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America will fall without a moral revival: Franklin Graham launches 50-state tour ahead of election
LifeSiteNews ^ | 1/7/16 | Lisa Bourne

Posted on 01/07/2016 12:17:22 PM PST by wagglebee

DES MOINES, Iowa, January 6, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The Reverend Franklin Graham believes the United States of America is in danger, and will only be saved by turning back to God. And this can only be accomplished by Christians praying and bringing their faith to the public square.

America’s problems are across the board, Rev. Graham said; spiritual, economic, and even racial, an area in which he believes the country is actually going backward. And he insists the answer is not found in politics.

“We have economic problems; we have political problems,” Rev. Graham stated yesterday in Des Moines, IA. “And no political party is going to be able to turn this around, okay?”

In Des Moines, Graham kicked off his Decision America Tour 2016, with which he intends to challenge Christians in each of the 50 U.S. states to live their faith in all aspects of life – at home, in public, and when they vote.

“I have no hope in the Democratic Party,” Rev. Graham exclaimed. “Listen to me, I have zero hope in the Republican Party. I have no hope in (the) Tea Party or any other party. My only hope is in almighty God and His Son Jesus Christ.”

“The moral and political walls of our nation are crumbling. Walls are meant for protection to keep bad people out, gates can be opened, and when the threat comes the gates can be closed. But our moral walls and gates are down.”

“We’re here because we understand our country’s in trouble,” he said. “It’s in big-time trouble.”

Rev. Graham recently renounced the Republican Party for failing to stop the recent spending bill that fully funded Planned Parenthood, despite the abortion giant’s role in trafficking the remains of human beings aborted at its facilities.

The son of renowned preacher Billy Graham and president of the evangelistic ministry that is his father’s namesake, as well as the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, Graham has been vocal about upholding biblical values in the past as well.  

In June of last year, he of businesses that promote the homosexual agenda, and backed it up by moving accounts for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse from Wells Fargo bank because of the company’s promotion of homosexual “marriage” in its advertising.

Back in 2012 Rev. Graham vowed he would break the law before he would have his organizations comply with the HHS Obamacare contraception/abortifacient Mandate, saying, “I guess at that point, I would just have to break the law and take it all the way to the Supreme Court and fight it if I have to.”

Men and women of faith, living their faith, in all aspects of life, is the only way things will get turned around in the Unites States, he told the Des Moines crowd at the first stop of his national revival tour.

“Our job as Christians it to make the impact of Christ felt at every phase of life,” Rev. Graham stated, “religious, social, economic, and political.”

“The most important thing we can do as Christians is pray,” he told the 1000-plus crowd gathered in 30-degree temperatures at the Iowa Capitol. “God hears prayer and God answers prayer.”

Rev. Graham likened the walls of Jerusalem being broken and the city’s destruction in Nehemiah Chapter 1, verse 2 with the U.S. today, faulting in part, political correctness.

“The moral and political walls of our nation are crumbling,” he stated. “Walls are meant for protection to keep bad people out, gates can be opened, and when the threat comes the gates can be closed. But our moral walls and gates are down.”

“Any type of wicked thought and activity can come and go,” he continued. “And our educators and our politicians and our churches seem many times to be more concerned about political correctness than God’s truth and His righteousness.”

“It’s not that the enemy is at the gate, they’ve come through the gate,” said Franklin Graham. “We’ve left the gates wide open and allowed our moral walls to fall down.”

He also prayed with the Iowa crowd to confess the nation’s sins. “Where do we begin to confess the sins of our nation?” Rev. Graham pondered, listing several social moral ills. “Our sins are so great.”

“I think about the entertainment industry and the sex and the violence that we export all over the world,” he said. “Abortion; the murder of children in a mother’s womb. We have sinned greatly. Same-sex marriage is celebrated in our nation today. We have sinned greatly against almighty God.”

He called sin a disease of the human soul, and prayed with the crowd again for forgiveness from individual sins.

After winning the Cold War against Communism, the U.S. felt relief, he recalled, but then then he condemned the secularism that followed as Godless and the root of many of the nation’s problems today.

“While we were taking that sigh of relief, secularism crept in to our federal government, it crept into our state government. It crept into our local governments,” Graham said. “And secularism and Communism, there’s no difference. They’re both Godless, okay? Godless.”

“And what’s happened is Godlessness has come into this nation of ours whose foundations were built on biblical principles,” he stated. “Our laws, all that we have has come from God. And the secularists are wanting to take it away. They’re wanting to take God out of government, take Him out of our schools, take him out of our society. And the progressives want to push us off to the side.”

Rev. Graham then told the Iowa crowd, “Well I’m here to say I’m not going without a fight,” yielding enthusiastic cheers.

An estimated 20-30 million evangelical Christians stayed home from the polls in the last election, he said, and Christians must be willing to vote in the next election, supporting candidates that stand for biblical truth and biblical principles, who are also willing to live them.

“America is being stripped of its biblical heritage and its God-inspired foundations,” he said.

Rev. Graham was clear that he would not tell anyone who to vote for, but he also shared how his father encouraged people of faith to get involved in the political process and run for office. Rev. Billy Graham did not believe that Christians should withdraw, rather in fact that it was a duty for Christians to study the issues and candidates and go to the polls, as well as offer themselves for elected office.

“I feel that we’re going to have to meet our political obligations as Christians and make our voices known if America is to be preserved with the type of Christian heritage that has given us the liberties we know enjoy,” Rev. Franklin Graham stated. “For unless America turns back to God, and repents of its sin, and experience a spiritual revival, we will fail as a nation. I believe God honors leaders in high places who honor him.”

The choice may not always be clear, he said, and sometimes it may be a case of voting for someone that most closely represents biblical values, but it is imperative for Christians to vote.

While national elections tend to get the most of the attention, Rev. Graham also stressed the importance of local elections, such as for mayor, city council, county commissioner, judges and school boards.

He encouraged Christians to vote in these elections, and vote for men and women of faith, also telling them to form prayer groups in their homes and communities, bringing in people of varying political persuasion and ethnic backgrounds.

As part of the Decision America Tour, the preacher is asking Christians to sign a Pledge to God and country, which includes in part striving for purity in and out of marriage and also supporting candidates that uphold biblical principles such as the sanctity of life and the sacredness of marriage.

The pledge also calls for Christians to pray for America and vote.

“Our country’s in trouble,” Rev. Graham concluded before the Iowa crowd, “but we’ve got a great God, we’ve got an awesome God.”

You have to invite the Lord in, he said, because He doesn’t force himself into your life.

“God gave us the freedom of choice,” said Rev. Graham. “We can accept him or reject him.”

“Let’s elect men and women to office who will lead this nation back to really being one nation under God, that can truthfully say once again, in God we trust.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: christianity; franklingraham; moralabsolutes
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"I feel that we're going to have to meet our political obligations as Christians and make our voices known if America is to be preserved with the type of Christian heritage that has given us the liberties we know enjoy," Rev. Franklin Graham stated. "For unless America turns back to God, and repents of its sin, and experience a spiritual revival, we will fail as a nation. I believe God honors leaders in high places who honor him."

He's absolutely right.

1 posted on 01/07/2016 12:17:22 PM PST by wagglebee
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2 posted on 01/07/2016 12:19:45 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
He's absolutely right.

Indeed he is. If we don't fix the fundamental fault, nothing will prevent the inevitable fall.

3 posted on 01/07/2016 12:23:01 PM PST by amorphous
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To: wagglebee
2 Chronicles 7:14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
4 posted on 01/07/2016 12:25:47 PM PST by amorphous
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To: wagglebee; Alex Murphy; bkaycee; BlueDragon; boatbums; caww; CynicalBear; daniel1212; ...

He’s saying the same thing Jonathan Cahn, author of The Harbinger, is and has been saying.

God always warns people of judgment before bringing it on a nation. He’s merciful and would rather pardon sin and have us turn back to Him in repentance and live.

But even He has a limit and will act when the time is right.

I am concerned because with all the other stuff going on in the world, if He is prompting men like these men to preach a warning of judgment, it is on its way.


5 posted on 01/07/2016 12:26:52 PM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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bump!


6 posted on 01/07/2016 12:27:13 PM PST by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: metmom
The most hedonistic inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah would probably cringe at what is considered "constitutionally protected" behavior in the United States.
7 posted on 01/07/2016 12:29:09 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
Unless we educate our children differently our nation will fall. We must abolish our K-12 socialist entitlement government schools.

Children in the socialist-entitlement and godless government owned K-12 schools will learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate within the godless classroom, read the godless texts, and do the godless homework.

Children in K-12 socialist-entitlement government schools risk learning that same voting mob that gives them tuition-free schooling is also powerful enough to give them **lots** of “free” stuff.

And....Nearly every teacher in this nation was trained by godless Marxists in Marxist-run colleges and universities.

Yet....Conservatives insist that their child's godless and socialist-entitlement school is different. No! It is not!

8 posted on 01/07/2016 12:32:13 PM PST by wintertime (Stop treating government teachers like they are reincarnated Mother Teresas!)
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To: wagglebee

“Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.”-Frederick Douglass


9 posted on 01/07/2016 12:37:07 PM PST by Politicalkiddo ("Even peace may be purchased at too high a price." -Benjamin Franklin)
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To: wagglebee

He is, which troubles me that so many believe a change of politicians alone is going to substatively bail us out.


10 posted on 01/07/2016 12:42:09 PM PST by 556x45
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To: wagglebee
America will fall without a moral revival: Franklin Graham launches 50-state tour ahead of election

How DARE he look at history and see that EVERY nation that has turned it's back on GOD has fallen.

11 posted on 01/07/2016 12:43:48 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: 556x45

Politics will NOT solve a spiritual problem.


12 posted on 01/07/2016 12:44:45 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: metmom

Well said.


13 posted on 01/07/2016 12:45:52 PM PST by Faith65 (Isaiah 40:31)
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To: Politicalkiddo

 

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country. 

Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.

I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion -- for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

In the United States, the sovereign authority is religious...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people...

Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent...

I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts -- the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.


Alexis de Tocqueville was the famous 19th century French statesman, historian and social philosopher.

He traveled to America in the 1830s to discover the reasons for the incredible success of this new nation.

 He published his observations in his classic two-volume work, Democracy in America.

 He was especially impressed by America's religious character.

 

The above are some excerpts from Tocqueville's great work.


14 posted on 01/07/2016 12:48:55 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: wagglebee

America must fall...


15 posted on 01/07/2016 12:50:20 PM PST by EBH ( I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction. ~~ Obama)
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To: wagglebee

http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/61225/20160107/rev-franklin-graham-writes-open-letter-to-obama-slamming-gun-restrictions-our-government-has-taken-god-out-of-society.htm#sthash.27e4ZXnP.dpuf


16 posted on 01/07/2016 12:50:28 PM PST by BeadCounter (,)
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To: Politicalkiddo

I would disagree with him on just one point.

The evil is rooted deep in the heart of the individual. But the solution is the same.

Regenerate the heart and the evil is rooted out.

Change the people and the nation changes.

Morality comes from within, it cannot be legislated from without.

An inherently moral people will not need laws against immorality as they will by nature do what is right.


17 posted on 01/07/2016 12:51:30 PM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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To: wintertime
Anyone who speaks out against the Dept. of Education and all of the other multitudinous bureaucracies that control the propagandizing of children today in the name of "educating" them must be willing to be marginalized by the media and politicians.

Even as early as the Year 1886, such was the case. A man by the name of Zacharias Montgomery was denied an important post in the federal government for doing just that. You will read some of his words below.

With that said, those who love liberty must be willing to come forward to declare that it is better to be remembered for standing on and articulating enduring principles of right versus wrong, liberty versus tyranny, than to be praised by the mainstream media and so-called "progressives."

I am reminded of the words of Zacharias Montgomery in his 1886 Book entitled "Poison Drops in the United States Senate . . . ." Although his treatise dealt primarily with the public school question, the following remarks might be helpful to those who, today, are concerned by what passes for "public education."

Excerpts from Zacharias Montgomery:

"My countrymen, disguise the fact as we may, there is in this country to-day, and in both the political Parties, an element which is ripe for a centralized despotism. There are men and corporations of vast wealth, whose iron grasp spans this whole continent, and who find it more difficult and more expensive to corrupt thirty odd State Legislatures than one Federal Congress. It was said of Nero of old that he wished the Roman people had but one head, so that he might cut it off at a single blow. And so it is with those moneyed kings who would rule this country through bribery, fraud, and intimidation.

"It is easy to see how, with all the powers of government centered at Washington in one Federal head, they could at a single stroke put an end to American liberty.

"But they well understand that before striking this blow the minds of the people must be prepared to receive it. And what surer or safer preparation could possibly be made than is now being made, by indoctrinating the minds of the rising generation with the idea that ours is already a consolidated government ; that the States of the Union have no sovereignty which is not subordinate to the will and pleasure of the Federal head, and that our Constitution is the mere creature of custom, and may therefore be legally altered or abolished by custom.

"Such are a few of the pernicious and poisonous doctrines which ten millions of American children are today drinking in with the very definitions of the words they are compelled to study. And yet the man who dares to utter a word of warning of the approaching danger is stigmatized as an enemy to education and unfit to be men tioned as a candidate for the humblest office.

"Be it so. Viewing this great question as I do, not for all the offices in the gift of the American people would I shrink from an open and candid avowal of my sentiments. If I have learned anything from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustaining solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices and honors in the gift of man.

"History tells us that Aristides was voted into banishment because he was just. Yet who would not a thousand times rather today be Aristides than be numbered amongst the proudest of his persecutors.

"Socrates, too, in violation of every principle of justice, was con demned to a dungeon and to death. Yet what name is more honored in history than his? And which of his unjust judges would not gladly, hide himself in the utter darkness of oblivion from the with ering scorn and contempt of all mankind ?

"From the noble example of Aristides and of Socrates let American statesmen learn wisdom, and from the undying infamy of their cow ardly time-serving persecutors let political demagogues of today take warning."

So Zacharias Montgomery in 1886.

His book is complete with a history of what he called the "anti-parental" system, documented reports, and other statistics. Read his complete work HERE.

Anyone who reads his complete volume will realize this man's ability to see the consequences of what his fellow Americans were advocating in the area of education of youth.


18 posted on 01/07/2016 12:52:35 PM PST by loveliberty2
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To: wintertime

You are absolutely right about the “my kids school is different” - Parents want so badly to believe that and the cling to the anecdotal evidence of a handful of “good teachers.” But all public schools are part of the godless system that the Left has created to indoctrinate your kids. Homeschool, private school, parochial school, radical (to the left) charter schools - Pick one but get your kids and grand kids out now.


19 posted on 01/07/2016 12:52:47 PM PST by azcap (Who is John Galt ? www.conservativeshirts.com)
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To: wagglebee

Jerry Falwell said this after 9/11

Freepers hated him for saying it

I think he was dead right, and said so then, too


20 posted on 01/07/2016 12:56:03 PM PST by RaceBannon (Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for)
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