Two evangelists stood at the fork of the road. One was more articulate, one was more subtle, one was drawing a larger crowd and one was seeing more conversions than the other. The one poised to be the greater preacher of the two was Charles Templeton and the lesser was Billy Graham. Yet both of them had a comity of friendship. Despite Templeton’s burgeoning success, he was wrestling with doubts about the Bible.
So, one day Templeton urged Graham to leave the ministry in order to pursue more studies at Princeton University. To which Graham responds: “When I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power. When I stand on the platform and say, ‘God says,’ or ‘The Bible says,’ the Holy Spirit uses me.
There are results. Wiser men than you or I have been arguing questions like this for centuries. I don’t have the time or the intellect to examine all sides of the theological dispute, so I’ve decided once for all to stop questioning and accept the Bible as God’s word.’” Templeton left the faith; he was soon forgotten and he died as an agnostic in 2001. But Billy Graham remained in the faith and he became one of the world’s greatest evangelists with 3.2 million people coming to Christ through his crusades and his media broadcast reached as many as 2.2 billion human beings.
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article courtesy BreatheCast.com/Timothy Yap
My Hope: Songs Inspired By The Message And Mission of Billy Graham” was originally published on praisecleveland.com
