Bleeding Edge

One of America’s great leaders has passed away…

This Great Leader was Billy Graham.

And I say this, because it was he that opened the door for many hundreds of thousands of people to read the good book, and to develop their own relationship with Christianity.

And it was Billy Graham the teacher and the preacher that wore his own heart on his sleeve, and thus offered his “lighting in the message” that converted Millions upon millions of people to Christianity through his massively beneficial Crusades.

And he was not fearful to give the much needed advise that we all need to receive at times of peril, as he counseled our own Nation on the path to National Unity and Reconciliation.

Some solid message that, isn’t it?

So for me, it is now proper and correct, to Thank him, for all his work insuring that this nation is saved, through one and all that turned their wyes down and prayed fervently, while hammering stoutly, in ensuring that is we are going to live for another hundred years — if not a Thousand years — we shall only do so, as a Christian nation.

And we can only do that by admitting that we let God inside our hearts through Jesus.

And since nobody found Jesus on their own, we must be grateful and fill our hearts with gratitude for our Godly and Good Friends, because it was always people like Billy Graham, this great preacher man, that somehow opened the door, paved the way, or simply led the ordinary folks to a state of grace. This he did for me as for many others, in his simple way, and in order for me to hear the saving gospel, and the voice from up above, that leads men to reframe the ordinary and super normal live we live, into the extraordinary life through the Good News…

This is how we get to the superhuman quality of Life, called “GRACE”.

This Life’s “GRACE” is the “True State of Letting God into your Life” and in return living momentarily in that State of Grace, that is unlike all the other moments of flow and synchronicity in your Life. Because the “State of Grace” is evidently quite different than anything else we experience in our daily life and in the midst of our struggle to achieve our goals, our purpose, our meaning or just plainly to win and overcome our struggle for survival.

Many folks like me became Christians by hearing and seeing the Preacher-Man Billy Graham, transport us all in the big tent, into praying and speaking at his behest, in such humble environments as his big tent gatherings, that he called the Crusades. Yet many millions of other human beings, were also converted to a faithful Christianity, by watching his films, his television appearances, or even his movies — that were all made for that purpose. Simple and well liked films, like the well known Billy Graham movie titled aptly “Time to Run”.

Time to run indeed, as Billy Graham came to his own at the end of the Jesus Movement years, when hundreds of Thousands of young people were coming to Christ all across our Nation and looking for meaning and purpose, amidst another bout of cultural revolution and revulsion of the red brigades pushing political correctness in the face of an anxiously suffering nation form the excesses of these communist cards and ideologues.

Indeed, Billy Graham was one of the very few preachers who unashamedly stood and proclaimed the three Greatest Words ever known to Mankind: ”The Bible Says”

His voice was crystal clear, and that is why his passing is so painful and the vacuum left behind so great, because in todays God and Gospel muffled world, I am not sure we will ever again see anyone who stands unashamedly for his savior Jesus Christ, in the way that Billy Graham so often stood, stood-up, and outright spoke form his heart, as he quoted passage after passage, from the good book…

Because today when the world is falsely accusing Christians of all kinds of sins, because they despise Jesus Christ and his words — we have resorted to attempting to water down the gospel to make it more user friendly, and perhaps more acceptable to sodomites, miscreants, perpetually broken and unfixable folks, and to simply try to accommodate the ways of this “brave new world” full of stoned and angrily drunk people serving evil dn the Satan like heathens and man eating barbarians…

But yet because we have done that, the true power of the gospel is waning in todays modern day world, just as much s it is waning inside our hearts. Our religion has become lukewarm, and tepid, and our belief is sadly uncertain…

My Anglican faith for one has become a bit of a joke, when you see the bending backwards of trying to be politically correct and religiously unsound…

Anglicans officiating with Muslims in or altars and our churches is not just a disgrace — its a stupidity “par-excellence”.

And all that behavior is shameful, but I have a feeling that reformation is coming.

And is coming fast and furious…

The Rev. Billy Graham’s children remembered “America’s Pastor” on Friday as a man devoted to spreading the Gospel, living his life at home as he preached it in stadiums, with a personable humility and an unwavering focus on the Bible. As his oldest son told the funeral congregation, “There weren’t two Billy Grahams.”

His adult children — all speakers or preachers in their own right — recalled being taught by their parents how to read Scripture aloud and deliver sermons, but also taking quiet walks with their father and feeling his embrace even when they made mistakes.

Franklin Graham, who delivered the main funeral message, said all of those qualities were part of the whole.

“The Billy Graham that the world saw on television, the Billy Graham that the world saw in the big stadiums, was the same Billy Graham that we saw at home. There weren’t two Billy Grahams,” he said. “He loved his family. He stood by us. He comforted us.”

Franklin Graham’s funeral message, which included a Gospel call to repentance and salvation, followed shorter remarks by his siblings in a service that lasted just over an hour before an invitation-only crowd of approximately 2,000.

“I believe, from Heaven’s perspective, that my father’s death is as significant as his life. And his life was very significant. But I think when he died, that was something very strategic from Heaven’s point of view,” said his daughter Anne Graham Lotz, later adding: “I believe God is saying: ‘Wake up church! Wake up world!'”

The congregation included President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their wives. Neither Pence nor Trump spoke during the service that was streamed live online, but they met privately with the family beforehand.

The funeral planning began a decade ago with Billy Graham himself. It also reflected his family’s desire to capture the feeling of the crusades that made him the world’s best-known Protestant preacher of his era. Graham, who died last week at age 99, brought a message of salvation to millions during visits and live broadcasts to scores of countries.

The funeral served as the last of Billy Graham’s crusades, as the world was told by his son Franklin Graham who succeeds his father as the head of the family of preachers that includes all of Billy’s children. They read the Scripture, inserting their name into the passages to make their relationship with God, even more personal, and breaking it down intellectually, as his daughter did just like her father famously preached. Indeed they are all gifted with the light of the Gospel and when his youngest daughter Ruth told about how she sinned and didn’t listen to her father with a hasty marriage — still he was waiting for her with open arms to invite her back home with all his Love and Grace, when she realized her mistake and drove herself back to his hearth and heart. He never once recriminated her, but he gave her more responsibilities to help her heal and regain her bearings.

Then, his oldest son Franklin, now the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association Philanthropic effort “The Good Samaritans,” spoke and wrapped up the speeches, with his father’s central theme: “The only path to salvation is to accept Jesus Christ.”

While Franklin Graham spoke sternly and loudly about his own and his father’s politics during his memorial message, by welcoming President Trump and VP Pence, who were the first guests he spoke towards, as he began his talk…

And he carried forth with Billy’s invitation to the whole world, to come be saved by Jesus that “The world, with all of its political correctness, would want you to believe that there are many roads to God, but that it’s just not true.”

“There is only one road, and that is the difficult path to salvation, that is to accept Jesus Christ.”

Like Graham’s famous crusades in many tents, in many states, and in many nations, over many years — this was no different. As a matter of fact, it featured a few great singers who had shared Billy’s stage in the recent past. Musicians, like Linda McCrary-Fisher, Michael W. Smith, and the Gaither Vocal Band were heavenly send offs, and the hymns that were sung were all memorable, but the one musician that brought tears to all the eyes, was the nameless Scottish bagpiper who played Amazing Grace with solemn mastery… at the very end before Billy’s casket was wheeled out to the burial plot in his library’s garden.

Billy Graham’s funeral came at the end of a week of mourning that included a public laying in state at the Capitol in Washington DC, a public state in Charlotte, and a 130 mile procession with crowds lining the road from Graham’s home in the blue mountains of Asheville, to Charlotte, in North Carolina, where Graham grew up. Approximately 13,000 people — including former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — filed past his casket during a public viewing in Charlotte this week.

And this past Wednesday, Billy Graham became the first private citizen since civil rights activist Rosa Parks (Died in 2005), to lie in honor, for a public mourning, at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington.

Graham was being buried next to his wife in a memorial prayer garden at the Billy Graham Library, with his grandchildren serving as pallbearers. His pine plywood casket was made by inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

His grave marker reads: “Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Friday’s goodbye also emphasized the message that only Graham’s earthly journey has come to an end, a point underscored by Franklin Graham as he stood behind the same pulpit his father used in the 1990s.

Graham recalled one of his father’s frequent sayings that people shouldn’t believe it when they hear the famous evangelist had died: “He said: ‘I’ll be more alive than I am now. I’ll have just changed addresses, that’s all.'”

Yours,
Dr Churchill

PS:

Thank you Billy Graham for unapologetically standing openly before the world for Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus did the same for YOU, ME and Jesus did the same for BILLY GRAHAM.

Thank You for not being ashamed to tell the wonderful story of someone who died on the Cross for all of us and for the forgiveness of our sins.

Thank You for being part of the party of someone who was willing to take the pain, shame and suffering of all humanity, as Jesus did just for us.

Be Not ashamed … my heart is forever eternally grateful..

Thank You God..

Thank You Billy Graham.

God Bless…