WHEN A GREAT MAN PASSES ------------------------- Billy Graham 2018 and George Whitefield 1770

When a great man passes away, the world sits up and takes notice.  It may be that they never paid much attention to what he said.  It is likely that they have never met him.  And yet on the day he dies, many are willing to listen and learn about him.  Today is such a day.

Billy Graham was a great man by the world’s standards.  The qualities that made him great will be discussed for years to come.  But today as news media across America and around the world share the facts of his life and death, what we feel is the sheer impact of the man.

In the 1700s God had raised up another such powerful preacher, George Whitefield.  He was 200 years before my time, yet this poem which was written about him by Phyllis Wheatley shares the same emotion I think many are feeling at Billy Graham’s passing – impact.

Hail, happy saint! On thine immortal throne,

Possessed of glory, life, and bliss unknown:

We hear no more the music of thy tongue;

Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.

Thy sermons in unequalled accents flowed,

And every bosom with devotion glowed.

Thou didst, in strains of eloquence refined,

Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.

Unhappy, we the setting sun deplore,

So glorious once, but ah! It shines no more….

Thy prayers, great saint, and thine incessant cries,

Have pierced the bosom of thy native skies.

Thou, moon, hast seen, and all the stars of light,

How he has wrestled with his God by night.

He prayed that grace in every heart might dwell;

He longed to see America excel.

He charged its youth that every grace divine

Should with full luster in their conduct shine,

That Savior, which his soul did first receive,

The greatest gift that even a God can give,

He freely offered to the numerous throng

That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung.

“Take Him, ye wretched, for your only good,

Take Him, ye starving sinners, for your food,

Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream,

Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme,

Take him, my dear Americans,” he said,

“Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid;

Take Him, ye Africans, he longs for you;

Impartial Savior, is his title due.

Washed in the fountain of redeeming blood,

You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.” …

MY STORY - In Honor of Billy Graham’s Homegoing

I was fourteen years old.  I’d had a rough life up to that point.  Divorce had shattered my family, and my dad had kept things stirred up with custody battles.  Mom was depressed, and so my sister and I often felt as if we were the parents.  Life at school wasn’t much better for me.  Except for academic success, the school scene was empty and lonely.

Then came a moment of decision and change that I had never anticipated.  I was at a movie created by the Rev. Billy Graham’s organization, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).   Titled “The Restless Ones,” it showed the empty lives of a group of teenagers and how everything turned around when they decided to follow Christ.  I was a church-goer, but I didn’t know that I was supposed to personally make a decision.  After the movie, the BGEA-trained counselors gave an altar-call, and –shaking all over—I went forward to give my life to Christ.

After that, I was spiritually sensitive to understand the Bible, to know how to pray, and to have wisdom for decision-making.  I prayed about how to deal with my difficult parent situation, how to act in relationships, and where to go to college.  God directed me – often in very specific ways – again and again.  He also gave me courage to move across the country at age eighteen, and later to marry and start a family.  When I became a parent, I sought God for how to raise my children, and I led them in the sinner’s prayer, as I had been led by the Rev. Billy Graham all those years ago. 

Today my family are all members of Christ’s own family because of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham.  This day heaven is overflowing with people who have the same testimony as I do – we are in God’s kingdom because of this man’s obedience to the gospel.

Thank you, Billy Graham.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving us such a servant of yours to show us the way.

If you want to get right with God and know that you are some day going to heaven, you can pray right now, right where you are:  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  I John 1:9

In Honor of Black History Month (2)

Phillis Wheatley, an African-American poet and educated slave in the 18^th century, was surrounded by many white Abolitionists who opposed the tyranny of slavery.  Lydia Huntley Sigourney, an educated woman of the 19^th century, was one of these.  Lydia expressed her opposition in her poetry.  She showed strength against opposition in her personal life as well, for her husband opposed her writing.  She then published in secret under a pseudonym, helping to support her family financially.

To the First Slave Ship

by Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791 – 1865)

‘First of that train which cursed the wave,
And from the rifled cabin bore

Inheritor of wo, --the slave
To bless his palm-tree’s shade no more.

Dire engine! –o’er the troubled main
Borne on in unresisted state, --

Know’st thou within thy dark domain
The secrets of thy prison’d freight? –

Hear’st thou their moans whom hope hath fled? –
Wild cries, in agonizing starts? –

Know’st thou thy humid sails are spread
With ceaseless sighs from broken hearts? –

The fetter’d chieftain’s burning tear, --
The parted lover’s mute despair, --

The childless mother’s pang severe, --
The orphan’s misery, are there.

Ah!—could’st thou from the scroll of fate
The annal read of future years,

Stripes,--tortures,--unrelenting hate,
And death-gasps drown’d in slavery’s tears.

Down,--down,--beneath the cleaving main
Thou fain would’st plunge where monsters lie,

Rather than ope the gates of pain
For time and for Eternity,--

Oh, Afric!—what has been thy crime?—
That thus like Eden’s fratricide,

A mark is set upon thy clime,
And every brother shuns thy side,--

Yet are thy wrongs, thou long-distrest!—
Thy burdens, by the world unweigh’d,

Safe in that Unforgetful Breast
Where all the sins of earth are laid –

Poor outcast slave! –Our guilty land
Should tremble while she drinks thy tears,

Or sees in vengeful silence stand
The beacon of thy shorten’d years;--

Should shrink to hear her sons proclaim
The sacred truth that heaven’s just,--

Shrink even at her Judge’s name,--
“Jehovah, --Saviour of the opprest.”

The Sun upon thy forehead frown’d
But Man more cruel far than he,

Dark fetters on they spirit bound:--
Look to the mansions of the free!

Look to that realm where chains unbind,--
Where the pale tyrant drops his rod,

And where the patient sufferers find
A friend,--a father in their God.

In Honor of Black History Month

Would you be shocked to hear an educated woman, stolen from Africa in her youth and sold into slavery, thank God for bringing her to America?  I was.  But that is the subject of a poem by Phillis Wheatley that I read today in a volume of poetry given me by my dear daughter Laura.

On Being Brought From Africa to America

by Phillis Wheatley (1753? – 1784)

‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their color is a diabolic dye.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Since I value my salvation so dearly, why should I be surprised that another person would thank God for circumstances that brought her to her own?  Because I live in the 21^st century in a culture that prefers political correctness to the Christian gospel.

Phillis Wheatly was educated along with the children of her master and learned not only English, but Latin and Greek as well.  She was the first published African-American woman poet.