There are those who feel that reporting on issues like this brings pleasure, well, it truly doesn’t. Billy Graham was always someone I had looked to as an example and someone I greatly admired in Christ. That is until troubling quotes and questionable associations he’d been making through the years kept coming up in research. Some of what you will see here has been available in different formats but it seemed good in the Lord to put it together in a more accessible form here in this article. There is little doubt that Billy Graham came on the scene as someone who preached the historic orthodox Christian faith with power and boldness. But sadly, as you’re about to see this would not continue as somewhere along the line Graham would apparently choose the role of “religious icon,” a musty old mantle now being passed to Rick Warren.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.
(1 Kings 18:21, KJV)

In his video presentation Billy Graham: The Man and His Message my good friend Cecil Andrews of Take Heed Ministries points out that “when he appeared on the Christian scene in the late 1940’s he certainly did not, at that stage, compromise on the uniqueness of the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, in fact in 1948 [Billy Graham] made this statement. He said: ‘the three greatest menaces faced by orthodox Christianity are Communism, Roman Catholicism, and Muhammadism,’ which we know is Islam today. The sad thing is that having made that very commendable statement he then subsequently proceeded to retreat on all fronts.”

Amazingly enough you are about to see evangelist Billy Graham tell you that someone can love Christ and know Christ and not even be conscious of it! Why then, Billy Graham, should we even preach the Gospel at all? The following is from a transcript of an appearance by Billy Graham on Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power,” program #1426 entitled Say “Yes” To Possibility Thinking, which was originally broadcast May 31, 1997:

Schuller: Tell me, what do you think is the future of Christianity?

Graham: Well, Christianity and being a true believer–you know, I think there’s the Body of Christ. This comes from all the Christian groups around the world, outside the Christian groups. I think everybody that loves Christ, or knows Christ, whether they’re conscious of it or not, they’re members of the Body of Christ. And I don’t think that we’re 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 in Jerusalem, when he said that God’s purpose for this age is to call out a people for His name.

And that’s what God is doing today, He’s calling people out of the world for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they’re going to be with us in heaven.

Schuller: What, what I hear you saying that it’s possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life, even if they’ve been born in darkness and have never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you’re saying?

Graham: Yes, it is, because I believe that. I’ve met people in various parts of the world in tribal situations, that they have never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, and never heard of Jesus, but they’ve believed in their hearts that there was a God, and they’ve tried to live a life that was quite apart from the surrounding community in which they lived.

Schuller: I’m so thrilled to hear you say this. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.

Graham: There is. There definitely is.

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NASB)

Dr. John MacArthur then adds the following salient comments to that insipid compromised conversion between Graham and Schuller quoted above:

This has certainly leaped from Aristotle to the [Roman] Catholic Church into evangelical Protestantism. Now we have a kind of Protestant viewpoint that says Muslims and Hindus and whoever are going to be in the Body of Christ, in the Kingdom, in Heaven, with salvation whether they ever get a Bible or whether they ever hear the Gospel or whether they ever know about Jesus Christ. The Billy Graham organization affirmed that this position is the same as the one articulated in an article in Decision magazine which Billy wrote in 1960, so this is not something new. (transcript on file)

So you see, this inclusivism now slithering its way into an evangelicalism which never renounced her humanism through the Purpose Driven postevangelical message of Rick Warren and the Emergent “twist to universalism” offered by Spencer Burke and the self-esteem “whichever way the wind blows” message of Joel Osteen isn’t really so new after all is it?

Below is the segment with Graham and his friend Schuller referenced above. See it for yourself:

See also:

BILLY GRAHAM’S APOSTASY IS OLDER THAN YOU THINK