Billy Graham's apostasy ... (1)

by Tom Flannerym, August 10, 2006 - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51461

After more than six decades spent preaching the Gospel – the truth that we can only be saved by God's grace through faith alone in Christ– Billy Graham now says non-Christians in other faiths (false religions) and secular humanists may be going to heaven.

In a profile of Graham in the current issue of Newsweek, managing editor Jon Meacham asks the 87-year-old evangelist whether those who belong to religions that reject Christ as savior (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) and secularists will be saved.

"Those are decisions only the Lord will make," Graham replied. "It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there [in heaven] and who won't. ... I don't want to speculate about that."

Meacham describes Graham's embrace of universalism in glowing terms, similar to the way in which media elites like himself celebrate Republican legislators who adopt liberal voting patterns over time as having "grown in office." Thus, the Newsweek article is entitled "Pilgrim's Progress." Get it?

To read the entire article, click HERE or go to
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51461

In the piece, Meacham calls Graham "a resolute Christian who declines to render absolute verdicts about who will get into heaven and who will not" and as someone who "refuses to be judgmental." As liberals have been lecturing us for decades, we can't speak in absolutes (because, according to their warped worldview, they don't exist) and therefore should never be "judgmental."

Meacham writes panegyrically how Graham has come to "an appreciation of complexity," or what liberals like to call nuance. They love that, because it's completely antithetical to the Bible's dogmatic teachings about right and wrong, good and evil.

He says Graham's newfound complexity and "gentleness of spirit" (i.e., as opposed to the rank mean-spiritedness of those who hold to the truth of Scripture) separates Graham from other far more incendiary and divisive religious figures – radicals like Graham's own son Franklin, who had the unmitigated gall to tell the truth about Islam being "a very evil and wicked religion" (his father, needless to say, strongly dissents).

Graham's redefining of salvation doctrine also separates him from any number of others who were considered radicals in their day.

One of them was the apostle Paul, who wrote by inspiration of God: "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." (I Timothy 2:5)

Another was the apostle John, who wrote by inspiration of God about Christ: "But as many as received Him, to them He [God] gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His [Christ's] name." (John 1:12)

Yet another was the beloved physician Luke, who wrote by inspiration of God concerning Jesus: "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) This verse is a four-fold declaration of the truth that salvation is found only in Christ, and in Christ alone.

How much clearer can it be?

Well, even more important is the testimony of one other "radical" ... Jesus Himself, who declared unequivocally: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6)

Graham hasn't completely forsaken the Gospel message, telling Meacham that he's made his share of mistakes in life but knows that all those transgressions have been paid for by the shedding of Christ's precious blood. And he does acknowledge with great regret in the article that he didn't spend nearly as much time studying Scripture as he should have through the years.

Considering his apostate redefining of salvation doctrine, I'd have to agree with him on that one.