God Loves You in pictures and text

A few photos and thoughts from the God Loves You tour last Thursday.

Well, my pictures did come out. It’s time to resurrect an old monoblogue tradition, the “pictures and text” post.

Somewhere around 6,800 people took over a small park in Salisbury on Thursday night to hear some music and receive a message. I just wanted to show you a few of my best photos from the event and share one important piece of what Franklin Graham said.

This is a bit of an experiment since I’ve not captioned photos on a Substack yet. But it appears they’ll be just fine.

In order to have a little more room in the park, the city of Salisbury closed part of South Division Street, including the bridge over the Wicomico River. It provided a space for tents like that of The Newsboys.

Regional (Delmarva and south Jersey) Christian music station The Bridge was also there broadcasting live. This event kicked off a busy weekend for them since there were Christian concerts scheduled in Dover (Jordan Feliz) and Atlantic City (Cochren & Co.)

The first performer was a gentleman by the name of Dennis Agajanian, who claimed he has been working with the Graham since 1975. He played a nice selection of acoustic hymns to get the crowd warmed up.

I turned around and looked up the hill. You can’t hardly see the food trucks in the back from the crowd.

The Newsboys came out and played one song (The Revelation Song) before turning things over to Marcos Witt, whose asset to this program was that he is bilingual. He sung a few songs in both English and Spanish, as you can see in the caption. The program had a means of interpreting the proceedings for those non-English speakers, of which there were many.

Overall, The Newsboys played about 8 or 9 of their songs, obviously a sampling of their greatest hits. They played 6 or 7 before Rev. Graham took over and then had a two-song encore afterward. The whole thing, which began at 6 with Agajanian, was basically over by 8:00.

I went back by the food court to take this one, just as The Newsboys were wrapping up part one of their set with We Believe.

Franklin Graham began speaking just about 7:15, and his remarks took about a half hour.

I’m going to jump back in with text here to point out that the Rev. Graham chose the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel as the opening subject of his remarks. It’s the “writing on the wall” chapter where the Chaldean king Belshazzar had his massive feast but was troubled when neither he nor his soothsayers and astrologers could read what the hand of God wrote as the feast progressed. When Daniel, a man of God, was summoned to interpret it, he told Belshazzar that his kingdom’s days were numbered, he had been measured and found wanting, and his kingdom would be divided.

While Belshazzar ignored the Lord in favor of his idols, the Rev. Graham talked about our own idols. And this is where I picked up the story, not knowing that he would address some local concerns.

(I’ve found one weakness of Substack that I miss from monoblogue - I can’t add my own raw video to a post like I can a Youtube video. It would have to be a separate post and in this case, I’d have rather videoed all of Graham’s remarks. But here below the photo of the Rev. Graham is the relevant transcript.)

Let me say something about transgenders. It’s a lie. We are made male and female, okay? That’s the way God created us. All this other stuff is a lie.

Now, I want to say something to the LGBTQ community. I don’t preach against you, okay? I want you to know that I love you. And I love you enough to tell you the truth! That we’re all sinners, okay? I’m no greater sinner than you are. You’re no greater sinner than I am. We’re all sinners.

But you have to repent, okay? That means to turn; you can’t continue to live in your sin, you have to turn from your sin.

So I want to warn people – tonight you’ve got an opportunity to turn from your sin, and put your faith and trust in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I’m hoping a few listened. But I will say I didn’t see or hear of any organized protest regarding the event, which is good.

One other interesting quote I got and wrote down on my phone from the Rev. Graham regarding the Bible: “I don’t understand it all, but I believe it.” So if he could be from an obviously religious family and be saved at the age of 22 and say that, it makes me feel a little better about my lack of understanding having come to the Lord later on in life. It doesn’t mean I should not make the attempt to figure God’s Word out like Daniel could, though.

I just liked this shot I took as the sun began to set.

Once Franklin finished up, The Newsboys came back out for two songs, wrapping up with the ironic Born Again before concluding with God’s Not Dead. That was a song that got the young ladies who had moved over to stand in front of me excited, which was cool.

Speaking of cool, it’s good the Spanish-speaking crowd was digging this guy.

It was nice to see people wanted to meet and greet the other musicians, such as Marcos Witt.

But there were more looking to spend a moment with The Newsboys, who promised to make their way to their tent after the show.

The Newsboys had a merch space set up like any other concert. I think this is the first show they’ve done around here since the pandemic days. Before COVID and IIRC they did an outdoor show in Cambridge, Maryland the last time they were here (I wasn’t there.)

Twilight over the placid Wicomico River in downtown Salisbury.

Before I finish, I want to say thank you to all my new readers and subscribers. This story arc has been quite the blessing, so a big thanks to my reader and early subscriber Carol Frazier for alerting me to the initial video that started the whole thing last week.

And if you’re interested, this is what the Billy Graham Organization had to say about its Salisbury stop. I think they did a wonderful job.

One last pitch: