Billy Graham’s Proselytizing Vultures Swoop in after Tornadoes [View all]

[cleanhippie]

John D. Rockefeller once said that he always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity. Billy Graham’s cultists sure take that to heart!

As Midwesterners try to dig out from the devastating tornadoes of last week, Billy Graham’s Rapid Response Team sees in the shredded homes, flattened trees, and devastated lives not a disaster, but an opportunity.

Opportunity to gain converts, that is.

Mere hours after tornadoes cut swaths of death and destruction across Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and Alabama, Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse team — which does actual work, like helping cut up downed trees — had arrived, with the “Rapid Response Team” in tow. Their job? To proselytize to traumatized people while they’re vulnerable. Like con men showing up at funerals seeking wealthy widows, they’re after the easy marks.

"We are seeing where they are in their struggles, we are letting them know that we care about them, and that Jesus loves them. We want to help them get through the struggle – we are there to pray for them, to minister to them, and help them if they need to contact a church or other support networks in the area . . .”

[T]he response chaplains generally get is that people start looking at life from a different perspective – an eternal one."Where they were previously caught up in the business of daily life, living life day by day with no thought of eternity – now they have been faced with the fragility of life, and how life can be turned in a moment," Stiles commented.

Stiles continued, "A lot of the times we go in expecting people to be angry, and asking why God allowed this, or why didn’t God stop this – but we really don’t get that a lot . . . We are finding people who are searching.

"It gives us an opportunity to explain how much God loves them, how much God cares and has a plan for their life. It allows them to loosen the grip on this life and look to the promises the Lord has made to them."

http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2012/03/09/billy-grahams-proselytizing-vultures-swoop-in-after-tornadoes/