Monday, May 27, 2019
Christian Gospel Essay
This is an inspiring story of how a man of idol grew into a man of coarse influence. Examining his purport and ministry from the wise and humble perspective that has made him one of the worlds most beloved and respected leaders, in this memoir, graham looks back at age 78 on his lifetime of personal relationships, ministry, leadership, and experiences. He chronicles such events and stories as his boyhood in North Carolina, his basic steps in ministry, flesh out of evangelical trips and revivals, and meetings with world and local leaders.Billy whole wheat flours gift has been to appreciate that in matters of faith there is no approach too simple, no affirmation too crude, no question too basic. The most striking thing to notice about graham flours travel concerns the most important matter, his gull of God. Here the question is whether Grahams strategies of access and ecumenicity undermine his put across. The charge that perhaps they do arises from two ways in which Graham h as come alonged to reduce the Christian Gospel to a utilitarian device existing for other, more ultimate purposes.In the first instance, it is possible to glimpse pressure on his message from the moral calculus, singularly American, of republican citizenship. This calculus suggests that in a republic the good health of the polity depends upon the righteousness of the citizenry that the best thing for personal morality is religion and that, since Christianity is the best religion, it is positioned to do the most for America. Especially in the first part of his cargoner, Graham was prone to statements that seemed to make the destiny of the United States loom big than the fate of the Christian Gospel.I seriously doubt if the old America is going to exist another generation unless we have a turning to Christ. whatever who share Grahams beliefs would agree with him, but also wonder if he was making the penultimate into the ultimate. In the second instance, Graham throughout his care er has spoken of Christianity, again in his words, as alone pointing the way to individual peace, social harmony, life adjustment, and spiritual satisfaction. For a Christian, true enough again.But priorities seem disarranged when sermons conclude as, for example, one did in New York in 1957 All your life youve been searching for peace and joy, happiness, forgiveness. I want to tell you, before you perish Madison Square Garden this night of May 15, you can find everything that you have been searching for, in Christ. He can bring that inward, deepest peace to your soul. He can forgive every sin youve ever committed. The charge that may be laid against the utilitarian drift of Grahams Christian message is the charge that so troubled Martin Luther as he struggled to find a merciful God nearly five centuries ago.The heart of Luthers spiritual plight was the fear that his supposed search for God was really a search for his own ease of soul, the fear that he was seeking God primarily for what God could do for him. Luther may have been overly scrupulous, but he could tell idolatry when he adage it, and tell it most clearly when he saw it up close. Billy Graham claims for himself neither Luthers theological acumen nor his penetrating powers of self-analysis. Yet what rescued Luther from himself was also what has preserved the authenticity of Billy Grahams message.The reason that Grahams message, though admittedly soft at the edges, remains solid as a rock is that at its magnetic core is the Cross. In the early 1950s Graham solidified early practice by dedicating himself to the saving work of Christ as the heart of his message I made a commitment never to preach again without being sure that the Gospel was as complete and clear as possible, centering on Christs sacrificial death for our sins on the Cross and His resurrection from the dead for our salvation. At the close of his memoirs, as at the close of so many sermons, Graham restates the appeal for conversion t hat is the trademark of his career. As he makes that appeal in this book there is his customary attention to what the Gospel does for us. But under girding all, from first to last, is an equally full sense of what the Gospel does to us We are not here by chance. God has put us here for a purpose, and our works are never fulfilled and complete until His purpose becomes the foundation and center of our lives.. . . When you open your heart to Jesus Christ, you become a child of God, adopted into His family forever. He also comes to live within you and will begin to change you from within. No one who truly gives his or her life to Christ will ever be the same, for the promise of His condition is true Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation the old has gone, the new has come All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 517-18).We have seen this happen countless times all over the world, and i t can happen in your life as well. Open your life to Christ today. If in the hands of Billy Graham, the Gospel bends, nonetheless, it does not break. To conclude that Graham has remained faithful to the message that God saves sinners for His own purposes, as well as for theirs, is the highest accolade a fellow-believer can bestow on this remarkable man. But Graham, of course, has become more than just a rallying point for Christian believers.Grahams apparently bottomless kindness, combined with the lightning pace of his narrativeso many visits, so many good friends, so many celebritiesmeans that full As I Am is not a particularly challenging book. It is, nonetheless, worth reading carefully, both because Graham is the genuine article and because many of its details and much of its tone are in fact quite useful for attempting a more complex assessment of his career.
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