Paula White, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, and Eddie Long are all being scrutinized for lavish life-styles under the suspicion that ministry funds have been siphoned off to support personal extravagance.
What a contrast to one of history's greatest evangelists, Billy Graham, whose humble and humbling message of Christ has saved millions around the world.
In his biography several years ago, Graham made it clear from the beginning that money was to be handled by others, and that he would never be alone with another woman other than his wife.
In a LA Times article (May 28 07) about the new Billy Graham Library and Museum in Charlotte, NC:
As Graham finished the tour, his son Franklin recalled, Franklin asked how he had liked the tribute. The gruff reply: "Too much Billy Graham."
With Graham, at 88, in failing health, his family and friends have struggled to find an appropriate way to commemorate and carry on his work. A humble man who never saw a need to upgrade his cheap suits or his modest mountaintop home, Graham at first shrank from the idea of turning his life story into a tourist attraction.
Only when he was convinced that the project would serve as a perpetual crusade -- a tribute not to him but to Jesus Christ -- did Graham give it his blessing.
"The last thing my father wanted was to have a monument to himself," Franklin Graham said.
A lesson for the Gang of Five under investigation.
