In this 1975 message from Albuquerque, New Mexico—”Hopeless, Yet There Is Hope”—Billy Graham spoke to those who’ve lost hope in our corrupt world.
(Voice-over)
From our archives…
The Billy Graham Classics.
(applause)
I want to welcome
all of those
that have joined
by television as well
and tell you tell we are at
the University of New Mexico
in their beautiful,
beautiful arena.
One of the most beautiful
anywhere in the world.
Now tonight I want you to turn
with me to the second chapter,
the second chapter of
the book of Hebrews.
The second chapter of
the book of Hebrews,
beginning with verse one,
“Therefore, we ought to
give the more earnest heed
“to the things
which we have heard
“lest at any time
we should let them slip.”
Now in the Greek that’s
very, very strong language.
In other words He’s talking
about the Old Testament.
It’s very important to study
and read the Old Testament.
Give heed to it.
Study it lest you
let those things slip
that are taught there.
The Scripture says,
“And every transgression
“and every disobedience received
a just recompense of reward;
“how shall we escape if we
neglect so great a salvation?”
And in the context here
he’s talking about the salvation
through Jesus Christ.
How that Jesus Christ
came down from heaven
as we heard a moment ago.
And was made a little lower
than the angels.
Now, of course Christ is
far above all angels
and principalities
and powers
in the hierarchy of heaven
and the universe.
But when He came to earth
He was made lower
than the angels,
identifying Himself with us.
And when you come and receive
Jesus Christ as your Savior
you are made higher
than the angels.
You are joint heirs
with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you’ll never know
’til you get to heaven
what it means to receive Christ,
what full salvation is.
But as I look into your future
of this generation
it’s not a pretty picture.
In fact, many of the statements
that are being made today
are very despairing
and almost hopeless.
I received a letter from a radio
commentator some time ago,
and he said, “Billy,” he said,
“I listen to your preaching.”
And he said,
“You know,” he said,
“You’re too discouraging.
Give us little hope.”
Well, I’m a little bit
like Jeremiah.
My wife calls me
Jeremiah sometimes.
Because, you know, Jeremiah
watched for forty years
the deterioration
of his country.
He saw his country captured.
He saw the city of
Jerusalem destroyed.
He lived through all that.
And he’s called
the “weeping prophet.”
And I look at America tonight,
and I look at the world tonight
and I’ll be honest with you.
I weep over it.
I weep in my soul and
in my heart and I cry out.
And I say, “God,
how shall we escape?”
And it’s moving in on us
fast now.
Events are accelerating
very fast.
And we see all over the world
many of the old traditions
and the old things that
people believed in
crumbling and shaking
throughout the world.
And we ask ourselves,
“Is there any hope?”
A London editorial
said the other day,
“Western civilization is
committing suicide.”
A very prominent churchman
in this country
went recently to Asia.
He came back, he said,
“All of my ideas have changed.
“I went out an optimist;
I’m a pessimist.
“I don’t think
the world can last.”
There’s a philosophy of
despair.
Bertrand Russell,
before he died, said,
“The best we can hope for
is unyielding despair.”
Now think of that.
Here’s a brilliant man,
a man of letters that says,
“The only thing we can hope
for is unyielding despair.”
Hopelessness everywhere.
A headline the other day said,
“Scientists despair
“as they move the atomic clock
forward once again.”
Now, the Scripture says in
Ephesians that,
“At that time ye were
without Christ having no hope,
“without God in the world.”
Now without Christ, I don’t
think I would have any hope.
One of the United States
Senators said to me
a few weeks ago,
I was going,
I was eating
in the Senate dining room
with some Senator friends, and
he called me over to his table.
And he said,
“Billy,” he said,
“Are you an optimist
or a pessimist?”
He said, “We’re having
an argument here at the table.”
I said, “I’m an optimist.”
He said, “How can you
be an optimist
“in a world
like we’re living in?”
Now, here’s a United States
Senator saying that.
And he’s been in
the Senate a long time.
I said, “I’m an optimist
“because I’ve read
the last page of the Bible.
“I know it’s going to
come out all right.”
“God has a plan.”
“How shall we escape if we
neglect so great a salvation?”
I look at the world scene today
and I don’t see much hope
for permanent peace.
I look at the world scene today
and I look at
the American scene.
And I see corruption
almost everywhere we turn.
Every time they appoint
an investigating committee
they turn up
a bunch of snakes;
local government,
high government,
federal government,
state government, business.
Every area of life it seems
we have our corruption
and we have
our cutting of the corners
and our cheating
and our lying.
Now, that doesn’t mean that
we’re worse than any other
generation because every
generation’s been doing it.
“All have sinned.”
We’re all sinners.
“The heart is
desperately wicked,
“who can know it?”
That’s always been true.
And my reason for standing
up here preaching today
is not to try to save
this perishing world
in which we live.
It’s not going to be saved.
You see, we have
built our civilization
on a cracked foundation.
The cracked foundation of sin,
human iniquity.
And it’s not going to be
saved by any actions
of the United Nations.
We are told to do all
we can for world peace.
We are told to do
everything we possibly can
to preserve the very best
qualities that are in life,
whether they’re in
the East or the West.
We are told to make life as
peaceful as we possibly can.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
But in the very end
we won’t succeed totally.
We might succeed
for a generation.
We can patch it up
here a little,
and there a little,
and there a little.
But in the end we are headed
toward world judgment
in which there will be
a tribulation,
there’ll be an antichrist,
and there will be a judgment.
But at the end of all that
when man stands at Armageddon,
and the human race is
ready to destroy itself,
the Lord Jesus Christ is
coming back.
Hopeless,
yet there is hope.
Now what are people
doing about it
when they read
the headlines
and watch their
television screens?
I’ll tell you
what they’re doing.
They are trying to escape.
Trying to escape.
How do people escape?
Some of them escape
by just daydreaming.
Just making out like it’s
not going to happen at all.
Or they escape through
evil imaginations
as they did
in the days of Noah.
You see, Satan turns himself
into an angel of light
and he says,
“Go out and just live it up
“and have good time
and forget it all.”
There’s the escape
of pleasure.
A flight into passion,
appetite and desire.
A man wrote
and he said,
“I’m going to drown
my troubles in alcohol.”
And millions are
doing that, just that.
A businessman said,
“I’m going out
“and having my fling
on the weekend
“with my secretary.
“The world is so bad
I’m going to have my good time
“while I can get it.”
One in every two
marriages is breaking.
Wife swapping, all the things
that are going on today,
unbelievable things.
How long?
How long is God going
to allow it to continue?
“How can we escape if we
neglect so great a salvation?”
The Bible warns against
the deceitfulness of pleasures.
Things are that serious.
John Steinbeck wrote
to Adlai Stevenson once,
a letter.
And here’s a part
of that letter.
He said this,
John Steinbeck said this,
“If I wanted to destroy a nation
I would give it too much
“and I would have it
on its knees,
“miserable,
greedy and sick.”
And he said, “That’s where
America is right now.”
James once said in
the fifth chapter,
“Your gold and
silver are cankered;
“and the rust of them shall
be a witness against you,
“and shall eat your flesh
as it were fire.
“You have heaped
treasures for the last days.”
But you won’t be
able to spend it.
“What shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world
“and lose his own soul?”
And a lot of you are just
killing yourselves
trying to get just a little
corner on the world.
And you’re losing your soul.
“How shall we escape if we
neglect so great a salvation?”
One of our famous senator’s
wives was quoted in the press
the other day as saying,
“Dear God, where has all
the happiness gone?”
Real happiness and joy and
peace seem to be disappearing.
People are afraid to walk
down the streets at night
in the average city.
Rapping, mugging,
crime, murder.
How shall we escape?
The final escape,
of course, is suicide.
And there was
a great theologian,
one of our greatest theologians,
had been president
of one of our most
prestigious seminaries.
He and his wife
had a suicide pact
and they committed suicide
about three weeks ago.
And people are
committing suicide.
But do you know what
Amos said?
Amos in the ninth chapter says,
“Though they dig into hell,
“thence shall
mine hand take them;
“though they climb up
to heaven,
“there will I bring them down.”
Suicides among those
under 19 years of age
doubled in the last two years.
This crowd sitting over here.
If you’re under nineteen,
suicides doubled
last year in America.
And then there’s
another escape,
especially on the university
campus today.
There’s the escape
of radicalism.
Join a radical cause.
Let’s overthrow
the government.
And I heard
on television the other day
one of those fellows
in the 1960s
from the University
of California
and he fled off to Algeria
or somewhere.
And they were
interviewing him.
He’d cut off,
he’d already cut his hair,
shaved his beard.
I didn’t recognize him.
I knew him by name.
He had three children.
He said, “No,” he said, “if I
could get back into America,”
he said,
“I’d fit into that system,
“because,” he said, “I’ve
traveled enough around the world
“to know that
the American system
“is the greatest system in
the whole world.”
(applause)
You see, what you do,
what you do,
you substitute
one crowd of sinners
for another
crowd of sinners.
You’re never going to get
anybody that’s totally
one hundred percent
pure and totally honest.
There was only one man
that ever lived like that
and that was Jesus.
And what we’re looking for
today is the perfect man,
the perfect politician,
the perfect businessman,
the perfect labor union leader.
You’re not going find it.
So you have to deal in society
with human nature as it is.
Now, let me tell you, there are
thousands of honest politicians,
as honest as they can be,
as honest as the preachers.
Because the Bible teaches
that all of us have
come short of God’s glory.
I know some of
the finest men in Washington,
and in our state capitals
that we’ve ever had.
But Sir Winston Churchill
said once,
“Our problems are beyond us.”
He said,
“There’s no way out.”
“How shall we escape if we
neglect so great a salvation?”
What is our hope?
Well, I want to tell you
it’s very important
that you have some hope.
Because you see, you not
only have world problems
that I mentioned, but you’ve got
your own personal problems.
You’ve got your own
personal pressures.
You’ve got your own
personal hell
that you’re living in
right now.
And you’re looking for
a way out
and a way of escape.
“How am I going to get out from
under this load I’m carrying?”
Maybe you’re failing
at the university.
Maybe it’s
a broken love affair.
It may be something else.
Pressure from your parents.
Whatever it may be.
Maybe your parents are
broken up and it’s torn you up
and you feel the pressure.
And you want to run and hide.
And you want to escape.
You’ve tried the drug route.
You tried the alcohol
and it hasn’t worked.
Well, it’s very important that
you have hope.
If you ever lose your hope
you’re finished,
old or young.
What oxygen is for the lungs
such is hope
for the meaning of human life.
And the fate of humanity is
dependent, I believe,
in its supply of hope.
A famous cardiologist was
written up the other day,
and he said,
“Hope is the medicine
that I use most of all.
“When a man has had
a heart attack,” he said,
“I try to give him
hope immediately.”
A well-known
professor of medicine said,
“In this state,
hope is like medicine.”
How shall we escape?
The Reader’s Digest was
quoted recently as saying,
“In order to be happy a person
must have someone to love,
“something to do, and
something to hope for.”
What is your hope?
What do you
place your hope in?
The government?
The educational system?
What is your hope?
Well, I’m going to tell you
where my hope is tonight.
My hope is not in
an organization.
My hope is not in a plan.
My hope is not in a treaty.
My hope is in a Man, a Person
that sits at the right hand of
God the Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the Bible says that
God has put in Him
all authority on
heaven and earth.
And my hope is centered
totally, completely in Him.
And I want to tell you
I have been
a failure in my life.
I have been a sinner.
I have broken God’s laws.
I deserve judgment.
I deserve hell.
But He came and died
for me on that cross.
And because He came and
died on that cross I am saved.
I have escaped.
I have hope.
I know that I’m
going to heaven.
And I have God’s presence
with me right here and now
to help me in this present life.
Do you have that hope?
The Bible talks about the hope
of the resurrection.
Paul speaks of the hope
of the resurrection.
And he said, “If in this life
only we have hope in Christ
“we are of all men
most miserable.”
Are you a Christian?
You say, “Yes, somewhere
when I was a boy or a girl
“I received Christ as Savior.”
But that’s as far as it goes.
Paul said, “If it’s in this
life only that I have hope,”
he said,
“then I’m miserable.”
But, he said, “There is
out yonder a continuing city.”
“There’s a city whose
builder and maker is God.”
There’s heaven to come.
And the Bible talks
about the resurrection.
Yes, we’re going to be
raised from the dead.
Yes, there’s the hope
of the resurrection
and there’s the hope
of righteousness.
“For we through the Spirit wait
for the hope of righteousness
“by faith,” says Paul
in Galatians 5:5.
Now, this word really
is the same as the word we use,
“justification.”
When God forgives,
God says from the cross,
“I love you.
“I’m willing to forgive you
“of every sin
you’ve ever committed.”
That means “just as
though you had never sinned.”
Now, suppose somebody
does something against me.
I say alright, “I forgive you.”
You’re forgiven,
but I can still remember it.
Ten years later
I’ll see you and I’ll say,
“Yeah, I remember
what you did to me
“when I was back there
at the university.
“I forgave you but I can’t ever
forget what you did to me.”
But, you see,
God doesn’t do that way.
God forgives and forgets
and justifies you
just as though
you’d never committed a sin.
He can’t even remember it.
Incredible.
But that’s what happens.
The hope of righteousness.
Because you see, I am now
clothed in the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when God looks at me
He doesn’t see the old evil,
bad heart of Billy Graham,
He sees Jesus
who lives my in heart.
And He says,
“Because Jesus lives
in your heart you’re forgiven.”
You’re clothed in
His righteousness.
So, I can claim tonight by faith
a righteousness not my own,
the righteousness of Christ.
Because God says,
“Be holy even as I am holy.”
I can’t be as holy as God.
But I’m going to have to be as
holy as God if I get to heaven.
And the only way
I can be as holy as God
is to appropriate
the righteousness
of Jesus Christ.
So, when I get to
the gates of heaven
they’re going to
look at my clothes
and they’re not going to see
this old suit I’ve got on,
they’re going to see
that I’m clothed in
the righteousness of Christ.
I’m going to go in on the merits
of His shed-blood on that cross.
Yes, there is a hope.
And then, not only is there
the hope of righteousness
but there’s the hope
of eternal life.
To live forever with Him.
And there’s the hope
of the second coming
of Jesus Christ.
“Looking for that blessed hope
and glorious appearing
“of the great God and Savior
Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ our hope,”
said Paul to Timothy.
You know, the New Testament is
an exciting book to read
because it’s so full of hope
and expectancy.
The Scripture says,
“For our hope is in heaven
“from which also
we look for the Savior
“the Lord Jesus Christ.”
And the Scripture says,
“And there were great
voices in heaven saying,
“‘The kingdoms of this world
have become the kingdoms
“‘of Jesus Christ our Lord
and of His Christ.
“‘And He shall reign
forever and ever and ever.'”
And that’s the same hope
and it’s the same picture
of two lovers that have been
separated for a while,
awaiting their reunion.
All the heartbreaks
of history
will end in the meeting
of lovers.
All the agony of the ages will
end in the meeting of lovers.
Have you ever been separated
from someone you love?
You’ve got a girlfriend
or a boyfriend
you haven’t seen
in about three or four months?
Boy, wait ’til
you see each other.
That’s one of the great things
about being an evangelist
and traveling.
My wife and I have
a lot of goodbyes.
But boy, when we meet
each other again
it’s a honeymoon
all over again.
I look forward to her coming.
I hope she looks
forward to seeing me.
At least she says she does.
And that’s what it’s going to
be on that glorious day
when Christ comes.
And we’re going to be
caught in the air to meet Him.
And it’s like two lovers
coming together.
What hope we have!
Suppose we didn’t
have a Bible?
Suppose we had no salvation,
no cross, no empty tomb.
Suppose we had
nothing to give except:
“Do your best.
Try to patch it up.
“Do what you can.”
But we have a hope.
There’s a plan in
this book of redemption.
God has a plan for the future.
And the future is all outlined.
Your future, and God
is interested in you.
“How shall you escape
if you neglect this salvation?”
If you neglect Jesus Christ,
notice it says “neglect.”
Maybe you’re not
going to reject Christ.
You just neglect Him.
Oh, you’ll join
a church alright.
Maybe you’re already
a member of the church.
But as far as your personal
relationship with Christ,
you just neglect Him.
You really don’t
have time for Him.
He’s not first in your life.
Something else is first.
He demands first place.
He demands that He be Lord
and Master of your whole life.
I’m going to ask you
tonight to march for Christ.
Hundreds of these
young people
had a march of love
this afternoon.
A march for love.
And they came
into this stadium.
I’m going to ask you tonight
to march for Christ,
to get under His banner and say,
“I want Him to forgive my sins.
“I want to know
I’m going to heaven.
“I want to know that
I’m going to escape
“the judgment
when it comes.
“I want to have the power in
this present life to escape
“all the terrible things that
happen to every one of us.”
That doesn’t mean you escape
problems and difficulties
and circumstances
that may be bad.
It means that He gives you
a peace and a joy
in the midst of them.
That’s the escape
that we have.
The escape is not running off
and hiding somewhere.
The escape is getting into
the Word of God
and in personal fellowship
with Christ all day long.
I’m going to ask
hundreds of you
to get up out of
your seat right now
and come and stand in
front of this platform
and say tonight,
“I want forgiveness.
“I want a new life.
“I want to know I’m going
to be raised from the dead.
“I want to know
I’m going to heaven.”
I’m going to ask you to get up
and come and stand in front
of the platform.
And after you’ve all come,
I’m going to say a word to you,
and have a prayer with you.
And then we’re going to
give you some literature
and you can go back and
join your friends.
That’s all you have to do.
A simple act of faith
in saying tonight,
“I want Christ.”
Get up and come quickly,
men, women,
young people,
hundreds of you.
We’re go to wait
on you right now.
Quickly, come.
♪ Just as I am
without one plea ♪
♪ But that Thy blood
was shed for me ♪
♪ and that Thou bid’st me
come to Thee ♪
♪ O Lamb of God,
I come ♪
♪ I come. ♪
You that are watching
by television
can see here
in this great university arena
hundreds of people
coming to know Christ as Savior.
We’ve seen the largest
percentage of people
coming to Christ
here in Albuquerque, I think,
of any American city
that we’ve ever been to.
Hundreds and thousands
of people this past week
have said “yes” to Christ.
You can do the same
where you are right now.
You can bow your head
and say,
“Lord Jesus,
come into my heart,”
and He’ll do it.
I hope that you’ll make
that commitment tonight,
and that you’ll go to church
next Sunday.
God bless you.
If you just prayed that prayer
with my father
or if you have any questions
about a relationship
with Jesus Christ,
why don’t you just call that
number that is on the screen?
There’ll be someone there
to talk with you, pray with you,
and answer those questions,
and remember,
God loves you.
(Voice-over)
If you would
like to commit
your life
to Jesus Christ,
please call us
right now
toll-free at
1-877-772-4559.
That’s
1-877-772-4559.
Or you can
write to us at
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One Billy Graham
Parkway,
Department C,
Charlotte,
North Carolina
28201.
Or you can
contact us
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at PeaceWithGod.TV.
We’ll get the same
helps to you
that we give
to everyone
who responds
at the invitation.
On behalf of
Franklin Graham
and the Billy Graham
Evangelistic
Association,
thank you
for watching,
and thank you
for your prayers.