Sunday Bonus Podcast-Billy Graham-Technology, Faith and Human Shortcomings

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
There's a clergyman. You can imagine how out of place
I feel. I feel like a fish out of water,
or may be an owl out of the air. I
was preaching in Sana's a some time ago, and my
friend Mark Kwame, who helped introduce me to this conference,

(01:04):
brought several CEOs and leaders of some of the companies
here in the Silicon Valley to have breakfast with me
or I with them, and I was so stimulated and
had such it was an eye opening experience to hear

(01:26):
them talk about the world that is yet to come
through technology and science. I know that we're near the
end of this conference and some of you may be
wondering why they have a speaker from the field of religion.

(01:50):
Richard can answer that because he made that decision. But
some years ago, I was on an elevator in Philadelphia
coming down. I was to address a conference at a hotel,
and on that elevator a man said, I hear Billy
Graham is staying in this hotel, and another man looked
in my direction and said, yes, there he is. He's

(02:12):
on this elevator with us. And this man looked me
up and down for about ten seconds, and he said, my,
what an anti climax. I hope, I hope that you
won't feel that these few moments with me is an

(02:32):
anti climax after all this tremendous talks that you've heard
on the dresses, which I intend to listen to every
one of them. But I was on an airplane in
the East some years ago and the man sitting across
the aisle from me was the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina.

(02:54):
His name was John Belk, some of you would probably
know him. And there was a drunk man on there,
and he got up out of his seat two or
three times, and he was making everybody upset by what
he was trying to do. And he was slapping the
stewardess and pinching her as she went by, and everybody
was upset with him. And finally John Belk said, you

(03:17):
know who's sitting here and the man said no, he said,
it's Billy Graham, the preacher. He said, you don't say
and he turned to me and he said, put her there.
He said, your sermons have certainly helped me. And I

(03:42):
suppose that that's true with thousands of people. I know
that as you have been peering into the future, and
as we've heard some of it here tonight. I would
like to live in that age and see what is

(04:04):
going to be, but I won't because I'm eighty years old.
This is my eightieth year, and I know that my
time is brief. I have phlebitis at the moment in
both legs, and that's the reason I had to have
a little help in getting up here, because I have
Parkinson's disease in addition to that and some other problems

(04:27):
that I won't talk about. But this is not the
first time that we've had a technological revolution. We've had others,
and there's one that I want to talk about. In
one generation, the nation of the people of Israel had

(04:49):
a tremendous and dramatic change that made them a great
power in the Near East. A man by the name
of David came to the throne, and King David became
one of the great leaders of his generation. He was
a man of tremendous leadership. He had the favor of

(05:12):
God with him. He was a brilliant poet, philosopher, writer, soldier,
with strategies in battle and conflict that people study even today.
But about two centuries before David, the Hittites had discovered

(05:36):
the secret of smelting and processing of iron, and slowly
that skill spread, but they wouldn't allow the Israelis to
look into it or to have any But David changed
all of that, and he introduced the iron age to Israel.
And the Bible says that David laid up great stores

(05:58):
of iron, which archaeologists have found that in present day
Palestine their evidences of that generation. Now, instead of crude
tools made of sticks and stones, Israel now had iron
plows and sickles and hoes and military weapons. And in

(06:22):
the course of one generation, Israel was completely changed. The
introduction of iron in some ways had an impact a
little bit like the microchip has had on our generation.

(06:43):
And David found that there were many problems that technology
could not solve. There were many problems still left and
they're still with us, and you haven't solved them. And
I haven't heard anybody here speak to that. How do
we solve these three problems that I'd like to mention?

(07:07):
The first one that David saw was human evil? Where
does it come from? How do we solve it? Over
again and again In the Psalms, which Gladstone said was
the greatest book in the world. David describes the evils
of the human race, and yet he says, he restores

(07:31):
my soul. Have you ever thought about what a contradiction
we are? On one hand, we can probe the deepest
secrets of the universe and dramatically push back the frontiers
of technology, as this conference vividly demonstrates. We've seen under
the sea, or three miles down, or galaxies hundreds of

(07:55):
billions of years out in the future. But on the
other hand, something is wrong. Our battleships, our soldiers are
on a frontier now, almost ready to go to war
with Iraq. Now what causes this? Why do we have

(08:19):
these wars in every generation and in every part of
the world, and revolutions We can't get along with other people,
even in our own families. We find ourselves in the
paralyzing grip of self destructive habits. We can't break. Racism
and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic

(08:42):
harvest of heartache and death. Even the most sophisticated among
us seem powerless to break this cycle. I would like
to see Oracle take up that or some other tech
logical geniuses work on this. How do we change man

(09:08):
so that he doesn't lie and cheat? And our newspapers
are not filled with stories of fraud in business or labor,
or athletics or wherever. The Bible says. The problem is
within us, within our hearts and our souls. Our problem

(09:28):
is that we're separated from our creator, which we call God,
and we need to have our souls restored, something only
God can do. Jesus said, for out of the heart
come evil thoughts, murders, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

(09:53):
The British philosopher Bertrand and Russell was not a religious man,
but he said it's in our hearts that the evil lies,
and it's from our hearts that it must be plucked out.
Albert Einstein, I was just talking to someone when I
was speaking at Princeton and I met mister Einstein. He

(10:14):
didn't have a doctor's degree because he said nobody was
qualified to give him one, but he made this statement.
He said, it's easier to denature plutonium than to denature
the evil spirit of man. And many of you, I'm sure,
have thought about that and puzzled over it. You've seen

(10:37):
people take beneficial technological advances such as the Internet we've
heard about tonight, and twist them into something corrupting. You've
seen brilliant people devise computer viruses that bring down whole systems.
The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology horribly used. The

(10:59):
problem is not technology. The problem is the person or
person's using it. King David said that he knew the
depths of his own soul. He couldn't free himself from
personal problems and personal evils that included murder and adultery.

(11:20):
Yet King David sought God's forgiveness and said, you can
restore my soul. You see the Bible teachers that we're
more than a body and a mind. We are a soul,
and there's something inside of us that is beyond our understanding.

(11:42):
That's the part of us that yearns for God or
something more than we find in technology. Your soul is
that part of you that yearns for meaning in life
and which seeks for something beyond this life. It's the
part of you that yearns really for God. I find
young people all over the world a searching for something.

(12:04):
They don't know what it is. I speak at many
universities and I have many questions and answer periods, and
whether it's Cambridge or Harvard or Oxford, I've spoken at
all those universities. I'm going to Harvard in about three
or four, no, it's about two months from now, to
give a lecture, and I'll be asked the same questions
that I was asked the last few times I've been there,

(12:27):
and it'll be on these questions, where did I come from?
Why am I here? Where am I going? What's life
all about? Why am I here? Even if you have
no religious belief, there are times when you wonder that
there's something else. Thomas Edison also said, when you see
everything that happens in the world of science and in

(12:50):
the working of the universe, you cannot deny that there's
a captain on the bridge. I remember once I sat
beside Missus Gorbachev at the White House dinner. I went
down by some Dobinion whom I knew very well, and
I'd been to Russia several times under the Communist and
they'd given me marvelous freedom that I didn't expect. And

(13:15):
I knew mister Dobringion very well, and I said, I'm
going to sit beside Missus Goeberchop tonight, what should I
talk to her about? And he surprised me with the answer.
He said, talk to her about religion and philosophy. That's
what she's really interested in. I was a little bit surprised,
but that evening that's what we talked about, and it

(13:36):
was a stimulating conversation, and after which she said, you know,
I'm an atheist, but I know that there's something up
there higher than we are. The second problem that King
David realized he could not solve was the problem of
human suffering. Writing the oldest book in the world was

(13:57):
Job and he said, man is born into trouble as
the sparks fly upward. Yes, to be sure, science has
done much to push back certain types of human suffering.
But I'm in a few months, I'll be eighty years
of age. I admit that I'm very grateful for all
the medical advances that have kept me in relatively good

(14:21):
health all these years. My doctors at the Mayo Clinic
urged me not to take this trip out here to
this to be here, I haven't given a talk in
nearly four months. And when you speak as much as
I do, three or four times a day, you get rusty.
That's the reason I'm using this podium and using these notes.

(14:45):
Every time you ever hear me on the television or somewhere,
I'm ad libbing. I'm not reading. I never read an address.
I never read a speech or a talk or a lecture.
A talk I had lib But tonight I've got some
notes here so that I begin to forget, which I do.

(15:06):
Sometimes I've got something I can turn to. But even
here among us, most in the most advanced society in
the world, we have poverty. We have families. It's self

(15:27):
destruct friends that betray us, Unbearable psychological precious bear down
on us. I've met a person in the world that
didn't have a problem or a worry. Why do we suffer?
It's an age old question that we haven't answered yet.
David again and again said that he would turn to God.

(15:50):
He said, the Lord is my shepherd. The final problem
that David knew he could not solve was death. Many
commentators have said that death is the forbidden subject of
our generation. Most people live as if they're never going

(16:10):
to die. Technology projects the myth of control over our mortality.
We see people on our screens. Marilyn Monroe is just
as beautiful on the screen as she was in person,
and many young people think she's still alive. They don't
know that she's dead, or Clark Gable, whoever it is.

(16:33):
The old stars, they come to life and they're just
as great on that screen as they were in person.
But death is inevitable. I spoke some time ago to
a joint session of Congress last year, and we were

(16:54):
meeting in that room, the Stature Room. About three hundred
of them were there, and I said, there's one thing
that we have in common. In this room, all of
us together, were the Republican, a Democrat, whoever. I said,
We're all going to die. And we have that in
common with all these great men of the past that

(17:16):
are staring down at us. And it's often difficult for
young people to understand that. It's difficult for them to
understand that they are going to die. As the ancient
writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, he said, there's every activity under heaven.

(17:37):
There's a time to be born, and there's a time
to die. I've stood at the death bed of several
famous people whom you would know. I've talked to them,
I've seen them in those agonizing moments when they were
scared to death, and yet a few years earlier never

(18:00):
crossed their mind. I talked to a woman this past
week whose father was a famous doctor. She said he
never thought of God, never talked about God, didn't believe
in God. He was an atheist. But she said, as

(18:22):
he came to die, he sat up in the side
of the bed one day and he asked the nurse
if he could see the chaplain and he said, for
the first time in his life he thought about the
inevitable and about God. Was there a God? A few

(18:44):
years ago a university student asked me, what is the
greatest surprise in your life? And I said, the greatest
surprise in my life is the brevity of life. It
passes so fast, but it does not need to have
to be that way. Worn of Rombron in the aftermath

(19:06):
of World War II, concluded quote, science and religion are
not antagonists, on the contrary of their sisters. He put
it on a personal basis on you, doctor von Braun
very well, and he said, speaking for myself, I can
only say that the grandeur of the cosmos serves only

(19:26):
to confirm a belief in the certain day of a creator.
He also said, in our search to know God, I've
come to believe that the life of Jesus Christ should
be the focus of our efforts and inspiration. The reality
of this life, in his resurrection, is the hope of mankind.

(19:47):
I've done a lot of speaking in Germany and in
France and in different parts of the world. One hundred
and five countries. It's been my privilege to speak in
and I was invited one day to visit Chancellor Adnau,
who has looked upon as sort of the founder of
modern Germany since the war. And he went and he

(20:12):
said to me, he said, young man, he said, do
you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? And I said, Sir,
I do. He said, so do I. He said, when
I leave office, I'm going to spend my time writing
a book on why Jesus Christ rose again and why
it's so important to believe that. In one of his plays,

(20:38):
Alexander Sulzanitsen depicts a man dying who says to those
gathered around his bed, the moment when it's terrible to
feel regret is when one is dying. How should one
live in order not to feel regret? When one is dying.
Blaize Pascal ask exactly that question in seventeenth century France.

(21:02):
Pascal has been called the architect of modern civilization. He
was a brilliant scientist at the frontiers of mathematics even
as a teenager. He is viewed by many as the
founder of the probability theory and a creator of the
first model of a computer, and of course you're all

(21:24):
familiar with the computer language named for him. Pascal explored
in depth our human dilemmas of evils suffering in death.
He was astounded at the phenomena we've been considering that
people can achieve extraordinary heights in science, the arts, and
human enterprise, yet they are also full of anger, hypocrisy,

(21:47):
and half and self hatreds. Pascal saw us as a
remarkable mixture of genius and self delusion. On November twenty third,
sixteen fifty four, Pascal had a profound religious experience. He
wrote in his journal these words, I submit myself absolutely

(22:12):
to Jesus Christ, my redeemer. A French historian said two
centuries later, seldom has so mighty an intellect submitted with
such humility to the authority of Jesus Christ. Pascal came
to believe not only the love and the grace of

(22:33):
God could bring us back into harmony, but he believed
that his own sins and failures could be forgiven, and
that when he died, he would go to a place
called Heaven. He experienced it in a way that went
beyond scientific observation and reason. It was he who penned

(22:54):
the well known words the heart has its reasons, which
reason not off equally well known as Pascal's wager. Essentially,
he said this, if you bet on God and open
yourself to his love, you lose nothing. But even if
you're wrong. But if instead you bet that there is

(23:16):
no God, then you can lose it all in this
life and the life to come. For Pascal, scientific knowledge
paled beside the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God
was far beyond anything that ever crossed his mind. He
was ready to face him when he died at the

(23:36):
age of thirty nine. King David lived to be seventy,
a long time in his era, Yet he too had
to face death, and he wrote these words, even though
I walked through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

(23:56):
This was David's answer to three dilemmas of evil, suffering,
and death. It can be yours as well, as you
seek the living God and allow him to fill your
life and give you hope for the future. When I
was seventeen years of age, I was born and read

(24:20):
on a farm in North Carolina. I milked cows every
morning and had to milk the same cows every evening
when I came home from school, and there were twenty
of them that I was responsible for. And I worked
on a farm and tried to keep up with my studies.
I didn't make good grades in high school. I didn't

(24:41):
make them in college until something happened in my heart.
One day I was face to face with Christ. He said,
I'm the way, the truth, and the life. Can you
imagine that I am the truth? I'm the bottom of
all truth. He was a liar or he was insane. Oh,

(25:09):
he was what he claimed to be? Which was he?
I had to make that decision. I couldn't prove it.
I couldn't take it to a laboratory and experiment with it.
But by faith, I said, I believe him, And he
came into my heart and changed my life. And now

(25:31):
I'm ready when I hear that call to go into
the presence of God. Thank you, and God bless all
of you.

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