When I Met Billy Graham

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Billy Graham has been in the news lately.

00:00:07.640 | He was sick and then he became very weak.

00:00:10.080 | And at the time of this recording,

00:00:12.120 | he seems stronger, we're told,

00:00:13.680 | but of course he's 95 years old

00:00:15.800 | and he will not be with us much longer.

00:00:18.080 | With his name in the news brings up questions

00:00:20.920 | about Graham's legacy in your own life, Pastor John.

00:00:23.760 | Let me ask you a few things about Billy Graham.

00:00:26.760 | We'll start here.

00:00:27.600 | I've heard somewhere, thank you, Justin Taylor,

00:00:30.160 | that when you were young, when you were a kid,

00:00:32.560 | you were afraid that Billy Graham would die.

00:00:35.800 | It frightened you to think of the prospect.

00:00:37.800 | What was that fear about?

00:00:39.460 | - It was immature.

00:00:44.200 | It was a little faith, oh, ye of little faith,

00:00:49.040 | but it was real.

00:00:50.200 | It's strange, I can remember, I think it was about 11

00:00:54.680 | and we had a back porch

00:00:58.360 | and my basketball goal was fastened

00:01:01.720 | to the top of the back porch

00:01:02.680 | 'cause the garage was under the porch

00:01:04.840 | and I was standing just to the left

00:01:06.640 | of the basketball backboard facing the driveway

00:01:10.600 | where I shot buckets.

00:01:12.400 | And this feeling came over me, isn't this strange?

00:01:14.440 | I can remember this.

00:01:15.680 | This feeling came over me of fear

00:01:19.480 | that Billy Graham might die.

00:01:22.240 | So that would have been 1950,

00:01:24.560 | okay, 46 plus 11, 57, give or take,

00:01:31.080 | somewhere around there.

00:01:33.800 | And it was, I think it would,

00:01:37.000 | I didn't articulate to myself what would happen,

00:01:40.280 | you know, what happened to the church, to the world.

00:01:43.160 | I just had this fear that something terrible

00:01:46.400 | would happen to the church

00:01:48.440 | if Billy Graham wasn't there for us, you know?

00:01:52.480 | And I tried to figure out why did I think that?

00:01:57.320 | In those days, the '50s, among evangelicals,

00:02:02.320 | and I didn't know that word from Adam, you know?

00:02:04.680 | I learned that word in college.

00:02:06.420 | There weren't a lot of respected people

00:02:11.880 | who spoke for the Bible.

00:02:14.600 | So the resurgence of evangelicalism

00:02:18.640 | that happened in the late '40s under Harold John Ockengay

00:02:23.640 | and Fuller Seminary and Gordon Seminary

00:02:27.360 | and Christianity Today and Billy Graham,

00:02:30.040 | that Wheaton College,

00:02:31.280 | that constellation of central evangelicalism,

00:02:36.240 | that was a newer thing on the horizon,

00:02:39.400 | and there weren't a lot of people.

00:02:42.040 | You know, there were some famous TV personalities,

00:02:44.920 | but nobody would have thought of them as evangelical.

00:02:47.680 | And so Billy Graham just seemed to be bigger than life.

00:02:51.920 | He just represented what we believed about the Bible,

00:02:56.400 | and to lose him would have almost,

00:02:59.640 | to see Christianity vanish off the American cultural scene.

00:03:03.480 | I mean, it's a stupid, immature, little faith,

00:03:08.160 | and yet it gives you the sense, a little taste maybe,

00:03:11.240 | of what a little John Piper was learning

00:03:15.320 | about the dangers of celebrity attention.

00:03:17.480 | We ought to have heroes.

00:03:20.800 | We really should have heroes.

00:03:22.740 | And Billy Graham is still one of mine.

00:03:26.520 | But the danger is always there of making him too important,

00:03:31.400 | making any celebrity too important,

00:03:34.240 | more important than the cause of Christ,

00:03:36.480 | somehow thinking that poor Jesus,

00:03:39.520 | poor, risen, omnipotent, all-authority-having Jesus

00:03:43.800 | is gonna stumble if one of our heroes stumbles

00:03:47.400 | or gets taken off the scene.

00:03:50.320 | No one is ever indispensable to the cause of Christ.

00:03:54.680 | Only Christ is indispensable.

00:03:56.600 | And I needed to learn that,

00:03:59.120 | and I didn't feel that like I should have at age 11,

00:04:02.720 | and I feel ashamed of that,

00:04:04.920 | but I'm glad God was merciful to me,

00:04:07.000 | and he will be to all of us to help us grow up

00:04:10.680 | and realize he is everything,

00:04:12.760 | and all of his advocates in this world are important,

00:04:16.840 | but they are not indispensable.

00:04:18.980 | - Did you ever go to any Crusades,

00:04:21.920 | or did you ever meet Billy Graham himself?

00:04:24.880 | - I went to the New York Crusade.

00:04:26.520 | So a lot happened when I was 11.

00:04:29.600 | (laughs)

00:04:31.200 | 11 or 12, whatever it was.

00:04:32.480 | So yeah, the summer it would've been,

00:04:33.880 | it went 11, the summer of 1957, we went as a family,

00:04:39.520 | and I'm pretty sure it's because my father

00:04:41.720 | wanted to see this phenomenon up close,

00:04:45.960 | because his life was really hanging on this,

00:04:48.800 | that is his relationships with very precious friends

00:04:52.200 | were in the balance as this was being,

00:04:56.080 | it was in the media everywhere,

00:04:59.120 | and many people were criticizing Billy Graham for it,

00:05:02.560 | and others were stunned at the work of God in it,

00:05:05.960 | and my father, I think, wanted to see it.

00:05:07.380 | So yeah, I went and saw the Crusade there.

00:05:12.040 | I was at one or two other Crusades.

00:05:14.280 | I think I was one in California when he came,

00:05:16.040 | when I was in seminary at the Anaheim Stadium,

00:05:19.720 | and I can't remember all of them,

00:05:22.600 | but yes, I've been to Crusades,

00:05:25.720 | and that one was very, very moving,

00:05:28.400 | and probably because so much was in the offing

00:05:32.520 | with regard to my father's relationships.

00:05:36.600 | I met Billy Graham when I was 14 years old

00:05:38.600 | at Cliff Barrow's house.

00:05:39.840 | Maybe a little background here.

00:05:42.740 | In Greenville, South Carolina, where I grew up,

00:05:45.560 | there was the university, Bob Jones,

00:05:47.920 | where Billy Graham went and left,

00:05:50.640 | and then my dad stayed, and then later was resigned

00:05:55.560 | because of the conflict with Billy Graham,

00:05:57.320 | but there were a cluster of evangelists called WOES,

00:06:00.840 | Wives of the Evangelists,

00:06:04.480 | and Cliff Barrow's, the song leader for Billy Graham,

00:06:08.720 | lived there.

00:06:09.560 | I went to high school with his kids,

00:06:10.960 | and at his home, every now and then,

00:06:15.440 | there were these gatherings for the kids and the families,

00:06:17.880 | and Billy Graham happened to show up at one of them,

00:06:20.240 | and so I think I was 14 years old,

00:06:21.960 | and all I remember is the guy was tall.

00:06:25.440 | He was a giant, and I was little,

00:06:29.560 | and so I got to shake his hand,

00:06:31.800 | and I just remember being nervous

00:06:35.120 | in the presence of greatness, and so that was one,

00:06:38.560 | and then more recently, about a year ago,

00:06:40.840 | I was able to visit him at his home here.

00:06:43.600 | I say here 'cause I'm living down south as I record this,

00:06:46.640 | down near Asheville, and what a privilege

00:06:49.680 | to spend, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes

00:06:52.000 | with a man who is remarkably humble

00:06:59.240 | and seems to love to give credit to others.

00:07:02.640 | He seems to very naturally speak of others

00:07:06.240 | rather than himself, and he speaks most endearingly

00:07:11.240 | of Jesus, so that was really a high point of my,

00:07:16.400 | if I came close to the dangers of hero worship

00:07:19.320 | or celebrity admiration, it would be Billy Graham

00:07:23.000 | because he's been there as one all my life long,

00:07:27.080 | and still is even in his ill health,

00:07:30.320 | so what a privilege it was to spend a few minutes with him.

00:07:33.800 | - Yes, what a privilege.

00:07:35.080 | Thank you, Pastor John, and Pastor John,

00:07:37.040 | you mentioned your father's relationships

00:07:38.560 | being tied up with Billy Graham,

00:07:40.400 | and tomorrow I wanna talk about one Billy Graham controversy

00:07:43.920 | that impacted the history of the Piper family.

00:07:47.400 | Until then, listeners, please continue

00:07:48.960 | to email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org

00:07:52.160 | and visit us online at DesiringGod.org

00:07:54.560 | to find thousands of books, articles, sermons,

00:07:56.480 | and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

00:07:59.320 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke, thanks for listening.

00:08:01.720 | (upbeat music)

00:08:04.320 | (upbeat music)

00:08:06.920 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

When I Met Billy Graham

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