You are my hiding place and my shield: I hope in your word.
– Psalm 119:114 (ESV)
It’s hard to measure how much we are influenced by others, which then shapes the course of our lives. Billy Graham was one such person in my own life.
I was surprised to learn of his passing this week just as many of us were. It’s not that I didn’t think at the age of 99 it wasn’t possible, but whenever some passes away, even when they are old, it still comes as a shock.
What did surprise me was that I had prepared this week’s Thinker Update about Billy Graham’s questions of doubt before the news of his death was known.
So let me tell you a little backstory of how Billy Graham has influenced my life. The first time I heard Billy Graham speak was in July 1973 when I was still in high school. Our church youth group went to see him at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. There were thousands of people in attendance that summer evening.
Besides all of the preaching throughout the world that he did, many people might not realize that in 1951, Billy and his organization started a motion picture and distribution company known as World Wide Pictures. In 1975 they produced a film called, The Hiding Place. It was based on the true story of a Dutch family, the Ten Booms.
They had a small watch repair business in front of their home. They decided to risk their own safety by hiding Jewish people from the Nazis during the WWII. Eventually, the family’s activities where discovered. They were arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Only Corrie Ten Boom would survive to later tell the story.
The title of the film, The Hiding Place had a two-fold meaning. The Ten Boom family created a secret room where Jewish people would hide until they could escape the Nazi threat and leave Holland. But the title was also was a scriptural message found in Psalm 119:114 which states, “Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word… ”
What does it mean to, “hope in thy word?” For me, in order to “hope in thy word” requires that the biblical events really happened.
I was 18 years old when The Hiding Placecame to our local theater. I saw the film three times in one week. That experience in the cinema, combined with the powerful story of the Holocaust, lit a spark in me that was the beginning of my interest in filmmaking and the stories related to the Bible. If Billy Graham and his team didn’t make The Hiding Place, I might never have become a filmmaker.
Eventually, I pursued my interest in filmmaking and started my own production/advertising company. At that time, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis as well as their motion picture arm, World Wide Pictures.
As an aspiring filmmaker, I knocked on their door looking for business, and after numerous attempts was given the assignment to make a series of Behind the Scenes TV Specials that would announce their upcoming films. I enjoyed doing this for several years and was a great training ground for documentary filmmaking.
WORLD WIDE PICTURES
Another connection I had was when World Wide Pictures closed down their Burbank Film Studio. I was able to purchase their lighting, 35mm & 16mm cameras and lenses. It’s very possible that these were the very cameras and lenses used to film Billy Graham Crusades around the world as well as some of their films like The Hiding Place, which so impacted my early interest in filmmaking. I used them to film scenes for Patterns of Evidence and I still use many of the lenses today.
GOOD NEWS IS COMING!
In 1996, Billy Graham was retiring from all of the worldwide travel. I was invited to be on an advertising committee and come up with a campaign for one of their last Crusades being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After some discussion with my team, we came up with a slogan. I went to the meeting to share the campaign idea with the director of the Minneapolis event.
To my surprise, there was a new person at the head of the conference table that I had not met before. His name was Ron Anderson, a big advertising agency executive with national credentials. He was a little intimidating.
The table was long and I was at the other end, with the director in the center.
He said, “Okay Tim what do you have?”
I said, “Good News is Coming!”
The room was silent. The director looked at Ron.
Ron, looking stern, spoke his first words, “That’s it? Where is your research?”
I said, “We don’t have any.”
Ron became even more serious as he peppered me with more research questions. I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.
Then I said, “Look, this is what we came up after a time of discussion and prayer.”
Then the room became quiet. Ron was thinking.
After a few more tense moments, he lifted his hand over his head and banged the table so hard the room echoed.
I thought, is this a good or a bad thing?
Ron said, “I LIKE it! We got a lot of bad news out there everyday on television and in the newspapers, and now with Billy Graham we’ve got, “Good News is Coming!”
I was greatly relieved and went on to work with Ron, a very creative man, to produce the commercials, which were used for other Crusades as well.
MISSING THE MAN!
Unfortunately, I was so busy one day, I sent one of my employees to a meeting at World Wide Pictures headquarters. Unknown to me, that was the day Billy Graham was in Minneapolis and I would have met him had I been there.
I greatly regret missing that meeting to this day. I just didn’t know at the time that he would be there.
New York City Regal Theater – Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus Fathom Event January, 2015.
(Copyright 2015 Patterns of Evidence LLC)
FATHOM EVENT
My last indirect connection to Billy Graham was in 2015 when we released Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus in theaters nationwide for a Fathom Event. We had a panel discussion after the showing, which was hosted by former Fox News moderator, Gretchen Carlson. Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of Billy Graham was on the panel and contributed her thoughts on the Bible and the Patterns of Evidence approach.
“Well I was raised in a Christian home and I’ve always believed Exodus happened because God’s word said it happened. So for me, in a sense, that’s good enough. The thing I love about this film, is that Tim Mahoney has taken history and archaeology and he’s looked at it through the lens of Scripture instead of looking at looking at the Bible through the lens of history and archaeology.” (Anne Graham Lotz)
JUST AS I AM
Recently, I was watching a Netflix series about the life story of Queen Elizabeth called, The Crown. It had an episode where Billy Graham and his team came to England for meetings and it had an impact on the country, as well as on Queen Elizabeth.
As I watched the show, I remembered that I was given Billy Graham’s autobiography, Just As I Am, by the head of World Wide Pictures, Barry Werner. I found it on my bookshelf and started to read about the events that were portrayed in The Crown. I was pleased to see they were fairly accurate, but there was much more to that story about how Billy Graham and his team struggled to gain acceptance in England.
As I continued to read his autobiography, I was comforted knowing that to doubt is human and that many others, great and small, have entertained doubts. Billy Graham, who touched the lives of over 200 million people worldwide with his evangelistic messages, tells about a time when he was uncertain.
Graham, who was the youngest college president in America, had just begun holding evangelistic campaigns when he was assailed by doubts about the inerrancy of the Scriptures. His doubts sprang from the misgivings of a close preaching and teaching colleague, Charles Templeton, and from what Graham described as “my own broadened reading habits.” Graham wrote that the works of German theologians Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr, “really made me struggle with concepts that had been ingrained in me since childhood.”
Graham said he never doubted the Gospel or the deity of Christ, but for the first time since his conversion he wrestled with the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. “Seeming contradictions and problems with interpretation defied intellectual solutions, or so I thought. Could the Bible be trusted completely?” he wrote.
This future “pastor to the presidents” dove into the matter, reading theologians and scholars on all sides of the issue, and also turning to the Bible itself. In the end, he made a decision to accept the Bible’s own testimony.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness …
– 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
– Peter 1:21 (ESV)
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
– Matthew 24:35 (ESV)
“The internal testimony of the Scriptures to their own inspiration and authority was unequivocal,” wrote Graham. “So was Jesus’ own view of the Scriptures.”
As with Billy Graham, I had a time in my own life with similar struggle with doubt. It happened while making this film about the Bible. The Good News for me is that now I know there is a remarkable pattern of evidence matching the claims of the Bible. And there’s more to come!
I look forward to continuing to share all I have learned along the way and all the new discoveries yet to be revealed.
Keep Thinking.
TOP PHOTO: Billy Graham (credit: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)
