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    Unhappy Religious Obituaries

    Head of Mormon Church passes away...

    Mormon Church President Thomas Monson Dies At 90
    January 3, 2018 - Thomas S. Monson, president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Tuesday night at the age of 90. In a statement, church spokesman Eric Hawkins wrote that Monson died at 10:01 p.m. in his home in Salt Lake City surrounded by family.
    Monson had been at the helm of the 16 million-member Mormon church for nearly a decade and will be remembered as much for his personal ministry as for his aversion to grand pronouncements. He was a traditionalist without a bold agenda whose presence as a church leader faded as he aged. In recent years, he remained quiet as the church grappled with issues like ordaining women and baptizing children of gay couples.

    A storyteller

    Monson was a storyteller. Many of his stories involved following an inner prompting from the Holy Spirit. "On one occasion many years ago I was swimming laps at the old Deseret Gym in Salt Lake City when I felt the inspiration to go to the University Hospital to visit a good friend of mine," Monson said during the October 2012 General Conference. "I later learned from my friend that he had been utterly despondent that day and had been contemplating taking his own life," Monson continued. "I had arrived at a critical moment in response to what I know was inspiration from on high." A native of Salt Lake, many of his anecdotes took place there. Whether that was visiting the 80 widows that lived in his downtown congregation as a young bishop or dropping in to see someone at just the right time.


    Thomas Monson delivers the opening talk at the 180th Annual General Conference of the Mormon church before thousands of members in 2010 in Salt Lake City.

    Monson was a young man, only 36, when called to be a full-time apostle for the church, part of the second-highest governing body. That would be unheard of today. "He really spent most of his life serving in the church," says William Walker, a former general authority for the church who worked closely with Monson for many years. Walker and Monson would often travel together on assignment and during those trips, he says, Monson would always make time to meet and shake hands with as many church members as he could. Walker remembers one time in particular when Monson had just spoken to a large gathering. Following the closing prayer, he leaned over to the church leader and said, "If we slip out the side door, I can get you back to the hotel very quickly and get you some rest." Monson looked at him and responded, "If Jesus was here, do you think he would slip out the side door?" Walker decided to never make that suggestion again.

    On church practice and policy, Monson didn't seem to have much of an agenda. He was a traditionalist. "I often heard him refer to the previous leaders of the church and he wanted to follow precedent," says Walker. One big change he will be remembered for is lowering the age for full-time missionary service. Women are now able to serve at age 19 instead of 21. This change led to a dramatic increase in the number of missionaries serving worldwide. But in recent years, Monson had scaled back public appearances and speeches. His health was declining and he was reportedly suffering from memory loss. "President Monson had such a prodigious memory," Walker says. "He could remember everybody and everything. So as [he] had to deal with that as [he] got older, that had to have been extremely challenging and difficult for him."

    A private prophet

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    Unhappy

    The Rev. Billy Graham passes away...

    The Rev. Billy Graham has died at 99
    February 21, 2018 - Billy Graham, the nation’s most beloved preacher, a native Tar Heel who many considered the embodiment of Protestant Christianity, died Wednesday.
    The 99-year-old Graham had been in failing health since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1992 and with hydrocephalus, a condition in which water collects on the brain, in 2000. His wife of 63 years, Ruth, died in June 2007. Graham’s sermons reached millions of people in more than 200 countries – whether in person or over the airwaves. His was a resonant voice and a handsome face. The 6-foot-2 evangelist, with his steel blue eyes and chiseled chin, looked and moved like a Hollywood actor.


    His voice was smooth and authoritative. He spoke in declaratory sentences, waving the Bible in one hand and jabbing an index finger at his audience in the other. Graham once said he had a single-minded mission: “My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which I believe comes through knowing Christ.” He did so with a combination of zeal, integrity and graciousness that won him admirers the world over. Many wryly called him the Protestant Pope.


    Friend to presidents


    From his humble beginnings as the son of North Carolina dairy farmers, Graham rose to national prominence, befriending every president since Dwight Eisenhower and serving as confidant to many others who occupied the Oval Office. In 1991, in one of his last roles as unofficial White House chaplain, Graham was summoned by former President George H.W. Bush to the White House on the night he gave the OK to send the first squadron of fighter bombers to the Persian Gulf. Later, Graham counseled President Bill Clinton in the dark hours of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Though officially nonpartisan, Graham had been increasingly drawn to Republican candidates. Despite being frail and hard of hearing, he invited onetime Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to dinner at his Montreat mountain home. But his influence went beyond U.S. borders, and he was a premier diplomat for Christianity. Graham was the first Christian to preach behind the Iron Curtain, and he accepted unprecedented invitations to Moscow and Beijing. When Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the White House in 1997, Graham met with him privately and discussed religious freedom in China.


    Graham traveled widely, mingling as easily with popes and kings as with soldiers and villagers living in mud huts. The Gallup poll consistently ranked him as one of the world’s most admired men. In 1996, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. That popularity has helped boost the ministry of his children, Franklin, his successor, of Boone, and Anne Lotz, his daughter, of Raleigh. In his early years, Graham earned the nickname “God’s machine gun” for preaching hell and damnation to those who strayed. In later years his message softened, as he spoke more about personal redemption. But his theology – with its bright promise of reconciliation with Jesus – never wavered. “We are helpless and hopeless,” Graham once said in a television broadcast, “but when Christ comes in we have a lot of help, and we have hope, and we have forgiveness of sin, and we have the assurance that if we die we are going to heaven.”


    Come to Jesus’

    See also:


    The Rev. Billy Graham TED Talk

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