Third time, yay, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will feel

no evil.

Well, thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

Well this morning Billy Graham walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and into

the arms of the Savior he served so faithfully over the decades, he was 99 years old.

Pastor John Billy Graham was a formative influence on you and your ministry, and I wanted to

jump on the phone with you today to record a special episode of the Pastor John podcast

to get your immediate response on what's going through your mind today, what you're thinking

about right now, the memories that are coming back to you as you process this news.

Billy Graham, when I was growing up as a teenager and even today in my experience, I said

to know well this morning, he was just larger than life, I didn't expect to get this emotional.

I can remember standing as a 15-year-old on the porch, and beside the basketball backboard

that was fastened to it, it's funny how clear this is, and thinking, what would we do

if Billy Graham died?

What that captures is an immature kid who doesn't have a big grasp of the sovereignty of God

yet, and yet a profound love for Billy Graham in a profound sense that he's a big deal

in my world, and he was a big deal in our world.

He embodied, for John Piper, my parents' religion written across the sky because he was globally

known and globally significant, and yet every word that seemed to come out of his mouth

could have come out of my father's mouth or my mother's mouth.

And so it was a massive affirmation that the same glorious good news was being heralded

by this man that everybody seemed to respect, and what I was being taught at home, which

...