Roy Exum
There is no one who can deny Billy Graham is the most famous living person in the world. The noted evangelist has been on Gallup’s list of “The Ten Most Admired Men in the World” a record 56 times after his first appearance in 1955 and today – on what is his 95th birthday – he will preach his “final and most important” message to perhaps his largest audience ever. “With all my heart I want to leave you with the truth” is his promise.
More than 25,000 churches in America and another 2,300 in Canada are joining in the largest outreach in the six decades of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and his talk today, “The Cross,” will be shown repeatedly throughout the week on many outlets, including Fox News, TBN, Christian networks and YouTube.
“We have been going down the wrong road for a long time,” Graham told Troy Anderson of WND.com. “Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.
“And yet mankind is also adrift morally and spiritually, confused and fearful because he does not know where he is or where he is going. He lives in a world dangerously torn by hate and violence and conflict, and yet he feels powerless to do anything about them. He also knows his own heart is driven by destructive passions and motives he cannot seem to control or change,” said Graham, a minister who grew up on a North Carolina dairy farm yet is believed to have preached to 2.2 billion people in his glorious lifetime.
Billy Graham told the writer Anderson that people the world over “need to repent of their sins, turn to God and take the narrow road that Jesus talks about in the Bible. The ‘narrow road’ means that you forsake sin and you obey God, that you live up to the Ten Commandments and that you live up to the Sermon on the Mount desiring to please God in everything,” he said.
“The narrow road is hard and it is difficult; you can’t do that yourself. You need God’s help and that’s the reason we ask people to come to receive Christ because when you receive Him, the Holy Spirit comes to live within to help us live the life. Our world is desperately seeking answers to the deepest questions of life – answers that can only be found in the Gospel. That is the reason for my hope, that there can be changed hearts and a changed society as we yield ourselves to Christ.”
Dr. Graham believes the Second Coming of Christ is very near and is one of a growing number of Christian leaders who hope that America will experience “a fresh spiritual awakening.” He believes that hope is alive and the greatest hope of all to those of the Christian faith is when Jesus will return to earth.
“That promise will someday become literal history, and with God’s help we’re going to be a part of that history that is yet to come,” Graham told the WND.com writer. “Only Jesus Christ when He comes back again is going to bring it. He will defeat every enemy. Sin will be eliminated. Death will be eliminated. War will be eliminated. Crime will be eliminated. The hope of the Second Coming of Christ generates energy and sacrifice and faithfulness and diligence and zeal.”
“The best is yet to be. Heaven is yet to be, along with eternal life,” Dr. Graham said and assured the writer that knowing the Second Coming is near “thrills me every day of my life.”
“I know that He’s coming again, and I know that He’s going to set up a kingdom of which there will be no end,” Graham said. “In Titus 2 it says, ‘Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.’ Our hope centers in a person, not in circumstances, not in a political party, but in a person.”
“The Cross” message is the centerpiece but only part of a series of pre-recorded sermons that signal a close to a lifetime of evangelism by Billy, who has struggled with health issues in recent years. The other messages in the “My Hope” series will also be broadcast by various outlets and more information can be obtained by calling 1-877-7MY-HOPE (The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)
“My Hope has been used in many countries and hundreds of thousands of people have received Christ as Savior,” Graham said recently. “I think it’s going to be a tremendous time of evangelism. I think that the Lord is going to use it mightily. I’ve been praying that we might have a spiritual awakening. But I think that becomes possible as individuals surrender their lives fresh and anew to Christ. And that’s the hope that we have.”
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