Last night, on his 95th birthday, the most prolific Christian evangelist since the apostle Paul launched his last crusade: My Hope America with Billy Graham.
His message was as old as the Bible, yet newer that what the New York Times saw fit to print on their website this morning:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. – John 3:16Before his health made it impossible, Rev. Graham took the good Gospel news message to every corner of the world, including the My Hope church and home-based ministry to 57 countries before this week’s launch in the 58th: a United States, millions of whose citizens no longer identify with Christ and his church.
In his first nationally televised appearance in many years, Rev. Graham also prayed that his beloved America experience another Great Awakening, akin to those that inspired our forefathers to found a nation based upon prosperity-producing Liberty; establish self-government and the rule of law; end slavery and racial segregation; and liberate millions enslaved by fascist National Socialists (NAZIs) and International Socialists (Communists).
When more American children prayed in schools, a cross in a jar of urine wasn’t subsidized as “art” by taxpayer dollars; and tolerance and diversity didn’t treat the name of Jesus as profanity while celebrating serial utterances of N-, F- and MF-words.
It wasn’t the hippies and free lovers that ended racial intolerance. It was the Greatest and so-called-Silent generations. It has been too many of us spoiled brat-Baby Boomers that have elevated self-loathing of the greatest inheritance of Liberty and transmogrified it into exaltation of a paternalistic welfare state that kicked the Black man (and the man, in general) out of the house, made Uncle Sam Daddy and deemed 26 year-olds perpetual children dependent on their parent’s Obamacare.
Amen Billy Graham, America needs an awakening that lifts our eyes towards heaven and away from our lint-filled navels or government.
Graham’s great forerunner to Go Ye unto all the nations, the former Christian-killer Saul, struck down on the Road to Damascus and henceforth known as the Apostle Paul, went on to be the rock upon whom Christ built his church. Yes, the church that went on to have its human-frailty-wrought flaws, but which also shined a light in a barbaric Dark Age, saved souls from paganism, sent Pilgrims to a New World to found a Shining City on a Hill with Christian-founded churches, hospitals and jobs. You will still find one not too far from most Americans’ homes.
Most people never lived and don’t live in America. And those of us that remember decades past across the Fruited Plain know that we no longer live in the more exceptional version it. But maybe there is hope for America if Rev. Billy Graham can still touch us with his faith in God, much as Rev. Martin Luther King did fifty years ago.
Click here for My Hope America with Billy Graham website and see birthday party report below:
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com @ Joe For America.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
