Baptist News Global: America's Biggest Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Franklin Graham, executive director of Samaritan's Purse, and son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, is planning on delivering an Easter address from Jerusalem. His presence there, along with the statements he is likely planning to make, are completely inappropriate for someone claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ, as well as a minister of the Christian gospel.
Israel is engaged in a vicious, bloody war with Hamas, an Islamic militant, terrorist group, a war which is now clearly disproportionate in its brutality and the murder of innocent civilians, to the October 7th attack that prompted it, and is now increasingly being seen as retaliatory revenge, rather than self-defense, against Hamas. Taking sides is a matter of politicial opinion, obviously. There's no justification for what Hamas did in crossing into Israel and committing heinous acts of murder, assault, including sexual assault, and torture, against Israeli civilians. But the magnitude of the murder of innocent civilians in Gaza, and the destructiveness of the attack, is also increasingly being seen around the world as unjustified, vengeful retaliation.
Any Christian leader, following the principles of the Christian gospel, especially the direct revelation of Jesus himself, should take the side of a just peace.
"Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus is quoted as saying, in Matthew's gospel, 5:9, "for they shall be called the children of God."
Graham takes Israel's side, based on his own particular interpretation of biblical eschatology, the study of what the Bible's writers had to say about "end times" events. In a doctrinal perspective known as "dispensationalism," which is not a historical interpretation of what Jesus or the apostles had to say about end times events, there are periods of history in which the core principles and values of the Christian gospel can be set aside, and a different approach taken to justify things that are otherwise diametrically the opposite of any Christian practice or value. Violence and hatred, condemned by Jesus to the point that the Apostle John calls those things "antichrist," become permissible in dispensationalism if they are used to accomplish the will of God. And of course, it is those who believe in dispensationalism who also interpret, for everyone else, what is the "will of God."
Graham's High Profile Amplifies His Error When it Comes to Israel
Graham's eschatology, known as premillennial dispensationalism, a commonly held misinterpretation of the Bible among conservative Evangelicals, is in error. But it's more than just holding a mistaken interpretation of Bible prophecy, something most Christians do. It takes the position that the ancient Israel of the Old Testament will have a future place in events preceding the second coming of Christ, contradicting the very words of Christ himself when it comes to his establishment of a salvation covenant. It treats the people who have occupied the Holy Land for over 2,000 years as outsiders and enemies of God. It neutralizes the influence that Christian leaders who have the kind of high profile platform that Graham does, in helping to actually resolve situations like the one now happening in Gaza.
Former President Jimmy Carter, whose conservative, Evangelical, Baptist faith was a clear part of his personal identity, took his role as a peacemaker seriously when he was President, and used his influence, his "bully pulpit" as it is often called, to bring Israel and Egypt to the table to talk peace, and then brokered the peace deal which ended decades of warfare and violence, and which still stands today. I consider that President Carter's greatest foreign policy achievement. It was an act completely consistent with a historical interpretation of the Bible in its original context.
And while I realize that Graham is not in political office, he does have a high profile because of his name, who his father was, and has used that to carve out a niche for himself in the American para-church industry through his "Samaritan's Purse" ministry. He could certainly use his influence to call for peace. At the very least, he could condemn all war and violence, as Christ did, putting pressure on American politicians who see this particular war as a means of either profiteering, or advancing a political agenda.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and wait to see what he says in Jerusalem on Easter. But, knowing his position in advance, and seeing some of the more despicable things he has endorsed and promoted with his support, I don't have much hope that he'll take the role of peacemaker. His prior actions and words have removed that as a possibility. The primary Christian peacemaker, with regard to the war in Gaza, has been a Catholic, not an Evangelical. Pope Francis has left no room for doubting where he stands.
"Do we really think we are building a better world in this way?" he said, during the Angelus in St. Peter's Square, adding, "Don't forget tormented Ukraine, where many peoplle die every day. It's a place of great sorrow."
The Pope sounds like he's articulating the Christian perspective that Jesus established when he gave the honor of being the children of God to peacemakers. No other virtue of the Christian faith assigns that kind of honor.
Graham is Helping Lead Evangelicals Over a Spiritual Cliff Into Apostasy
It's not just standing in support of a nation at war, using its military might to indiscriminately kill civilians by bombing and destroying their homes and their lives, well beyond any reasonable, expected boundary of response to the October 7th attack that most of them had nothing to do with, nor approved of happening. We can recognize the illegitimacy of Hamas and condemn their actions, and their existence, without the kind of destruction and death occurring in Gaza, and Graham, as a Christian leader, should know better, and say so.
But, as the article linked above, in Baptist News Global, by Nathan Empsall, an Episcopalian priest and executive director of Faithful America, points out, Graham's blend of theology and politics is "an odious interpretation of Christianity, and the threat it poses to religious liberty on which we depend."
Graham's open endorsement of Trump is an embrace of all of the worldliness and corruption that comes with being a MAGA follower, and that is a polar opposite position to the Christian gospel, in every possible way. Trump has openly denied the spiritual conviction and the need for repentance that is at the very center of Christian conversion in an Evangelical interpretation of it, and for Graham to support Trump in this open denial legitimately calls into question his motives, and the veracity of his doctrine and theology.
While Empsall lists a litany of Trump's anti-Biblical positions, and Graham's excuses for them, and endorsements of them, he also points out that Graham has abandoned even some of the more conservative points of his right-wing Evangelicalism to become nothing more than another droning Trump sycophant. Evidence of this can be found in Graham's despicable statements he made during his recent trip to the border, coordinated to be there when Trump also showed up. Graham dishonestly declared that immigration "is not a Bible issue," and erased the entire epistle of I John from the canon of scripture.
Election Denial is a Main MAGA Theme, and a Denial of Truth, A Central Christian Theme
Aside from Trump's personal denial of having done anything requiring God's forgiveness, which is an open denial of the basis for Christian conversion, his election denial, and his subsequent orchestration of an attempt to overthrow the government and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power provided for in the Constitution, is a political position that no Christian can legitimately accept, and claim to be true to their faith.
Not only is the claim that the election was stolen from him a very provable lie, the moral implications of believing this, and continuing to promote it, require complete abandonment of the very core principles in those verses in Matthew's gospel, in the 5th through 7th chapters, that form the foundation of Christian doctrine and theology and are the interpretive criteria for all of the rest of the Bible.
This is a big lie, a national lie, a deception aimed at the destruction of American democracy. It means the perpetrator of it is a liar, not to be trusted, with his own self interest involved. It has separated patriotic Americans, who know it is a lie, from insurrectionists and malcontents, who believe it. Those who continue to support Trump have to carry that baggage too, and they also become liars. That includes every Evangelical Christian church leader, pastor, minister, preacher or evangelist who not only uses their pulpit to support Trump, but who also plan to vote for him secretly, even though they won't tell their congregation. Voting for Trump is a compromise of Christian faith. whether it is out of conviction or ignorance. Open support for him is open denial of Christian faith and practice.
It's not possible to support, as a politician, a man who is a deceitful liar, especially using it to his own benefit, an openly admitted adulterer, a practice he not only celebrated and bragged about committing, but delighted in publicly humiliating all three of his wives. He disrespects women, he is openly racist, the evidence of which continuously pops up in every speech he makes, carefully edited out by both Christian media and conservative, right wing propagandists. He has consipired against the United States with foreign powers, openly violating the law in business dealings and as President, in attempted bribery of a sovereign state to elicit lies about his political opponent from them. He organized and conducted an attempted overthrow of the government, based on his big lie, causing at least five deaths for which he is responsible as a murderer. But the bottom line is not that he's done all of this, it is that he is openly and vocally unrepentant.
His attack on American democracy was an insurrection against the government, a violation of two apostolic-authored passages in the New Testament, the very same American democracy that has given Christians freedom in a way that never existed anywhere else in the history of the church, even in America prior to 1789. And if America has become morally degenerate and spiritually bankrupt, as some right wing Evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, claim, they need to point the finger at their own ineffectiveness, including their pursuit of money and political power over the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as the reason for it. Their support for an evil, worldly man like Trump is evidence of their error and their spiritual blindness. They persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, as the unknown author of the book of Hebrews says. In biblical terms, the MAGA cult has "spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace."
Wake up, or lose it all.
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