People have been sending their greetings to the home of Billy Graham in North Carolina. It is his birthday.
At ninety five he is looking frail and is no longer walking without aid. Nevertheless, his spirit burns bright and his mind appears as clear as ever.
I recall his crusade at Harringay Arena in England in 1956. It was a great success but, unsurprisingly, Reverend Graham was bitterly opposed by the media and lampooned as a money-grabbing American evangelist who preached his message with "an ugly enthusiasm."
At that time I was an all-wise-teenager of seventeen and I fully agreed with the British press.
Six years later, after my own dramatic conversion to Christ, I was raising my own voice in "an ugly enthusiasm" for the cause of the Kingdom of God and have continued to do so for the last fifty years.
Was there ever a better message than the Gospel of Christ? Was there ever a more eloquent and faithful exponent of that message than the Reverend Billy Graham?
Happy Birthday Billy.
Ian
Today another mayor joined the line-up to the public confessional.
The Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, after six months of stout denial, finally 'fessed up to using crack cocaine while in a drunken stupor.
In doing so he is simply the latest among the mayoral miscreants in North America.
Washington mayor, Marion Barry, was put behind bars for drug trafficking, the mayor of San Diego resigned after a barrage of charges of indecent conduct with female employees and the mayor of Detroit is doing time for embezzling city funds.
What is common in their pleas for sympathy, understanding and forgiveness is the absence of confession of their SIN.
Rob Ford declared "he made a terrible mistake." Marion Barry said he committed a "huge error of judgment" The mayor of Detroit ruefully reflected that he had let down himself, his family and his city.
Wait a minute! I thought lying, cheating, stealing and adultery were SINS.
Not in our brave New World lexicon. They are now classified as mistakes, errors of judgment, personal faults, misdemeanors etc. but never SINS.
There was a time when sinners roamed the planet in great abundance.You could find them practically anywhere, not just in jails, they were even in church.
But no longer. Sinners are becoming an extinct species, replaced by time travellers, pilgrims, rolfers, new-agers, fellow seekers, evolvers-in-process and so on.
Our own beloved mayor may be a liar, a cheat and a drunkard but apparently one thing he is not, and that is a SINNER.
Proof of that will be in a year's time, in the next election, when a million more non-sinners will likely vote him back for a second term!
Jubilate
Ian
By way of contrast to Eike Batista, the fallen Brazilian tycoon, here is an up to date snippet of Andrew Forrest who has made a fortune in Australian mining.
He announced last week that he is donating his 5.7 billion dollar fortune to charity.
Eike Batista went from 30 billion to zero because he LOST IT.
Andrew Forrest went from 5.7 billion to zero because he GAVE IT.
A slight difference you'll agree.
This same Andrew Forrest, when he was a boy in his home town, went riding an ATV. When he was in the scrub land he stopped his bike and threw the key over his shoulder and challenged himself to find it. After searching for an hour without success, he became desperate and prayed to God "If you help me find that key, I will serve You." On opening his eyes he glanced down and there was the key stuck between the exhaust pipe and the foot rest.
That immediate answer to prayer decided his destiny. He became known as the mining tycoon that always packed his Bible wherever he went.
Now, fifty years later, he is laying up a chunk of treasure in Heaven to await his later arrival.
I guess he found more than one key out there in the bush land when he was a fourteen year old ripper.
Jubilate.
Ian
