American evangelist Franklin Graham's father, Billy Graham, is arguably one of the most popular Christian preachers the world has ever known, and Franklin has definitely learned a lot from his father and even followed his footsteps.
However, his deep-rooted Christian faith cannot be attributed to his father alone, since his mother Ruth played an equally important role in raising her son and his siblings to become God-fearing individuals. Ruth passed away in 2007 due to pneumonia, and her death broke the entire Graham family's hearts. But Franklin still remembers his mother with great fondness, and recalls everything she had taught him.
One of the things he thanks his mother for is the value of God's Word. "My mother always insisted that I memorize Scripture — and I'm glad she did," he wrote on his Facebook page. "She said that if we didn't have the Word of God with us, we could always have it in our hearts."
One of the first passages he memorized was Psalm 1. It's a very long passage, but Franklin has no problem reciting and sharing it with others.
It says: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night..."
Franklin definitely has a strong voice against the ungodly, and just recently, he urged Christians not to conduct business anymore with companies that are promoting same-sex marriage. He slammed Wells Fargo for using a same-sex couple in its advertising, and Tiffany & Co. for advertising rings for gay couples.
"It has dawned on me that we don't have to do business with them. At the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, we are moving our accounts from Wells Fargo to another bank. And guess what—we don't have to shop at Tiffany & Co., there are plenty of other jewelry stores. This is one way we as Christians can speak out—we have the power of choice," he said.
