The Scourge Of Racism
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Thank God that churches where Jesus is Lord do not pick men and women to serve as they see fit, but rely on God who has established spiritual gifts as the way He calls and equips His servants to serve! Globally known evangelist, Billy Graham is among those from the 1st century God has called and equipped by spiritual gifting to serve Him through the Body of Christ. I wrote the following blog as the Lord led to be of some support during the launch of what turned out to be yet another fruitful evangelistic campaign to our nation from the Graham team that continues. After repentance and revival, pastors and churches would do well to engage with them in this effort.
Another important reason I originally wrote this blog and present it as an edited repost now is to highlight again how willful pastor and church ignorance about spiritual gifts get in God’s way; hindering the work He wants to do through His servants like Billy Graham. No one delights more in hindering the work of God than Satan! Imagine his glee at having churches do his dirty work for him by overstepping the Holy Spirit in casting aside spiritual gifts and attempting to deploy members into invented religious service after fleshy wisdom and preference. In great joy I thank God that Billy Graham did not listen to flesh driven men in his service, but to Him as I have also done!
Originally Posted November 3, 2013
The memory of words spoken to me by one of the now departed mothers of the church I formerly served as pastor, Cleolia Wilder, came to mind as the Holy Spirit led me to consider this blog on Billy Graham: “Give me my flowers now,” she said. “I won’t be around to hear what you have to say about me after I’m gone.” Her playful, but real words echo wise as I reflect on a lifetime of having heard in some setting or another the name, Billy Graham; the name rising to the forefront once again as his national evangelistic broadcast event, My Hope America, is set to begin on the occasion of his 95th birthday November seventh.1
If there were anyone that qualified to be our nation’s spiritually wise grandfather with the right and clout to speak to us at such a time as this, it is certainly Billy Graham. Without question, Rev. Graham is a God gifted and called evangelist (Acts 8:4-5, 26-40, 21:8; Ephesians 4:11) and the greatest of post 1st century history in terms of reach and impact around the earth. Men like me “do the work of an evangelist” along with other ministry responsibilities (2 Timothy 4:5, NKJV). However, Billy Graham is a full-time, all the time preacher and witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the burning passion from Him to win souls!
Born in North Carolina on a dairy farm, Rev. Graham was himself won to Christ in a revival meeting as a youth. He answered God’s call to preach and evangelism and by 1949 had assembled a team that conducted a history making evangelistic Crusade in Los Angeles, CA. It lasted eight weeks and saw many hundreds come to Christ. In those days the secular media took note of the young evangelist and before long word spread around the nation about his fiery delivery of the simple Gospel message. He drew crowds in the tens of thousands in crusades on every continent and in many major cities at the height of his labor.
Noteworthy too is the favor God gave to Rev. Graham among the churches across denominational lines, though his lifelong affiliation is with Southern Baptists. He rallied the churches in the cities of his crusades to pray for, financially support and participate in them. I was privileged to participate as a decision counselor in a Billy Graham Crusade that came to San Jose, CA in the early eighties through the Emmanuel Baptist Church where I was a member at the time. During his nearly half a century of service Rev. Graham became known as “God’s ambassador to the world” and was spiritual advisor to American Presidents from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush.
Billy Graham also broke racial harmony building ground in publically urging white Christians to repent from racism.2 He endorsed the non-violent work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a man of God, he stood tall as a role model in setting standards of humility, integrity and propriety with women that I as one of his admirers continue to emulate. For all of the fruitful labor and good God has used Rev. Graham to bring forth as a full-time evangelist, I stagger at the thought of what might have happened if he had listened to those early on in his young career that would keep him close to the local church to prove his loyalty to its program.
Similarly, other voices among the churches and in denominational circles would also attempt to pigeon hole him as a pastor; confining him to their unbiblical view of what “a call to preach” really means as has happened to me in my own Scriptural calling as a watchman/prophet. Billy Graham--as do all His gifted and called servants--served at the pleasure of God, not mortal flesh and as a result, stands as a towering Christian figure; an excellent example of an aspiring strong man of God in the image of Christ in our times who has earned the right to be heard nationally one last time in these latter days!
Therefore, whether you are participating in Billy Graham’s My Hope America through your local church or not (many churches have chosen not to be involved), I urge you to join me in praying for it.3 Pray that many souls will be won to the Lord through Rev. Graham and this broadcast as the Gospel is presented simply and clearly one more time by the devoted heart of a truly God called evangelist on a national platform. Otherwise, there is no one of his stature to command the cooperating media involvement he is getting now in the future. Indeed, most of the secular networks and cable systems are not participating in this broadcast event.4
Given the times, perhaps the next voices to command even global audiences for the authentic proclamation of the Gospel are God’s two witnesses who are prophets and finally, a holy angel (Revelation 11:1-14, 14:6-7). For this cause, pray also that God will be able to light a spark of revival among Christians as we understand with this broadcast how extraordinary it and the hour are. Thank you for your faithful service, Rev. Graham, and happy birthday!
1 For more information about My Hope America visit https://myhopewithbillygraham.org/.
2 Current events have clearly nullified the hostile conservative white evangelical put down of bringing up the charge of continuing racism among them and their churches
as playing “the race card.” Once again, the silence during an opportune time to proclaim and display a biblical worldview that black and all lives matter to God is
deafening. Billy Graham's call to repentance from racism then, is still appropriate now and required by God to be in the mix of all the sinful ways of the guilty to be
repented of before revival comes to them.
3 Oregon Regional Coordinator for the campaign, Ken Ramey is quoted in the November issue of Christian News Northwest as saying that “only one in every 12 churches
nationally knows about it.” He goes on to say the Graham team had met their goal to have 25,000 churches participate. For the entire article, Billy Graham My Hope
America Campaign enlists hundreds of Northwest churches, go to http://cnnw.com/2013/11/.
4 Three years later, if this year’s wicked race for President is any indicator of where our nation is at and going spiritually, then, in this reality taken seriously as it should be,
I humbly submit the Graham national evangelistic effort to all Americans using secular media in the mix is--barring divine intervention--truly the last of its kind as the Lord
led me to warn.
The stirring John Legend written song, Glory, he and rapper, Common, perform with a little help from a choir as the theme of the movie, Selma, has risen up in my heart again in the present version of the ongoing black American quest for racial acceptance. Well captured in the song and the current news images of students passionately protesting long tolerated systemic patterns of racial mistreatment in American society, its campuses and streets is the deeply troubling pathos involved in continuing to fight the many centuries long battle that cannot seem to be finally won. Even so, as the song asserts, the fight continues to be won at last when the Glory comes.
Glory is a fitting close to the film biopic, Selma, that chronicles the challenges and adversities slain Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dealt with to safely and peacefully complete a march over the Edmond Pettus Bridge into the now famous Alabama city in 1965. Such marches were the cornerstone of King’s purposeful strategy of nonviolent resistance to America’s legally sanctioned racial discrimination against blacks that also involved students peacefully sitting in at segregated eating establishments across the South. The marchers and protesters stood up carrying in their hearts the long held aspiration of our slave forefathers for freedom, equality and justice.
Recently seeing tears on some faces of University of Missouri black students as they sang, prayed and expressed themselves vocally to protest incidents of racism they felt were ignored or not considered important enough by school officials to investigate coupled with the sometimes very angry marches of those that protest under the banner, “Black Lives Matter,” caused me to easily and compassionately empathize with them. Transported to my childhood a generation ago when the activities of the Civil Rights Movement unfolded in real time on my family’s black and white television screen, I too began to tear up at the sadness that this seemingly easy to resolve struggle continues.
While I do not find every single sentiment expressed in Glory biblical, I nevertheless, greatly appreciate Legend’s recognition and incorporation of the predominant Christian faith of our people going back to slavery. Also, his song includes the fight for what should be common human decency as just, an encouragement to peaceful protest, respect for Jesus Christ as victorious after a public crucifixion and of course, the exclusively Christian hope of His glorious return to make things right as themes. In my mind, these themes enable the song to be an appropriate final anthem for the struggle to a generation forced to face the reality this fallen world will not of its own do right.
Indeed, since Legend’s song invites the wisdom of the elders into the continuing struggle in this generation, I step up. I qualify to do so now after nearly sixty years of experience being black and having the requisite mental and emotional battle scars from wounds suffered in the struggle with secular white as well as professed Christians that practice racism. First, understand as God has judged and declares in His Word, all human beings are sinners unwilling and unable to line ourselves up with His perfect standard (Romans 3:9-20). Nevertheless, God in love, grace and mercy has provided deliverance and help for the willing in Jesus Christ (John 3:16-21; Romans 3:21-26).
Obstinate white men guilty as sinners have resisted doing right from slavery because racism is not just about skin color, but guarding selfish privileges and opportunities--economic and otherwise. In light of this, consider also your generation’s wholesale embrace of the world’s sinfully invented political correctness, tolerance, multiculturalism, gender and sexual equality and how these concepts have not brought the long quest of our slave forefathers to full realization. In fact, in spite of these concepts and a very morally tolerant African-American President, your generation is still marching to protest racism! A holy God is constrained to help because so many marching are in rebellion against Him as willful sinners (Proverbs 14:34; Jeremiah 5:20-29; Romans 1:18-2:11).1
Second, understand that the resistance in guilty white men to do right and your own rebellion is not only driven by sin within, but outside forces are at work too. Ultimately, the struggle of our and all people that long for a world of love, acceptance, peace and justice is opposed by fallen angels led by Satan (Ephesians 6:12). This is why finally, the struggle will continue until the Day I am pleased to say is near; the Day when Jesus Christ, the Glory of God comes in wrath to insert Himself and His Kingdom into this world (Revelation 1:7-8, 6:12-17, 11:15-19, 19:11-16)!
Wholeheartedly come back to the biblical faith of our Christian slave and free forefathers so that you will not suffer the fate of those who mistreat you and all sinners before it is too late! For the kingdoms of fallen men and angels will be destroyed, the victory of Heaven justly won and His righteous reign rolled out! 2 Those who waited on Christ living as it pleases Him (1 Thessalonians 1:6-10, 2:10-12) will joyfully stand in that Day with elect Jews in His triumphant, eternal Kingdom (Isaiah 25:6-10a).3
1 Read the June 2015 blogs under the category, Black History.
2 Read the July 26, 2015 blog repost, Final Deliverance From The Evil Oppressor under the category, Encouragement.
3 With a learner’s heart, I challenge my fellow black American readers to set aside the convictions you may have from the worldview of a victim, to consider a biblical worldview of the enslavement and suffering of our people presented on our From Slavery To Victory Web Site; reading all the way through the brief presentation to the Victory Page. Follow this link, https://fromslaverytovictory.org/Healing/The-Journey to be taken directly to the presentation.
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