The Real Meaning of The Cross: Billy Graham (Transcript)

Full text of renowned evangelist Billy Graham’s sermon titled ‘The Real Meaning of The Cross’ which was delivered in Hartford, Connecticut in the year 1985.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Billy Graham – Evangelist

One of the television networks ran a series of five programs on the early days of Christianity. And they included the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One of the most graphic pictures I have ever seen.

And among all the emblems of the world, none is admired, glorified and worshiped as the cross. It was the instrument of Christ’s suffering and death. And it’s also the instrument of our salvation.

HISTORY OF THE CROSS

The history of the cross is very interesting. Because it goes back to India, it goes back to China, long before Christ ever came. And the victim, as you know, was fastened to the cross by cords, or his hands were nailed and he was left to die. And the heat of the sun, the pull of his body, and the torture that he’d had before he was on the cross, it took sometimes, two and three days, and sometimes a week for a person to die on a cross.

The most terrible, the most awful, the most painful way to die that we can imagine.

But by the time of Constantine, in the fourth century, and he had become a Christian or a professing Christian, as an instrument of torture it had been abolished. And later Christian nations started to use the cross as a symbol of Christianity. It was embossed upon their chariots, upon whatever they had. And the cross became the symbol of everything that Christianity stood for.