Will Graham Shares Message His Late Grandfather Would Have Told Values Voters at FRC Summit
WASHINGTON — Billy Graham's grandson Will Graham spoke to one of the nation's leading evangelical conservative political conferences on Friday and rather than offering a political message like many of the gathering's other speakers, he offered up what he thinks his late grandfather would have shared.
"I am here today, not as a Republican. I am not here as a Democrat. To be honest, I am not even here as a citizen of this wonderful country," Graham told the hundreds gathered for the Family Research Council's annual Values Voters Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. "I stand before you as ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ."
The 43-year-old Graham, vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and son of the politically outspoken Franklin Graham, warned in his sermon-like 15-minute speech that there are many problems facing society today and none bigger than the "spiritual problem" that no politician on either side of the political aisle can fix.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"I am going to talk to you about what my grandaddy would want to talk about if he was here today," Graham said. "Today, we are talking about a lot of different things in our society, a lot of problems we are going to face no matter who is the politician or who's in government. Our country has a lot of problems to be dealt with."
"The problem is that a lot of the stuff that we are talking about, even at this conference here, are really just symptoms of a greater problem," the evangelist who has preached on six continents added. "And no one wants to address it. Everybody wants to put band-aids on the symptoms. But the problem is even greater."
Graham stressed that the "human race's greatest problem is that of the human heart."
"The problem is there is no legislation or no government that can fix this. It is a spiritual problem. The human race's greatest problem is that of the heart — its heart disease," Graham stressed.
While over 610,000 people die from heart disease in the United States each year, Graham assured that he was not speaking of heart disease in the medical sense but rather in the "spiritual sense."
"What is the heart? What does the Bible say is the heart?" Graham asked. "The heart represents the entirety of a person, it deals with the intellect. In other words, when you see the word 'heart' in the Bible, it talks about your thoughts."
Graham quoted Genesis 6:5: "Then the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the Earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
"The heart thinks. It represents your thinking in this world. The heart also represents not only our intellect and our ability to think but it also deals with our emotions," he remarked. "As a matter of fact, in high school, I had a few girlfriends but none of them liked me though. At Valentines [Day], I would give them all a valentine. What do you do? 'I heart you.' The heart represents emotion. It is what we feel with. It's our heart."
In addition to emotion and intellect, Graham added, the heart represents a person's volition or "will power and ability to do something."
"I love watching basketball games. Sometimes someone will upset [University of] North Carolina and the other team will be all happy. Often times, they will [ask] 'Coach, how did you do it? How did you beat North Carolina? How did you beat the big gorilla? How do you beat them?" the North Carolina native explained. "They'll say, 'I guess we had more heart tonight.' 'We played with more heart tonight.'"
Graham said that the coaches were not talking about having a physically bigger heart than the other team but the fact that their teams played with more will power and "determination to see the game through."
"My friends, this is what [the Bible] is talking about," Graham contended. "The heart represents our mind, it represents our emotions and represents our will power to see things through, it talks about our motives. The heart is not just a part of you but an entirety of you."
Graham said that although his grandfather died in February, he assured that his grandfather's heart and his ministry still live on.
"It's a party that continues even when your life ends. When your physical heart quits, your spiritual heart continues," Graham said. "Every aspect of our heart, our thoughts, our emotions, our will power, our motives, all are affected by sin — the disease called sin."
Graham criticized society in the fact that many people don't like talking about sin and society has seemingly become callous to it.
"You look at your hands and some of you have calluses on your hands from the work that you have done in life or on your feet. This irritation rubs back and forth but we get used to it," Graham said. "That is what sin does. We get used to the sin in our life and when we see things on TV that we would blush at 20 years ago but now we just sit there and watch it."
"We rebel against everything — against authority, against God, against our parents, against anything that is set in stone, we want to be away from it," Graham continued. "Matthew 15:19 says the symptoms of heart disease is evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Sounds relevant today?"
Graham pointed out that Mark 7 states that greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, arrogance and foolishness are also symptoms of a "bad heart."
"That describes our society today," Graham said. "We have a huge spiritual problem. But my friends, the good news is this. There is a cure and we need a new heart."
According to Graham, the cure can't be found with money, education, government or policies.
Graham stressed that the cure for the spiritual heart disease comes from the "divine Creator."
"God can change your heart," the preacher said. "When he gives us a new heart, we see fruit of the spirit. In Galatians 5, it says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We have peace with God, it says in Romans 5:1. John 10:10 says, 'I have come so they may have life and they may have it more abundantly.' Jesus Christ didn't come to ruin our life, He came to give us life.
Graham warned that there are too many people "chasing false gods" like money, fame and education thinking those things will solve all their problems and provide them a life of happiness. However, Graham said those people will only find the "antithesis of what they are actually looking for."
"My friends, I am here to tell you that Christ can come into your life and change your life. But you must be willing to surrender your life," he concluded. "This is not a message for other people. This is a message for you, each and every one of you."
Graham stars in the recently released film "Unbroken: Path to Redemption," the true story of Olympic gold medalist Louis Zamperini's path to Christ after returning home as a prisoner of war in World War II.
Graham plays the role of his grandfather, who is said to have had an encounter with Zamperini that changed Zamperini's life.
Graham is also author of the upcoming 50-day devotional titled Redeemed: Devotions for the Longing Soul.
Each entry in the devotional will feature a passage from scripture, a personal story and a quote from Billy Graham.
"I noticed that my grandaddy used radio, used preaching, used newspaper articles and he did all these things to reach the greater audience," Graham told The Christian Post Friday morning. "[Writing this book] was one of those things I wanted to do and I was waiting for the right time. God had left it on my heart. I knew one day I would be writing books but I didn't know when. All of a sudden, God said it is now time."
"I finished it and had everything over to the editor earlier this year and then my grandfather passed away," Graham added. "So I had to go back and re-write some of it because I had to use my grandaddy in past tense."
