Charles, Billy, and the Bible

Charles - Part 1

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 right - 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.”

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[wn]. Come down. . . .”

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Billy - Part 1

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 diner 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”.

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 evangelist 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.

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Charles - Part 2

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 6 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 su...