Billy Graham's family feud

Smart_Cookie

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Smart_Cookie
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Not even Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher, is immune from family conflict. His wife wants them to be buried together, in a peaceful meaningful location.

His son Franklin want's Billy's final resting place to be the centerpiece of some awful tourist-attraction he's planning.

Almost makes me feel sorry for him.

Link to story here.
 
Smart_Cookie said:
Not even Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher, is immune from family conflict. His wife wants them to be buried together, in a peaceful meaningful location.

His son Franklin want's Billy's final resting place to be the centerpiece of some awful tourist-attraction he's planning.

Almost makes me feel sorry for him.

Link to story here.
Click to expand...
I think Franklin has the right idea. Look what it did for Lenin. And if he really wants to go the whole nine yards, there's King Tut for a model. Talk about being remembered!
 
Tricky said:
I think Franklin has the right idea. Look what it did for Lenin. And if he really wants to go the whole nine yards, there's King Tut for a model. Talk about being remembered!
Click to expand...

Yeah! Tut even got a Steve Martin song out of it.
 
Smart_Cookie said:
Not even Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher, is immune from family conflict. His wife wants them to be buried together, in a peaceful meaningful location.

His son Franklin want's Billy's final resting place to be the centerpiece of some awful tourist-attraction he's planning.

Almost makes me feel sorry for him.

Link to story here.
Click to expand...


Actually, this is rather sad. Canadian author and media personality Charles Templetom was once a good friend of Billy Graham and often preached with him before seeing the light. Even as a atheist and agnostic (he seemed to waver a bit), Templeton always said that, unlike so many others in the "business", Billy Graham was genuine in his belief. For Billy Graham, to have his tomb be some sort of shrine, would appear to be contrart to what he lived for. :gear_sad2:
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Actually, this is rather sad. Canadian author and media personality Charles Templetom was once a good friend of Billy Graham and often preached with him before seeing the light. Even as a atheist and agnostic (he seemed to waver a bit), Templeton always said that, unlike so many others in the "business", Billy Graham was genuine in his belief. For Billy Graham, to have his tomb be some sort of shrine, would appear to be contrart to what he lived for. :gear_sad2:
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I agree. Graham is a sincere person. I may disagree with him about a lot of things, but I do find him honorable and good hearted. Pat Robertson truly believes too, but the difference is that Pat is bats**t insane.
 
Billy Graham used to be my neighbor. Really. His offices were just a couple of blocks from my home in Minneapolis. But Billy's business moved away and so did I.

It pains me to say it, but I don't like Billy Graham as a person. I think he deserves some congratulations for being the ONLY televangelist to be in publicly favor in favor of proving responsible cash flow to those from whom he solicits money, but in the end, he's a charlatan who ought to be ashamed of himself.

Billy Graham lost his coherence at least 30 years ago. I distinctly remember watching him on television and marveling at how disjointed and incomprehensible his sermon was. He jumped from topic to topic without a hint of transition, and quoted scripture that had nothing to do with anything he'd previously mentioned or was about to mention. Maybe he was having a bad night, but periodically I'd tune in to one of his "Crusades" and see if he was speaking more rationally. He wasn't.

I've read one of his books, "Abide With Me," as well as excerpts from some of his other books. I've found nothing but nonsense. The kindest thing to say about his writing is that it is pablum for the simple-minded. A more realistic thing to say is that his writings include shameless pleas to disregard logic and good sense.

Like the writings of a charlatan.

Oh, and I was on his mailing list for several years. Got his newsletter and couldn't cancel it. It was an absolute waste of time to read the document. Most of the supposedly scripture-based advice was bizarre and cult-like, if not totally useless. Like Graham's books, the newsletter was full of sentences in English that made perfect grammatical sense but made no practical or logical sense.

And then I saw some of his movies. Yes, Billy and his business made movies. Although they lacked a supernatural element, they were about as realistic as a Jack Chick tract. Throw some illogic at a bad person and trick him into hearing some scripture, and ZAP! he'll convert and be a good person from then on.

And I still remember Billy's remarks after September 11, 2001. He sought to comfort the country by saying that many of those who had been murdered were in heaven right now. When I heard that, I screamed, "WELL, THEN, WE OUGHT TO SEND THE TERRORISTS A F***ING 'THANK YOU' CARD!"

And don't get me started on that turd son of his, Franklin.

Sorry. Billy is not the raving lunatic that many televangelists are, but he's far from being honorable in my book.
 
Brown said:
Sorry. Billy is not the raving lunatic that many televangelists are, but he's far from being honorable in my book.
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I can understand that quite well. Kind of telling, isn't it, that the best evangelists are damned with faint praise like, "He's not as much of a flaming asswipe as most of them."
 
Brown said:
Billy Graham lost his coherence at least 30 years ago. I distinctly remember watching him on television and marveling at how disjointed and incomprehensible his sermon was. He jumped from topic to topic without a hint of transition, and quoted scripture that had nothing to do with anything he'd previously mentioned or was about to mention. Maybe he was having a bad night, but periodically I'd tune in to one of his "Crusades" and see if he was speaking more rationally. He wasn't.
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Thanks for the input, Brown.

Do you think perhaps Billy's lack of coherence has grown over the years - partly because of his age? I mean, did he USED to make more sense many years ago?

I just looked him up in Wikipedia. The man is 88 years old.

Just wondering.
 
As long as the burials happen REAL SOON for the whole clan, I don't give a rat's patootie where he gets dug under.

Aside: Maybe he could accede to Franklin's wishes with a proviso that Franklin has to be buried in the same tomb at the same time...dead OR alive! ;)
 
A slight claim to blame - the "The Greater London Crusade" back in the 50s is often credited with making Billy Graham the first evangelical "superstar" (and some even credit it with kick starting the huge USA evangelical money-making machine) and my great Aunt was one of the UK organisers behind that.

I heard many stories about Billy Graham growing up and some were about how his preaching had changed - indeed they somewhat reflected Brown's comments. It was felt that he had become more interested in the process of preaching and the numbers of people being preached at was more important than the message he was preaching.
 
Brown said:
Me, too. They say it's tacky, but it could also be quite mooving.
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Not to belabor the Golden Calf analogy, but is this cow supposed to be part of the Franklin proposed shrine, intended to milk the flock?

DR
 
The Charlotte museum, near the headquarters of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is designed to look like a dairy barn that might have existed on the farm where Graham grew up outside Charlotte.
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I saw this, and wondered why they would want a museum that looked like a dairy barn that never existed. Is it going to feature a talking cow? Now that would explain things...
 
The building, designed in part by consultants who used to work for the Walt Disney Co., is not a library, she says, but a large barn and silo -- a reminder of Billy Graham's early childhood on a dairy farm near Charlotte. Once it's completed in the spring, visitors will pass through a 40-foot-high glass entry cut in the shape of a cross and be greeted by a mechanical talking cow. They will follow a path of straw through rooms full of multimedia exhibits. At the end of the tour, they will be pointed toward a stone walk, also in the shape of a cross, that leads to a garden where the bodies of Billy and Ruth Graham could lie.

Throughout the tour, there will be several opportunities for people to put their names on a mailing list.
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LOL, I need to read these religion links more carefully. :rolleyes:
 
The building, designed in part by consultants who used to work for the Walt Disney Co., is not a library, she says, but a large barn and silo -- a reminder of Billy Graham's early childhood on a dairy farm near Charlotte. Once it's completed in the spring, visitors will pass through a 40-foot-high glass entry cut in the shape of a cross and be greeted by a mechanical talking cow. They will follow a path of straw through rooms full of multimedia exhibits. At the end of the tour, they will be pointed toward a stone walk, also in the shape of a cross, that leads to a garden where the bodies of Billy and Ruth Graham could lie.

Throughout the tour, there will be several opportunities for people to put their names on a mailing list.
Click to expand...

Do they even realize the irony of this or do they know the vistors will likely be too stupid to see it for what it is?
 
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