In one of the presentations Billy talked about a struggle he had early in his ministry about the truth and authority of the Bible. Was it really God's inspired Word?? Apparently he had a couple theologian buddies who were questioning the Bible's veracity and he needed to settle the issue for himself.
I was very interested to hear how Reverend Graham would solve this dilemma and come to some kind of resolution. There are lots of things about the Bible that I struggle with, and it would be nice to know how he came to believe in it and teach it with such conviction. What arguments persuaded him? How did he deal with the seeming contradictions and errors and atrocities and unscientific stuff? I was all ears.
To paraphrase what he said, it went something like this...
"God, I've got all kinds of questions about this Bible. There are a lot of things I don't understand. But I came to believe in you by faith, and I'm also going to decide by faith to accept this book as your inspired Word."
From then on he never looked back.
I was disappointed by this. The most significant evangelical of the 20th century solved his struggles over the Bible just by "deciding" to believe it? That left me so empty. I could not help but think of the millions of Mormons who have accepted the Book of Mormon by faith as the Word of God. And, fundamentally, every religion has holy books that at some level are accepted by faith. So what makes the Bible different? Any time you decide to accept teachings based on faith and not on reason or evidence, you lose the authority to pronounce those teachings as true, right? You can't say, "These writings and teachings are true because I decided to believe they're true. So you must believe them too!" But this, to my way of thinking, is what Billy Graham did. And he did it with a tremendous amount of conviction.
So, what about you? Do you believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God? If so, why? I'd like to hear your story. Leave a comment, and share this post with others please. Thanks!
