A study in the contrast between Political and Pneumatic Christianity in the light of the life and death of Bill Graham

Feb 23, 2018 by

by Gavin Ashenden:

The responses to the news of Billy Graham’s death have been varied, as one might have expected. They stretch from the kind:

“Thank you Billy.
For Everything.
See you on the other side,
Michael W.”

to the septic, as in that of the Teen vogue columnist Lauren Duca:

“The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, bitch.”

Archbishop Cranmer, (aka Adrian Hilton) penned a brief but admiring note in which he concentrated on what he perceived as the shift in Graham’s soteriology, and an implicit interrogation of his role as an evangelist.

“I used to believe that pagans in far countries were lost if they did not have the gospel of Christ preached to them,” (Dr Graham) said in a 1978 interview with McCall’s magazine. “I no longer believe that,” he added, calmly and assuredly.

(Cranmer continued) He went further in a 1997 television interview with Dr Robert Schuller, when he explained that the body of Christ would be made up:

“..from all the Christian groups around the world, outside the Christian groups. I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. And I don’t think that we are going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole world to Christ at any time. I think James answered that – the Apostle James in the first Council of Jerusalem – when he said that God’s purpose for this age is to call out a people for his name. And that is what he is doing today. He is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.”

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