Ravi Zacharias Narrated:
Some years ago, I was speaking at a television taping with the late James Kennedy. At the end of it, a gentleman came forward and thanked me for the thoughts shared and introduced himself with a rich Eastern European accent as Dwight Barrows. I asked him where he was from, and he said, “Originally from Romania, now studying theology in Florida.” “How does a Romanian get a name like Dwight Barrows?” I asked.
It was a long story. During the communist oppressive days of the dictator Ceausescu, he succeeded in a daring escape from his country in 1973 and arrived in Vienna, Austria, hoping to get a visa to the United States, but he kept getting turned down. Barrows says the officials were not yet prepared to approve his emigration. “I came out the embassy into the very busy, big city of Vienna and I say, ‘Lord, if what my parents told me for 18 years is true–they’d been Christian–and if You really exist someplace and help me go to the United States, I’ll turn my life to You.'”
A month later, on Oct. 18, 1973, Barrows returned to the American Embassy. He met with a different official this time, a young man who asked if Barrows was a Christian. According to Barrows, “I say, ‘Yes, I guess I am. I was born in a Christian home.'” After explaining that being born in a Christian home does not make a person a Christian, the official gave the young Romanian man his very first Bible and a biography, The Life of D.L. Moody. Then he approved Barrows’ passage to the United States.
The man took them, made a promise, and started to read but never completed the biography. After arriving in America, the young man kept his promise to God in the back of his mind, but didn’t act on it. He got a job at the Ford company in Detroit, Michigan. Periodically he would read the Bible and every now and then would feel a twinge of guilt for not keeping his word to the official. Out of sheer loneliness, he began drinking heavily and lost his way in life. Alcohol became his escape.
God, however, did not forget Barrows. One day, Sept. 22, 1976, as he wandered aimlessly in the evening hours, he saw a massive crowd coming out of the Pontiac Silverdome. Thousands were exiting. He thought it was a football game and wandered in wondering what the stadium looked like. To his surprise it wasn’t a football game. It was a Billy Graham Crusade. He walked around the arena and ended up near the platform, where he saw people folding chairs and putting them away. One of them looked at him and said, “May I help you?” The man said he was just curious about what the event was all about. The gentleman on the platform sat him down and several minutes later, led him to Jesus Christ. He was so convicted and transformed by God’s grace that he went back to his room, picked up D.L. Moody’s story again, started reading the Bible again, and one day asked to be baptized.
The man who had led him to Christ on the platform was Cliff Barrows, Billy Graham's song leader (The man who got the world to sing, “This is my story, this is my song”). So when he was baptized, he took the first name of Dwight Moody and the last name of Cliff Barrows. Hence, the Romanian with the name Dwight Barrows. Two years later, when he became an American citizen, he officially adopted the name Dwight Barrows. And he kept the promise he made to God–to live his life for the Lord. He has built a strong ministry since those early days, especially among fellow Romanians living in the United States.
When Cliff heard that story, he said, “I remember that happening because it was so unusual.” His eyes filled with tears and his face radiated with gratitude to God. Years later as he wrote his memoirs, Cliff phoned me and asked how he could connect with Dwight Barrows. With the little details I had, I gave them to him, and amazingly, they made contact.
On April 2, 2011, Barrows had the opportunity to meet once more with his namesake. As the two men tearfully greeted one another at the Billy Graham Library, Dwight said to Cliff, “Oh God bless you, brother! This is a dream come true to see you again. And I wish you a very happy birthday on Wednesday and for God’s blessings always.”
“Now I work more or less like an evangelist,” says Barrows. “I work with so many Romanians…we have a Romanian Baptist Association in the United States. We have about 56 churches. I work a lot with the Romanian people from the republic of Moldova.”
Source: https://www.rzim.org/read/rzim-global/the-story-and-the-song-a-tribute-to-cliff-barrows; https://billygraham.org/story/a-tale-of-two-barrows/
