Billy Graham on Perseverance & eternal security
No — the genuinely saved will certainly persevere
The Holy Spirit comes to live within, and the Holy Spirit stays there for eternity.
THE POSITION
The Spirit who comes to live in the believer stays for eternity. Another column under his name tells a fearful reader that sin breaks fellowship with God, not the relationship. A first-person My Answer column under his name says that once a person sincerely trusts Christ, nothing can change that relationship. The qualifier he adds is the usual one for this stance, not a door to apostasy: a persistently sinful life "may well mean" the person was never converted.
29 My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand.
18 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Evangelist of the citywide crusades from 1947 to 2005, ordained a Southern Baptist minister, founder, with L. Nelson Bell, of Christianity Today (1956) and convener of the 1974 Lausanne Congress. He is generally reckoned to have preached in person to more people than anyone before him and was the public face of postwar evangelicalism. This entry rests on sermon texts dated 1951 to 2005 that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association republishes on the Decision magazine website, his recorded Billy Graham Minutes, his daily devotions, interviews he gave to Time, Christianity Today, Newsweek and Robert Schuller, and the My Answer column that ran under his name. By the standard account the column was written with staff, so cells that rest on it say so.
Cite this page
"Billy Graham on Perseverance & eternal security", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/graham/perseverance (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/graham/perseverance).