P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

NEVER ON THE SALE RACK #4

BOB BARKER LIVES FOREVER

Well, happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Ken and I, and the entire ministry family here at the Voice of Prophecy, want to wish each of you God’s abundant blessings on this holiday, if you’re celebrating with us here in America.  And around the world, even, why not make this special Thursday a time to pause and remember how much God means to you, and what a valuable free gift salvation is through Jesus Christ?

You know, as we gear up for that big holiday meal sometime later today, and as we continue here for today and tomorrow with our radio series honoring National Bible Week, I have to point you toward a television program that probably won’t be airing today.  Do you ever see The Price Is Right?  The CBS television network is still airing that classic game show, although today a football game or parade might knock it off the schedule.  But here’s our little bit of Thanksgiving trivia.  Did you know that The Price Is Right began as a television program 44 years ago this coming Sunday, November 26, back in the year 1956?  That’s right.  Some of you old-timers — and I recall this too — can remember Bill Cullen, who also hosted a memory game on television called Eye Guess.  He and announcer Don Pardo — remember him from the original Jeopardy! with Art Fleming?  — were the first team to run The Price Is Right a brief 44 years ago.  (Of course, I can’t help but point out that the Voice of Prophecy had already been on the radio for 28 years when that happened!)

Well, here’s the point as we consider the value of the Word of God and our radio series title for the week: NEVER ON THE SALE RACK.  Admittedly, those old programs, the first episodes for The Price Is Right, are so much different from what we see today on TV.  Black-and-white, shaky graphics, corny little cardboard signs thrust in front of a TV camera, bow ties, cheesy haircuts, elevator music from a little studio band.  And of course, the obsolete prices on the program itself, with cars selling for $1400 and a can of tuna for a nickel, probably. 

And yet here in 2000, that program is still going.  The concept still works.  It was and is, apparently, Nielsen-worthy entertainment television. 

And the same is true, I would dare to say, with this old Book we call the Bible.  Yes, if you browse through a King James Version, it might have a black-and-white feel to it.  There are stories in there that sound like they come from the 50s — and that would be 50 A.D.  And yet this franchise called the Word of God is an enduring classic, a phenomenon that continues to live and thrive here during National Bible Week in the year 2000, nearly twenty centuries after its final paragraphs were written.  What a Book this old Book is!  And just like CBS continues to create five new episodes a week of The Price Is Right, our heavenly Father continues to give us new life, new understandings, new insights year after year after year as we keep on tuning in to this special heavenly Guidebook.  I like how John the Revelator, in the last book of the Bible, has this to say about God:

“He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”

But here’s a follow-up thought for our consideration — and appropriately so on a holiday that is celebrated by such a mosaic, such a cross-section of different religious faiths.  Thanksgiving Day really belongs to everyone, and rightly so.  But you take this Book, the Bible, and the specifically Christian message it contains.  Friend, how can we have confidence that this Book and not some other, that this Faith and not some other world religion, is the answer here in 2000?  Back in 1956, there weren’t really that many game shows on television; The Price Is Right and a few others had the whole market to themselves.  Now there are a million channels to surf through, so many competing claims, so many ad sponsors screaming in your ear for a few seconds of your attention, as they try to sell you a new and improved Thanksgiving turkey or Toyota Tercel.

And in the world of faith, too, there are more gurus and more books than ever.  Is this Book, the Bible, which we say never goes on the sale rack, THE right Book?  Does it still stand tall above the competition, the wannabes that are out there?

There’s an old anecdote from Billy Graham’s biography, Just As I Am, which helps us hold on to the tried and true original recipe here on Thanksgiving Day.  Early in his career, as he was just getting through with seminary, and beginning his career as a pastor and as an evangelist, he was torn by the very kinds of doubts I’ve mentioned here.  His fellow Bible students were asking questions about Scripture.  Maybe it was outdated; maybe it was a defunct, old Price Is Right clunker that ought to be traded in for a bright, in-living-color replacement sitcom.  Solid friends, guys with good heads on their shoulders, were taking verses here and there, and even whole chapters and books out of the Bible, and saying with a dismissive wave: “Well, this part’s archaic.  And who knows if Paul ever really said THAT?  And these sermons by Jesus — we can’t take them literally.  How about a flood back in Noah’s time?  Well, probably folklore.”  And on and on they were going, taking this Book of books and tearing out major chunks.

And some of them said to young Billy Graham, “Get with it, friend. Nobody takes the Bible literally anymore.  Your ministry’s going to go nowhere if you don’t update your attitude.”  In fact, one good friend was heard to lament in specific terms: “Poor Billy.  I’m afraid he’s taken the wrong turn here . . . and he isn’t going to amount to anything.”

Well, that’s the irony of ironies . . . but the plain truth is that young Billy Frank was facing a crisis.  He did have doubts.  There were verses he couldn’t explain, passages he couldn’t adequately interpret.  Maybe this old Bible was too old, just a low-rated rerun, not worthy of prime time.  And then one night, he made his decision.  Talk about a turning point!  But Billy Graham, one star-filled night, after praying and agonizing, looked up at the heavens and told God this:

“Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word — by faith!  I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.”

That’s what he said.  That’s what he decided.  And some 60 years later you and I and God Himself can decide whether the ministry of Billy Graham amounted to much or not.

And in this world, friend, of one million channels on TV, one million channels of New Age thought, one million spiritual gurus telling us that truth is inside of ourselves, that I’m okay, you’re okay, cross or no cross, that all roads lead to salvation, and that if you just chant OM enough times, you will surely be saved . . . can we sweep all that aside and just hold on to one Book?  Billy Graham himself, many years after that moonlit night, has something to say about it:

“We live in a world of confusion,” he writes very near the end of his book.  “Competing and often contradictory intellectual and religious voices clamor for our attention and allegiance.  In the midst of so many crosscurrents, how can we assert that anything is true?  Is it not arrogance or narrow-mindedness to claim that there is only one way of salvation or that the way we follow is the right way?  I THINK NOT.”

It’s not arrogant, he says, to hold to the one way . . . if it’s the right way.  He continues to explain:

“After all, do we fault a pilot for being narrow-minded when he follows the instrument panel in landing in a rainstorm or at a fogbound airport?  No, we want him to be narrowly focused!  And do we consider it arrogant or narrow-minded when a doctor points us to the one medicine that will cure us of a particular disease?  The human race is infected with a spiritual disease — the disease of sin — and God has given us the remedy.  Dare we do anything less than urge people to apply that remedy to their lives?”

That’s tremendous, isn’t it?  And of course, that’s not just Billy Graham’s personal opinion.  The Bible itself applies the same level of crucial-ness to this decision.  Notice this in Second Timothy 3:14 and 15:

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

The next verse goes on to testify that ALL Scripture is inspired and useful for teaching, for instruction, for reproof, etc.  But friend, it’s this one Book that contains the plan of salvation.  This one Book testifies of Jesus Christ, the only way to heaven.  This one Book doesn’t just contain the Word of God; it IS the Word of God.  Parts of it do have that black-and-white, adjust-the-rabbit-ears feel to them, but friend, this is the program that always is and always will be “Must-See” TV.  Must-read reading, here on Thanksgiving Day and all year long. 

And remember, since it describes for you and for me and for all of our Thanksgiving guests a salvation through Jesus that is full and free, we could really say this as well: “The price . . . is right.”