{"id":72,"date":"2011-10-30T11:11:30","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T11:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2014-02-25T05:26:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T05:26:39","slug":"i-saw-billy-graham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"I saw Billy Graham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billy Graham<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was in my early teens I saw a film called \u201cWiretapper.\u201d It is based on a true story of a guy who got mixed up with the mob, but went to a Billy Graham meeting, and gave his heart to the Lord. When I saw that movie, I felt it was the best movie ever. It was in black and white, but it was powerful. One thing that concerned me was that everything seems so exciting up until the time he received Christ as his Saviour, then the movie ends. I often wished they would show more of his life, to give people ideas of what happens next. Is it just a boring life after that when I guy just goes to church once a week? That is one thing about the book of Acts in the Bible, it shows action stories of what happened in the early church. It wasn\u2019t just a once a week religion. I saw a church sign recently where it said: \u201cGod wants full custody, not just weekend visitations.\u201d<\/p>\n

To me Billy Graham looked like a movie star, and I saw him on a movie. A few years later he visited our city of Bulawayo. It was so exciting. There was a big crowd, some African people were even in the trees. He mentioned them when he spoke and cautioned them not to fall asleep like Eutychus did while Paul was preaching, because he might have to pray for them to come back to life! He preached with an African interpreter, so the going was a whole lot slower that when he preached on the \u201cWiretapper\u201d movie.<\/p>\n

I thought I was going to hear a big fancy sermon, but he preached John 3:16: \u201cFor God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.\u201d But he made it feel like it was today\u2019s headlines. He would bring in all the latest news, together some of the big movie stars, and relate it all to Christ and our lives. Many people responded to his invitation to go to the front by the platform to surrender their lives to Christ.<\/p>\n

Many years later I was invited to sing at a South African Council of Churches meeting in the downtown Methodist Church in Durban. Later that week Billy Graham was one of the speakers. To me he still felt like a celebrity movie star. I got within a yard of him afterwards, and was tempted to shake his hand, when I realized I would just be wasting his time. I was a nobody, and there were lots of people like me doing it, so I gave him a break. It must be tough being a celebrity when everyone wants to bother you. I still admire him, and feel he did a great work for God.<\/p>\n

Some years later I sang at a church near Cape Town, and I mentioned Billy Graham when I was talking to an old woman, and she said: \u201cWho is Billy Graham?\u201d That shocked me. I thought everyone in the world knew about Billy Graham. I guess there many people in the world who have never even heard about Jesus. I heard of one preacher recently who was somewhere on the mission field, buying a coca cola, and he asked a man if he knew about Jesus, and he replied: \u201cIs that a new American soft drink?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy Graham When I was in my early teens I saw a film called \u201cWiretapper.\u201d It is based on a true story of a guy who got mixed up with the mob, but went to a Billy Graham meeting, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1GvAs-1a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/favourite-love-songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}