What if Billy Graham Had Made Another Choice?
New Book Sheds New Light on “America’s Pastor,” His Life, His Influence and His Most Important Decision of All.
Billy Graham seems to have attained a Mount Rushmore-like status, standing loftly above the fray of the major controversies of public life: a figure who symbolizes an acceptable, unthreatening religiosity.
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(Nashville, Tenn.) On the ever-growing shelf of Billy Graham literature, one book now stands out as the definitive source of the astounding influence of Graham’s life and ministry on the world.
In Billy Graham: His Life and Influence (Thomas Nelson, ISBN # 978-0-8499-1702-8, October 2007), acclaimed author, current Christianity Today columnist, and former TIME magazine senior correspondent David Aikman expertly writes of Graham’s:
• early childhood and first steps toward Christianity�
• love at first sight with Ruth
• almost sudden burst under the national spotlight
• family and the painful effects of his days away from home
• enthusiastic mission to take on Communism
• unprecedented influence with world leaders
Aikman skillfully takes readers to a decisive evening deep in the wooded hillside of San Bernardino, California where Billy, challenged earlier in the day by his friend and one-time fellow evangelist on the authenticity of the Gospel, chose to turn to God in the face of uncertainty.
“I got to a stump and I put the Bible on the stump, said Graham. “I knelt down, and I said ‘Oh God, I cannot prove certain things, I cannot answer some of the questions [people] are raising, but I accept this Book by faith as the Word of God.”
What would the world look like today had Billy Graham decided to abandon Christianity as his friend did?
Readers of Billy Graham: His Life and Influence will experience the man who has known more American presidents, foreign leaders, and famous people than any other American living or dead. They will learn of his deep-rooted humility and true sense of his flaws and they’ll learn how that may have been Billy Graham’s most powerful secret weapon.
About The Author
David Aikman is former senior correspondent for Time magazine. He has written numerous cover stories, including three “Man of the Year” profiles. A regular columnist for Christianity Today, he is the author of several nonfiction books, including Great Souls, Man of Faith, and Jesus in Beijing, as well as the novel, Qi.
Excerpts
“[His] humility surely has helped keep him out of serious trouble and scandal throughout his career, even as other American evangelists in the 1980s fell in disgrace over various financial and moral scandals. Billy Grahams humility, in effect, was a powerful secret weapon, a protective cloak that kept him safe from the
pitfalls that have tripped others up when they have become heady with success and fame.”
“Graham’s legacy as a pastor to the presidents is incalculable. Many, perhaps most, of the confidences he was privy to will never be known by any others. Enough is know, though, to suggest that, even of his role as an international evangelist is disregarded, Billy Graham’s unique access to several presidents actually had specific police consequences in national life and in international affairs, even if only indirectly.”
“Billy Graham, world famous evangelist, sometimes called the Protestant Pope, a seven-decades-long servant of the call to preach the gospel, has been singularly and to the end a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.”
“To sum up Billy Graham’s entire life and ministry, what can be conclusively said? Few would dispute that he was the greatest Protestant evangelist that America and the world have ever seen.”
DAVID AIKMAN IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS
Contact: Curt Harding
Senior Publicist
(615) 902-2246 office
(615) 902-2340 FAX
charding@thomasnelson.com
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