Pilgrim,
With all due respect, sir, it is not Billy Graham that's deluded, but rather you yourself, and many of the members here. I'm glad you wrote this post and spelled out just how confused you really are.
You have, in an effort to defend
sola fide, created a works based salvation, in that you require Christians to meet your exacting standards in order to attain salvation. They must have a "correct" belief in the 5 sola's as well as a college level understanding of "justification by faith alone," as only a couple of examples of a highly sophisticated body of theology. Lord help the simple, because they're just too stupid to go to heaven. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/comfort.gif" alt="" />
In that you don't see the obvious circular paradox here, you don't need to worry about the "damage" you perceive Rev. Graham to be doing. In fact, you've ushered in a semi-neicheism in that you've created a "clique" in which the smart are "in" and the simple are "out."
I'm glad God isn't like that, because in Ecclesiastes we read:
The race is not to the swift;
Nor the battle to the strong;
Nor the bread to the wise;
(chapter 9)
Thank you for clarifying your extremely distasteful and errant position. For what God has made simple, that the simple may come to Him, you have made complicated; and therefore placed your own gate on the path to salvation, with a heady entrance exam.
Billy Graham has made Jesus accessable to common people, and you have barred the door! How do you distinguish yourself from the pharisees who did the exact same thing?
Just a few not-so-well-known facts: The smart have little compassion for the simple, the strong have little compassion for the weak, the thin have little compassion for the overweight, etc. It is human nature to be so short sighted that we wonder why the others just don't get it.
We are educated, but we are called not to lord it over those who are lacking, but to have compassion on others, not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, but to be humble before God and men, knowing that even the foolishness of God surpasses our crowning intellectual empires.
I really hope you think hard about this pridefulness you seem to espouse.
catholicsoldier <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/takethat.gif" alt="" />
