Franklin Graham sets us straight | Religion News Service

(RNS) Nobody gives a rip about Donald J. Trump’s taxes, he assures us. And how does he know that?

Source: Franklin Graham sets us straight | Religion News Service

 

As you can see, foolish Franklin Graham does it again.

“But Mark,” you’re asking, “how does Franklin know that nobody gives a rip about about Donald J. Trump’s taxes?”

Believe me, he knows. Because even though the media talked about it, he knows that nobody gives a rip that the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pulls down seven figures a year.

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Good News – Franklin Graham’s Moscow Summit Cancelled

Franklin Graham & Hylarion Alfeyev

M o s c o w — It was unofficially announced in Moscow on 19 May that the “World Summit in Defence of Persecuted Christians”, planned by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in conjunction with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government, has been cancelled or at least postponed. The summit intended to gather 1.000 Christian leaders from as many as 150 countries in Moscow from 28 to 30 October 2016.

Vitaly Vlasenko, Director of External Relations for the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, attributes the decision to the preponderance of other issues burdening the ROA. According to him, Patriarch Kirill’s decision to meet with Pope Francis in Havana on 12 Feb. has caused major discord within the ROC. Consequently, Russian Orthodoxy needs all the resources it can muster to prepare for the global “Holy and Great Synod” scheduled for the Greek-held portion of Crete from 16 to 27 June. This gathering of the heads of all autocephalous (independent) Orthodox churches has been in preparation since 1961 and is touted to be the most significant gathering of Byzantine churches since the Second Council of Nicaea in 787!

Stephen Holmes – Mr Graham, you ain’t no Baptist, bruv – An open letter to Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham

ear Mr Graham,

This week someone who has put himself forward as a candidate for the presidency of your great nation made a number of hate-filled and inaccurate comments about Muslims, and proposed some extreme policies on the back of those comments. This came to our attention here in the UK because one of the things he claimed, entirely erroneously, was that parts of London were so radicalised that they had become no-go areas for our police and security services.

Our national response was, as our national responses so often are, as mocking as it was derisive. The mayor of London led the way, but on social media many of us joined in with the humour. I know London well; I trained for ministry there, took my PhD there, pastored my first church there, made, with my wife, our first home there, and saw two of our three daughters come into the world there. My home has been elsewhere for eleven years now, but it is a city I still visit several times a year, a city that still has a significant place in my heart. For all these reasons, I know that the truth about London was expressed far better by a young Muslim Londoner caught on camera as our police arrested someone who had attempted violence, pretending to represent Islam. In a pure London accent he called out to the attacker, ‘You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!’

London is an exhilarating and sometimes disorientating coming together of people of different national backgrounds and of different faiths; London is also a city that is passionate that people come together, without denying who they are. London Muslims are truly Muslim, and devoted the the peace of the city also; London Baptists the same, as I know well. In London, the person who believes the two are impossible to hold together will be told, straightforwardly, ‘You ain’t no Muslim, bruv.’

William Yoder – A Commentary on Evangelist Franklin Graham in Moscow

Franklin Graham

Note of the blogger: The text below proves, again, what an embarassment the foolishnes of Franklin Graham is to his illustrious father. Read for yourself (I have undelined certain passages, for out help). I need to say no more. (D.M.)

* * *

God: Big Enough to Stomach Us Both

M o s c o w — Rev. Franklin Graham’s visit to Moscow from 28 October to 1 November was surely the most “politically incorrect” visit of a Western church leader to Eastern Europe in decades. A foreboding of things to come had arisen when Graham assured at the outset that he was praying for Vladimir Putin. Franklin Graham, chairman of the “Billy Graham Evangelistic Association” had previously only visited Russia in 1984 along with his famous father. Franklin did hold evangelistic campaigns in Ukraine in July 2007 and June 2014.

Ukrainian Baptists had ridiculed the “Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists” for a statement on 30 May 2014 which lauded the divorced Russian leader for “protecting and strengthening spiritual and moral values”. Graham repeated the transgression in his meeting with RUECB leadership on 28 October by assuring that Putin “defends Biblical values from the attacks of secularism”. On the basis of his statements in Moscow, Graham sees Putin as a major defender of the historic Christian faith. Barack Obama on the other hand is “without a Christian worldview” and “promotes atheism”.

Mainstream media – the “Washington Post” for ex. – have repeated branded Putin a “fascist”. Yet Graham insisted in Moscow that millions of simple Americans would like to see Vladimir Putin candidate for the office of US President. God has given Putin the wisdom necessary to “lead a massive country, which God has blessed”. Graham met personally with the Russian president for 45 minutes during the Moscow sojourn.

Russian Baptists Fail to Assume Responsibility for Their Shameful Support of Putin Invasion in Ukraine

Orthodox Metr. Hilarion addressing the forum

Relationships between Russia and the US are deteriorating rapidly because of the aggressive neo-Soviet imperialism promoted by Putin, primarily in Ukraine, but, in fact everywhere in the world where he has interests. This unavoidably affects Russia’s image in the world. Not that Putin cares very much about that – it was not care for the world that made him a KGB spy and then president of Russia. However, such image deterioration has economic consequences, and that really hurts (not so much the Russian people, who really do not count, but the interests of the oligarch’s who support the Russian dictator). Thus, the new Russian ‘tsar’ started sending around his ‘slaves’ to try saving what they can.

This is the context for the so-called ‘Russia-USA Forum of Christian Leaders’, in which a delegation of Russian Orthodox, led by Metr. Hilarion Alfeyev, in charge of foreign affairs for the Moscow Patriarchate, and of Russian Evangelical leaders, mostly Baptists and Pentecostal/charismatics (nota bene, there were no Catholic leaders involved), have met with a number of Protestant/Evangelical American leaders, in an attempt to clean up the tarnished face of ‘mother Russia’. The convenor of this religiously dubious and politically misguied meeting was the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, more precisely, its constantly embarassing president, Franklin Graham.

Richard Pierard – Four Changes Evangelicals Must Make (in the United States)

Baptist historian Rchard Pierard suggest in a recent article in Religious Dispatches, four changes that American evangelicals need to make in order to restore their credibility after their desperate attampt to remove Obama from office and replace him with Romney.

Here they are:

1) The Southern Baptists need to get rid of the discredited Dr. Richard Land immediately, not wait for his announced retirement as President of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which won’t be effective until October 2013. Dr. Frank Page, the President and CEO of the Executive Committee, needs to act summarily and forcefully. He certainly must understand that Land’s (and by implication the Southern Baptist Convention’s) endorsement of Mitt Romney undermined the Southern Baptist witness. He and his office are an embarrassment to the convention, attract unnecessary criticism, and contribute to the public image problem that hinders the ministry of the SBC.

The convention could channel the money expended on its tarnished reputation to the International Mission Board where it could do some real good in reaching men and women for Christ. Proclaiming a political gospel will never achieve this noble goal. Also, there’s no need to jump aboard the “religious freedom” bandwagon when Southern Baptists could contribute funds to aid in the task of fostering religious freedom around the world through the respected and well-managed Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty.

Faith leaders condemn Franklin Graham for questioning Obama’s faith

Associated Baptist Press.

What an embarrassment is it for this great man of God, Rev. Billy Graham, to have such a foolish son as Franklin Graham.

May God protect all of us of such shame.

Q & A: Franklin Graham on Obama’s Birth, Trump, & Faith | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Q & A: Franklin Graham on Obama’s Birth, Trump, & Faith | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

Franklin Graham, a loose canon and irresponsible cheap talker that brings shame to his great father. What a pity!

I am glad I am not working for Samaritan Purse.