“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24 NKJV
What are we to think of the Bible? Have you ever really wondered how reliable it is? Do you believe in all of what the Bible says without any questions, or have you dismissed all of it because you have too many? For the intellectually consistent person, what you conclude in your mind about the Bible will be played out in your life, for better or for worse. Our story today is about two similar evangelists who each honestly wrestled with the claims and merits of God’s Word.
So let’s see what can we learn from them and their stories.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly everyone knows who Billy Graham is, his ministry of preaching and his life of faithful service from advising kings and presidents to throngs of everyday people across numerous nations. Even skeptics cannot deny that Billy Graham had an eternally positive impact upon the world in his ninety-nine years of life. But most people have no idea who his friend and preaching partner was in the early years of the ministry. A Canadian named Charles Templeton, an evangelist who by many accounts was a more articulate speaker and polished orator than Billy.
So alike were the two evangelists that they were referred to as the “Gold Dust Twins.” They were both influential in co-founding Torrey Johnson’s “Youth For Christ” in 1944 and spoke together often throughout the United states and Europe for the sole purpose of drawing people to faith in Jesus.
Two young men, similar in age, calling, talents, and results.
But something happened to them individually in the height of their careers that sent the two friends and co-ministers into opposite trajectories, ending with two radically different conclusions. This is a story of two men with two fates who made two decisions about one book.
Charles Templeton was born October 7th, 1915, in Toronto, Canada. With four other siblings in the midst of the depression, the family learned to adapt on meager wages. Everyone in the family had to do their part. Young Charles picked up drawing and was quite talented at it. So after failing to pass the 9th and 10th grade, he pursued his knack of drawing sketches, hoping that someone might find value in his work and purchase them. Charles was pleasantly found to be correct. The 17-year-old artist was hired onto the Toronto Globe as a sports cartoonist.
Overnight the teenager was making good money and was thoroughly enjoying his job. Charles found himself in the very midst of the sports news world and everything else associated with it. Notoriety, late-night drinking, and fawning women were all bonuses. He would later write about this time in his life: “To a boy in his late teens, it was the best of all possible worlds.” (1)
But after four years, the underbelly of his envied job and lifestyle began to show. Returning home one morning at 3:00 a.m. from a party, the young man, feeling quite depressed, looked into a mirror. He didn’t like the reflection. As he walked to his room, his mother heard him in the hallway and called out to him. She talked to him about her own faith in Christ.
Charles would later write about this event: “As I went down the hall, I was forming a prayer in my head, but as I knelt by my bed in the darkness, my mind was strangely vacant; thoughts and words wouldn't come to focus. After a moment, it was as though a black blanket had been draped over me. A sense of enormous guilt descended and invaded every part of me. I was unclean. Involuntarily, I began to pray, my face upturned, tears streaming. The only words I could find were, "Lord, come down. Come do. Come down. . . .” (2)
At this same time, in the United States near Charolette North Carolina, Billy Graham had just graduated from high school. As he struggled through school, being the son of a dairy farmer, his graduation was a feat that many questioned. And while the young man had grown up in a godly and Christian environment, he had just made a personal commitment to Jesus during a revival two years earlier under the preaching of Baptist evangelist Mordecai Ham. Like his future friend and preaching partner, Charles Templeton, Billy was also convicted by his sin and his need for forgiveness. That night at the dinner table, Billy stopped to inform his family that he had been saved that day.
While he first enrolled at Bob Jones College in Cleveland, Tennessee, since it was closet to home and less expensive than Wheaton, he quickly felt the school too legalistic and rigid. So after only one semester and racking up nearly enough demerits to be kicked out, he transferred to Florida Bible Institute. And it was there in 1937 that Billy would begin to preach.
Having become mentored by the academic Dean of the school, John Minder, Billy joined him to attend a Baptist conference in Palatka, Florida. When Minder was asked to speak that night to a small church of Baptist preachers, he politely declined, saying that Billy would be pleased to preach in his place. So with no real choice in the matter, the 19-year-old awkwardly preached for the first time. It was a mixture of four different sermons he had memorized from Moody Press. He would later remember that the sermon was very “Raw”. (3)
The next few years in Billy’s life would be transformational. He was baptized on December 4, 1938, in Silver Lake, Florida, ordained to the ministry in a Southern Baptist church a year later and graduated from Florida Bible Institute in 1940. And so began his humble and long journey into becoming one of the most influential evangelists in America. But there was another great evangelist being formed in Canada, and the two were soon to meet and unite their passion and calling to preach the truths of the Bible to a world on the brink of another World War.
By this time Charles had left the Toronto Globe to enter the ministry and to give himself fully to the preaching of the gospel. He had evangelized all over: Michigan, New York, Indiana, Illinois, and even further south, probably very close to where Billy was himself beginning his career as a preacher. Charles had met his wife in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the couple was married six weeks later. But soon after, in 1941, in the midst of starting a new church with his new wife, Charles read a number of books written by famous secular authors. And for the first time in his short life as a follower of Jesus, his faith in the veracity and miraculous claims of the Bible was challenged. But Charles soon stuffed these troubling questions behind the success of becoming one of North America’s top evangelists and so, he continued to do what he knew best.
And before long, notable people began to take notice of Charles’ ministry. In the Spring of 1945 he was invited by a local pastor named Torrey Johnston to speak at Chicago Stadium to a crowd full of young people. It was a Youth for Christ rally and attendance was steadily growing into the thousands. Backstage, among the noise of a boisterous crowd, Torrey introduced the young Canadian evangelist to the slightly younger Billy Graham and the two preachers become instantaneous friends. On the platform, just before Billy was about to speak, he leaned over to his new friend Charles and said, "Pray for me. I'm scared to death." (4)
Soon after, a Youth for Christ team was selected to take the message of the gospel to a war torn Europe. Torrey Johnston would serve as the president while Billy and Charles would alternate as preachers. The tour went well and over the months Charles’ and Billy’s friendship grew as did their success and influence. But the questions that had bothered Charles years before could no longer be ignored. So, at thirty-three years of age and without formal education for the last 15 years, Charles was accepted into the theologically liberal Princeton University to formally seek answers to those doubts “that were eroding his faith.” (5) Charles remembers these three years at Princeton as some of the best in his life. Among his enjoyable courses, Charles would often see Albert Einstein, who lived only three houses away from the Campus Seminary. But although he throughly liked his new environment, Charles couldn’t escape the fact that he was experiencing a real crisis of faith about the Bible and the person of Jesus. And his fears of possibly believing and preaching something not empirically, historically, or spiritually true, was being shared by his friend Billy as well.
It was August of 1949, when Billy was 30 years old, in Forest Falls, California, in a Christian Camp speaking to a crowd inside Hormel Hall. No one knew it, but having been recently challenged by his friend and fellow evangelist, Billy was now internally questioning the veracity of the Bible and whether he believed it to really be God’s spoken word to humanity. It was a shocking blow to Billy’s confidence that his friend, fellow pastor and Bible teacher now believed the Scriptures to be flawed, outdated, and full of superstitions. The two had discussed their disagreements and had been civil about their opposite conclusions, but if Billy was really honest, he still had lingering doubts.
The weight and the enormity of it all bore down on Billy’s soul. So in the dark woods of the night at Forest Home Billy placed his Bible on a random tree stump and cried out: “O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and others are raising.” (6) Falling to his knees, Billy then resolutely confessed “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word!” (7)
Billy later recalled in this moment that the Holy Spirit was moving within him and he felt his presence and power in a new and fresh way - one that he hadn’t experienced in months. For Billy “A major bridge had been crossed.” (8) On the next day, 400 people made a commitment to Jesus and Henrietta Mears, the woman who invited Billy to speak at the camp noted that he “taught with authority” than she had ever seen before. (9)
And while at first Billy had reluctantly accepted Henrietta’s invitation to speak at Forest Home, he now knew why God led him into the forest. Like Jesus being led into the desert, a test was finished and a decision was made, a decision that would effect the course of Billy’s calling and, in turn, the eternity of millions. While Billy was calling people to trust and follow Christ, Christ was calling Billy to trust and follow His word.
Billy’s heart and mind were now settled. And his friend Charles was settling his. While the two friends remained courteous, they grew apart from each other knowing their views of the Bible and the person of Jesus were diametrically opposed to each other.
By the end of Charles’ three years at Princeton in 1951, his doubts about the Bible had nearly solidified and his faith was no more. And yet, because of his success and influence, he was still offered positions on numerous platforms. Radio and Television ministries as well as churches all sought him out. In 1953, Charles found himself living in Manhattan as the Director of Evangelism for the Presbyterian Church USA. But it wasn’t long before the weight of leading others into a theological persuasion that he himself no longer thought true came to a head.
Charles would later write: “What right did I have to stand before … thousands of people I had been preaching to nightly for years, using all my persuasive skills to win them to something I was no longer convinced of myself? It was a reprehensible thing to do and I must stop it.” (10)
And stop it he did. Charles left the ministry in 1957, publicly declaring that he was an agnostic. At this time his mother, whose faith was real and vibrant, was dying from cancer. Although Charles was with her when she past, she died assuming her boy was still a believing Christian and in the ministry. On top of this, Charles and his wife, Connie, were undergoing a divorce after 18 years of marriage. She too was still a Christian and was heavily involved in the church. Charles’ conclusion about the Bible came with great cost:
“It seemed that all of life was showing me its nether side. My faith was gone, my marriage was dead, my mother was dying. I was cutting myself off from the hundreds of friends I had made during nineteen years in the church. I was abandoning people who looked to me, including thirty-six men and women who were in the ministry or on mission fields because of my work. I felt like a betrayer….But there was no real choice. I could stay in the ministry, paper over my doubts and daily live a lie, or I could make the break.” (11)
As Charles made the physical break from the Church, he was merely following the decision that his heart and mind had made years before. Similarly, as Billy continued in evangelism, he too was naturally following the resolution that he had made in the dark forest years ago. And so the two friends had chosen their two separate paths and were now far from each other. As the years passed the two naturally grew apart. Charles became more involved in television and writing and had even invented a child-resistant medicine cap and a teddy bear that stayed warm throughout the night.
Billy continued in evangelism and as most people know, would become one of the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th Century. Although there are many reasons for Billy’s success, none could have been as important than the decision he made at Forest Home. Billy knew this, as did those close to him. And In 1967, a massive rock in honor of how Billy overcame doubt that fateful night 18 years before was dedicated at the Christian Conference Center, Forest Home. In addition to preaching, Billy would go on to publish many books on the Christian faith.
And while not producing as much content as Billy, Charles authored some books as well. In 1996, just 5 years before his death, Charles chronicled his doubts about his faith in his most well-known book titled: Farewell To God - My reasons for rejecting the Christian Faith. “In straightforward language, Templeton deals with such subjects as the Creation fable, racial prejudice in the Bible, the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus' alienation from his family, the second-class status of women in the church, the mystery of evil, the illusion that prayer works, why there is suffering and death, and the loss of faith in God.” (12)
Soon after the book was published, Charles was diagnosed with Alzheimers. But before his passing, Charles was interviewed by a curious journalist and former atheist named Lee Strobel. Upon Charles’ resolve in denying Christianity’s most foundational claims, he surprisingly confessed with tears in his eyes that he “missed Jesus.” Charles Templeton died soon after on June 7th, 2001 in Toronto Canada. (13)
Billy would live for 17 more years. With nine months short of living a century, Billy Graham died February 21, 2018. His last words were recorded: “By the time you read this, I will be in heaven, and as I write this I’m looking forward with great anticipation to the day when I will be in God’s presence forever.” (14)
Two similar men who for a season shared the one Christian faith. But over time the two decisions they made about the Bible led to two very different faiths and two different lives with extremely divergent endings. Now that we know what these men thought about the Bible and the place it served or didn’t serve in their lives, what do you believe? And perhaps a better question to ingest is how will that affect you when you step into eternity?
Micah Coate, President and Host of Salvation and Stuff
To enjoy this in a Podcast go here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/salvation-and-stuff/id1492371560?i=1000543661516
Work Cited: 1. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 2. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 3. Graham, Billy, Just As I Am, Billy Graham, 1997 4. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 5. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 6. Graham, Billy, Just As I Am, Billy Graham, 1997 7. Graham, Billy, Just As I Am, Billy Graham, 1997 8. Graham, Billy, Just As I Am, Billy Graham, 1997 9. http://www.gospel-life.net/heroes-of-the-christian-faith-henrietta-mears/ 10. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 11. Templeton, Charles, An Anecdotal Memoir 12. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/farewell-to-god-my-reasons-for-rejecting-the-christian-faith_charles-templeton/287805/item/1711095/?gclid=CjwKCAjw7--KBhAMEiwAxfpkWKxKCBq11cKOHfkUQDe3mo5ao_Xoc5rqmTuCPIceHA0hF5-M6j0OJhoC9sMQAvD_BwE#idiq=1711095&edition=4422278 13. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/charles-templeton-missing-jesus/ 14. https://www.fayobserver.com/news/20180221/billy-grahams-last-column-by-time-you-read-this-i-will-be-in-heaven 15. Photograph of “Billy Graham and Joe Blinco, Associate Evangelist, standing in front of Lake Mears at Forest Home, California in 1967” https://billygrahamlibrary.org/70th-anniversary-greater-los-angeles-billy-graham-crusade-of-1949/
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