Franklin Graham Rebukes ‘GQ’: ‘They Couldn’t Be More Wrong’
Evangelist Franklin Graham rebuked GQ magazine for including the Bible in their “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read,” article.
“Wow—they couldn’t be more wrong,” Graham says in a Facebook post.
He continues: “I guess they can’t explain why the Bible is the best-selling and most widely distributed book in the world. Recent estimates put the number that have been distributed since 1815 at more than 5 BILLION copies—and over 100 million are printed every year! The Holy Bible is God-breathed, it is living and active, and it is sharper than a double-edged sword. There’s nothing more powerful, and there’s nothing more needed by mankind than the Word of God. Maybe the GQ editors need to read it, again. The subject of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is Jesus Christ. And one day soon, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.”
The Bible ranks No. 12 on the list, preceded by common school reads, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher and the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea and more.
“The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it. Those who have read it know there are some good parts, but overall it is certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced. It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish and even at times ill-intentioned,” Jesse Ball writes. “If the thing you heard was good about the Bible was the nasty bits, then I propose Agota Kristof’s The Notebook, a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough. The subtlety and cruelty of this story is like that famous sword stroke (from below the boat) that plunged upward through the bowels, the lungs and the throat and into the brain of the rower.”
GQ debuted the article days after California’s legislature considered how a law banning conversion therapy for those struggling with same-sex attraction could affect the sale of Bibles.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
One key part of the debate centers on whether Assembly Bill 2943 would stretch beyond businesses that charge for these programs and extend to printed documents, even Bibles. An analysis by the Assembly Judiciary Committee says the bill would apply only to services that purport to change a person’s sexual orientation and offered “on a commercial basis, as well as the advertising and offering of such services.”
In 2015, the Bible made the list of the most challenged books in America, according to the American Library Association. Other books on the top 10 list included Fifty Shades of Grey and stories about or by transgender people.
