All the Graham offspring acknowledge that their father had a difficult time growing old. During the summer of 2001 GiGi observed that “it has been very difficult for Daddy. He has the impression that he is sort of a has-been, that he is no longer in control of anything—especially his work. In many ways, he has retired, but it’s real, real hard for him to turn loose. He’s used to having people talking to him, asking his advice, seeking his counsel, and it’s just not the same anymore.”
Daughter Ruth noted some of the same things. “The other day I was at the house,” she recalled, “and Daddy had been watching [an old video] of himself preaching on TBN [a Christian television network]. He said, ‘I watched myself. I wonder what it felt like to have that power. I don’t have that power and strength now.’ I think he underestimates himself. He underestimates the power of gentleness. There is a power in gentleness that is not in fire and brimstone.” Ruth also noted the greater vulnerability her parents had shown as age and illness overtook them, but thought they had been true to their natures. “Mother was always sweet,” she said. “There’s never a problem. It’s all sunshine. She won’t talk about herself. And that gets worse as she gets older. She’ll never tell you how she feels. It’s always been that way, but it has intensified. She’s not supposed to lift anything, but she’ll get up from her chair and walk slowly across the room to put a log on the fire when I’m right there by the fire. One of the nurses told me that she checked on her late one night and found her kneeling by her bed in prayer. She had every excuse not to kneel—her broken body, hurting and aching—but nothing would stop her from worshiping her Lord, and that’s how she has done it. That’s Mom.”
Her father, Ruth noted (as others did through the years), had played the sick role in a different manner. “Daddy complains all the time. When he had shingles, he was in so much pain and he would say, ‘I’m dying,’ and we’d all rush to his bedside. And then he’d get better. Finally, Mother said, ‘Would you please just hush up and die like a Christian?’ But it’s so sweet to see him toddle in to kiss her goodnight and she raises her face to him, her eyes just sparkling to receive his kiss. Daddy is a clay pot that has allowed God to fill him with his grace.”
Anne Lotz also showed appreciation for her father’s increased vulnerability and for the opportunity to be of service to him as his earthly life drew to a close. She spoke with obvious gratitude at his request that she be with him at the Mayo Clinic when, in June 2000, a shunt was placed in his brain to reduce the pressure from hydrocephalus. Within a day of returning to North Carolina, she learned that the procedure had not worked as hoped and that additional surgery was required. She quickly booked another flight to Minnesota. “It happened to be on Father’s Day,” she recalled. “I got there and was sitting in the chair. Daddy was asleep, and I just started to cry, because his head was now totally shaved and he had this little green cap on, and he looked so frail. I asked God to help me get hold of myself, and he did. When Daddy woke up, I was fine. I was under control. He looked at me, and his eyes focused, and he said, ‘Anne, what are you doing here?’ and I told him, ‘Happy Father’s Day.’ I couldn’t remember a Father’s Day when I knew where he was, much less be able to be with him. I told him I was on my way to New York [to be on the Today show] and wanted to spend Father’s Day with him. He just grinned and said, ‘Anne, this isn’t on the way to New York.’ We both got really emotional. I stayed with him once again until I knew he was out of the woods. It is one of the most precious blessings I feel God has ever given to me.
“When I’m with Daddy, I feel like we communicate on a level that is not verbal. The Lord is just present when we’re together, and he seems strengthened and encouraged and blessed by it. For years and years, I felt like Daddy gave more attention even to the local reporter at the newspaper than to us, because that was where his focus was, and Mother had encouraged him in that. Then, at the end of his life, to see him come back and have the time with us is really wonderful. So precious! And my mother also. I have been with her in the hospital when she has had surgeries. She is always afraid she is going to be a burden to us. I told her it isn’t a burden; it is a blessing. For all these years, they have been so self-sufficient, so selfless, and if they had a need, they had a whole staff to answer it. We have not been able to do things for our parents. And then to find that I can actually do something for them that would be a blessing and help to them is just the highest privilege and the greatest blessing of my life. Daddy just hates growing old, but in the midst of all his physical infirmities and limits, to see the sweetness of his character and the gentleness and the same concern for others, it’s incredible. It’s such a testimony to a life that has been lived for Christ and focused on Christ, so that in the end you actually take on his characteristics. I look at my daddy and mother and I can see Christ in their faces. Sometimes when they are feeling the worst, are hurting the most, or things are not going right for whatever reason, you can see the countenance of Christ in them. And it gives me hope.”
Concerned at both a personal and professional level, Franklin Graham made the eighty-mile trip from Boone to Montreat as often as his schedule permitted and often astride his Harley, but he also took extra pains to see that his father was well cared for when he was away from home. To take the place of T. W. Wilson, forced by a stroke in 1999 to relinquish his role as Billy’s faithful traveling companion, Franklin assigned two longtime staffers, David Bruce and Maury Scobee, to the task so that his father was never without one of them close at hand. In addition to handling details of travel, appointments, and meals, the men were also enjoined to make sure Billy’s hearing aid always had fresh batteries and to watch for such things as a crooked tie or a minor food stain on a lapel—details an older man might overlook before an interview or a television appearance. But Franklin’s overwhelming commitment was to help his father “finish well” and to provide him with ample assurance that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association would remain faithful to its mission. At least in part to facilitate his own ability to keep close watch on the operation, Franklin surprised many by announcing in mid-November 2001 that BGEA would move its headquarters from Minneapolis to a new and larger facility to be erected on the Billy Graham parkway in Charlotte, thus bringing the ministry back at last to the soul from which it sprung.
Franklin faced the future with little obvious trepidation. Samaritan’s Purse is solidly positioned to continue its work indefinitely. As for BGEA without BG, he felt it could long continue what it was born to do and had done best for decades: evangelism. He and other associate evangelists will continue to hold crusades, using the time-tested model that seems always to bring out the crowds and gather in the harvest. And for a time, his father will also continue to proclaim the gospel—by means of the technology whose use he and his team pioneered.
While still thinking big, Franklin thought that available technologies could be used in a more efficient and effective manner than in such undertakings as Mission World and Global Mission. “I never was totally comfortable with those,” he said, “especially when we came out of San Juan. I think what we were trying to do was good, but the world is a pretty big place and you just can’t do something all the way around the world at the same time. There are too many time zones. When it’s day here, it’s night there. What we ended up having to do was video it and delay it so that we could go around the world within a twenty-four-hour period of time. And I was thinking, ‘So what?’ What was so wonderful about that, other than that we could say we had done it? What I want to do is focus. We can take one of my father’s old telecasts and lip-sync it so that Daddy is speaking Chinese if we show it in China, Spanish if we show it in Central or South America, Swahili in Africa, and Hindi in India. Let’s just go in with the money and buy the time on state television and show it in prime time. That’s what we do in this country. And let’s go around the world. Let’s say we start with Central America. We put a local address and local telephone number on the screen and work with a local mission group or local church to be our representative for that telecast, so that all the requests will come in to them, and we provide the materials and pay them to mail them out for us and we keep that little office open for a month or two. We do that in every nation, so that people can respond to a local address. When we finish Central America, we move to South America, and when we finish South America, we move to Europe, and then to Africa and the Middle East and on into India. It might take us three years to go around the world and do it right in every country. And once we go around the world and complete it, we do it again with a different program, and the next time around we will be a little smarter, because we have been there before.”
In addition to the immediate results, Franklin added, “By having a crusade on television, we would be giving a model to the church. People would say, ‘So that’s what a Billy Graham crusade is. That’s what the message is about. That’s how you give an invitation.’ That would spark an interest so that people will say, ‘We want to have a crusade like that in our city. Who has the gift of evangelism in our country? Let’s get together and help them. Let’s do this in our town, with one of our own.’” It would be far better, Franklin thought, to let people see a crusade on their state-run television at prime time than at four in the morning on some UHF Christian station that was coming in all scratchy.”
Franklin also determined to extend his father’s ministry by using BGEA’s enormous collection of videotapes. “We have sat on my father’s videos,” he explained. “I am making them available to Jan and Paul Crouch [of Trinity Broadcasting Network]. Some people wonder why we want to give it to them, because they are ‘different.’ I’ll tell you why: They have a network. [Skeptics of the plan] say, ‘Yeah, but they are Pentecostals.’ So? At least they love the Lord Jesus Christ. We pay to be on NBC and ABC and CBS, and Daddy [would] be on and the program right after [would] be some godless program, with immorality and killing and violence and everything. I’d much rather be on Trinity Broadcasting, and I don’t have to pay for that. They are going to take my father’s telecasts and play them for free, and they are thrilled to have that opportunity. I think you can take some of these old telecasts and show them on Trinity Broadcasting. We’re going to put a little subtitle down on the bottom—Billy Graham Classic—so people will realize this is not live—and fifty years from now people can still come to know Jesus Christ. But sitting on those tapes isn’t leading one person to Christ.” TBN began airing “Billy Graham Classics” twice weekly in mid-2001.
Franklin’s creative rethinking of ways to combine BGEA’s extensive archival resources, various forms of media, and time-tested organizational methods has proved astonishingly successful in an initiative known as “My Hope World TV Project.” Begun in 2002 and continuing to evolve, the program centers on regional telecasts of programs featuring Billy Graham “classics,” current presentations by Franklin, and films from Worldwide Pictures. Local churches cooperate to stir interest and support, as in traditional Graham revivals, but instead of gathering people into churches or public venues, church members trained in sharing their faith and leading people to Christ invite small groups into their homes to view the programs, as the World Television Series had pioneered with Operation Matthew in the 1990s. The results far exceeded expectations. In the first five years of the program, more than 2.2 million “Matthews” posted such gatherings, with 6.4 million people making decisions for Christ. Local churches reported explosive growth overnight, with 40 to 70 percent of those making decisions following through and becoming integrated with the congregation. Several Latin American countries reported remarkable harvests—Venezuela, 234,000; Argentina, 321,000; Colombia, 705,000—and three Russian installments have garnered more than 320,000 decisions. But the clear standout has been India, with a total in excess of four million.
Although he thought it plausible that within a few years BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse would share common boards, Franklin thought it unlikely the two organizations would ever merge formally. “I think we will keep them separate,” he said, explaining that “Samaritan’s Purse complements BGEA. The criticism that my father and his generation got, that people are more concerned with the soul and not the body—they can’t make that charge against me. Even the most liberal of liberal groups receive me because I had twenty years with Samaritan’s Purse before I started my evangelism. In their minds, that gives me credibility. I didn’t design it this way. This is just the way it happened. I never dreamed the media and others would treat me differently because of the humanitarian work, and I am going to use that to the advantage of evangelism.”
Despite his intention to keep the two organizations separate, Franklin did see an advantage in having BGEA headquarters closer at hand. In November 2001 he announced that the central operation would move from Minneapolis, “all the address you need” for more than fifty years, to Charlotte. Dedicated in April 2005, the spacious new facilities (200,000 square feet) sit on sixty-three acres alongside the Billy Graham Parkway. The new location, not far from the Charlotte airport, is much closer to Samaritan’s Purse in Boone and the Cove in Asheville.
The Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove has become and will doubtless continue to be a major component of BGEA ministries. Prominent Evangelical teachers lead seminars, most lasting three to five days apiece and focusing on such topics as “A Hunger for the Holy,” “Following Jesus in Tough Times,” “Shepherding the Heart of a Woman,” “Five Lies That Ruin Relationships,” “Christ’s Take on Investing the Rest of Your Life,” “Successful Aging,” and “Who Wants to Have a Million-Dollar Marriage?” The main conference auditorium seats 500 and features state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Two reasonably priced inns are tastefully furnished, but offer guests no radio or television sets, and recreation is limited to walks through the woods of the beautifully maintained 1,500-acre property. In the future the Cove will likely serve as the site for “mini-Amsterdam” conferences (now called “Beyond Amsterdam”) to provide intensive training in evangelism.
In all these ways and others that may present themselves, Franklin Graham intends to use the resources of BGEA to further evangelism (to use the words of the association’s original charter), “by any and all means.” The great desire of his heart, he said convincingly and with a sense of urgency, is “to help other evangelists. I want BGEA to be in the forefront of the battle. We are not going to sit on the sidelines and say, ‘The glory days are behind us.’ We are going to be pro-active, out there, in the face of the devil and every demon in hell. We are going to fight for every soul we can, to give them a chance to hear the gospel, give them a chance to confess and repent before God, give them a chance to receive God’s provision through his Son, Jesus Christ. I like to build. For twenty years I’ve been building a ministry for my Father in heaven, and I don’t have any intention of quitting that. I want to build BGEA, and I want to build Samaritan’s Purse, and we want to take it for another generation. I’m forty-eight now; fifty-eight . . . sixty-eight . . . seventy-eight. . . . Maybe I’ve got thirty more years. You can say, ‘That’s a long time.’ But I’ve been here twenty years and it feels like it’s gone just like that. We don’t have a lot of time. So if we are going to do something, we had better do it now.”
When he spoke these words in the spring of 2001, Franklin’s awareness of the swiftness of the stream of life had doubtless been quickened by the passing of those who had so long held up his father’s arms. Fred and Ted Dienert, Billie Barrows, Robert Ferm, Victor Nelson, Alexander Haraszti, and George Wilson had all died during the 1990s. Just two weeks after that conversation and a few days after finally making his retirement official, T. W. Wilson suffered a fatal heart attack in a restaurant near his home in Montreat. Walter Smyth had retired and was in poor health. John Wesley White was still recovering slowly from a devastating stroke suffered in 1996. Another of Franklin’s mentors, Roy Gustafson, died in April 2002. Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea appeared to be in good health, but Cliff was seventy-eight and Bev was ninety-two. And, of course, his own father’s precarious health was seldom far out of Franklin’s mind. Obviously and inexorably, the little team that had done so much to lead Evangelical Christianity out of the wilderness and into the central arenas of the religious world over the past six decades was about to pass into history.
Awareness that an era was ending was not limited to Evangelical Christians. On September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Billy Graham was once again called upon to fill the role of People’s Pastor at the observance of National Day of Prayer and Remembrance in Washington. Representatives of Judaism, Islam, and various segments of Christianity spoke, and spoke well, but the task of delivering the central message fell to the man who had borne its weight so many times before. Although he was obviously frail and accepted the assistance of two escorts to help him to his place on the dais at the National Cathedral, Graham’s voice was strong and his manner sure. He acknowledged that, when asked how God could allow such tragedy and suffering, “I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering.”
Graham noted how the events of the week had underscored the brevity and uncertainty of life, cited the heroism and courage so many had shown in the aftermath of the attacks, called for spiritual renewal, and pointed to the cross as the symbol of hope for Christians—making it clear that “I’m speaking for the Christian now,” a tacit acknowledgment that not all present or watching on television shared the same convictions. Toward the end, he said, “I’ve become an old man now,” confirming that he understood what many in this global audience were seeing for themselves for the first time, “and I’ve preached all over the world, and the older I get the more I cling to that hope that I started with many years ago and proclaimed in many languages to many parts of the world.” The wounded nation and its people would recover, he felt confident, and he called upon them to rebuild on the solid rock of faith in God, quoting the words of the familiar hymn, “How Firm a Foundation”:
Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
As Billy Graham returned slowly to his seat, the huge audience, silent throughout most of the service, signaled its respect and gratitude for the venerable evangelist with a sustained wave of warm applause for one whose like would not pass their way again.
Sadly, troubling shadows soon clouded the aura of expansive goodwill Billy Graham and his ministry had come to symbolize. A few weeks after the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, many Christian leaders were working to ease and forestall expressions of enmity against Arabs and Muslims. On a day when President Bush was wishing Muslims “health, prosperity, and happiness during [the Islamic holy month of] Ramadan,” Franklin Graham publicly observed that he did not regard Islam as “this wonderful, peaceful religion.” On the contrary, he said, it is “wicked, violent, and not of the same God. . . . It wasn’t Methodists flying into those buildings, it wasn’t Lutherans. It was an attack on this country by people of the Islamic faith.” Irate Muslim leaders decried these comments, but when representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked to meet with him to foster better understanding, Franklin declined, claiming he could not fit them into his schedule.
He did, however, offer a clarifying statement, in which he claimed he had been “greatly misunderstood” and said he did not believe Muslims “are evil people because of their faith.” He acknowledged that much evil has been done in the name of religion, including Christianity. Still, he did not temper his criticism of Islam, expressing concern about the treatment of women in Muslim lands and observing that the Qur’an “provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world.” Muslims, of course, were hardly satisfied by such putative clarifications, but other observers also expressed bafflement. The White House distanced itself from Graham’s remarks, saying that President Bush “views Islam as a religion that preaches peace.” The president of an international relief organization lamented, “It doesn’t help the cause of Christianity. It doesn’t bring the faiths together. My question is, ‘What’s he trying to accomplish?’ I hope he was caught off guard.” More pointedly, veteran Newsweek religion editor Ken Woodward, a longtime Graham observer, volunteered that “obviously, Mr. Graham is tone deaf in this respect. He’s certainly not his father’s son in terms of discretion.”
Unfortunately, in late February 2002 evidence surfaced that caused many to wonder if at least part of the father’s “discretion” had not been, in fact, “deception.” A newly released batch of tapes from the Nixon White House included a 90-minute conversation Graham had had with the President and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman on February 1, 1972, during which all three men made anti–Semitic statements. Although they both expressed admiration for Israelis, Nixon and Graham agreed that liberal American Jews played a prominent role in what they regarded as the largely unpatriotic news media and in the production and dissemination of an increasingly corrosive popular culture. Graham noted that he was not talking about all Jews and that he had many Jewish friends, but he admitted that, when in the company of liberal Jews such as those at the New York Times, he did not let them know “how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances.”
Predictably, Jewish leaders, many of whom had professed great admiration for Graham, expressed disappointment, dismay, and disgust at these remarks. According to staff members close to him, Graham immediately saw the implications of these revelations and quickly issued a statement saying that, although he did not remember the conversation, he deeply regretted what he had obviously said and insisted it did not reflect his feelings toward Jews. He noted that he had long sought to build bridges between Jews and Christians and would “continue to strongly support all future efforts to advance understanding and mutual respect between our communities.” In a more extended statement, issued a day or two later, he said,
I cannot imagine what caused me to make those comments, which I totally repudiate. Whatever the reason, I was wrong for not disagreeing with the President, and I sincerely apologize to anyone I have offended.
I don’t ever recall having those feelings about any group, especially the Jews, and I certainly do not have them now. My remarks did not reflect my love for the Jewish people. I humbly ask the Jewish community to reflect on my actions on behalf of Jews over the years that contradict my words in the Oval Office that day.
Much of my life has been a pilgrimage—constantly learning, changing, growing, and maturing. I have come to see in deeper ways some of the implications of my faith and message, not the least of which is in the area of human rights and racial and ethnic understanding.
Some Jewish leaders as well as others who had been taken aback by the tapes accepted his apology, recalling that he had been a strong supporter of Israel, had urged Soviet leaders to allow Jews to emigrate to Israel, had assured Jewish leaders in New York that he would not be targeting Jews for conversion during his 1991 crusade there, and, more recently, had criticized his fellow Southern Baptists for announcing a special campaign of evangelism aimed at Jews. They also noted that his remarks on this occasion stood out as virtually unique in his known oral or written statements.
Although not all were convinced by such arguments, it seems plausible that, just as Billy Graham moved from acceptance of segregation and male dominance to a firm insistence on racial integration and equal opportunity for women, and from denunciation of all forms of socialism to a more flexible political stance, he had also grown beyond whatever validity he had once assigned to anti–Semitic stereotypes that were more widely held and voiced in the general culture in 1972 than was the case three decades later.
Graham’s later life had become quiet, as disease, accidents, and age kept both Ruth and him confined mostly to Little Piney Cove or hospitals, except for brief periods when he emerged to hold crusades—in Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Despite delays because of health and fears that he might not be able to handle the rigors of such outings, he rallied repeatedly and, in virtually every case, drew record crowds as multiplied thousands turned out for what they reasonably expected would be their last chance to hear the fabled evangelist.
It was fitting that the final crusade of Graham’s career, in June 2005, was in New York City, the scene of his most memorable American crusade, the 1957 marathon in Madison Square Garden. He had hoped to return to the Garden, for nostalgia’s sake, but realization that it could not possibly hold the expected multitude forced a shift to Corona Park in Flushing Meadow, the site of the 1964–65 World’s Fair. Death had continued to winnow the ranks of Billy’s family, friends, and associates—Montreat pastor and friend Calvin Thielman died in 2002; Walter Smyth followed in 2003, as did old friends Johnny and June Cash and beloved brother Melvin Graham; and Stephen Olford died in 2004—but the core platform team was there. Cliff Barrows, age eighty and nearly blind from macular degeneration, looked robust and was in fine voice and spirit, though direction of the 1,500-voice choir had been surrendered to Tom Bledsoe. George Beverly Shea, age ninety-six, was still able to sing “How Great Thou Art,” the song he had introduced to America at the 1957 Crusade, with remarkable volume and vibrancy. (Three years earlier, in Dallas, he had said, “I think I sounded better at ninety.”)
In the weeks prior to the event, reporters who interviewed the aging evangelist commented on the toll taken by disease, failing sight and hearing, and two serious falls that had hospitalized him for long periods in 2004. He seemed feeble, they said, his voice sometimes barely above a whisper, a weak echo of the clarion instrument that had been his trademark, and he seemed at times to grope for words. At a press conference two days before the crusade, however, Graham seemed visibly and audibly revived. His voice had grown noticeably stronger, and his answers came without hesitation or imprecision. Newspapers continued to report that he would be able to sit on a high stool behind a specially built pulpit and that Franklin would stand ready to take over if his father were unable to finish a sermon. They need not have worried. Though he remained offstage in an air-conditioned tent until minutes before he was to preach, and proceeded to the platform slowly, using a walker and with Franklin supporting him at his side, Billy Graham was ready.
When his time came on opening night, his snowy mane flowing down to his collar, the venerable old evangelist accepted the tremendous standing ovation for a few moments, then signaled the audience to settle down. Never one to shed tears, in part because of a tear-duct limitation, he said, “I have stars in my eyes. I can’t see you very well just yet.” That he should be moved is understandable. Arrayed before him like sheep on a thousand hills, the huge crowd—attendance for the three nights topped 230,000—may well have been the most ethnically and culturally diverse crowd ever to attend a Billy Graham Crusade and perhaps as diverse a large audience as ever assembled anywhere.
As Graham spoke, his voice was clear and strong, little different from other crusades in the previous decade. He stood throughout all three sermons, using the stool only during the invitation. The sermons were short—about fifteen minutes, with the exception of the last afternoon, when he spoke at greater length on the Second Coming—but the response was, one last time, impressive, as nearly 10,000 people streamed forward in response to the familiar call, “I’m going to ask you to come. . . . Come now,” and the encouraging strains of “Just as I Am.”
After the New York Crusade, Graham spent most of his time either at Little Piney Cove with Ruth or traveling to the Mayo Clinic for treatment of his various ailments, newly including an aggressive form of macular degeneration. Although he was unable to withstand the rigors of even a shortened crusade, he did make one-night guest appearances at Franklin’s festivals in New Orleans and Baltimore in 2006. In April of that year, he battled illness to appear at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University to receive the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. Despite being mostly offstage, however, the venerable evangelist was not forgotten. Newsweek profiled him in a thoughtful cover story and Time reporters Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs interviewed him extensively for a book, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. Graham also achieved distinction as apparently the oldest person to hit the best-seller lists, with the publication of The Journey: How to Live By Faith in an Uncertain World. And on May 31, 2007, his status as an eminent figure was confirmed yet again as the nation’s major media converged on Charlotte for the formal dedication of the Billy Graham Library and Visitor Center, where the Mayor of Charlotte, the Governor of North Carolina, and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton lauded Graham for his contributions to the world and for the personal spiritual guidance and moral example he had provided them over decades.
The complex, sharing space with BGEA headquarters, was expected to attract 250,000 tourists a year. The grounds have a rustic quality that echoes the rural setting of Graham’s original home. The handsome two-story brick structure itself, which had been moved from its original Park Road location just four miles away to Jim Bakker’s PTL Christian amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, was repurchased and reassembled on the new site. The main attraction, however, is the library, a designation that is something of a misnomer. Unlike presidential or other special-purpose libraries, it is not designed to be a research facility; although it contains some of Graham’s personal papers, most of his archives remain at Wheaton. The library’s major functions are to serve as a memorial to the evangelist’s life and ministry; as an evangelistic tool, since guests are repeatedly exposed to presentations of the Gospel; and, not insignificantly, as a way to keep people informed about and loyal to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Visitors enter the library through a forty-foot-high cross-shaped portal in a huge barn that recalls Billy’s early days on the dairy farm. They are met there by a mechanical talking cow named Bessie, designed to engage the attention of children. Inside, visitors watch a video of people asking the great life questions Graham sought to address during his long ministry, together with highlights from that ministry. They then move through display rooms that—using realistic sets, photos and artifacts gathered over a lifetime, and a variety of media—recreate key episodes and facets of the evangelist’s life: the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade; his use of radio, television, and movies; his response to such issues as Communism and racial strife; his relationships with eleven U.S. presidents; the great international conferences for evangelists at Lausanne and Amsterdam; and regularly updated information about current BGEA ministries. One room is devoted to Ruth’s life, both as a young girl in China and Korea and as devoted wife and mother in one of the world’s most famous families.
Early reaction to the venture was mixed. Numerous observers regarded the talking cow as inappropriately hokey; others found it a fitting reminder of Graham’s dairy-farm origins and a charming way to introduce the evangelist and his message to children. Some viewed the enterprise as glorifying the evangelist instead of the Christ he preached. Graham himself was said to have resisted the project at first, claiming he did not want a monument to himself. Franklin and members of the BGEA board assured him that the library tour would have a strong evangelistic dimension, which it emphatically does—virtually every exhibit involves pointed exposure to the gospel Graham preached, and the tour ends with a montage, taken from crusades over the decades, of his offering the invitation to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer and meet with counselors awaiting outside the cross-shaped exit. With that understanding, Graham relented. “When it was presented as an ongoing ministry and people would have the opportunity to be won to Christ,” he said, “I changed my mind.”
The sharpest and most public controversy arose over whether the complex would also contain the graves of Billy and Ruth Graham. It had long been assumed that the Grahams would be buried at the Cove, but Franklin and at least some members of the BGEA board thought the library would be more appropriate. Indeed, plans had been made for the tour to end in a garden that would serve as their final earthly resting place. When Ruth learned of the plan, however, she would have none of it. Supported by Ned, at least one of his sisters—an exact count was difficult to obtain—and crime novelist and lifetime family friend Patricia Cornwell, Ruth adamantly insisted that she intended to be buried in the mountains where she had raised her children and that “she hopes her husband will join her there.” She underscored her determination by signing a notarized statement, witnessed by six people, stating that she expected Billy to stand by their agreement. “My final wish,” it said, “is to be buried at the Cove. Under no circumstances am I to be buried in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
The dust-up drew wide, if brief, attention after the Washington Post published a detailed account of the family dispute, quoting Ruth as having dismissed the library complex as a “circus” and “a tourist attraction.” Franklin defended the library as an appropriate burial place and said that his father had approved of the plan. He lamented the opposition from his siblings, conceded that his parents should have the last word, and observed that he was preparing both sites. A few days later, he would say only that a decision had been reached, but that the family had agreed not to discuss it any further.
The indomitable feistiness that Ruth displayed as she talked about her burial could not mask the fact that she was indeed dying. Finally, aware that she had reached the end of her earthly road and in consultation with her family, she asked to be taken off artificial life support. On June 14, 2007, surrounded by her five children and her husband of nearly 64 years, she died, at age 87. Two days later, a great cloud of witnesses turned out to express their love and respect as the cortege bearing her body traveled from the funeral home in Asheville, along U.S. Highway 70 past her beloved Cove, through the streets of Black Mountain and the narrow roads of Montreat, to Anderson Auditorium on the campus of Montreat College.
At the service, attended by more than 2,000 people and carried live on local and cable television as well as the Internet, the congregation sang, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”; George Beverly Shea sang one of Ruth’s favorite hymns, “In Tenderness He Sought Me”; and Ruth’s older sister, Rosa, charmed the audience with amusing stories of their childhood in China. Each of the Graham children spoke briefly, blending reminiscence with evidence of the faith she had instilled in them. Daughter Ruth noted that early in her life their mother had chosen Christ as “as her center, her home, her purpose, her partner, her confidante, her example, and her vision, and we can all make that choice today.” Ned read a Puritan prayer that Ruth had often requested as part of their daily devotions in recent years. GiGi, who said she was losing her best friend, told of standing at her mother’s bedside in the last days as “she looked past us into what I believe was eternity,” then read a poem, “Time to Adore,” that Ruth had written about hoping she would ascend to heaven slowly rather than “in the twinkling of an eye,” so that she might have “time to adore” both what she was leaving and the “joy unspeakable” that lay in store. Franklin drew laughter with stories of Ruth’s trying to catch a rattlesnake with a marshmallow fork and of rousting him out of bed by pouring a can of cigarette butts and ashes on his head, but stressed that her belief in the Bible and in Jesus as the Son of God was her most important gift to her children. “I thank you, Mama,” he said, “for your example, for your love, for your wit, for your humor, for your craziness. I love you for all of it, and I’m going to miss you terribly.” More serious by temperament than her siblings, Anne noted their mother’s love for their father, but said even that paled in comparison to her love for Jesus and for God’s Word. She then read from Romans 8, the same passage she had read to Ruth on “the morning she went to heaven, to our Father’s house.”
Throughout the service, Billy, his white hair still long and full, had listened pensively from the front row. He had not been scheduled to speak, but decided he did have something to say. Helped to his feet by two aides and clutching his walker, he thanked people for coming and noted the presence of a large contingent of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “As you have already heard,” he said, “she was an incredible woman.” Nodding toward the simple wooden casket, aware that an inmate at Louisiana’s Angola prison had made a matching one for him, he added, “I wish you could look in that casket, because she’s so beautiful. I sat there a long time last night just looking at her and praying, because I know that she’ll have a great reception in heaven.” In a statement released earlier, he had said, “Although I will miss her more than I can possibly say, I rejoice that some day soon we will be reunited in the presence of the Lord she loved and served so faithfully.”
At the close of the service, the Graham children stationed themselves at the major exits from the auditorium, to greet and visit with all those who had come to honor their mother. Their father had said that he wished he could greet them all as well, but apart from his diminished strength, he would soon be accompanying Ruth’s body to Charlotte, where she would be buried the following day in the memorial garden at the Billy Graham library.
Even in death, Ruth’s personality shone through. Her headstone reads, “End of Construction—Thank You for Your Patience.”
Some closest to him predicted that Billy’s grief at Ruth’s death would hasten his own, but it did not. Age continued to take its inexorable toll, further degrading his eyesight and hearing and largely restricting him to his home except for visits to his doctors in Asheville, outings he sometimes used to have lunch at TGI Friday’s or to get a corn dog at the Sonic drive-in. As he was able, he wrote the book Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well, a thoughtful book about aging (published in 2011). He followed the 2008 presidential campaign on television and welcomed Republican candidate John McCain to his home. A temporary health episode forced cancellation of a similar visit with Barack Obama.
Graham himself gave no public indication of his preference between the candidates and said, “I’m not making any endorsements, and I’m staying out of partisan politics.” Franklin also professed not to be offering an endorsement, but noted that the differences between the two candidates were substantial and “the choice Americans make in November will affect our nation for years to come.” The mass mailing that contained that observation included a picture of Senator McCain seated between Billy and Franklin and a picture of Franklin with Fox News journalist Greta Van Susteren, who had accompanied him on his trip to North Korea. As had often been the case in previous elections, the implication was not difficult to divine.
Billy Graham turned ninety on November 7, 2008. A small gathering of family, caregivers, close friends, and staff members from the Montreat area celebrated with him at Little Piney Cove on the day of record, followed by a larger celebration a few days later at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. That event opened with a short video, narrated by veteran radio broadcaster and old friend Paul Harvey, who sat at Graham’s table, had recently turned ninety himself, and would die in early 2009. Dignitaries including former President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, sent warm greetings, as did then-President George W. Bush in a separate video greeting. Stephan Nelson Tchividjian, the oldest of Graham’s nineteen grandchildren, thanked “Daddy Bill” for the many valuable lessons he had taught them in both word and deed. Daughter Ruth recounted the enveloping grace her father had shown when she drove home after a failed marriage they had tried to discourage. Billy’s younger sister, Jean Ford, recalled incidents from their childhood, noting that “All of us knew from Day One that he was Mother’s favorite.” And a notable musical trio of Michael W. Smith, Cliff Barrows, and Bev Shea, who would soon turn 100, led the assembly in “Happy Birthday.”
Throughout the program, Graham sat staring emptily and impassively, reminding one of elderly nursing-home patients whose minds have long departed. When she spoke, Ruth even said, “Daddy, it’s Bunny.” But then, when he was handed a microphone for a response to the tributes and gifts, he spoke for nearly five minutes, his voice weak but his mind still clearly intact. He expressed gratitude to his family, his staff, and his many friends and gratitude for the opportunity to preach the gospel of Christ for so many years. Then he said he hoped to see everyone again at his ninety-fifth birthday party.
In preparation for that evening, Franklin had sent out a message asking anyone who had come to Christ under his father’s ministry to send a letter or e-mail telling their story and sending birthday greetings. Like the multitudes that had streamed down the aisles at Graham’s crusades, the response was visibly impressive, as waiters rolled in the first of several large carts containing more than 120,000 messages. Franklin noted that one had come from a woman converted in 1938, surely one of the first in Billy’s crown, and it summarized thousands of others with the words, “We love you and we thank you.” Graham managed a weak “Love you” that set off a prolonged and, for many, tearful outpouring of applause.
Franklin announced that his father was tired and needed to go to bed, wheeling him out while dessert was being served. Ruth, looking back on the occasion later, was not so sure. “Daddy thought Franklin took him out too soon. He wanted to stay longer. He talked about that night for weeks. He absolutely loved it.”
Billy Graham may seriously have intended to stay free of partisan politics, but Franklin made that difficult for him. In November 2009, he invited John McCain’s 2008 running mate and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her family to meet with his father for dinner at Little Piney Cove. After the gathering, Graham issued a statement calling it an honor to have Governor Palin in his home and noting, “I, like many people, have been impressed with her strong commitment to her faith, to family and love of country.” Afterward, Franklin told the Charlotte Observer, “Daddy feels God was using her to wake America up.” He later took Palin with him on a Samaritan’s Purse relief effort to Haiti and featured her in a Samaritan’s Purse video wearing one of the organization’s sweatshirts as she and husband, Todd, helped clean up after the May 2011 tornadoes in Alabama.
In April 2010, at a request from the White House, the elder Graham received President Obama, marking the first time an incumbent president had ever visited him at his Montreat home. With Franklin present, they met for half an hour and prayed together, president for preacher as well as preacher for president. After the meeting, Graham issued a statement expressing pleasure at the visit and adding, “As we approach the National Day of Prayer on May 6, I want to encourage Christians everywhere to pray for our President, and for all those in positions of authority, and especially for the men and women serving in our military.”
The reference to the Day of Prayer and the military was surely a conscious allusion to the fact that a week earlier, the Pentagon had rescinded an invitation to Franklin to lead a prayer service on that day, responding to public criticism of his repeated negative statements about Islam.
Franklin later described Obama as “a very nice man” and “very gracious,” but indicated he was not sure if Obama was a true Christian, criticized him for appearing to be more concerned about Muslims than about Christians persecuted by Muslims, and told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he wished “the president could come under some good, sound biblical teaching.”
When Mitt Romney became the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election, Franklin noted that “He’s a Mormon” and “Most Christians would not recognize Mormons as part of the Christian faith,” but added, “He would be a good president if he won the nomination, because I think he’s got the strength, business-wise, politics-wise. He’s a sharp guy. And he’s proven himself.”
Perhaps as a caution to his less circumspect son, Billy had told Christianity Today in early 2011 that if he had a chance to “go back and do anything differently, I would have steered clear of politics.” Though grateful for the opportunities to minister to powerful people, he admitted that, “looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.” But in 2012, he appeared once again to cross that self-drawn line. In October, with the election only weeks away, Franklin brought Governor Romney to Montreat to visit his father.
That visit led immediately to a report that the elder Graham had said he would do all he could to help Governor Romney in the campaign “and you can quote me on that,” and that Franklin had pledged to help turn out Evangelical Christians to vote for the governor. Soon after, BGEA produced full-page ads bearing Billy Graham’s iconic visage and signature alongside copy urging voters to support “those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman.” The ads appeared in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and newspapers in battleground states, with smaller versions sent to churches to insert in their Sunday bulletins. Graham representatives note that the ads do not mention a specific candidate or party, an observation surely intended more for the IRS than for the target audience. Given that Governor Romney opposed same-sex marriage and that President Obama supported it and by doing so had, to use Franklin’s words, “shaken his fist” at God, the ads left no doubt about their intent. To clarify matters further, Franklin wrote a piece in the October issue of Decision explaining “Why Evangelicals can vote for a Mormon,” and the BGEA website deleted a long-running item identifying Mormonism as a cult. The explanation offered for the latter action was that BGEA did not want “to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.”
Because of Graham’s reentering the political arena “out of due season” by offering an endorsement of Romney and focusing on a topic that had never been central to his ministry when he was active, some observers charged that Franklin had steered his father in that direction, perhaps against his will or at least without full enthusiasm. Skeptics, including former and then-current BGEA employees, wondered if Graham actually made the pro-Romney statements attributed to him or had much to do with the advertising campaign. Franklin turned away reporters seeking direct confirmation or clarification from Mr. Graham himself, on the grounds that his father’s infirmities made that impossible. A disappointed insider familiar with the ministry for decades suggested that, in the absence of a definitive statement by Billy Graham himself, or even if one should be forthcoming, perhaps the best course would be “to remember him as he was for most of his ministry.”
When President Obama was reelected by nearly five million votes, Franklin saw a dark future. “If we are allowed to go down this road in the path that this president wants us to go down,” he lamented, “I think it will be to our peril and to the destruction of this nation.” Fewer than half of evangelical voters showed up to vote, and Graham considered that an insufficient turnout. “If Christians are upset,” he said, “they need to be upset at themselves. We need to do a better job of getting our people—the Church—to vote. . . . If Christians would just vote, then elections in this country would be much different.”
Franklin determined to do what he could to achieve a better result in the 2016 election. While many people were surprised by the popularity of Donald Trump, Franklin turned out to be remarkably prescient about Trump’s appeal. In fact, in his 2011 interview with Christiane Amanpour, Franklin had said of Donald Trump, who had floated the idea of a 2012 run, “When I first saw that he was getting in, I thought, well, this has got to be a joke. But the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, you know, maybe this guy’s right.”
“So, he might be your candidate of choice?” Amanpour asked.
“Sure, yes,” he responded.
In the same interview, Franklin had echoed Trump’s “birther” views by saying that if Obama had a legitimate birth certificate, he should produce it. Not surprisingly, Trump liked the sound of those views and called Franklin a few days later to tell him so. Graham chose not to reveal the content of their conversation beyond saying, “I never told him he should run. I don’t feel that’s my role.” But their exchange obviously went well. In 2012, BGEA received a $100,000 donation from Trump’s Foundation; Samaritan’s Purse received $25,000. On November 7, 2013, Donald and Melania Trump sat alongside News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch at a table next to Billy Graham as more than eight hundred people gathered in a hotel ballroom in Asheville to celebrate the evangelist’s ninety-fifth birthday. A photo of the two tables, with then Fox News Host Greta Van Susteren leading the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to Graham, appeared in the January 2014 issue of Decision.
In keeping with his determination to light a fire under lukewarm Christians during the 2016 election campaign, Franklin led a “Decision America Tour” that featured rallies at the capitols of all fifty states. He professed to be nonpartisan—“My hope is not in either party. Both have failed miserably over the past few decades, compromising with evil all too often, and refusing to take a bold stand for righteous behavior.” The aim of his campaign, he said, was “to put God back in the political process.” He left little doubt, however, as to how he thought God wanted people to vote “according to His will and purpose.” He repeatedly decried the policies and actions of “our government today” and opined that, despite the widely publicized blots in his copybook, “I think Donald Trump has changed. I think God is working on his heart and in his life.”
When Trump surprised the world by defeating the heavily favored Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, with the help of 81 percent of the evangelical vote, Franklin professed not to be surprised by what he called “the biggest political upset of our lifetime.” After large crowds showed up for his rallies at the capitols during his fifty-state tour, he told the Washington Post, “I could sense God was going to do something this year. Prayer groups were started. Families prayed. Churches prayed. Then Christians went to the polls, and God showed up.” As for the political pundits and secular media, “None of them understood the God-factor.”
Though Graham never explicitly endorsed Trump during the campaign, the president-elect invited Franklin to join him at a “thank you” event in Alabama a few weeks after the election and acknowledged the boost Graham had provided: “Having Franklin Graham, who was so instrumental, we won so big, with evangelical Christians.” At Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Franklin continued the long tradition of Graham participation in signal rituals of American civil religion by reading from I Timothy 2:1–2, which urges “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.”
At his ninety-fifth birthday celebration in Asheville, Billy Graham was quite frail and said little, but his few words were directed to Cliff Barrows, who had turned ninety himself a few months earlier. “Cliff,” he said, “I want to thank you. This celebration is partly for you as well. I want to thank you for all you have meant to me all these years. Thank you, and God bless you.” Barrows responded, “Happy Birthday, dear Bill. I thank God for every remembrance of you.” Notably missing was the third member of the seventy-year inner circle, George Beverly Shea, who had died in April of that year at age 104.
The evening also served as the occasion to draw attention to a new nationwide effort called “My Hope America,” in which Christians across the country are encouraged to invite friends and neighbors into their homes to watch BGEA-produced videos that include messages from Billy Graham. The first of these, “The Cross,” which aired on nationwide television a few days later, featured dramatic testimonies of people whose lives had been transformed by accepting Christ, punctuated by scenes of individuals struggling up a mountain to reach a large cross covered with ugly, misshapen pieces of wood that represented the sins of the world. Also interspersed were film clips of Graham’s proclaiming the old, old story at various points in his long life and contemporary scenes of the venerable evangelist sitting in a chair at his home in Little Piney Cove. Although his eyes had dimmed and his natural force had abated, his conviction remained as strong and powerful as ever as he told the familiar story at the heart of the gospel he had preached since boyhood. Near the end of the video, as a young woman stood at the foot of the cross and sang of Jesus’ resurrection, the ugly branches and tangles fell away, leaving an unblemished symbol of redemption and salvation. A younger Graham, recorded at the height of his powers, proclaimed, “God says, ‘Receive Him. Believe Him. Put your trust and your confidence in Him, and I will forgive your sins, and I will guarantee you eternity in heaven. It’s all yours, and it’s all free. All you have to do is receive it.’” Then, for the last time in his legendary ministry, Billy Graham exercised his remarkable gift of the invitation: “Today, I’m asking you to put your trust in Christ and pray this prayer, sentence by sentence after me. ‘Dear Heavenly Father, I know that I’m a sinner. And I ask for your forgiveness. I believe you’ve died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins. I repent of my sins. I invite you to come into my heart and my life. I want to trust and follow you as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus’ name, Amen.’”
As the program ended, Graham was shown sitting in a rocker on his porch, rubbing his large black dog’s neck and looking past the old rail fence at the border of the yard to the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance as the voice of his younger self said, with blessed assurance, “He’s given me a reason for existence. I know where I’ve come from. I know why I’m here. I know where I’m going. Do you?”
Earlier in the year, Graham had published The Reason for My Hope: Salvation, which proclaimed a similar positive message and seemed to be an appropriate valedictory volume. Indeed, that was said to be the expectation within the Graham family and BGEA, but in September 2015 another book appeared, this one officially identified as the thirty-third and last in the string of (mostly) bestsellers. The title, Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond, would have attracted little attention in itself, but early reviewers were surprised by a greater emphasis on hell, described as “a place of wailing and a furnace of fire; a place of torment, a place of outer darkness, a place where people scream for mercy; a place of everlasting punishment” and the stark warning, “If you accept any part of the Bible, you are forced to accept the reality of hell, the place for punishment for those who reject Christ.”
In the early years of his preaching, Graham used familiar fire-and-brimstone imagery and language when speaking of the ultimate fate of the unredeemed, but for most of his long career, he spoke of hell more as a state of separation from God, without much allusion to or description of the agonies of eternal physical fire. In 2005 he had told CNN’s Larry King, “That’s not my calling. My call is to preach the love of God and the forgiveness of God and the fact that he does forgive us. That’s what the cross is all about, what the Resurrection is about. That’s the Gospel.” He acknowledged that he had once preached a harder line: “In my earlier ministry, I did the same. But as I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.”
Inevitably, some observers reckoned that the harsher tone of the new book reflected Franklin’s views and temperament more closely than those of his father. Franklin rejected such speculation. “This isn’t a cut-and-paste of his old sermons or anything like that,” he insisted. He acknowledged that his former secretary, Donna Lee Toney, had helped with the actual writing of the book, but insisted that the idea, the organization, and the actual content were entirely his father’s. “It’s a new book. Where we needed to fill in some gaps, we went back and checked his sermons to make sure it was accurate.… It’s all him. Nothing in the book was written that’s not in his words.” As for a perceived difference in tone and emphasis, Franklin said, “Maybe this was a burden, that he felt he didn’t preach (about hell) strong enough in his latter years. I don’t know.”
As the years rolled past, Billy Graham continued to outlive those who had stood by his side through the decades. Howard Jones, BGEA’s first black associate evangelist, died in 2010. Maurice Rowlandson, longtime head of the BGEA offices in the UK, followed in 2015, as did Graham’s son-in-law Danny Lotz, Anne’s husband. The following year saw the passing of researcher and sermon writer John Wesley White and Billy’s faithful companion and closest friend, Cliff Barrows. Photographer Russ Busby died in 2017.
For many years Graham had said repeatedly and convincingly that death held no terror for him. That fearlessness was rooted, of course, in his absolute confidence that death was but a passage to the glorious eternal life that he had invited millions of his fellow humans to share with him. On at least one occasion he had spoken of heaven in terms harking back to his earliest preaching. In 1992 he said, “I don’t think I’ll miss anything about earth, because I think everything that is for my happiness and well-being will be in heaven. If there’s a golf course there and golf makes me happy, there’ll be a golf course.”
More typically, Graham spoke of the ineffable but surely matchless glories of being in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and reunion with the redeemed of the ages. He talked of questions he wanted to ask God when they had a few minutes together, such as why there is suffering in the world and whether those who have never heard the Christian gospel will truly be damned forever and ever. He wondered, no doubt, about what people would say of him in the days and decades after his death, but only one accolade seemed truly important: “I want to hear one person say something nice about me and that’s the Lord, when I face him. I want him to say to me, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ I’m not sure I am going to, but that’s what I’d like to hear.”
Surely, few Evangelical Christians doubted Billy Graham would receive that Ultimate Compliment. But many, both within and without those circles, had a more immediate question. In the famed evangelist’s waning years, it became common for observers of the religious scene to speculate as to who would be “The Next Billy Graham.” The answer is quite likely, “No one.” Billy Graham is not, like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury, an office in the Christian church that must be filled by the likeliest candidate. Graham rose to prominence at a rather low point in the history of Evangelical Christianity, when candidates for leadership were relatively few and it was easier for one person to stand out above others. Half a century later, Evangelicals had become a movement at least equal in size and strength to Catholics and “Mainline” Protestants in the United States, and most of the Christian missionary work conducted throughout the world was done under the aegis of some Evangelical/Fundamentalist/Pentecostal denomination or parachurch agency. Many faithful and talented men and women contributed mightily to that remarkable transformation. Still, from his crusades to the great international conferences, to the fostering of religious freedom in godless regimes, to the training of tens of thousands of individual itinerant evangelists, to the pioneering use of media, it was Billy Graham who, more than any other, shaped and inspired that movement. And, to the world’s good fortune, he consistently manifested an expansive spirit that reached out to enlist an ever-widening circle of individuals and groups to join him in that effort. From revivals supported by small knots of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals to crusades and conferences and global missions in which Christians of every stripe and color and culture work together in common cause, Graham was a powerful, even unique force for Christian ecumenism. Individual lives and nations, the world, and the Church of Jesus Christ are richer for that fact.
The remarkable success, scope, and complexity of the movement to which Billy Graham contributed so much make it unlikely that any single figure could ever match or exceed his influence over it. It is possible, of course, that ten, fifty, or a hundred years from now, some young man or woman with just the right combination—a combination easy to describe but apparently harder to embody—will manifest comparable achievement and leadership. It may be that developments in transportation and communication will enable this New Light to shine more brightly than Billy Graham’s ever could, just as jet power and radio and television and satellite and computer technology enabled him to reach more people than any of his predecessors could have dreamed possible. But unless and until that happens, William Franklin Graham, Jr., can safely be regarded as the best who ever lived at what he did—“a workman,” as Scripture says, “who needeth not to be ashamed.”