Billy Graham - Q&A at Gordon-Conwell Chapel

for us this is the first day of the new semester and what a marvelous way to begin new students the Board of Trustees all our returning students I won't call you old students and then the Board of Trustees are here for two days so this is the Gordon Conwell family and so we have gathered as a family for conversation with our leader and chair of the Board of Trustees mr. Billy Graham and so we give a welcome to you Billy for being with us [Music] dr. Christopher Lyon a member of our Board of Trustees is going to lead us in our opening prayer dr. Lyon let's pray together got a Heavenly Father we thank you for this afternoon and for this great convocation this great opportunity to come together how we thank you for dr. Graham and his worldwide ministry how I thank you Father for the consistency of his life how we thank you for the fact that it's so obvious that he loves Jesus we'll love you too Lord Jesus and we gather together in your name amen in 1969 three gentlemen one a philanthropist mr. J Howard pew the other of pastoral theologian dr. Hale John ican gay and the other and evangelist mr. Billy Graham joined together in planning the merger of the Conwell school of theology and the Gordon Divinity School and out of their vision and out of their dreams we stand today on this campus with this institution and with all of us gathered in this wonderful moment I think it's fair to say that we enjoy marvelous facilities a very exciting vision and a burden for taking Christ to all of the world because of the leadership of one of those persons mr. Billy Graham and so it's our joy to have this conversation today with mr. Graham and we look forward to his sharing his vision with us and then giving you an opportunity to ask him some questions and to learn better of that vision thank you for being with us Billy the reason I'm having such a struggle is I've just gotten out of the hospital where I had to have a small tumor removed from my left foot so if I am a little bit right-footed it's because of that but I deeply appreciate the gracious and generous words that dr. Cooley had to say I'm sorry that I haven't been able to attend all the meetings of the trustees but look forward to tonight and tomorrow and especially to be with you I didn't know that I was going to have such a opportunity as this I heard that I would be answering some questions with some students now the last time they told me that that I was up here we sat at a table in the dining room and had about 10 students and that that was the vision that I had what I was going to be doing now I didn't know that so many of you were going to be here I would have prepared a lecture an address or something like that I'm not I'm not capable of preparing a lecture but I can give a sermon at once in a while and I would have done a little bit more when I was in Bible School in Florida they used to have a saying down there that if you're going to be a preacher you ought to be able to to speak and die at a moment's notice and so I think that this is the speaking part of it at a moment's notice and perhaps the dying part of it will be on the slick highways going back but be that as it may it's a privilege for me to be here and to share with you what little bit I may be able to share I've been asked to tell a little bit about what we have been doing the past few weeks or months and then to start off from there because I hope we can keep our questions along the line of ministry and evangelism and so forth because if you get into some of the subjects that you're already studying or going to study I would be lost and wouldn't be able to answer your questions I have had the opportunity of answering questions for the student bodies at Oxford and Cambridge and even Harvard and MIT and University of Massachusetts and many of these well I suppose nearly all the Ivy League schools I try to take it to about every three or four years of the Ivy League schools so I can find out what they're thinking and some of the questions I get asked I wish you were there to answer them because I have to say'll I'm sorry I don't know I'm have to ask one of my colleagues here to help me on that I was at the academic city in Siberia not too long ago and that's the second University in the Soviet Union the first is Moscow University and the second most important is the academic city where they do all their great research in Siberia and I had flown that it was a four time zone change from Moscow Bay and you're in an old Russian tu-134 and you wonder if it's going to hold together and the stewardess said as we were getting in our seats she said please fasten your seat belt and if we get airborne you may unfasten them she she got the if in the wind a little bit mixed up but I felt that before we got there that the if might have been the more appropriate word but I remember we went there and they said my first engagement was a debate with the head of the department of anthropology well you can imagine how I felt about that and so here the place was packed and jammed I'd say a little more than maybe here and the fact that they set up in the balcony and they were looking down on this what was to be a debate between him and me and I barely knew what the word anthropology meant even though I had taken it as a major in college but I'd had a Russian teacher and his name was Alexander Grigory if some of you ever been to Wheaton you remember him because he was certainly a great anthropologist but be that as it may he began to show me the maps and to how they felt that all the Americans came from the through the Bering Strait and through Alaska and down the coast and became what we call today Indians all Native Americans or whatever the latest term is and I said I don't think any anthropologist in America would disagree with you and then I asked him a question I said sir I said have you found any people anywhere in the world a tribe or a group of people and any continent that does not believe in God or a god or gods it may be animist with some leaves rustling in the trees or it may be Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or Christianity or Judaism have you found anybody in the world that doesn't worship and he thought for a moment and he said no we never have I said but in the beginning a moment ago you told me you were an atheist I found in talking to Soviet leaders everywhere they usually start out that way of course you know I'm an atheist they get that on the recorder that's going and once they get that on the recorder they can relax and talk a little more freely with you about religion on and they call it philosophy and so we talked in those terms and I said if you haven't found any people in the world what do you think why do you think that is why is it that the entire human race worshiped something believes that there's something beyond us and he said I'm going to ask a couple of my colleagues to speak to that and they did and I didn't understand all that they were saying but the whole conclusion of the matter was there was no answer they had no answer as to why the whole human race throughout the world believes in something i sat beside mrs. Gorbachev one time for two and a half hours and I had gone to the ambassador Dobrynin who had been the former ambassador Benin was his successor but Dobrynin had been here 21 years and he was the senior ambassador in Washington I said mr. ambassador I said I'm supposed to sit beside mrs. Gorbachev all two and a half hours tonight at the table and I said what should I talk to her about and he surprised me he said talk to her about religion he said that's what she's really interested in and that's exactly what I did and and on one side of her sat the president and crossed the table who couldn't hear what we were talking about much was Tom Brokaw and I said beside mrs. Gorbachev on her right and then the translator whit's on his knees between us going back and forth between me and the president and so in a little while we've got on the subject of religion and philosophy and she finally ended up by saying we know that there is something beyond ourselves we know that there's something up there somewhere that's stronger and greater than we are and she said that's as far as I've been able to get in my thinking now she I understand has gone much further than that but she couldn't say it at that moment at that table but I just found very few real atheists in my conversations with those people in fact I found since we we saw mr. I saw mr. Gorbachev alone for two or two weeks before the coup for an hour and then the next day I saw mr. Yeltsin alone for an hour and a half or hour and a quarter it was and this was just one or two weeks before the - and Yeltsin said to me said I've given up atheism I've given up communism and he said my grandchildren are wearing crosses and I'm delighted and I thought it was very interesting because he had had the new patriarch Alexis patriarch of the Orthodox Church and I every time I'd gone to the Soviet Union four times to preach I'd gone sponsored by the Orthodox Church I was their official guest and I went from one great Cathedral to the other and they would have their liturgy and then I would preach the gospel as straight as I knew how and his the predecessor to him were - - alexis was named PMON and i had preached in his Cathedral in Moscow a great beautiful Cathedral and I preached on you must be born again as straight as I knew how and gave an invitation for people to lift their hands if they were not sure that they knew Christ and it seemed that almost every hand was lifted and when I sat down the patriarch who's stronger in the Orthodox Church than the Pope is in the Roman Catholic Church he stood up and he had a staff in his hand and he pounded him and he said I want mr. Graham to promise that he'll come back here and teach our students and teach our ministers how to preach like that he said that's the kind of sermons we need he said we need to know how to know God and how to talk to God and how to have a new heart in a new life and he sat down so we accepted that invitation that's why last summer we held a school of evangelism in Moscow and we had 5,000 clergy and they paid their own way to the University of Moscow and the university housed them and fed them we paid the university of course and then we met in one of the auditorium's in the great Lenin Stadium complex and I have never seen so many tears I've never seen we gave each one a Bible and it's hard to get them to bring their Bibles from their dormitory rooms to the plenary sessions because they were afraid they getting wet while they're afraid somebody'd steal them they were so anxious to have those Bibles and when you hear organizations and there are many of them now that are distributing Bibles in the Soviet Union you just thank God because they are needed they're wanted that people are hungry for it and they've there they they grab for it as though it were bread that they'd never tasted before water that they'd never drunk before which it is true spiritually and so let's pray for the people of not only them but pray for this the people of Eastern Europe and that have undergone these tremendous changes and their changes in other parts of the world we're going to go to a country God willing and about a month a little over a month that is the most closed country in the entire world to the gospel and we've been invited by the president or the leader they have no television that will televise anything except what they want them to televise they have no radio except it's tuned to their station and there are no Bibles they now have two or three churches open I'm going to be speaking at the University and will be speaking at those two churches and seeing the political leadership I've talked to mr. Bush about it I'm going to see mr. Bush this week in Washington and Jim Baker the Secretary of State and it looks like we're going if physically I can hold up that's the big problem I'm facing now with so many opportunities like that I'm not saying any of that to boast about me I am nothing and I don't know why these things are coming I have no idea but God is allowing and God is preparing the way and people are praying and I believe the Holy Spirit is greatly at work in spite of the work of the devil I've never seen such evil in the world as we see today you turn on the television today I go to the motion pictures and you can just see what how Satan is working and behind the scenes he's working in a way I have not seen before and people ask me about that and I tell them the Lord taught that the wheat and the tares will grow together they're not going to stand still they'll grow evil will get worse good will get better and that's exactly what we're seeing now and I believe as many people tell me and as many people think as I travel about that we are approaching the end of the age and that Christ is going to come back and set up his kingdom that's the hope in my heart but I know we have many different differences at that point as to how it's going to be and exactly when it's going to be and there's a great deal of apocalyptic literature that we get turned to and there's a lot of it coming out you go to the average bookstore today to Waldron's or any of those big bookstores and you'll see quite a number of books on that subject well pardon me I've talked too long I could talk all evening and I need to talk to head and Robinson first they told me to sit down [Music] hi dr. Graham it's great to have you here today I know that all of us appreciate you taking this time my question I have a preface to it then I'll ask the question the situation that we have right now dr. Christie Wilson is retiring this spring and he is one of the few professors that is a professor of evangelism I guess purely he's the only professor of evangelism and he also as an individual has waved the banner of evangelism for us and encouraging people to participate personally in evangelism and also globally and my concern is that with him being gone also secondly second part of this is that as an institution we don't have a requirement in evangelism there's a requirement in missions but not in evangelism and we're one of only two or three seminaries that have the evangelical nondenominational seminaries that do not have a requirement in evangelism and I know this is an important issue to you and so my question is is if there's a possible way that you could influence the Board of Trustees as well as the faculty advisor and the committee's that make those decisions in terms of what will be required to take another issue that concerns me it's a great thing but it also has to be handled properly and is that our scimitar is expanding with lots of new programs which is wonderful it attracts a lot of people but also with that is the possibility that it's more difficult to require certain courses and just to maintain the issue of AJ Gordon's vision I just think there's a number of people that would agree with me I hope there is any way to see a continued requirement admissions or evangelism especially in the MDF degree possibly for both evangelism admissions most people aren't trained and how to share their faith personally and it's just a big issue so I want to be sure to make it a real clear point for you to emphasize well I would like to answer that by saying that I have read the current issue of the catalog from one end to the other to see what the subjects were and what was written under the subjects and I've talked to a lot of people from Gordon Conwell and I think from the very beginning that Gordon camels faculty and curriculum has been directed toward evangelism and missions you may be taking homiletic so you may be taking something else but I think that the whole thing is toward evangelism and missions you can look across New England and I don't know how many churches there are now but there are many churches that were once not evangelical churches that are today evangelical churches because of Gordon Conwell and Gordon Connell has placed these young men and women there that have turned whole churches and whole communities around we toured New England back in nineteen fifty 50 we spent six weeks here going from town to town and city to city and I was absolutely brokenhearted at some of the ministers and people that I saw that were pastors of churches today the last two we took which was maybe five or six years ago from one town to the other universities of Newington Ava's thrilled that the people that came up to me and said their church was changed it was different had a new influence because a person from Gordon Conwell had gone there to be the minister so I'm very proud of Gordon Connells history when it comes to and its effectiveness as far as evangelism I don't think you have to have a course called evangelism to to make people conscious of their need of evangelism because whatever course we're taking its directed toward preparing us for for evangelism and for teaching and preaching it that has evangelism in it whether it's called evangelism or not thank you I'm wondering what you think about the use of seeker services or that particular model in our churches today and established churches or in establishing new churches that are oriented toward seeker services would you say that again you know my left ear is almost deaf and I don't have a hearing aid in it I've got one with me but I'm always embarrassed to worry I'm just getting used to it if you speak of looking out on more distinctly I'm curious about your opinion or your your opinion on the use of seeker services in established churches today seeker services that are directed towards the unchurched the Willow Creek sort of model the Saddleback sort of model and how those can be used as evangelism tools is that a legitimate tool in your opinion do you know you're telling me something that I don't know much about and I don't think I could give you a very adequate answer until I could sit down and have a conversation with you about it and you could explain it a little more what you mean because I really don't quite understand the question it's my fault not yours [Laughter] you must be an evangelist if God wills three questions very briefly all three the first is dovetailing on Marty's question what do you see is the greatest obstacle toward van July zhing the world by the year 2000 in light of various movements such as 82,000 etc the second would be how do you see gordon-conwell being used in that way and especially in light of our history light of our founder AJ Gordon who once said that our task is not to bring Christ or not to bring the world to Christ but to bring Christ to the world and in light of the situation as Marty said Jay Christie Wilson retiring in May the other missions professor Gary Becker on sabbatical for the fall and so basically our missions program missions core people have been eliminated for the fall and so I was wondering how you might see the school equipping men and women to evangelize the world in light of those circumstances and third will you join us for graduation on May 8th oh [Music] thank you I think that most of us realize that we have been called to go out into the world and proclaim the gospel and any proclamation of the gospel is evangelism and missions we've got another evangelist and I think that if I win Seminary today all in a Bible school I would spend my time studying the greatest mistake that I've made in my life is the lack of study you know when I even when I was in school I would go and preach every weekend and come back and do a little bit of studying and so forth and I got through school alright but barely and since then I've taken so many engagements around the world and have not studied enough not stopped and thought enough I've spent a lot of time on airplanes trying to think through different things but a motor would catch on fire or the tires that blow out or something would happen I think everything that can happen to a person in an airplane has happened to me I've been across the Atlantic twice now when the motor blew out just in the last two years on the jet airplane and so I know that's the devil disturbing me so I can't think through anything and but I would say that ask God to give you studying grace because a lot of the students will go to school and they say that I've got to get out there and do this and do that time is short and so forth if I knew that the Lord was going to come back in in three years and I had two years to study I wouldn't get up and start running up and down the streets of Boston preaching the gospel I'd stay here and study and prepare in the place that God put you because you must be ready for what he has ahead of you and you must be prepared and you've come here to prepare and it takes a special grace from God to prepare takes patience it takes their power of the Holy Spirit it takes the anointing and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit just like I have to have the power of the Holy Spirit to preach I have to have the anointing of the Holy Spirit to proclaim his message with a love and a passion compassion and you must have that same anointing of the Holy Spirit to be a faithful student or faithful faculty member dr. gray my name is Alex Kishan third-year m.div student here and I'm in process with the Southern Baptist foreign Mission Board I spent 7 months last year would you think a little louder okay I've spent seven months last year ministering in a hungarian baptist church in by a hungry two hours directly south of budapest i have several friends and hungry who are very appreciative of your work in both Hungary and in Romania I was wondering what future plans you have to follow up your very successful campaigns in Budapest well two years ago I believe and your work in Romania and if possible if I could tag along yes my my first visit to Eastern Europe came in 1960s 1967 when we went to Yugoslavia into Croatia and preached the gospel in Zagreb and then the big thrust came a short time later when we were able to go to Hungary and two of the various cities of Hungary and I'll never forget in-page it spell spelled pece s PS but they pronounced it page and I remember the Catholic Archbishop introducing me to 50,000 people he was introducing me from the steps of the capital of his Cathedral and in those countries we get it we try to get everybody to cooperate and when we held a big meeting and hungry about three years ago and a hundred and some thousand people the Catholic Cardinal read the scriptures the reformed the leader of the Reformed Church participated and different denominations participated but when I got up I just preached the straight gospel because they weren't if there's any compromise in it it was them compromising not me and you go to those places where it's been ruled by the communists and you're just glad to hear anybody talk about Jesus whatever his background is and so it teaches us a great deal of love and tolerance toward people who don't hold our views and it was made very clear that we didn't hold their views and that we were come together as a Christian witness and it wasn't just an event but when I gave the invitation about a third of the audience started forward I knew they'd misunderstood what I had said so I asked him to go back to their seat and they went back to their seats but then they came forward again and we fortunately had enough literature and the counselors who had been prepared had to throw it to them by the thousands I think there were 37,000 people that came forward that day to make their commitment to Christ and then it was carried live on Hungarian television two or three days later and another great batch of mail came in of people receiving Christ as their Lord and Savior now we have an opportunity to go into the Soviet Union every week on channel number one that's their main channel with the gospel of Christ at prime evening time now some people will take time early in the morning and so forth we wanted at prime time you will never see us normally if we have anything to do with it on in the daytime on Sunday morning and all any time like that we try to take prime evening time and that's the way we're doing in Eastern Europe as well I don't know what that answered your question because I didn't hear at all dr. Graham I'd like to ask you as we Minister we find out how important prayer is and how important it is to have someone standing with you in prayer and I know that you attribute most of the success of your ministry to people who have been praying for you but I'm curious if I were to be with you alone what I would ask you is could you comment and perhaps give us an an anecdote or something on your relationship with dr. Stephen ol fir'd as being a prayer partner could you could you tell us a little bit about that yes Stephen and I have been friends for many years he was first time I ever met him was that hildenburg Hall and just outside of London in 1946 the year after the war and he was with Tom Reese and Tom Reese had invited a group of us in Youth for Christ to come over and tell them about Youth for Christ in America to see if they couldn't get something similar going in Great Britain Tom Reese was a fairly wealthy man and he had the largest evangelistic rallies at that time in Britain and Stephen was helping him Stephen was born in red in Africa and his father and mother now lived in Cardiff Wales and he was sin and Wales he's a Welshman and he was to be the opening speaker that night of the conference and I never heard such a powerful address as he is he gay and so after the meeting was over I asked him if he was going to be in Wales in the next few days because we were going to Wales and he said yes so we went down there and we had a day with him I had a day with him and just fell in love with him and we've been very close personal friends ever since and we've prayed together a lot and then I began to become acquainted with the Kazik message and the Kazik teaching and I became a speaker at Kazik I gave their 100th anniversary address and read the books and Stephen was a very strong Kazakh speaker for young people at that time he now is in Memphis with a program in which he trains young pastors to be preachers and his if he has a failing and I don't know that he does it maybe it's my failing but he preaches too long and it's hard for Stephen to preach less than an hour to hour and a half and I've tried to limit my preaching now to 35 minutes because I find that with television and all these other things that and you read the Sermon on the Mount how long does it take you to read it Jesus didn't spend all day long and of course that result put together probably and from different messages that he brought there's big discussion about that but all the Ten Commandments Oh any of those great things in Scripture a very brief and the prayers of our Lord and public were brief but in private he spent all night in prayer and I think that should be our pattern but we certainly need prayer and I think that that I can feel it and sense it when I'm up speaking I can just sense prayer because around the world people now know about us they pray for us we get hundreds and thousands of letters that say we pray for you daily and I'd rather have their prayers than their money or anything else dr. Graham I wonder as you look at the Evangelical Church in America what are your deepest concerns well it's according to what we mean by the word evangelical the word evangelical has changed so that and has become so fuzzy that we hard to know how to define an evangelical to me and Evan Jellicle is a person who believes the Bible to be the Word of God who takes the Apostles Creed of the Nicene Creed as the basis of his theology of some of the other Creed's of the church and then there's an emotional part to being an evangelical and that is our love for the person of Christ we love God the Father God the Holy Spirit that but there's a centrality of the second person of the Godhead that's in the heart and mind of the of the evangelical and then the third thing that I would describe as an evangelical would be a person who who proclaims the gospel who is evangelistic who who loves other people and whether he does it through social worker social emphasis on social justice on the proclamation of the cross he starts with the cross but then it goes out in a horizontal way as well and I would say that the state of the of angelical in America is is good much far better than it was when I started out there's just thousands of evangelical pastors across this country and AB angelical leaders and I think a part of it has come from the parachurch organizations and that has spurred the denominations and now I know denominations are splitting and dividing and in my own denomination we're having all sorts of ups and downs and divisions about it but by and large the evangelicals are holding fast and they're stronger than ever dr. Graham I was just wondering if you could share with us who are preparing for ministry or those who have ministry now what are the some of the most important lessons you've learned about ministry in your ministering down through the years well we've just talked about one of them and that is prayer and I would say that the most important thing that you can learn and develop is a daily devotional life that is reading the scriptures for many years I've had the practice of reading five Psalms a day in one chapter proverbs a day five Psalms teaches me how to get along with God and you see the ups and the downs of David and Alsip and the others that wrote the Psalms and then you come to proverbs and that teaches you how to get along with man and you can read them both through one chapter proverbs a day and five chapters of Psalms a day in one month so read them over and over and over again in addition to the other reading and the other studies my wife and I this year are to have adopted the they epistles the prison epistles for our daily devotional time and we just finished the book of Isaiah and I would think that to get on your knees and feel with those men that wrote it and feel with what they were saying is one thing then the second thing I would say is learn how to lead a person to Christ personally you know it's easy to get up on a platform and preach an evangelistic sermon but to sit face-to-face with a man and say will you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior will you sign on the dotted line will you shake my hand and say that you're going to receive him and you'll pray this little prayer after me and get on your knees and pray with him that's an important thing to learn and that's one reason that I backed bill Brighton and the work of Campus Crusade in those full spiritual laws of course they were put out by Bob Jones a long time before bill bright came along and then before Bob Jones about the turn of the century another man had those same four points but they're good and I adopted I'm we have four steps to peace with God and so I think that it's that those are very good little helps and winning a person to Jesus Christ and then I would also practice something that I've not always practiced and that is I would try to leave a little tract or a little something about the Lord with almost everybody that I meet but it's somebody at the toll gate or somebody in the hotel or wherever it is and tell them what it means to be a Christian why they should become a Christian and you're scattering the Word of God and during the Desert Storm and my son got the idea of sending thousands and several million Arabic tracts to the the soldiers and they he said in his letter to them he said you may want to learn Arabic and the best way to learn Arab April would be to take these scriptures in these passages may be familiar to you and get an arabic person that you meet and get him to teach you and so thou and then he said if you throw it away just throw it away it'll be buried in the sand and someday some Arab will come and get that and read it and just all kinds of little ways that people have thought of to get the Word of God out because there's power and the word I could go on with a lot of other points but thank you dr. Graham I have a tendency go too long on each one dr. Graham it's obvious throughout the history of your ministry and even most recently that you have a lot of accessibility to political leaders around the world and as my understanding that you were with President Bush the night before we made a decision to go to war and I was wondering just what that's like to be a part of of all of that what it's been like for you to be with leaders as they've made important decisions and just a little to know a little bit about that thank you I'm very glad you asked that because I've been asked that before and I'd like to tell you the story I was at home that day and we were working on a I think I was working on my memoirs as a matter of fact and the call came asking me if I could come and have lunch with secretary Baker and the president alone and I said no there's no way in the world we can make it because it takes us 40 minutes to get to the airport and then it's an even if it's a private plane it takes us a hour and a half to get to Washington so we turned it down then the call came back about an hour later and said the president would like you to have dinner with him he wants to have dinner with you alone so I said well we can do that if we have a private plane so we had a private plane and they picked us up and I went to Washington and I was it was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I arrived at the White House and they took me up to the second floor at the Lincoln room on the second floor is the quarters of the president and his family and you have the Lincoln room in the Queen's room and you have the Blue Room you have several of those rooms and then on the third floor you have sort of hotel rooms where a guests stay they've always put me in the Lincoln room of that I've been there for several presidents I spy I think it's about 20-some under Johnson he always wanted somebody near him there was a preacher and I can assure you he needed somebody I preached his funeral and I told that but be that as it meant as it may I got there and I was sitting there watching CNN on the television that was in the room they had it on and a knock came at the door and I went to the door and there was mrs. Bush alone and she was in her wheelchair she had been hurt in a skiing accident and she said Billy would you push me up to the Blue Room and I've known the bushes for 25 years we've been very close family friends and so I said certainly so I pushed up to the Blue Room and we sat down and we were talking and visiting and all of a sudden the man on the television said it looks like anti-aircraft fire from Baghdad and he kept on talking and that Dane for about five minutes and I turned to her and I said Barbara I said is this the beginning of the war and she didn't say anything but I could tell by the way she looked that that was it and about a half an hour later the president came in he'd come from his office and he said now you know and I won't quote what all he said and then I said let's have prayer and we had prayer together the three of us and then we went to they said dinner was served so the three of us went to dinner just the three of us and in the little private dining room and we had another prayer and then during the dinner somebody came in and said this is a copy of your speech we want you to go over it one more time he had to speak at nine o'clock to the nation to tell them about the beginning of the war and when the man left I said could we have another prayer and because I was very concerned and very burdened I was thinking about all those men that might be slaughtered we'd had so many negative reports and then he left to go over to the to his office to give his speech and we have another prayer praying that God would give him liberty and say the right thing to the people and then he came back and he said Billy he said I've I'd like for you to do something for me I said what is it he said I'd like to have a service tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock at Fort Myers and I'll have all the cabinet there I'll have the heads of all their Armed Forces : Powell and Dick Cheney all these people will be there and we'll have about three or four hundred Marines in we'll have the Marines sing and then he said in three chaplains three heads of the chaplains cores will be there to read the scriptures and to pray and so forth but I want you to preach to us he said what what subject would you like to have I said I want to speak on the sub if I'm to speak I want to speak on the subject of peace so they called it a service for peace and they had little bulletin already printed and no not not before the conversation they I think they stayed up half the night the chaplains called for printing that little bulletin but we went out there and had a nice little service and came back and that was the total extent of my involvement in that war and it's interesting I'd like to say this that President Bush has never discussed politics with me and he never discussed whether to go into this war or not he never asked me a question and I didn't volunteer any advice dr. Graham I want to turn from white house to Kremlin again because I came two years ago from Russia and I am exciting that you half of your introduction tell us about Russia and what's going on there among Christian especially especially a few seminary scenes you know in the United States they already involved with their start with their professors too in teaching in Russia and so on how you how's your then Gordon Connell could be involved in such a very important things now I didn't understand all that how could what is your vision for how Gordon Conwell may be involved in ministry in Russia I think Gordon Connell is probably already very involved in form of students that are in these various organizations that are working in Russia we have so many organizations that are working they in fact some of the pastors last summer told me that they're too many Americans representing too many organizations and he said they come over here and they tell about our needs and they take pictures and they go back to America to raise money and said they also offer money to our leaders more than they could ever earn in a year they offer them for one week to work with them and to help them and this is a real danger that we go and exploit them this is a minority that's doing this but there are some that have done that are still doing it and it causes great confusion among the Christians in the Soviet Union Oh in Russia as well as the Ukraine and other places dr. Graham I was told to keep this revolving around ministry or Jack was going to pull the mic what I'd like to ask on this side of your view most of us have dreams and aspirations and thoughts and I myself have difficulty imagining the places you've been and the people you've seen and let alone the numbers of sermons that you've delivered so my question is in your life yet ahead of you what is your greatest ambition in terms of your own ministry to get to heaven [Applause] and I'm certain that that's where I'm going not because of me I'm a sinner saved by grace thank God but I'm going because of what Christ did on the cross and by his resurrection dr. Graham thank you very much for your time with us you've talked about how the spirit of communism has has been destroyed by the power of God there's another spiritual giant of evil Islam and I'm wondering what you see in the future for how we can kill this giant with the Spirit of God this needs to be the subject of our prayers as much as anything in the world today because Islam is growing much faster than Christianity in relation to the world population and they are very dedicated of course there are different kinds of people that the Shiites and the Sunnis and other splinter groups in Islam they're not all united as we may think they are but it's for example in Egypt right now they are I believe arresting some Islamic leaders because they're too fervent the same is true in Algeria their Minh almost became a Islamic Republic very much like Iran but the same they would live by Islamic law and yet I hear of constant stories of people coming to know Christ that are former Muslims and I think that we shouldn't give up because they are they are strong and they they they don't really know the grounds of their beliefs most of them have not read the Quran they've read excerpts from it and parts of it and I had a man that traveled with me from years his name is agua Huck maybe he's been here to speak he's from India and he traveled with me for over the last 30 years and he got his doctor's degree at Northwestern University and Islamic studies his father was an Islamic priest he himself was president of the Henry Martin School of Islamic studies in New Delhi and I considered him the greatest authority I'd ever met on Islam and he I would like to suggest sir that he'd be invited here to speak sometime because he's a powerful speaker with a British accent good-looking and he really knows Islam and he knows the answers to Islam and if he could have sat down with the president and the cabinet and explained what they were up against in that war as he did to our office in Minneapolis I think they would have thought twice on some of the things that they did dr. grandmother four or five things you could mention that we could be praying for you just for your ministry there is a number of us who pray for you regularly and are there items especially that you'd like us to be covering for you in prayer thank you very much dr. Alan Emory is here he's on this board as well and he's chairman of our Executive Committee and I'm sure he would we have a board of 27 men and women and I believe I can say without any contradiction that we have the strongest board and the tightest run financial organization in the country secular religious and it's been because of this board that has been so strong and another one of we're seven members of our board on the board of Gordon Connell so we have that relationship with you also if we need money all we have to do is ask dr. Cooley how to raise money he does such a wonderful job in whatever he tackles and every one of us are so proud of him yes you could pray also for our physical condition my wife and I both past 70 I'm 73 and she's 70 and I didn't really notice that I was beginning to slow down in my body until I was about 67 68 and I began to realize I couldn't do the things I did at 38 and today I can't do the things that I did when I was a young man of 65 and yet the opportunities for both of us to write and to speak here and there are greater than ever and we just we need your prayers that God will show us what our priorities are I'm trying to write my memoirs I'm not sure they'll ever get finished I've got the outline finished that's about as far as we've gotten and I have the help of one man but I need about four or five right now if we're gonna get finished before the Lord takes me to heaven and they may not be worth reading I'm trying to pass on to the next generation of young people like you what we did how we did it the mistakes we made the things that you shouldn't make and try to keep it interesting at the same time tell about our opportunities in all parts of the world because I've to it all the continents I've been now preached to health Crusades in 84 countries and so you've learned a little something as you go along and it's been my privilege to preach in all kinds of interesting situations whether it's a prison or in bucking at Buckingham Palace all it wins a park or wherever and various universities I remember the first time that I had a question-and-answer period with the faculty at Oxford I'll tell you about that sometime that was very interesting because three or four times I said I don't know the answer to that question and when I said that already it's applauded I don't know why and all the times that I had with CS Lewis and people of that caliber Emile Bruna or some of those great theologians I'd spent days with him I took a vacation with dr. Karl he was a great theologian from ball yeah Karl Bart I'm embarrassed you see that's age but he was a wonderful friend and I remember when we took a holiday together up in the mountains of Switzerland and he said you're going to come to Baal to preach and he said I want to tell you something he said you won't have very many people to hear you and then if you give an invitation nobody will respond so the night that I went to Baal he was there and it was pouring rain like it is tonight and he was sitting there with a big umbrella over him and an old trench coat and I looked at him and we had 15,000 people which is about four times what they expected I gave an invitation about five or six hundred people responded and the next day I had lunch with him and he said well he said that meeting last night was a great surprise to me but he said there was one thing that you did that I did not like one thing that you said I said what is that he said you said we must be born again I said I believe in being born again but he said I don't like that word must so a few days later I had lunch with Emil Bruna over in Zurich and I told him about that experience and he said don't ever preach without saying you must be born again because he and Bart did not get along as you know so that was another difference of opinion between them thank you very much mr. Graham for sharing this conversation with us in a moment that George ray a graduate of our seminary here in 1981 I believe 82 I missed by ear is going to lead us in prayer and we're going to pray for you and your ministry well we do want to thank you for sharing these comments with us you have shared your vision and you have done so with knowledge and you've shared some anecdote with a little humor and we appreciate that so very much thank you [Music] let's pray together our Father and our God we rejoice in this evening and we thank you father for this man that you have raised up by your hand to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth I pray that in the name of Jesus Christ that your healing power would rest upon him and that your strength would be imparted to his being that he might continue Oh Lord to rejoice in you and to sow the seeds of your love to the uttermost parts of the earth and I pray a double portion of the Spirit of God that is upon this man will come upon the student body at gordon-conwell and father that many might be raised up Oh Lord to go forth even as he has done to carry for this ministry and greater power and in greater authority father may it be so in Jesus name and may you be glorified in all of our lives father as we go forth in your love through Christ who is our Savior and our soon and coming king amen before you go I would like to wish all of you a wonderful do I call it winter or spring term anyway spring we're gonna go with that and I trust that you have a marvelous time in study in prayer tomorrow morning we will gather for worship here in the chapel at 9:40 and dr. Leighton Ford will be giving the sermon in that hour and I trust you will be present god bless you and give you a marvelous evening

Channel: GordonConwell

Views: 39,255

Rating: 4.8130217 out of 5

Keywords: Billy Graham, Gordon Conwell, Gordon-Conwell, GCTS, Evangelical, Seminary, Crusades, Founder, Trustee, chapel

Id: jiqa7EAdK0o

Length: 59min 36sec (3576 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018