It sounds "farfetched, audacious, insane," says Bill Bright, 55, the hard-driving head of one of the world's biggest evangelism conglomerates. Nonetheless, he firmly believes that Christians must quickly carry out Christ's message to his followers to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations." Bright wants to saturate the U.S. by the end of 1976 and the entire world by 1980. He is convinced that God Himself has ordained those deadlines, and his Campus Crusade for Christ hopes to raise $100 million to help get the job done.
With only days left to go in the U.S. and four years worldwide, $10 million has been raised, but things are running a bit behind schedule. Right now the action centers on the Atlanta-based Here's Life, America! campaign, which has launched locally run blitzes in 165 U.S. and Canadian cities this year. It will hit 50 more by mid-1977 to reach a total of 60 million households.
TV Tease. Here's Life markets Jesus the way others might introduce a new brand of soda pop to a city. I FOUND IT! tease the TV and newspaper ads, billboards, buttons, bumper stickers. Found what? The ads offer a telephone number that will provide the answer: Jesus. In Chicago, church members manned 100 telephones 15 hours a day. Said one local convert, Banker William McLaren: "I had an unbelievable feeling. I cried for six hours."
As with all Bright operations, the 400,000 Here's Life volunteers around the country use Blight's 77-word version of Christianity, the Four Spiritual Laws. Law 1: "God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life." Law 2: "Man is sinful and separated from God" so he doesn't know about Law 1. Law 3: "Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin . . ." Law 4: "We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives." Simplistic theology, but thousands testify that this upbeat message has led them into the kingdom. Campus Crusade policy is to steer its converts into local churches.
William Rohl Bright's appointment with 1980 began a quarter-century ago. He was running a fancy-foods business, Bright's California Confections, and taking seminary courses on the side. One night, while studying for a Greek exam, he had an "intoxicating" vision: "God showed me the whole world and gave me the confidence that He would use me and others in this generation to reach the multitudes of the world." That was 1951, and since a generation runs 25 years or so, Bright concluded that victory would come in 1976 and 1980.