Inauguration Speaker Franklin Graham: God Allowed Donald Trump to Win

The Reverend Franklin Graham will offer the invocation, benediction and several readings at the swearing-in ceremony of Donald Trump. “I think maybe God has allowed Donald Trump to win this election to protect this nation for the next few years," he said.

WASHINGTON — The Reverend Franklin Graham isn’t sure which Scripture he’ll read at the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.The evangelist and head of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse won’t get to make remarks at the event, but he will get to pick his own Bible passage, which could say a lot.

Will it be something hopeful to heal a divided nation? Something pointed about the importance of praying for leaders?

Graham was praying about that Thursday (December 29), he told RNS, the day after it was announced he is one of six clergy chosen to offer the invocation, benediction and several readings at the swearing-in ceremony.

“You want it to be meaningful not only to your president-elect, but you want it to be meaningful also to the nation,” Graham said.“I’m taking time just to pray and ask God to give me wisdom and guidance because it’s a responsibility that I take very seriously.”

This is the third inauguration Graham will have attended, he noted. The first was to assist his father Billy Graham at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1997; the second, to offer the invocation at the first inauguration of President George W. Bush in 2001.

It follows his Decision America Tour, during which he held rallies in each of the 50 U.S. state capitals to urge evangelical Christians to pray about the upcoming election and vote for candidates of any party who agree with their values.

Weeks before launching the tour, Graham announced he had resigned from the Republican Party and declared himself an independent. And he was careful to note throughout the campaign that he endorsed neither Trump, a Republican, or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

But, he said, he got the sense “God was going to do something in our country — just from the people coming early in the day, standing in hot sun, standing in freezing cold, standing in snow, standing in rain, and they came to pray. They didn’t come to hear me. They came to pray for their nation.”

Graham has had some supportive words for Trump, noting the president-elect has surrounded himself from the start with a number of evangelical Christians in a way he said Clinton didn’t.

That included Vice President-elect Mike Pence; his choice to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson; Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.; and former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee.

“Even though Donald Trump has some rough edges, there’s something inside of him that desires the counsel of Christian men and women, and I don’t know one Christian on Hillary Clinton’s team,” he said.

Clinton has spoken openly about her United Methodist faith. And asked about her choice of running mate, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who volunteered with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras as a young man, Graham said the Democrat had difficulty connecting with evangelical Christians in the same way because he was Catholic and because of his party’s support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

He also pointed to the list of potential Supreme Court justices the Trump campaign had released, saying, as he had before the election, “It’s not about her emails. It’s not about his bad language. It’s about the Supreme Court … and who do you trust to appoint judges that are going to be in favor of Christian liberty?”

“I think maybe God has allowed Donald Trump to win this election to protect this nation for the next few years by giving maybe an opportunity to have some good judges,” he said.

It’s not the first time Graham expressed his belief God had played a role in the results of the November election. He had tweeted earlier this month suggesting it was God, not Russia, that had interfered with the outcome.

In an interview Thursday, he said he doesn’t know if Russia hacked the election, and he doesn’t presume to know how God works. But he knows God answers prayers.

And, Graham said, “All I know is Donald Trump was supposed to lose the election,” according to projections of the results.

“For these states to go the way they did, in my opinion, I think it was the hand of God,” he said. “It wasn’t hacking. It wasn’t Wiki-leaky or whatever. It was God, in my opinion, and I believe his hand was at work, and I think he’s given Christians an opportunity.”

I like this; it seems to hit all the notes, so to speak:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved. Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah, Catholic chapter forty, in its entirety,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.