20世纪美国最具影响力的传教士比利·格雷厄姆 | 经济学人讣告

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The hour of decision

抉择时刻

英文部分选自经济学人20180301讣告

The hour of decision

抉择时刻

Billy Graham died on February 21st

比利·格雷厄姆于2018年2月21日去世

America's most influential preacher of the 20th century was 99

20世纪美国最具影响力的传教士享年99岁

WHEN the moment came, Billy Graham did not feel any special emotion. The woman next to him had tears streaming down her face, but he was calm, full of peace, as he returned to his seat. He had committed himself to Christ as his Lord and Saviour at the invitation of Preacher Mordecai Ham at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was 15, just a farm boy with poor grades, and already the Lord was preparing mighty works in him. But He worked quietly. Three years later, when the calm had worn off and the wrestling had started, the Holy Spirit moved in him again as he wandered disconsolate one night across a golf course in Florida. At the edge of the 18th green he was urged to kneel, pray and accept the call to ministry. Again, there were no signs in the heavens. But this time the tears that flowed were his.

这个时刻到来时，比利·格雷厄姆没有特别的情绪。他旁边的女人泪流满面，但是他波澜不惊，淡然地回到自己的座位上。在北卡罗来纳州夏洛特的一次集会上，他受牧师末底改·汉姆的鼓舞，加入基督教奉基督为他的上帝和救世主。那时他15岁，来自农村，成绩不好，但上帝已在冥冥之中对他委以重任。但是他一直默默耕耘。三年后，那份平静渐渐褪去，他的内心开始蠢蠢欲动。一天晚上，他郁郁寡欢地在佛罗里达的一个高尔夫球场独自徘徊，圣灵再次住进了他心中。当他走到最后一个球洞时，一股冲动让他跪地祷告并听从内心的召唤。又一次，天堂没有任何征兆。但是这一次泪流满面的是他。

注：A standard round of golf is eighteen holes, with the “green” being the flat area around the hole (where you're trying to get the ball to land). So “the eighteenth green” is, figuratively, the final round, or the end of the game.

On the strength of that promise made to the Lord, who now controlled each step of his life, he set out to preach the Gospel in every land. Over more than half a century, as he changed from a strapping, vigorous, shiny-suit evangelist to a frail patriarch with a white mane, around 215m people in 185 countries heard him live at more than 400 Crusades. In 1957 he packed Madison Square Garden every night for 16 weeks, and in Seoul in 1973 he drew a crowd of more than a million. In Moscow in 1992, so hungry for God, 155,000 came to hear him.

向上帝许下的承诺，给了他力量，如今掌控着他生命中的每一步，他前往全球各地传福音。在大半个世纪里，他从一个魁梧有力，衣冠楚楚的福音传道者变成了一个垂垂老矣、满头白发的主教。他做过400多场布道，全球185个国家，大概两亿一千五百万人听过他的现场布道。1957 年，麦迪逊广场花园连续 16 周每晚都挤满了人。1973 年在首尔，他吸引了超过一百万观众。1992 年在莫斯科，有十五万五千人如饥似渴地前来聆听他的布道。

Technology advanced as he did, spreading the message. From 1947 to 2008 around 2.2bn people watched the Crusades on television, video or webcast, or listened to his “Hour of Decision” radio talk, which aired weekly for more than 60 years. His magazine, Decision, had 2m subscribers. All this was God’s wondrous doing, not his. And the number that really mattered was that over his years of ministry, when he issued the Invitation to come forward, at least 3.2m people walked to the Cross to receive Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

在他不断布道的同时，科技也在不断进步，传播基督教思想。从 1947 年到 2008 年，约有 22 亿人通过电视、视频或网络观看他的布道，或收听了他的《抉择时刻》广播谈话节目，该节目每周播出，连续播了 60 多年。他的杂志《抉择》拥有两百万订阅者。这所有的一切都是神迹，非他个人的功绩。在他这么多年履行神职中，当他向众人发出邀请，至少有三百二十万人走到十字架下，奉耶稣基督为他们的救世主，这个数字不容小觑。

His way of preaching was not hellfire and brimstone in the old revivalist style, though it started that way at the Florida Bible Institute, where he would go into the swamps to shout at alligators with a voice already resonant from practising Tarzan yells as a boy, the pulling voice that preachers needed. As he got better at it—working up from a basement church in Illinois to local radio broadcasts to his first revivalist meetings, in two old circus tents in Los Angeles in 1949—his delivery modulated, but not his urgency. Men and women had allowed their souls to shrivel up in sin. They had forgotten God. Yet God had sent His only Son into the world to save sinners. Jesus had hung, and bled, and died on the Cross, for them. When were they going to give their lives to Him? When would they repent and earn God’s forgiveness? Now was the time, today! For at any moment God might call them to His judgment.

他布道并不像旧时宗教复兴运动者那样传播炼狱之苦，虽然他在佛罗里达州圣经学院就读时确是那样。就读期间，他会跑到沼泽里对着鳄鱼大喊大叫，小时候就会像人猿泰山那样大哄大叫，因而彼时他的嗓音已经十分洪亮，这种吸引人的声音也正是传道所需。在传道上，他渐入佳境，从伊利诺伊州的一个地下室教堂，到地方电台广播，再到1949年洛杉矶两个旧马戏团帐篷里举行的第一次复兴运动者集会，他的传道的方式有所变化，但他的紧迫感却始终如一。世间男女让自己的灵魂在罪恶中逐渐枯萎。他们已然忘记了上帝。然而，上帝派耶稣来到世间，救赎罪人。为了他们，耶稣被钉在十字架上，流血死去。但他们什么时候才能把自己的生命交给祂？他们什么时候才会进行忏悔，获得上帝的宽恕？时间已到，就在今天！因为上帝随时都可能召唤罪人，接受审判。

This was not a political message. “Evangelical” simply meant, of the Gospel. Yet it drew in presidents, not least because a Godly America was bound to prevail against Soviet evil. He prayed beside the deathbed of Eisenhower and the sickbed of Johnson; put his strong arm round Nixon’s shoulders after his early election defeats; helped George W. Bush to give up drink, and told all of them that God’s grace alone, not any works of theirs, would assure them of Heaven. Through all this he struggled not to be partisan, kneeling down (and playing golf) with Republicans and Democrats alike and managing, too, to like Kennedy, though he had not wanted this Catholic in the White House. When the evangelical right, inspired by him, rose up in power, he kept his distance.

“福音”无关乎政治。"福音派 "所指只是《圣经》里的福音书。但总统们也信仰上帝，尤其是因为敬畏上帝的美国一定会战胜邪恶的苏联。他为艾森豪威尔做了临终祷告，在约翰逊的病床旁虔诚祈祷；尼克松早期选举失利后，他有力地搂住了尼克松的肩膀；他帮助小布什戒酒，并告诉他们所有人，只有上帝的恩典才能保证他们上天堂，这和他们的任何行为都无关。他一直都尽力避免偏袒某个党派，与共和党人和民主党人一起下跪（也一起打高尔夫球），并且尽量喜欢上肯尼迪，虽然他并不希望这个天主教徒入主白宫。而当福音派的右派在他的激励下登上权力高峰时，但他却保持了距离。

Because his mission was to save souls, he was bound to love everyone in Christ. The ground at the foot of the Cross was level. When he received Him he began to see people without colour, which in the Deep South astounded him. It led him to tear down the ropes separating whites from blacks in his early southern Crusades, and to a friendship with Martin Luther King that extended to bailing him out of jail. With other groups, God’s command was harder. At times both Jews and Muslims bothered him. As for homosexuals, though he refused to join the ultra-conservative Moral Majority, he prayed they would repent of their perversion.

这是因为他的使命是拯救灵魂，爱基督心中的每一个人。十字架下众人平等。接受基督为主与救主后，他便无视肤色，平等待人，而在美国南方的遭遇也令他震惊。这种观念让他在早期南方布道时扯掉隔离白人和黑人的绳索；和马丁·路德·金交友，并助他逃离牢狱之灾。然而对于其他群体，上帝却要严厉得多。他时常为犹太人和穆斯林的事犯愁。至于同性恋，尽管他拒绝加入极端保守的“道德多数派”，仍祈祷他们对自己与常人不同的性取向忏悔。

The Bible was clear on that point. God’s inspired Word defined marriage as between a man and a woman and stipulated, too, that the man should lead and the woman should follow. So while he travelled the world, bringing the Good News to its leaders, his wife Ruth held everything together at home. And their marriage endured, built on the rock of daily prayer and Bible readings. The children rebelled, then returned to Christ. He was not a fundamentalist, not a Bible-pounding Old Testament man, but handed out the Gospel of John at his Crusades. John’s message was redeeming love, pure and simple.

圣经对待性取向问题态度明确。上帝的真道将婚姻限定在男女之间，同时规定夫唱妇随。因此，当他周游世界，将上帝旨意带给信众首领时，他的妻子露丝在家里操持家务。他们持久的婚姻建立在每日祷告和阅读圣经的基础上。孩子们起初叛逆，后来回归基督。他不是原教旨主义者，不认为旧约才是圣经的核心，在布道时也和信众分享约翰福音。约翰福音教世人爱、纯和真。

On the mountaintop

山巅之上

In his heart he would have been quite happy as the pastor of some little church up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he loved to walk and talk with God. He did not need the global adulation or his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. All he needed was Jesus Christ. But God had mysteriously planned his life otherwise. And he trusted that, sinner though he was, the Holy Spirit would testify to his faithfulness; and that after all his travelling he would have the assurance of Heaven, truly home.

内心深处，他更愿意在蓝岭山脉上的小教堂做一名牧师，他可以在山间行走，与上帝交谈。他既不需要得到世人的吹捧，也不想在好莱坞星光大道留下自己的星光。他只想要耶稣基督，但是上帝对他的人生秘密地做了另外安排。尽管自认是个罪人，但他相信圣灵将见证他的忠诚；毕生周游布道之后，他确信自己将升入天堂，那里才是真正的家。

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