The day before the Republican National Convention commenced here in New York City last summer, I was sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Park Row and Beekman St. (near City Hall), when I observed a woman next to me using a newspaper reporter's notepad as she discussed deadline copy with someone over her cell phone.

Upon inquiry, I learned she was with the Dallas Morning News and had been sent to cover the convention along with a large corps of reporters, editors and photographers from her paper. Her assignment was to cover the protests and she showed me a comprehensive, color-coded typewritten list of planned demonstrations that must have had 20-30 different names on it. We even talked about the difficulty in trying to gauge ahead of time which protests would be the most newsworthy.

Examining the local newspaper coverage of Billy Graham's visit to New York last weekend for his three-day "crusade" in Flushing Meadows, Queens, I can report there was little if nothing to suggest to the reader anybody at all organized to express opposition to the religious agenda of Graham, whom the New York Times called both "America's spiritual leader" and the "global ambassador for Christ."

I only know myself there were organized protesters as a result of a phone call last Sunday morning from a friend who informed me he had attended the Graham event the night before and that there was a vocal group of people on the grounds, arguing Graham "violated the spirit of the Bible," as my friend put it.

For all the media's rehashing of Graham's civil rights record and his anti-Semitic remarks to Nixon over the phone, there was not a mention anywhere on how Graham, for decades (at least since the '60s), has been labeled an apostate teacher by sincere Bible-believers, some of whom have even written books castigating him and his bad doctrine.

In fact, in all the media's endless references to Graham as a friend and "spiritual advisor" to presidents since Dwight Eisenhower, not once was it revealed that President Harry Truman actually denounced Graham as a "counterfeit" and publicity seeker.

The big elephant in the room, as media-types like to refer to these days, was how Graham, in interview after interview, avoided any clear gospel presentation even as he stressed ad nauseam that he wasn't in N.Y.C. to discuss any potentially divisive political issues but to "proclaim the gospel."

Here's one example from an exchange last Monday on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (Matthews, by the way, shamelessly gushes on his show that the "Reverend Billy Graham, perhaps the best known evangelist in history, since the Christian era, and he talked to me right before he went on stage"):

MATTHEWS: If a person—well, millions of Americans see these movies every night. If people go to movies like "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," how is that a stepping stone to appreciating Jesus Christ?

GRAHAM: Well, that helps them to think about God and right and wrong and the need for something else, which is found in Christ, I think. I may be wrong, but I think.

MATTHEWS: I wonder, are we creating false gods? I mean, I—I grew up with movie stars. I love Cary Grant, but he was a movie star. (Note: Graham had just mentioned that he was a friend of Grant's)

Is Hollywood today creating people that are, like, bigger than movie stars? They're almost like icons, like Madonna, Angelina Jolie and people like that? Are they distractions?

GRAHAM: To some extent. There is a lot of furor around Tom Cruise right now and the Scientology.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

GRAHAM: All of that. I think that causes people to think and discover for themselves. And I hope they'll go on thinking and come to the point where they need to realize that they need Jesus.

MATTHEWS: Do you think that Scientology is a religion?

GRAHAM: I don't know. Tom Cruise is trying to explain it to everybody.

MATTHEWS: Well, a lot of people think it has a lot to do with people's success in Hollywood, is being into that religion sometimes.

GRAHAM: Well, I don't know about that.

MATTHEWS: You don't know.

Obviously even Matthews is trying to get Graham to say something—anything—in defense of sound biblical truth as the top Christian spokesman given the national spotlight.

Why Graham would even bring up Scientology, and then talk about it in such a non-committal fashion, is extremely telling.

Of course, in one of his Flushing Meadows' addresses he did the same thing with rock star Madonna, a renowned adherent of Kabbalah who even opened a school here in Manhattan to indoctrinate youngsters into her occultic Jewish mysticism steeped in ritual magical texts.

As someone who lives on the same street only several blocks west of the Scientology "embassy" here in Manhattan, I DO know with absolute certainty it's a dangerous religion bent on converting well-meaning individuals thinking "about God and right and wrong and the need for something else," as Graham puts it.

They regularly pass out tracts for Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" in the intersections surrounding Times Square. Following 9/11, they organized en masse at the World Trade Center site to distribute water bottles to relief workers as they tried to play on their grief by pushing Scientology propaganda

Practiced in more than 100 countries in 30 different languages, Scientology has more than eight million practitioners worldwide.

According to the book, "Bruce and Stan's Guide to Cults, Religions, and Spiritual Beliefs," Scientology is a "mind-science religion" that says the world's suffering and sickness is an "illusion and merely the result of bad thinking."

"The mind sciences are full of compassionate, spiritually sensitive people who want to feel better about humanity and our world, so they deny the reality of a personal God and substitute the notion of an impersonal life force," explains authors Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. "It's not what you think that counts, but how you feel.

"It's easy to see how appealing this belief is in our culture, and you don't even have to be a member of a mind-science church to buy into it. As an example, just look at the tremendous popularity and appeal of the Star Wars culture. We're not saying that George Lucas is an advocate of the mind sciences, but where did the idea of the 'Force' come from? This is not a personal God, but rather an impersonal, universal life force that you access by feeling it. Luke Skywalker wasn't successful until he could 'feel' the force. Only then could he hit the target and save the world."

Also during Graham's Queens crusade, he talked affectionately about the time Bono, front man for the rock band U2, actually composed a song called "Yahoo" while visiting the Graham household.

Bono, who has performed live in red horns with his Satan persona he calls Mister MacPhisto, has "always been fascinated with the dark side of life," according to an article on the website U2 Sermons. "(The tune) Exit, for example, is so dark that Bono has difficulty singing it live as it makes him feel so evil. But even Exit sounds happy beside some of the songs off Achtung Baby."

Just the fact Graham authorized the 1991 biography, "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story," even asking by name for William Martin as author, readily tells you where he's at. Any sincere Bible-believer knows there are no prophets speaking for God today and to refer to yourself as such is an abomination.

In an op-ed column from last Sunday's New York Times, journalist Kenneth Woodward writes, "When Mr. Graham invites his audience to 'listen to the voice of God,' it is his voice they hear reading and interpreting Scripture and thereby making Christ come alive. Once, while watching Mr. Graham watching himself preach on videotape, I asked him what he experienced. 'I think of him,' he said of his image on the screen, 'as another person speaking, because the spirit of God begins to speak to me through him.' "

There are dozens and dozens of other alarm-sounding statements by Graham that any newspaper reporter even slightly interested in a balanced story could unearth without much effort. In one website alone, Biblical Discernment Ministries at www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/, I found a gold mine.

Here are just some examples:

-- In 1966, Graham was asked in a panel discussion led by the apostate United Church of Christ, "Do you think a literal belief in the Virgin birth—not just as a symbol of the incarnation or of Christ's divinity—as an historic event is necessary for personal salvation?"

Graham's answer: "While I most certainly believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, I do not find anywhere in the New Testament that this particular belief is necessary for personal salvation."

-- In a 1978, Graham, in an interview with McCall's Magazine, endorses pantheism as a means to achieve salvation without Jesus Christ. He is quoted in the article as saying,

"I used to think that pagans in far-off countries were lost—were going to hell—if they did not have the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that. . . I believe there are other ways of recognizing the existence of God—through nature, for instance—and plenty of other opportunities, therefore, of saying yes to God."

-- In a Time magazine article from 1993, Graham denies a literal hell. He says in the article, "The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from His light, from His fellowship. That is going to hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don't preach it because I'm not sure about it. When the Scripture uses fire concerning hell, that is possibly an illustration of how terrible it's going to be -- not fire but something worse, a thirst for God that cannot be quenched."

--In 1985, when asked by a newspaper reporter from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, ""What about people of other faiths who live good lives but don't profess a belief in Christ?" Graham replied, "I'm going to leave that to the Lord. He'll decide that."

-- In 1993, Graham said to David Frost in a television interview, "And I think there is that hunger for God and people are living as best they know how according to the light that they have. Well, I think they're in a separate category than people like Hitler and people who have just defied God, and shaken their fists at God. ... I would say that God, being a God of mercy, we have to rest it right there, and say that God is a God of mercy and love, and how it happens, we don't know."

-- From a 1998 interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," came this exchange where Graham suggests not only a belief in reincarnation (I guess, but for sure it's not biblical since our soul is the only eternal part of humans) but in a heaven devoted to man's sexual lusts:

GRAHAM: I'll know Him. He'll know me. He will receive me. I believe the moment I die, an angel comes and takes my hand and leads me into His presence.

KING: In your body or through a soul?

GRAHAM: Both -- maybe both, because we have been resurrected. Remember, this body's coming back together again. Nothing ever disappears ...

KING: All right. You'll meet Jesus and then what will it be like? What will paradise be like?

GRAHAM: It's going to be like paradise. It'll be the -- everything that you ever wanted for happiness will be there. People say that the Bible teaches there's no sex in Heaven. If sex is necessary for our happiness and fulfillment, it'll be there. And then, if certain other things that we think are pleasurable will -- it'll be there.

-- In 1993, Graham attended a prayer breakfast in which President Clinton participated. Senator John Kerry read from John 3:1-21 in the Bible, but purposefully skipped verse 3:16, which says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Kerry then explained Christ was speaking of "spiritual renewal" and that "in the spirit of Christ . . . Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Christian" were meeting and "there is renewal . . . with a new President and Vice President. . ."

Graham added, "I do not know a time when we had a more spiritual time than we've had today."

-- From published accounts in 1988, Graham was quoted saying, "Mao Tse Tung's Eight Precepts are basically the same as the Ten Commandments. In fact, if we can't have the Ten Commandments read in the schools, I'll settle for Mao's Precepts" (Gothardism Evaluated, 1988, p. 16).

-- After a five-day visit to North Korea in 1992, in which Graham praised North Korea's Marxist dictator Kim II Sung's call for "reconciliation and peace" and said he had "learned to appreciate Korea's long struggle to preserve its national sovereignty," Graham appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America", saying of his trip that the people of North Korea seemed "relaxed and happy," noting that they were preparing for Kim's 80th birthday, of whom Graham said was almost like "a grandfather" to his people. Graham said that Kim had given the Graham party "a very lavish luncheon" during which he was "very warm and friendly." (Reported in the 5/1/92 Calvary Contender and the 2/22/93 Christian News.)

--In 1988, Graham gave the keynote address at the signing ceremony of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, "an ecumenical amalgamation of professing Christians, humanists, atheists, New Agers, Eastern religionists, etc., whose stated goal is religious tolerance in education, but all the while is promoting a new one world religion," according to the BDM website. Other "evangelical" signators and/or supporters with Graham were James Dobson, Beverly LaHaye and Chuck Colson.

--In 1967, Graham spoke at the dedication of Oral Roberts University and has appeared on TV specials with Roberts, never speaking a negative word on Roberts' "wild visions, faith healing, and shameless money-raising schemes," as the BDM site reports. At Graham's Amsterdam '83, two of the main speakers were wacked-out charismatics David Yonggi Cho of Korea and televangelist Pat Robertson.

On this same website of Biblical Discernment Ministries' is a great overall testimony from a pastor who attended a Billy Graham crusade in Long Island in 1990, then wrote to the publication The Baptist Lighthouse, saying,

"I have read often of the compromises of Billy Graham, but doubted some of the stories as exaggerated. Now they have been proven, in my eyes, worse than reported. . .My conclusion is that Billy Graham is making men twofold more the child of hell. . . The emphasis was on believing in God, with a little commentary on Jesus Christ, but very little. . .We were told that the way to take care of the sin problem is to 'receive Christ, rededicate your life, or renew your confirmation vows, or whatever you call it in your church.' I could hardly believe my ears. What do confirmation vows have to do with salvation?. . . No one could have convinced me of the apostasy of Billy Graham any more than my own experience. . . .He even had a Rabbi on the platform to show the unity of the religions. . . . Not having competent counselors is bad enough, but then to have led them to believe that a church experience is the same as being born again is the height of apostasy. . . . Billy has not compromised, he has gone kaput!"

Obviously Graham and the glowing coverage he's received by the media, not to mention the ga-ga reception from preachers and churches all over the New York City area (including the Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists Graham has no problems with), has everything to do with the apostasy leading into the Rapture.

As Hazel Brown, a missionary in New Mexico, writes in her 1972 booklet, "The Dispensations,"

"Satan, the god of this world, manipulates nations, rulers and finances. Through the news media, TV, schools, apostate churches, and the money situation, he is grooming and conditioning the world to welcome his masterpiece of deception, the Anti-Christ. Most of the world is totally unsuspecting of this mind control and financial maneuvering."