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The past day and a half since Billy Graham’s passing, I have been asking the Lord what He wanted to say about the event, as I felt there was prophetic significance to it. I had something else planned for my weekly blog post, but held off on posting it as I wanted to hear clearly what God wanted to say, and to make sure that I wasn’t simply creating something out of my own mind.
From the time I heard about his death, a scripture verse has been rolling around in my mind. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24). Mark Chironna prophesied years ago that God was getting ready to release a multitude of people to do the work of the Kingdom (link to clip at the end of the article), and Benny Hinn stated that the sign this would be so would be Billy Graham’s death. Personally I don’t like the idea of using one person’s death as a sign of something, because God is anti-death. Nevertheless, the contents of John 12:24 matches with the word Mark Chironna/Benny Hinn gave—that ultimately this event would bear much fruit, multiplying into many seeds from the one.
The Lord impressed a second verse upon me as I was pondering and meditating on this matter: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins. (Mark 2:21-22)”
I believe this verse signifies that Reverend Graham’s death is the sign that an old wineskin has ended and a new one is being established. To be clear, it could sound dishonoring to Billy Graham to call him an “old wineskin”, but that isn’t where I am coming from, and is NOT what I am saying. Usually, wine gets better as it ages, so old wine isn’t bad—just different. Every year the same vine will produce different grapes, and those different grapes will be similar, but invariably have different flavor from the year prior. A new wineskin is designed for new wine not because it is better than the wine in years prior, but in order that the two would be compatible.
Reverend Graham was born almost a full century ago, having died yesterday at age 99. It is a fact that God used him mightily to bring many people into the Kingdom. My parents took me to one of his crusades at the Phillies Stadium in Philadelphia when I was a kid, and while I don’t remember much of the event, I do recall that hundreds of people streamed onto the field when he gave an altar call for people to come and get born again. We honor him for what he has done and for the legacy he has left with us, but we also look forward into the new that God has for us.
What I found most fascinating about the verses in Mark 2 is that I didn’t know the address of the verses when I first began to meditate on them, but when I looked them up I realized this section of verses began on 2:21—the same as the date of Billy Graham’s death, February 21! This, to me, is a clear prophetic confirmation that this is what the Lord is saying: Billy Graham’s passing is the sign of a new era..
We ought to spend some time praying for the Grahams as a family, as this must be a hard time for them, and even more so because it is so highly publicized. Let us pray that they would have grace and peace. We ought to pray and ask the Lord to help us step into the NEW that He has for us. As one era is drawn to a close and another era opens up, God is releasing new revelation to us as the Body of Christ. Finally, I encourage everyone to take some time to ask the Lord what new things He is releasing into our lives, and what this spiritual transition will look like for us personally.
Clips of other prophetic words on Billy Graham’s passing:
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