Left-Wing and Right-Wing Collusion against Trump’s Original Plan of Partnership with Russia against Islamic Terror

By Julio Severo

Every time the subject Trump and Russia emerges, U.S. socialists, more known as “Democrats,” talk about Russian “collusion,” as if a mere attempt of partnership with Russia were treason.

America has had much more than collusion with Saudi Arabia and China, which are not Christian, but the real threat in the American mind is… Russia, which today is much more conservative and an advocate of its main religion, the Christian Orthodox Church. The largest conservative conference in the world in 2014 happened at the Kremlin, Moscow. This conference attacked abortion, the homosexual agenda and Marxism.

In fact, Russia has especially been under attack since 2013, when Russian President Vladimir Putin passed a law banning homosexual propaganda to children and adolescents. U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. mainstream media mocked Russia, which has paid a very high cost for protecting its children from homosexual predators. The most important U.S. homosexual magazine labeled Putin and his conservative stances as the main global threat to the homosexual agenda.

In contrast, Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, praised Putin’s conservative stances in a 2014 cover story titled “Putin’s Olympic Controversy” in Decision, the magazine published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Because of the past, where an anti-Christian atheistic Soviet Union was as threatening as China and Saudi Arabia, U.S. neocons keep the bogeyman alive, because they need to justify their insatiable expenditures in the massive U.S. military industrial complex. The Soviet Union died, but for all intents and purposes, it is necessary to keep it alive in the American mind.

So left-wing Obama and right-wing Bush were opposed to Russia. Both used NATO to keep Russia surrounded and suffocated. Obama imposed his socialist sanctions on Russia and Trump has kept them.

If Trump tries to lift Obama’s sanctions, the powerful left-wingers and right-wingers in America will charge him of “cozying up to Putin,” “collusion with the Kremlin,” etc.

Right-wingers say that all the accusations of “cozying up to Putin” are socialist-oriented.

So because of the condition of the American mind, trained for decades to see Russia as the biggest bogeyman, both sides use the bogeyman to scare the American public and scare U.S. presidents from a healthy partnership with Russia.

If the U.S. can have an economic partnership with China, the largest communist nation in the world, why not with Russia? For all intents, China is today the “Soviet Union” as far as communist threat is concerned. It is officially atheistic. It is anti-Christian.

If the U.S. can have a military and economic partnership with Saudi Arabia, the capital of Islam and the main sponsor of Islamic terror around the world, including ISIS, why not with Russia, the largest Christian Orthodox nation in the world?

Why does the U.S. establishment use a bogeyman against Christian Russia, but not against Islamic Saudi Arabia and communist China?

Any attempt by Trump of a partnership with Russia has been faced, since 2016, with numerous lies and accusations of “Russian collusion,” as if he wanted to enslave America to a Soviet Union — while actually America is already enslaved to Chinese communists and Saudi Muslims.

There is a real collusion. It is neocon-oriented. It involves U.S. left-wingers and right-wingers. And their aim is not China and Saudi Arabia. It is Russia.

In 2016, the Trevor Loudon website, known for his anti-Russian stridency, said,

“If Trump is elected, you will have the Russians… in the White House. Trump’s advisers are very connected to Vladimir Putin and Russia. Trump himself has many ties as well and is friends with Putin. This is why Putin will try to sabotage Clinton with leaked emails, etc.”

With Loudon’s occultist history, his presence in the White House would be more threatening than many other threats.

If you thought that “Trump Cozying Up to Putin” was an original left-wing accusation against Trump, nope. It came also from Cliff Kincaid, a Catholic who sees widespread Russian conspiracies in every crisis and problem in this world and outside it. In 2016, he wrote a number of articles against what he saw as a Trump-Putin “romance.”

In his article “Generals Warn of Russian Aggression As Trump Cozies Up To Putin,” Kincaid said,

Trump recently gave a foreign policy address that completely ignored Russian aggression in Ukraine, leading to a warm reception in Moscow for the Republican candidate.

The curious omission by Trump is one of several actions or statements he has made on Russian affairs that led Jonathan Chait to write an article for New York magazine entitled, “Why Is Donald Trump a Patsy for Vladimir Putin?” Attempting to explain Trump’s statements of support for Russian President Putin, he cited evidence of “Russia’s campaign to cultivate influence in the West by corrupting members of the American media and political Establishment.”

Even more significant is the verdict delivered by New York magazine’s Chait regarding Trump himself. He says that while Trump’s style and bombastic statements on foreign policy and other areas are considered controversial by some, the much bigger scandal may be that “Trump is Vladimir Putin’s stooge.” The story carried the implication that Trump is acting like an agent of influence for Putin’s Russia.

Trump, however, continues to preach cooperation with Russia.

Both Kincaid and Loudon, who consider themselves right-wingers, saw some kind of “Russian collusion” in Trump in 2016.

For neocons, the biggest problem in the universe is not Saudi Arabia and its supreme Islamic terror that slaughters Christians around the world. It is not China, the current Soviet Union.

It is the Russian bogeyman!

No one wants to be near the bogeyman. And neocons — including Loudon and Kincaid — are making sure that no American may have the peace of mind to be near the bogeyman.

“Trump Cozying Up to Putin” is a charge that shows that U.S. left-wingers and U.S. right-wingers are colluded in their disposition to serve neocon ambitions.

What if Trump took Putin to his ranch to extend a hand of friendship? Would Democrats and Republicans accuse him of treason?

Ronald Reagan did just so. He took Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to his ranch, to feel his family life and his warm reception. If Reagan could do it for the leader of an evil empire of atheism and communism, why cannot Trump do much more for the leader of the largest Christian Orthodox nation in the world?

No one accused Reagan of collusion with the Soviet Union. But now there are widespread accusations, from neocons, of Trump’s collusion with Putin, and Trump does not have even taken Putin to his ranch!

But neocons see no collusion of America with Islamic Saudi Arabia and communist China. And they do not let U.S. left-wingers and right-wingers see it too.

By consistently harassing and bullying through baseless accusations of “Russian collusion,” the neocon-oriented left-wing and right-wing collusion was able to scare Trump from a necessary partnership of America, the largest Protestant nation in the world, with Russia, the largest Christian Orthodox nation in the world, against Islamic terror.

Essentially, Trump’s speech in 2016 was against neocons and supportive of a partnership with Russia, a stance opposed by both Bush and Obama. A stance opposed by all neocon-oriented left-wingers and right-wingers.

Today, for neocons’ joy, Trump has learnt how to behave like Bush and Obama on foreign policy issues. The bogeyman has returned!

American neocons cannot live, and they cannot let Americans live, without the Russian bogeyman.

It is impossible for Trump to fulfill his promise of draining the swamp and having a necessary partnership between Christian America and Christian Russia against the Islamic threat while the swamp’s neocon crocodiles call the shots.

Portuguese version of this article: Conluio esquerdista e direitista contra o plano original de Trump de parceria com a Rússia contra o terrorismo islâmico

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

What Is Neoconservatism? Who are the Neocons?

An Open Letter to President Donald Trump

Trump and Prophecies, and a New Model of National and World Leader

Why the American Left Hates Russia

Fall of anti-neocon advisers hinders Trump from pursuing his promised focus of partnership with Russia against Islamic terror; new neocon advisers urge the old, traditional focus against Russia

Is Trump a KGB Agent?

Ronald Reagan: A Christian Example against Communism

Condemnation of Former Socialist President for Corruption in a Traditionally Corrupt Brazil

By Julio Severo

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been condemned on corruption charges. His condemnation carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Lula

Lula, who served two terms in office (2003-2010), had campaigned on a platform of honesty, in a nation plagued, since its birth 500 years ago, by corruption.

There is a culture of corruption in Brazil that is evident not only in politics, but also in people’s behavior. When a truck capsizes in a crash, often the reaction of the local population is to loot it.

Lula promised to bring into earth a paradise of honesty in Brazil, but what he did was to capsize the Brazilian State in a greater moral and ethical disaster. He eventually brought into a spotlight his own corruption. He was condemned because he received millions of illegal dollars for personal use.

He was the man whom former U.S. socialist Barack Obama called “the most popular politician on Earth.” He was featured in Time’s 2010 The 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Yet, his socialist politics threw Brazil into a quagmire of moral and economic corruption. Not that Brazil had no corruption before. Brazil was essentially colonized by criminals from Portugal, which chastised the colonial Brazil with excruciating taxes, which continue an excruciating chastisement on Brazil even today.

Lula’s socialist politics, even though mocking U.S. imperialism (the conservative aspects of America), accelerated the Brazilian cultural and legal importation and assimilation of many left-wing items from the American culture, including on abortion and the homosexual agenda. In fact, the Lula administration was one of the strongest allies of the Obama administration at the United Nations on the defense of abortion and the homosexual agenda.

In 2006 the late Calvinist theologian Harold O. J. Brown invited me to write an extensive feature report in his The Religion & Society Report. The report, titled “Behind the homosexual tsunami in Brazil,” dealt with Lula administration’s obsessive politics advocating the homosexual agenda. Brown wanted my report to show to the conservative world the Lula that the mainstream media did not show. I disclosed then to the American conservative public who Lula actually was.

Besides, the Lula administration was hostile to Israel. Such hostility is not new in Brazil, where the Catholic culture traditionally does not sympathize with Israel. All the Catholic Latin America does not sympathize with Israel. So it is no surprise the first Latin American nation to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a country that is trying to leave Catholicism behind: Guatemala, which has an evangelical president and whose population is 50 percent Protestant (especially Pentecostal and charismatic).

Lula, who founded the Workers’ Party, with the kind assistance of Catholic bishops, has seen his party shipwreck in corruption. Several of the most prominent leaders of his party are in jail.

All of them deserve their fate. Socialism and corruption are inseparable.

Yet, in the context of the Brazilian culture, corruption, which exists long before socialism, is an epidemic problem in the behavior of politicians and the people, probably also fueled by the traditional heavy taxes and a Christian culture based on mostly nominal Catholic values.

Corruption is rampant in Brazil.

The successor of Lula in the Brazilian government was socialist Dilma Rousseff, a leading member of Workers’ Party. Her administration (2010-2016) was plagued by corruption and she was impeached in 2016.

Her impeachment was made possible because Congressman Eduardo Cunha, a Pentecostal, fought against her agenda and her corruption. While she was pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality, he was pro-life and pro-family.

She fell. And next, he also fell, and today he is jailed on minor corruption charges — which are vastly lesser than the charges against Lula and Rousseff. Yet, he was arrested as soon as he was accused, while Rousseff remains free, and Lula is not jailed, even though he has been very tardily condemned by a court.

Even Sergio Moro, the judge who has condemned Lula and Cunha, does not have escaped the blemish of “corruption.” Brazilian judges who have no house or apartment receive a housing aid from the government that, in Moro’s case, amounted to thousands of dollars. The problem is: He had a house during all the years he received the housing aid.

Lula cannot accuse Moro of corruption because during his two terms as Brazil’s president, he could have terminated the immoral house aid for judges, but he did not so. Besides, Moro’s moral “corruption” pales in comparison to Lula’s corruption.

Moro’s case perfectly exemplifies the Brazilian quagmire: Corruption in the Brazilian culture touches everybody and everything.

A perfectly honest judge would never accept a housing aid when he already has a house.

A perfectly honest people would never elect Lula.

Of course, as a Pentecostal, Eduardo Cunha also knew that corruption is wrong. His activism as a congressman was so fundamental for Rousseff’s impeachment and the promotion of pro-life values that the Workers’ Party labeled him in 2015 as the most dangerous man in Brazil! He was the only conservative leader mentioned nine times in a strategic guide of Workers’ Party on how to fight right-wingers, while Jair Bolsonaro was mentioned just one time.

Corruption is in the Brazilian DNA since Brazil’s birth. Even evangelical politicians do not escape its tentacles. In the traditional survival efforts to avoid excruciating taxes inherited from a Portugal that exploited and abused Brazil, Brazilians continue perfecting their survival efforts and the government continues exploiting and abusing Brazilians through excruciating taxes.

Cunha was quickly condemned because he had secret accounts in Swish banks — to protect his money from excruciating taxes. There are no Brazilians who do not want to be free from such oppressive taxes, which are also corruption. High taxes are a powerful enemy of the Brazilian economy, of the Brazilian people and free enterprise. Brazil is always in poor economic condition because of high taxes.

An American once asked me how to vote in this context, as corruption is rampant. I answered that there is no option: Or you elect a pro-abortion corrupt candidate or a pro-life corrupt candidate.

Corruption is in the DNA of the Brazilian politics, culture, society and, above all, the excruciating taxes.

Lula and his socialist comrades fully deserve their condemnations because they amplified the exploitation of an exploitative political system inherited from Portugal 500 years ago.

Do Moro and Cunha deserve a condemnation? I do not think so, because they just exemplify that corruption is so rampant in the Brazilian history and culture that no one goes untouched. They should be given an opportunity to correct themselves.

In comparison to Lula, whose corruption involved millions of dollars and sank Brazil in greater corruptions that deprived the Brazilian economy from billions of dollars, Moro and Cunha are saints.

Brazil, the largest Catholic nation in the world, colonized by criminals, needs to know the liberating power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to make Brazil free of spiritual and moral slavery among its people and politicians. Without Jesus, there is no solution.

About 500 years ago, the first Protestant service in the Americans was held — exactly in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was a privilege. But Catholics led by Jesuits and its machine of the Inquisition were quick to torture and kill the first Protestant missionaries to Brazil. They had been sent by Calvin.

About 400 years ago, the Netherlands formed its first Protestant colony in Northeast Brazil. In this colony, Catholics, Protestants and Jews enjoyed the first system of religious freedom in Brazil. But again Catholics, led by Jesuits and its machine of the Inquisition, were quick to kill and expel the Dutch “heretics,” and Brazil returned to its routine of corruption, excruciating taxes, Inquisition, persecution of the Jews and no religious freedom. The surviving Brazilian Jews, transported by the Dutch Protestants, headed to New York, where they established a flourishing Jewish community and the first robust financial system in New York.

Brazilian Catholics, oppressed by the Catholic Portugal, could have given these Jews and the Dutch Protestants freedom, and they would have established in Brazil, not New York, their financial system. The opportunity the Catholic Brazil rejected, the Protestant America welcomed and was blessed. Northeast is today one of the most cursed and poorest regions in Brazil.

Brazil could have become what America became: powerful. But Catholic corruption hindered Brazil from prospering.

In the Dutch Protestant colony in Northeast Brazil, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, erected in 1636, was the first synagogue built in the Americas, which was eventually closed, because the Brazilian Jews had to flee to New York to save their lives from the Jesuits and their Inquisition.

Even today, historians recognize that the most important progress Brazil had in culture, architecture, religious freedom and non-persecution of the Jews was during the Protestant Dutch administration in Northeast Brazil.

All that is left is a sad memory. Brazil has today the Museum of the Inquisition to remind Brazilians of the horrors Brazilian Jews suffered from Jesuits, and Pernambuco, a state in Northeast Brazil, has a Memorial Day of Jewish Victims of the Inquisition.

The Gospel brings transformation, but Brazil preferred corruption, excruciating taxes, Inquisition, persecution of the Jews and no religious freedom.

Who can say that Brazil does not deserve what it is suffering?

Corrupt Lula is a result of the Brazilian DNA.

Moro’s opportunism comes also from this DNA.

Cunha’s minor involvement in corruption has also the same cause.

In fact, Jair Bolsonaro, who is today a candidate for the Brazilian presidency representing right-wingers, said years ago: “I evade all taxes that I can.” He said that he did it for survival and also because politicians use taxes for corruption, and he advised the public to evade too. Cunha seems to have followed his advice.

My worry about Bolsonaro is not tax evasion, but the Inquisition and its horrible marks against the Jews in the Brazilian history. Bolsonaro has praised a revisionist of the Inquisition. This is very worrying because there is an increasing Brazilian movement of pro-Inquisition right-wing Catholics.

In the past, Bolsonaro praised Lula as an honest politician!

Bolsonaro was not arrested for his tax-evasion comment. But Cunha is jailed for it.

While Lula and Rousseff are not jailed for his big crimes, Cunha is. It seems that Cunha’s real “crime” — opposition to abortion and the homosexual agenda in a corrupt and politically correct Brazilian culture and be the number 1 enemy of Brazilian left-wingers — was worse than all Lula’s socialist crimes.

Portuguese version of this article: Condenação do ex-presidente Lula por corrupção num Brasil tradicionalmente corrupto

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

Lula, the Ugliest Face of “the Brazilian Way of Doing Things”

Amid Crisis in Brazil, Evangelicals Emerge as the Main Conservative Power

Psychotherapist warns of epidemic of working mothers producing mentally ill children

By Julio Severo

A leading psychotherapist in New York City in the last 25 years has warned that mothers who return to work too soon after having babies are damaging their children’s mental health.

In a video for the New York Post, Erica Komisar revealed how she’s seen an “epidemic level of mental disorders in very young children,” which she puts down to the “devaluing of mothering in society.”

The author of Being There, Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters explained that babies experience a rush of cortisol and a great deal of stress when they’re away from their mothers.

She argued that when working women return from work in the evenings they spend as little as 90 minutes with their babies before they put them to bed — and then find that they are unable to sleep through the night because they’re craving their mothers’ attention.

“Our society tells women go back to work, do what you want, they’ll be ok,” she explained. “But they’re not OK.”

“I was seeing it in my parent guidance practice. I was actually seeing an epidemic level of mental disorders in very young children who were being diagnosed and medicated at an earlier and earlier age.”

“I started looking at the research which backed up what I was seeing in my practice, which is that the absence of mothers on a daily basis in children’s lives was impacting their mental health.”

Referencing research that’s been done since the ‘60s, she said the only thing that reduces stress for babies is when their mothers return from work.

“I still say daycare is my least favorite option,” she said. “You’re taking a very young baby and exposing them to a great deal of stimulation and a great deal of fear.”

“When you take them out of their immediate environment and put them in a group with a lot of stimulation and a lot of people that’s not the natural environment for babies.”

“When we give mothers the option of being home in the first three years we increase the emotional security and reduce mental disorders.”

“On a societal level we need to recognize mothers’ work is valuable work. We emphasize material success and professional achievement, but there is no more valuable or more important work.”

Even though there is a high appreciation of mothers’ work in the homeschool movement, the voice of Erica Komisar, who is a psychotherapist outside the homeschool movement, reinforces the value of mothers’ presence in the lives of their children in their early childhood. She is a voice from the secular world confirming the same warnings that Christian homeschool leaders as Mary Pride have given for decades.

With information from DailyMail.

Portuguese version of this article: Psicoterapeuta alerta acerca de epidemia de mães que trabalham fora produzindo filhos mentalmente doentes

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

The prophet Elijah’s return: what the Elijah anointing represents to families and the political world in these last days

Facebook finally responds on censoring hot Bible verse

Bob Unruh

Facebook claims that censoring a Bible verse from a Christian writer’s page was a mistake, and it has since apologized.

But to whom?

Julio Severo, an activist whose Facebook pages have been attacked at least three times in just the last six months by Facebook itself, says he has not heard anything from the social-media giant.

WND reported Monday Facebook deleted a Bible verse, Leviticus 18:22, that Severo had posted.

That’s the one in which God instructs, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”

Some translations use the word “abomination.”

The verse is a favorite target for actor Ian McKellen, who has admitted that when he stays in hotels and motels, he takes out the Bibles from nightstands and “rips out pages that contain a certain passage from Leviticus.”

Facebook had sent a message to Severo that said: “We Removed Something You Posted. It looks like something you posted doesn’t follow our Community Standards. We remove posts that attack people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender or disability. Levítico 18.22: Não de deitarás com homem, como se fosse mulher; abominação é.”

WND’s initial request to Facebook for comment brought only an automated response.

Days later, Severo’s page again was active, and a Facebook statement to WND, released on condition that it be considered “on background,” said the post “was mistakenly removed by a member of our review team after we received reports that content in the post violated our Community Standards.”

“As soon as we were notified of the problem, we began to investigate and restored the content as soon as we were able to identify the mistake,” Facebook said. “The content has been restored since it didn’t violate our standards. We’ve informed Mr. Severo of the restoration and apologized for the error.”

But Severo told WND there was no apology. And he said there’s a longtime pattern of Facebook attacking him.

He said he was put on a 30-day suspension on Jan. 28.

It was while he was on suspension that the Bible verse issue arose.

And last summer, Facebook gave him another 30-day suspension for posting an article about homosexuality in Brazil.

At that time the company also admitted the suspension was a mistake but still left it in place, Severo said.

The linked article reported neighbors were fined $4,500 for calling a homosexual a name, but Severo said his posting “made it abundantly clear that I oppose name-calling and foul language.”

The company appears to be targeting Christians, Severo said, noting “pictures of the communist criminal Che Guevara, who murdered people, including gay men, remain unshakingly throughout Facebook’s social network, as if his filthy image did not deserve banishment for his crimes.”

To read the full text, click here.

Portuguese version of this article: Facebook finalmente responde sobre sua censura a versículo picante da Bíblia

Source: WND

Recommended Reading:

Famous Bible verse too sizzling for Facebook

Help! Facebook Is Censoring Bible Verses

Famous Bible verse too sizzling for Facebook

Bob Unruh

There are some who believe that America’s longstanding constitutional speech protections apply to them but not to others.

Take actor Ian McKellen, for example.

He’s admitted that when he stays in hotels and motels, he vandalizes the Gideon Bibles in the nightstands.

Not content with leaving ideas with which he disagrees concealed in a drawer, he says he takes out the Bibles and “rips out pages that contain a certain passage from Leviticus.”

The passage that annoys the homosexual actor, Leviticus 18:22, is one in which God instructs, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”

Some translations use the word “abomination.”

Now Facebook is taking McKellen’s position that freedom of speech is fine for some but not for others, according to Christian writter and blogger Julio Severo.

Severo said Facebook is punishing him for posting Leviticus 18:22 in Portuguese, “Não de deitarás com homem, como se fosse mulher; abominação é.”

A WND request to Facebook for comment generated only an automated response with instructions on how to get press releases, photos and other media resources.

Facebook sent a message to Severo that said: “We Removed Something You Posted. It looks like something you posted doesn’t follow our Community Standards. We remove posts that attack people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender or disability. Levítico 18.22: Não de deitarás com homem, como se fosse mulher; abominação é.”

The offending post originally was published in 2013, Severo noted.

“Willing or not willing, Facebook treated Leviticus 18:22 directly as a ‘attack’ on ‘people based on their … sexual orientation, gender.’ That is, Facebook treated the Bible as a criminal book!” Severo said.

“Does Facebook guidelines warn its users that the Bible is a criminal book? Does Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities warn its users that the Bible is a criminal book?”

He said he’s on a 30-day ban from Facebook over the issue.

“Facebook waited exactly five years to notify my exposé is ‘offensive,”‘ Severo wrote.

“What does Facebook have against the Bible and those mentioning its verses? What does Facebook have specifically against Leviticus 18:22, a famous verse in the Bible?”

Severo directed pointed questions at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom he described as a “Jewish American.”

“Does he approve what his company has done against the Jewish Scriptures? Is he aware?

“Or does he think that Facebook is now bigger, greater and more important than the holy Jewish and Christian Scriptures?”

He noted that President George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”

The company appears to be targeting Christians, Severo said, noting “pictures of the communist criminal Che Guevara, who murdered people, including gay men, remain unshakingly throughout Facebook’s social network, as if his filthy image did not deserve banishment for his crimes.”

To read the full text, click here.

Portuguese version of this article: Famoso versículo da Bíblia intolerável demais para o Facebook

Source: WND

Recommended Reading:

Help! Facebook Is Censoring Bible Verses

Billy Graham, the Best of America to the World

By Julio Severo

Billy Graham (1918-2018) was a Baptist evangelist whose worldwide crusades and role as a spiritual adviser to 11 U.S. right-wing and left-wing presidents from both political parties made him one of the best known religious figures of the world and the best representation of the U.S. Christian spirituality.

Billy Graham with U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton

The best of America to the world is American evangelicalism, which has been a powerhouse inundating the nations with the Gospel for 200 years.

No other U.S. leader represented so finely the original Christian essence of America as Graham did. No one represented so excellently U.S. integrity, virtue, character, goodness and generosity as he did. And, above all, for 80 years he proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ — the same Gospel that made America great in the past, the same Gospel that has been rejected in Hollywood and in the current American mainstream culture.

He was known as “America’s Pastor.”

He wrote 27 books, which included numerous best-sellers. Among them were his memoir, “Just As I Am,” released in 1997. His 1983 book “Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was on the New York Times best-seller list several weeks. In 1977, “How to Be Born Again” was released with the largest first printing in history, more than 800,000 copies. The book followed “Angel’s God’s Secret,” which sold more than 1 million copies in 90 days.

Graham also launched World Wide Pictures, producer and distributor of more than 130 films.

He was regularly listed in polls as one of the “Ten Most Admired Men in the World.”

In 1996, Graham received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award Congress can bestow on a private citizen.

More than anyone else, the magnetic, Hollywood-handsome Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivaled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the United States.

His Christian crusades took him from the frenzy of Manhattan to isolated African villages. According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) website, he preached to more people in live audiences than anyone else in history.

The BGEA put his lifetime audience at nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories, with “hundreds of millions more” viewing him on television, video, film and webcasts.

“My one purpose in life,” he said, “is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which, I believe, comes through knowing Christ.”

“I have found that when I present the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with authority and simplicity, quoting the Word of God, He takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart,” he said.

In 1957, he said, “I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ.”

His approach helped evangelicals gain the influence they have today. His stand on abortion and homosexuality, the most divisive issues in the U.S. culture, was conservative. He said,

“I do not feel the church as an organization should become involved in political matters… However, when political issues also have moral and spiritual dimensions… we have a responsibility to speak for the truth. I believe things like abortion are morally wrong… we have a responsibility to take a stand.”

“The serious student of the Bible cannot dismiss homosexual behavior simply as an alternate lifestyle. Nor can it be argued that homosexuals were ‘born this way’ or that such behavior is an illness.”

Yet, Graham avoided addressing these issues forcefully. In his biography “Billy Graham: His Life and Influence” (Thomas Nelson), David Aikman said,

“He has refrained from speaking out against homosexual behavior, and indeed even on the question of abortion has sometimes sounded distinctly equivocal. When asked on ABC’s Good Morning America show in September 1991 about his views on abortion, he responded, ‘There is a Christian position, I think. But I’m not prepared to say what it is.’ … When Bill Clinton won the presidential election in 1992, Graham was invited to lead prayers at the inauguration the following January, as he had done at almost every inauguration since 1952. Many evangelicals criticized him for doing so, on the grounds that Clinton was a liberal on moral issues and that he and his wife were pro-choice on the divisive abortion issue. Graham responded that he felt an obligation to pray for Clinton, even if he did not agree with everything the president said.”

Yet, his family legacy is impressive. His son Franklin Graham is a powerful conservative voice in America, speaking forcefully against abortion and the homosexual agenda. He has been a treasure for the U.S. conservative movement.

Billy Graham, a registered Democrat, also was noted for developing influential relationships with 11 presidents, from Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Dwight Eisenhower to Republican George W. Bush and to Democrat Barack Obama, who in April 2010 visited Graham at his mountaintop cabin in North Carolina. He consulted and prayed with all of them, but was careful not to endorse any candidate.

Graham described Republican Ronald Reagan as the president to whom he was closest.

George W. Bush recalls that at a time when he was a cynic and a heavy drinker with many questions about faith, Graham had an “enormous influence” on his life.

“Billy Graham helped me understand the redemptive power of a risen Lord,” he said in a Fox News Channel interview.

Graham also developed a friendship with Democrat Bill Clinton.

Clinton recalled attending a Graham crusade in Little Rock, Arkansas, when he was 13 and becoming so moved he sent a portion of his allowance to Graham’s ministry for years afterward.

Graham presided over the graveside services for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1973 and spoke at the funeral of Republican President Richard Nixon in 1994.

On September 14, 2001 he led a national prayer service at Washington National Cathedral after the 9/11 attacks.

In 1979, when Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority gathered strength, Graham refused to join.

“I’m for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice,” he explained. “We as clergy know so very little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future.”

“I have failed many times and I would do many things differently. For one thing, I would speak less and study more and I would spend more time with my family… Becoming involved in strictly political issues or partisan politics inevitably dilutes the evangelist’s impact and compromises his message. It is a lesson I wish I had learned earlier,” he said.

Graham developed a close friendship with Martin Luther King Jr., who credited him with helping reduce tensions between blacks and whites in the South.

“Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been,” King said.

Graham’s integrity was credited with salvaging the reputation of broadcast evangelism in the dark days of the late 1980s, after scandals befell TV preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, who were Assemblies of God ministers.

In 1948, he resolved, to avoid pitfalls of earlier evangelists, never to be alone with a woman other than his wife. Instead of taking a share of the “love offerings” at his crusades, he drew a modest salary from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He said,

 “We determined to do all we could to avoid financial abuses and to downplay the offering and depend as much as possible on money raised by local committees in advance. ... From that day on, I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife… We were determined to cooperate with all who would cooperate with us in the public proclamation of the Gospel and to avoid an anti-church or anti-clergy attitude.”

When he began his ministry, he took up the cause of fighting communism, preaching against its atheistic evils, and he called communists “Satan worshippers.” But in May 1982 he went to Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, to discuss world peace and nuclear disarmament at a conference run by the state-controlled church.

Many evangelicals criticized his trip to the Soviet Union. But Graham explained his actions.

“I learned that there are two sides to all these questions,” he said.

“Freedom is relative,” he said. “I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.”

“People of the West have various forms of democracy based on a belief in God as well as on a general acceptance of moral law. However, in practice we are beginning to resemble the Marxists, who have little respect for moral law or religion,” he said.

Graham had an opportunity that no pope ever had: He preached the Gospel in the Soviet Union.

“How marvelous it was to stand in a place like the Soviet Union and talk about the coming kingdom and to tell them that Communism will not win. I told them capitalism would not win either; it’s the kingdom of God that is going to win,” he said.

Billy Graham walked with and ministered to the leaders of the world. During his ministry years, he ministered to everyone, from royalty to the lowest of the low. He was a friend of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. The Queen of England loved his visits.

When Jim Bakker, a televangelist of the Assemblies of God, was in prison for fraud, Graham visited him, threw his arms around him and said, “Jim, I love you.”

Bakker remembered the visit:

“The day before, I had heard that he had been voted one of the top three most respected men in the world, and now he was in my prison, comforting me… The week I was released from prison, I was sitting in the Graham home eating chicken dinner. That first Sunday out of prison, I was surrounded by the Graham family.”

Graham was not afraid of touching the “untouchables,” even among evangelicals. Oral Roberts University (ORU), founded by charismatic televangelist Oral Roberts, was officially dedicated by a message of Graham in 1967.

In August of 2009, Roberts, who was one of the pioneers of the prosperity gospel, reflected on his friendship with Billy Graham:

“Billy was the most generous man in the ministry I’ve ever met. He accepted me as a brother. He said he fell in love with my ministry. I counted him the No. 1 evangelist in the world. We became very close friends.”

Upon hearing of Oral Roberts’ passing in December 2009, Graham said, “Oral Roberts was a man of God and a great friend in ministry. I loved him as a brother. We had many quiet conversations over the years.”

One recognized that he needed the other. Graham was also a friend of televangelist Rex Humbard. Their work was equally important. My mother understood the Gospel for the first time in her life by hearing Graham and next she was spiritually encouraged by the preaching of Rex Humbard and Pat Robertson. All of these American preachers were present on Brazilian television, some daily.

When Graham died in 2018, President Donald Trump said,

“The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man.”

Hollywood superstar Chuck Norris said, “My family’s hero: Billy Graham.”

Former U.S. president Barack Obama said,

“Billy Graham was a humble servant who prayed for so many — and who, with wisdom and grace, gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”

Former U.S. president George W. Bush said,

“A great man, a humble servant, and a shepherd to millions has passed on.”

Former Republican President George H.W. Bush said,

“Billy Graham was America’s pastor. His faith in Christ and his totally honest evangelical spirit inspired people across the country and around the world. I think Billy touched the hearts of not only Christians, but people of all faiths, because he was such a good man. I was privileged to have him as a personal friend. He would come to Maine to visit with Barbara and me, and he was a great sport. He loved going really fast in my boat. I guess you could say we had that in common. Then we would come home and talk about life. He was a mentor to several of my children, including the former president of the United States. We will miss our good friend forever.”

Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter said,

“Rosalynn and I are deeply saddened to learn of the death of The Reverend Billy Graham. Tirelessly spreading a message of fellowship and hope, he shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide. Broad-minded, forgiving, and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve.”

Graham ministered to everyone, from presidents to common people, from whites to blacks, from left-wingers to right-wingers.

He was indeed a Preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was the best of America to the world.

With information from WND (WorldNetDaily), FoxNews, Associated Press, Charisma News, Billy Graham in Quotes (Franklin Graham, Thomas Nelson), Billy Graham: His Life and Influence (David Aikman, Thomas Nelson), DailyMail and Franklin Graham.

Portuguese version of this article: Billy Graham, o melhor dos Estados Unidos para o mundo

Source: Last Days Watchman