Message For The Masses
Sun Herald
Sunday March 26, 1995
WITH an illuminated map of the world as his backdrop, the Reverend Billy Graham preached in warm southern American cadences while an interpreter at his side translated into staccato Spanish.
Upstairs in the balcony, 47 translators in individual soundproof booths simultaneously rendered his call to repent into that many other languages.
This Christian workers' conference was the opener for the largest evangelistic event in the history of Christianity.
When Graham stepped on to the stage in a stadium in San Juan 10 days ago , his preaching was sent by satellite, TV and videotape to an audience of more than one billion people in 185 countries - about one-fifth of the planet's population.
In Australia, Graham's message was beamed via Sky Channel to 192 clubs, school auditoriums, church halls, racecourses and community centres over three days. Eighty-two of the Global Mission centres were in NSW.
He was derided as a "blast from the past" and "part of US cultural imperialism" by a leading NSW churchman, the Rev Harry Herbert, general secretary of the Uniting Church's Board of Social Responsibility.
However, Graham still plans to visit Australia for the fourth time early next year, depending on his health.
His global mission was the pinnacle of his 50-year crusade to fulfil his promise as a youth "to do something great for God".
At 76, his hands shaky and his step jagged from Parkinson's disease, Graham says he has left behind the partisan politics of his younger days and is sticking to "pure gospel".
Where he once acted as an unofficial adviser to Richard Nixon, Graham says now he wouldn't as much as recommend Bible passages for a President's speech.
Yet his reputation as chaplain to the White House has opened doors to nations previously untouched by evangelical Christianity. This new crusade is the most dramatic demonstration of the transcontinental, transcultural reach Graham has attained.
The son of North Carolina dairy farmers attracted coliseum-sized crowds in former communist-bloc nations that once brooked no Bibles, and in countries where Christianity is a small sect overshadowed by Islam, Hinduism or Confucianism.
Graham is not, he readily confesses, a natural-born preacher. Among his first awkward attempts, he once recalled, he opened a service at a city jail with: "I'm glad to see so many of you out this afternoon."
As a theologian he has been said to lack profundity and his books are "not that deep", he conceded.
While some other evangelists have fallen to scandal or obsolescence, Graham has kept his name clean.
He has been ranked among Gallup's "10 most admired men in the world" 37 times in the past 39 years - more than any other person.
"He has maintained a life of remarkable integrity," said his biographer, William Martin, a sociologist at Rice University in Houston.
"I've looked awfully closely, and a lot of other people have, and it looks to me like it's for real. Billy Graham wants to be, and he succeeds in being, an extraordinarily good man. I think he's a genuinely humble man with a great deal of ambition."
At 190cm, with a profile made for marble, Graham looks an aging western film actor.
He described the place of his $34.6 million crusade in the time line of Christianity.
Jesus started with 12 people, he said. At the first Pentecost, 3,000 converted. Nearly 2,000 years later, Graham's preaching was beamed by 30 satellites to 2,921 auditoriums.
"Never before have this many stadiums and auditoriums been used for people to listen and respond to the message of the gospel," he said.
He said that "in some ways I feel I have been a failure" as he had not reached enough people.
Graham, nicknamed God's machine gun because of his rapid-fire delivery, truly believes that he and his fame are an "instrument" of God, said boyhood friend T W Wilson.
Even in this crusade, he attributed the tremendous mobilisation of people and resources to divine will. The satellites in every time zone, the 160 digital editing machines, the 13 generators with enough power to keep it all going if the island had a blackout, were all "God's tools".
An unabashed name dropper, Graham related how King Hussein of Jordan once told him the reason the American evangelist was welcomed in both Jordan and Israel was because "we can tell that you love us".
Graham is a Baptist but his workers include Pentecostals, Methodists, Presbyterians and a smattering of Catholics. Wherever he preaches, his local organisations reach out to the leadership of many denominations. When new converts step forward at his crusades, he turns them over to the local churches.
"He's tried to avoid getting involved in church politics," said Robert Williams, director of Global Mission. "The church around the world trusts him. They know we're not going to come out and damn this one, favour that one."
In secular politics too, Graham has moved toward non-alignment. He once had a reputation for golfing with Republicans and backing the war in Vietnam.
"He made a conscious effort to befriend people in power so he could gain access to bigger crowds," said Stephen Winzenburg, a American communications expert who has studied Graham and other evangelists.
Graham was summoned to the White House the night his friend George Bush gave the OK to launch the first squadron of fighter bombers in the Gulf War. Now, Graham says, he steers clear of partisan politics and the conservative evangelical groups.
"I'm just neutral," he said.
Graham is often asked who will be "the next Billy Graham" and much speculation has centred on his son, Franklin. Many say that Graham may have no single successor but instead may leave behind the global army of pastors, deacons and church volunteers who have heard his message in places as far-flung as Finland and Nepal.
For his part, Graham says he is not ready to speculate about succession.
As with everything, he turns to scripture: "I do not find any place in the Bible where anybody retires."
© 1995 Sun Herald