Franklin Graham III, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, was criticized in 2009 for collecting a full-time salary from Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief agency, while receiving a full-time salary from Billy Graham’s Evangelical Association.
He earned more than $1.2 million that year.
Graham acknowledged that his compensation total “looks terrible” and that “people won’t understand it.”
What part of that was so hard to understand – the head of a relief agency making $536 thousand a year or the son of one of the beloved evangelists in history exploiting his father’s name for another $669 thousand a year?
https://www.cleveland.com/nation/2009/10/franklin_graham_moves_to_addre.html
An embarrassed Graham temporarily gave up his salary with the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, but then soon began collecting it again.
The Charlotte Observer reported that Graham 2013 compensation from Samaritan’s Purse “made him the highest-paid CEO of any international relief agency based in the U.S.”
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article30505932.html#storylink=cpy
To Graham, greediness is next godlessness.
How did Graham justify his higher salary with the teachings of The Bible?
If need be, here are a couple Biblical verses he could quote:
Jesus, of course, turned the tables on the money changers in the temple.
Or how about this one from Matthew 19: 24.
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019%3A23-24&version=NIV
Graham and Trump have much in common.
Both men owe their wealth to their father. They owe their values and sense of priorities to God knows what.
How does Graham, as a Christian, justify his close relationship with a deviant sociopath like Donald Trump?
God only knows.
Graham attributed Trump’s election as president in 2016 to God.
“I could sense going across the country that God was going to do something this year,” Graham said. “And I believe that at this election, God showed up.”
God may work in mysterious ways but this is crackers, Graham.
There are probably dozens, perhaps hundreds, of passages in The Bible that apply to people like Trump – perhaps dozens of passages in Proverbs alone:
“The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2012%3A16&version=ESV
“Be not envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them, for their hearts devise violence, and their lips talk of trouble.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2024%3A1-2&version=ESV
“Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2026%3A24&version=ESV
Graham defended Trump against dozens of women who accused him of sexual misconduct by saying: “These alleged affairs, they’re alleged with Trump, didn’t happen while he was in office.”
https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/franklin-graham-says-donald-trump-is-a-changed-person
So the measure of a man is solely defined by what happens when they’re president?
Ten Republicans joined Democrats in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection” for exhorting a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in hopes of changing the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Graham compared those Republicans who voted to impeach Trump with Judas Iscariot.
https://time.com/5932014/donald-trump-christian-supporters/
When Trump urged his followers to go to U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” to keep him in the White House, all hell broke loose in the worst case of mob violence in Washington D.C. since the capital was attacked by the British during the War of 1812.
Graham told USA Today that he thinks Trump “regrets” his rhetoric that led up to the insurrection.
Not so.
Trump called his rhetoric “totally appropriate.”
