Billy Graham: make now the time

Time is short, warns legendary evangelist Billy Graham.

What is your life? The Bible tells us you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

If someone had told me when I was 20 years old that life was very short and would pass just like that, I wouldn’t have believed it. And if I tell you that, you won’t believe it either.

I cannot get young people to understand how brief life is, and how quickly it passes. It seems like yesterday I was in school. 

Every one of us here has been given the same amount of time in a day. Fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day, 168 hours per week. The Bible tells us that 70 years are given to us, or 80 if our strength endures, and it’s interesting to me with all of our medical science we’ve never passed that magic mark. The average British male today lives 79 years and the average female 82.9 years. 

What a thing it is when you think that you have just one short life to spend and it will soon be over! I’d write down my priorities in life and I’d get committed to certain priorities. Now is the accepted time.

The things we ought to do, the classes we ought to take, the books we ought to read – do it now. The family that needs you, spend more time now. Write that letter home now that you’ve been meaning to write. Money you ought to give, give now. The time you ought to give for study, do it now. The people you ought to witness to, do it now. 

Every time the clock ticks, it seems to say now! Today if you hear his voice… there may not be a tomorrow for you and for me. Because there’s a warning to time – time is running out for all of us.

Time is too short for indecision and vacillation. Do not halt between two opinions. Fools say the time is long.

Every morning we have 86,400 seconds to spend and to invest. And each day the bank named ‘Time’ opens a new account for you and for me. It allows no balances and no overdrafts. If you fail to use the day’s deposits the loss is yours. The Bible says redeem the time because the days are evil, and the days in which we are living are very evil. 

If there was ever a time for the gospel that can transform the human heart it’s now. Jesus said as long as it is day, we must do the work of him that sent us. The night is coming when no one can work 

The night is going to come in your life. Yet there was a serenity about the work of the Lord Jesus. It’s the quality of life, not the length. Jesus only had 33 years, and it ended on the cross. To the world he was a failure, yet at the end of his life he said, “I finished the work that you gave me to do.” 

It doesn’t matter whether you live another year or two years or five years. Will your work be finished? Is there a quality to it? Is there a dedication to it? 

Fill your heart with the Word of God. I have found that those who know the Scriptures are the ones that have the power today. But we need men and women who walk with God. And if you do that, you too can finish the work that God gave you to do.

Billy Graham was one of the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century, preaching to live audiences of 210 million people in more than 185 countries, while his broadcast audience is estimated at more than two billion.

From New Life Newspaper issue 328.