(upbeat music) - Billy Graham has been in the news lately. He was sick and then he became very weak. And at the time of this recording, he seems stronger, we're told, but of course he's 95 years old and he will not be with us much longer. With his name in the news brings up questions about Graham's legacy in your own life, Pastor John.

Let me ask you a few things about Billy Graham. We'll start here. I've heard somewhere, thank you, Justin Taylor, that when you were young, when you were a kid, you were afraid that Billy Graham would die. It frightened you to think of the prospect. What was that fear about?

- It was immature. It was a little faith, oh, ye of little faith, but it was real. It's strange, I can remember, I think it was about 11 and we had a back porch and my basketball goal was fastened to the top of the back porch 'cause the garage was under the porch and I was standing just to the left of the basketball backboard facing the driveway where I shot buckets.

And this feeling came over me, isn't this strange? I can remember this. This feeling came over me of fear that Billy Graham might die. So that would have been 1950, okay, 46 plus 11, 57, give or take, somewhere around there. And it was, I think it would, I didn't articulate to myself what would happen, you know, what happened to the church, to the world.

I just had this fear that something terrible would happen to the church if Billy Graham wasn't there for us, you know? And I tried to figure out why did I think that? In those days, the '50s, among evangelicals, and I didn't know that word from Adam, you know? I learned that word in college.

There weren't a lot of respected people who spoke for the Bible. So the resurgence of evangelicalism that happened in the late '40s under Harold John Ockengay and Fuller Seminary and Gordon Seminary and Christianity Today and Billy Graham, that Wheaton College, that constellation of central evangelicalism, that was a newer thing on the horizon, and there weren't a lot of people.

You know, there were some famous TV personalities, but nobody would have thought of them as evangelical. And so Billy Graham just seemed to be bigger than life. He just represented what we believed about the Bible, and to lose him would have almost, to see Christianity vanish off the American cultural scene.

I mean, it's a stupid, immature, little faith, and yet it gives you the sense, a little taste maybe, of what a little John Piper was learning about the dangers of celebrity attention. We ought to have heroes. We really should have heroes. And Billy Graham is still one of mine.

But the danger is always there of making him too important, making any celebrity too important, more important than the cause of Christ, somehow thinking that poor Jesus, poor, risen, omnipotent, all-authority-having Jesus is gonna stumble if one of our heroes stumbles or gets taken off the scene. No one is ever indispensable to the cause of Christ.

Only Christ is indispensable. And I needed to learn that, and I didn't feel that like I should have at age 11, and I feel ashamed of that, but I'm glad God was merciful to me, and he will be to all of us to help us grow up and realize he is everything, and all of his advocates in this world are important, but they are not indispensable.

- Did you ever go to any Crusades, or did you ever meet Billy Graham himself? - I went to the New York Crusade. So a lot happened when I was 11. (laughs) 11 or 12, whatever it was. So yeah, the summer it would've been, it went 11, the summer of 1957, we went as a family, and I'm pretty sure it's because my father wanted to see this phenomenon up close, because his life was really hanging on this, that is his relationships with very precious friends were in the balance as this was being, it was in the media everywhere, and many people were criticizing Billy Graham for it, and others were stunned at the work of God in it, and my father, I think, wanted to see it.

So yeah, I went and saw the Crusade there. I was at one or two other Crusades. I think I was one in California when he came, when I was in seminary at the Anaheim Stadium, and I can't remember all of them, but yes, I've been to Crusades, and that one was very, very moving, and probably because so much was in the offing with regard to my father's relationships.

I met Billy Graham when I was 14 years old at Cliff Barrow's house. Maybe a little background here. In Greenville, South Carolina, where I grew up, there was the university, Bob Jones, where Billy Graham went and left, and then my dad stayed, and then later was resigned because of the conflict with Billy Graham, but there were a cluster of evangelists called WOES, Wives of the Evangelists, and Cliff Barrow's, the song leader for Billy Graham, lived there.

I went to high school with his kids, and at his home, every now and then, there were these gatherings for the kids and the families, and Billy Graham happened to show up at one of them, and so I think I was 14 years old, and all I remember is the guy was tall.

He was a giant, and I was little, and so I got to shake his hand, and I just remember being nervous in the presence of greatness, and so that was one, and then more recently, about a year ago, I was able to visit him at his home here. I say here 'cause I'm living down south as I record this, down near Asheville, and what a privilege to spend, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes with a man who is remarkably humble and seems to love to give credit to others.

He seems to very naturally speak of others rather than himself, and he speaks most endearingly of Jesus, so that was really a high point of my, if I came close to the dangers of hero worship or celebrity admiration, it would be Billy Graham because he's been there as one all my life long, and still is even in his ill health, so what a privilege it was to spend a few minutes with him.

- Yes, what a privilege. Thank you, Pastor John, and Pastor John, you mentioned your father's relationships being tied up with Billy Graham, and tomorrow I wanna talk about one Billy Graham controversy that impacted the history of the Piper family. Until then, listeners, please continue to email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

I'm your host, Tony Ranke, thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)