Bob Jones Sr.: "Billy, if you leave ...all you can amount to would be a poor country Baptist preacher somewhere out in the sticks"

Dan, I’ll not debate Dr Bob’s statement with you, but, on the whole, would you say that Billy Graham was a net plus or a net minus to the cause of Christ? Would the Christian church be better off if Billy had stuck to farming in North Carolina?

Don…I will leave that up to the Judgment Day to be revealed and would suggest that you do the same.

Dan

Dr. Bob Jr. for his statements?

Apparently Billy Graham is exempt from judgement, but not Dr. Bob Jr?

So if I must refrain from judging, assessing, discerning, evaluating Billy Graham, I would suggest that you do the same for Dr. Bob Jr.

[Alex Guggenheim] Billy Graham gave us the context, you are ignoring it. Your appeal to not believing Bob Jones Sr. was not infallible (i.e. God) is no valid appeal at all. Your prejudice is not disguised by this.

A rather ignorant statement.

1. Graham gave us the part of the context that he remembered and from the perception that he remembered it by.
2. I have no pro-Bob Jones prejudice. The man was dead long before I knew anything about him. I had the opportunity to hear his son preach and teach a few times. I don’t see any reason to make my assessment of his son’s qualities public. I had the opportunity to learn that there was much good but also some bad in how they decided to run their school. But I never knew anything about the man, really.

If as suggested the statement was in a letter, that still doesn’t tell us the personal context of what led to the letter. It would tell us more about Bob Jones, though, because in a letter you have the time to pick and choose your words and reflect on what they convey, no matter what the context. If you don’t consider your words carefully, you at least reveal pride or carelessness.

Not that it matters, Alex. You are free to judge as you see fit, in regard to both Bob Jones Sr and me. It doesn’t gain you or me anything that you do, but it doesn’t really damage me in any way, nor does it seem likely to have much impact on Dr. Jones any more. :)

Don….you will not bait me into a mindless exchange when everyone who reads this board knows that you will reflexively defend all things Bob Jones. I think the statements speak for themselves. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions.

[Dan Burrell] Don….you will not bait me into a mindless exchange when everyone who reads this board knows that you will reflexively defend all things Bob Jones. I think the statements speak for themselves. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions.

Dan, I am not trying to draw you into an argument. Just trying to get you to see that you are being inconsistent.

I’m not being inconsistent at all. You have no idea what I feel about Billy Graham. I was thinking about something last night however as I live in the Charlotte Metro region — home of BGEA and within 2 hours of BJU.

In the four churches where I’ve served as a pastor in the last 28 years, I’m guessing conservatively that I’ve had at least 30 people who were active in those churches who specifically trace their salvation to an intersection with a Billy Graham crusade or TV broadcast. The number I’ve had tell me that they trusted Christ as a result of a Bob Jones evangelistic outreach. Zero.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, if you ask 10 people on the street what they think of Billy Graham, I’m estimating that 7 out of 10 would say something positive. The other 3 would spout pure unmitigated venom because they hate the Gospel and thus hate Graham. None of them would say a word about his “associations”. None. He is judged purely on the Gospel and his evangelistic ministry and his public reputation as it relates to his role as an evangelist.

If I were to ask the same 10 people what they think of Bob Joneses, probably two of them would say “who?”. The remaining eight (because BJU is relatively well known in these parts) would give a one-word answer — “Racists”. Sad, but an accurate reality in this neck of the woods.

Fair or not to Bob Jones, ignorant or not of the dangers of ecumenicism, I find this interesting and I do not believe that I am exaggerating or misstating what I would find to make a point.

I’m more in line with Franklin Graham than Billy Graham and my public identity — a part from those who view me askance from the far right of fundamentalism — would probably be more frequently associated with Bob Jones’ brand of fundamentalism than Billy Graham’s brand of Evangelicalism (though I would not consider either an enemy, nor want to be identified as in either of their orbits). However, if we leave the fundy plantation from time to time and consider the broader impact of these two ministries — could we not agree that God has used BG more than Dr. Bob, Sr. anticipated and that truly, Dr. Bob, Jr. was way off on some sort of rhetorical tangent when he declared him to be “doing more harm to the cause of Christ than any living man”?

Billy Graham should be held accountable for his words and his associations as should the Bob Jones’s (and the Dan Burrell’s and everyone else). Peter certainly was. Yet, God sovereignly chooses to use us for His glory and the good of others. Any time we get into the game of comparison and competition with the family of God, we cross a line. Disagreeing on non-doctrinal issues does not need to make us adversaries. It may simply make us in disagreement. Would any here suggest that Graham is actually some sort of agent of Satan? Should we not rejoice that God chooses to use us in spite of ourselves? Paul seemed to have a keen appreciation for that.

Any way….I guess I did get drawn in. My bad. Probably all I did was harden opinions and stir up unnecessary feathers.

FWIW, there’s another way to read BJ’s advice to BG…. the “you’ll never amount to much if you leave” advice. Consider this: BJ saw that BG had a great deal of leadership potential and realized that backwoods obscurity would not be the best use of his abilities.
(Of course the leaving part just has to do with what he saw as the value of the school he founded. Anybody who doesn’t feel that way about the school he founded should, well, unfound it.)

I say this as a guy who ministers in (very) small town Wisconsin. There’s no shame in “the sticks” if this is where you belong, but there is shame in it if it isn’t so… it’s not a simple matter of whether to pursue “fame and fortune,” but employing your skills where they are going to be best used. But even that isn’t the whole story because “best used” can be very hard to determine in the long run. Sometimes the real impact of a man’s ministry comes a generation later or is not seen at all in the earthly eyeballs way.

As somebody put it, there are no small places, only small people.

[Don Johnson] Dan, I’ll not debate Dr Bob’s statement with you, but, on the whole, would you say that Billy Graham was a net plus or a net minus to the cause of Christ? Would the Christian church be better off if Billy had stuck to farming in North Carolina?

I can’t speak for the church in general, but for me personally, I’m thankful that through Billy Graham, Christ was preached. My dad was saved when Billy Graham preached in Viet Nam during the war. When he came home, we tried about every kind of church there was until we got a visit from a local independent fundamental Methodist preacher. Had we not started at that church, maybe I would have never accepted Christ as my savior. God used all of those events in my family’s life, Billy Graham included.

I certainly won’t defend all of Billy Graham’s false doctrine, associations, with unbelievers, etc., but I stand with Paul when I say “notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.”

No, certainly I rejoice in the gospel he preached and the souls that were saved.

But that isn’t the question I asked. I asked if Billy’s ministry was a net plus or a net minus for the cause of Christ, since Dan brought up Dr. Bob Jr’s criticism of Billy in those terms.

The response was interesting.

Jim,

I am not so interested in finding out who is on who’s side. I am attempting to point out that people are quite willing to be judgemental when it comes to the Joneses, but its “hands off” for Billy. That’s inconsistent and highly selective.

And please note, the thread started with the mention of Dr Bob Sr’s comments to BG as BG remembered them… then Dan brought up Dr Bob Jr. Why?

I don’t think your last question is one we can safely answer, I agree. And Dr Bob Jr’s statement uses superlative language, so as such is debatable.

But I think that a lot of the weakness and failure of evangelicalism can be laid at the feet of Graham and his cohorts for bringing in the compromises with liberalism and worldliness as they did. Whether he is the person singly most responsible, it is undeniable that the evangelical approach from the 1950s on has his fingerprints all over it.

I’m reminded of a passage in one of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories:

“We can direct our moral wills; but we can’t generally change our instinctive tastes and ways of doing things. Boulnois might commit a murder, but not this murder.”—“The Strange Crime of John Boulnois”—G.K. Chesterton

By this I mean that while I wouldn’t be surprised that Dr. Bob Sr. was capable of saying something unkind to Billy Graham, I am a little surprised that he would actually denigrate the backwoods as such. That just doesn’t fit with the ethos of BJU, which has always held faithful pastors in high esteem. Isn’t there a chapel saying about the honor of being like the back hall light?

By addressing this one point, I am addressing this one point and no other.

Michael,

Maybe he knew Billy didn’t belong in the backwoods. I’ve been to Brannon Stand Alabama where Sr. is from. It’s still backwoods. He served a lot in the backwoods, but then he knew it well.

Do you know if the warning from BJ came before or after Grahm sent him the letter thanking him for teaching him how to “shoot the gospel gun”? They were friends at the time of the communication. Now after decades of of disagreement over eccumenical evangelism people read the comment as harsh criticism.

Did BG ever say what was the reason for leaving BJU and going to a little school in Florida? The school doesn’t seem like it got much of a bump from having had such a high profile person as a student. Did he promote Trinity much? I saw a him describe his background once and he never named the school but just said it was in Tampa. Did he promote anything that he wasn’t the head of?

What gain is there to the over all cause of Christ in having a debate about the opinions that were expressed over 65 years ago? I think the whole thread reveals more about human hero worship or hatred than anything. Is it not a covert way of pridefully saying “my guy was right or your guy was wrong so my guy is better than your guy and all of his followers too”?

“Only by pride comes contention” Lord save us from ourselves!