A Visit With Bill Bright During His Last Days (Part 1) - Bill Bright

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A Visit With Bill Bright During His Last Days (Part 1) - Bill Bright
A Visit With Bill Bright During His Last Days (Part 2) - Bill Bright
A Visit With Bill Bright During His Last Days (Part 3) - Bill Bright

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Lessons Learned

Day 1 of 3

Guest: Bill Bright

From the series: Reflections of Life: A Personal Visit With Bill Bright

Bob: Throughout his life and his ministry, Dr. Bill Bright has had a single focus – The Great Commission – that Christ would send us into all the world to preach the Gospel to all men. Here is Dr. Bill Bright.

Bill: The average Christian does not realize that his loved ones, neighbors, and friends, are going to hell. Now you say – would a loving God send people to hell? No – God has put a cross at the entrance of hell, and the only way anybody can go to hell is to reject God's love and God's forgiveness.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, February 19th. Our host is the Executive Director of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Today we talk with the man who has made The Great Commission his life's objective, Dr. Bill Bright.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. It was not long ago that you and I had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with a Christian leader and, frankly, two years ago if you had said we would have had that opportunity in the fall of 2002, I would have said it won't happen, because the Christian leader, in this particular case, Dr. Bill Bright – well, everyone thought that he would not live much longer.

Dennis: Right, and there were a number of us who wrote Bill letters, tributes; we made phone calls. I still remember a great conversation I had with him that I thought would be my last, and he asked me to speak at an event, and I thought, "You rascal, you've done it again. You've gotten one more thing out of me. You're not even going to be here then," but Bill Bright is a great man. His life is not over. He is showing us how to finish strong, all the way to the end.

He only has about 40 percent of his lung capacity due to the disease that he has, but he's writing books, he's doing interviews, he's taking a limited number of speaking engagements and, Bob, I came to you a few months ago, and I said, "It's time we went to Orlando and sat in Bill Bright's living room and talked with him again. He's now lived for a couple of years longer than either you or I thought he would. Let's go find out what he's learned."

Bob: And that conversation that we had in his living room in Orlando was just a relaxed conversation where we peppered him on a variety of subjects, but it was so refreshing.

Dennis: Yeah, and it was really a sweet time. For those who don't know who Bill Bright is, and there are some who perhaps don't – Bill is the founder and past president of Campus Crusade for Christ. He is the author of the "Four Spiritual Laws", which has – I suppose there are billions of "Four Spiritual Laws" that have been reproduced around the world – people sharing their faith. Bill has been used mightily by God to touch the world, to touch nations, but he also was used mightily in my own life and yours, too, Bob, and I think by the time our listeners listen to this interview, along with the next couple of days, Bill Bright will touch you deeply as well. Let's listen to Dr. Bill Bright.

Bob: You've talked about being on your way to the grave. You know, there are some who are surprised that we're even having this conversation today, because there was a time just a few years ago I remember hearing you and Brant Gustafson together talking about being ready for heaven and, of course, Brant is there, you're here. How have you processed all of that over the last several years?

Bill: Well, just before Easter a year ago, I came home from California to die. I said to Vonette that I was choking and fainting and all the first signs of what they told me what happened at Mayo's and the Jewish Institute in Denver and my local doctor –"What you have is horrible." He tried to get my attention, and when I received word I was dying, I said, "Praise the Lord," because, you know, you can't lose with a believer. It's win-win. If you die, you go to heaven; if you stay here, you keep on serving Him. So I had begun to praise the Lord. He thought I'd lost my sanity, and he said – then he really began to rebuke me – he said, "You have a horrible disease. You're going to die the most horrible kind of death" – he's a heart specialist and been my doctor for 30 years – and he felt he could tell me that. Most doctors wouldn't. And he said, "It's worse than cancer, it's worse than heart trouble, you're just going to choke to death."

And so I was choking, and I came home to die. So when I got off the plane, a couple – Jack and Pearl Galpin [sp] had befriended this Russian doctor, and they insisted that she come and examine me. Now, here's a Ph.D, a research scientist, seven years in charge at Chernobyl, and she had no place to live except the home of the Galpins, who befriended her. So she came to live in our home, treated me three times a day, and by the end of the 30 days, I began to have new life, and I’m awed at how good I feel.

Dennis: You know, there's a story I want to just tell real quickly, because I want our listeners to know this – there's a real sense in which God used a Russian doctor in your life to keep you alive, and that really can be, I think, tied back to something you did years ago with your retirement savings. You actually – you and Vonette – actually gave away your retirement to start an outreach in Moscow when the Iron Curtain dropped. You gave away your retirement, and now here, at the end of your life, what does God use to bless you back, but a Russian whose country had benefited from your sacrificial act of giving, and I think, you know, that's the kind of thing that God in heaven, I think, must have a big grin about.

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