate to meet Indira Gandhi, Graham writes:
    President Nixon, at the request of the American consul in New Delhi, had personally asked me to seek an interview with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in part to find out from her what kind of ambassador she wanted from America. He asked me to notice every single thing about her—the movement of her hands, the expression on her face, how her eyes looked. “When you’ve finished the interview,” he said to me, “go to the American embassy and dictate your report to me.” And so, when I visited with Mrs. Gandhi in the Indian capital, I put the question to her. She told me she wanted someone who understood economics, who had the ear of the President, and who had influence in Congress. This I reported to the President. He later appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Whether my report influenced the President’s decision, I never learned.
  • Our purpose in going to India was to preach in Nagaland, an isolated area tucked in the mountainous, jungle-covered northeast corner of India near the Burmese border. The area was home to a dozen separate tribes, each with its own dialect and often with a history of headhunting. Tensions among Nagaland’s tribes, and an armed guerrilla movement bent on independence from India, made it a highly unstable area. During Akbar Abdul-Haqq’s crusade five years before in Nagaland’s largest town (and capital), Kohima, three people had been killed during an assassination attempt against the Indian government’s chief representative.
  • On one hand, because of Nagaland’s instability, very few foreigners were granted government permission to visit the area. On the other hand, Nagaland was home to one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India; at the time of our visit, more than half the population of 500,000 were Christians, almost all living in villages. November 1972 marked the hundredth anniversary of the coming of Baptist missionaries to Nagaland, and we were invited to Kohima as part of that celebration.
  • Almost miraculously, the Indian government in New Delhi granted a permit for us to enter Nagaland in late November. This permission was in response to an appeal from a delegation headed by the Reverend Longri Ao and other church leaders from Nagaland. (Assisting them was a gifted young Indian clergyman named Robert Cunville, who was head of the North East India Christian Council and had been invited to be director of youth evangelism for the World Council of Churches; he later joined our Team as an evangelist and has had a wide ministry not only in India but in many other parts of the world as well.)
  • “Billy,” John said, “you are on your way to India, a country that has no conception of God. You will need a special approach to break into people’s thinking, because they know nothing of the Bible or God. Do you have such an approach in mind?” Admitting that I didn’t, I suggested that we make that issue a matter of concentrated prayer.

Quotes about Graham

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  • Next week, Graham's corpse will lie in state at the Capitol rotunda – only the fourth private citizen to be so honored, and the first since Rosa Parks in 1995. This is a disgrace. But in a certain way, it's also right and fitting – as oddly appropriate as Graham's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If Billy Graham was, ultimately, a conniving hypocrite with a layman's grasp of the Bible and a supernatural lust for earthly power, he was also a quintessential American success story. He was not so much "America's pastor" as its greatest evangelical entrepreneur – the man who launched a whole separatist (and lucrative) Christian media culture, who laid the foundations for megachurches and prosperity ministries, who brought Jesus back into American politics. He was a public-relations savant, a shameless sycophant who whispered sweet nothings to power in lieu of hard truths. He demonstrated what fortunes could be made, and what human glory could be attained, by transforming evangelical Christianity into a patriotic corporate entity. If that's not American, by God, what is?
  • “Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had just started to implement his policy of nonalignment in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though India was a democratic nation, Nehru had been profoundly influenced by Fabian socialism and, in fact, was sympathetic to Marxism. His concept of “nonalignment” and “neutralism” made him unwilling to be a pawn of Washington against Moscow. India, however, was by far the most important of the nations of the “third world” (another Nehru coinage) that had not yet succumbed to Communist Party rule, and Delhi’s sympathy toward Moscow not only rankled Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, but also it frankly worried him. With Graham’s India crusade followed by just two months the triumphant visit to Delhi by Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, the religious event also had important implications for American diplomacy”. ... The book says, “This was but the first of many occasions US administrations found it useful to capitalize or piggyback on Graham’s evangelistic activities and indeed his prominence as a worldwide evangelist. In decades to come, not only did his crusades have the indirect effect of helping to bring down totalitarian regimes, but, on occasion, Graham served as an unofficial emissary for American presidents to world leaders with whom the US government was unable otherwise to have direct contact”.
    • “Billy Graham – His Life and Influence” written by David Aikman
  • In 1972, Billy Graham returned to India. The Hindu on 24th November 1972 published a report that read as follows: The noted American evangelist, Dr. Billy Graham, to-night expressed the hope that his visit to this country would help improve relations between India and the United States. Dr. Graham, who was talking to newsmen at the airport here on his arrival from Kohima, was asked if he was carrying any message from President Nixon for Mrs. Indira Gandhi. “I am sorry, I can’t answer that,” he replied. Dr. Graham, a close friend of Mr. Nixon, is scheduled to meet Mrs. Gandhi on Monday. Dr Graham said the Indian Government had gone out of the way in permitting him to visit Nagaland. “I am grateful for this,” he added. During his stay in the capital, he will also call on the President, Mr. V.V. Giri. Earlier, talking to newsmen at Calcutta airport, Dr Graham said he had talks with Mr Nixon twice before he left for India. “I love India and I want the United States and India to become very close friends. This is necessary because we need each other for our mutual interests,” he said.
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