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John MacArthur on the Charismatic Movement

Billy Graham- 1918-2018 119

"When God gets ready to shake America, he may not take the Ph.D. and the D.D. God
may choose a country boy … and I pray that he would!"

The litany of accomplishments is familiar. Billy Graham has preached the gospel of
Christ in person to more than 80 million people and to countless millions more over the
airwaves and in films. Nearly 3 million have responded to the invitation he offers at the
end of his sermons. When America needs a chaplain or pastor to help inaugurate or
bury a president or to bring comfort in times of terrible tragedy, it turns, more often
than not, to him.

For virtually every year since the 1950s, he has been a fixture on lists of the ten most admired people in America
or the world. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a Ladies Home Journal survey once ranked the famed evangelist
second only to God in the category "achievements in religion."

Into the spotlight
Born near Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1918, Billy Graham first attended Bob Jones College, but he found both
the climate and Dr. Bob's strict rules difficult. He then followed a friend to Florida Bible Institute, where he
began preaching and changed his denominational affiliation from Associate Reformed Presbyterian to Southern
Baptist. To round out his intensive but academically narrow education, he moved north to Wheaton College,
where he met and married Ruth Bell, the daughter of a medical missionary, and undertook his first and only stint
as a local pastor.

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