AN ARKANSAS HERO
The first time I saw Billy Graham was in Arkansas when I was about 11. He came right into the middle of our state's racial trouble to lead a crusade and to spread a message of God's love and grace. When the citizens' council tried to force him to segregate his meeting, he said, "If I have to do that, I'm not coming."
I asked a Sunday-school teacher in my church to drive me 50 miles to Little Rock so I could hear Dr. Graham preach. For a good while thereafter, I tried to send a little bit of my allowance to his crusades because of the impression he made on me then.
I was elated when Billy came to Little Rock for another crusade a few years ago when I was Governor. We had the chance to spend a good deal of time together, and I have treasured his friendship as well as his prayers and counsel ever since.
I am grateful for the way his ministry and friendship have touched my life and, even more, for the unparalleled impact his Christian witness has had throughout the world.
I am honored to be able to share this tribute with you and your readers on this special occasion.
—Bill Clinton President of the United StatesA RARE JEWEL
"Billy Graham," said Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, one-time minister of health in India's Parliament, "is one of those rare jewels who tread this earth periodically and, by their lives and teaching, draw millions of others closer to God."
I've known Billy for many decades, and exempting family, he is the best friend I've ever had. As a result, people frequently ask me what Billy Graham is like when he is not on center stage. I think the Indian minister of health put it well:
look at his life and teaching.
—Sherwood Eliot Wirt Former editor,Decision Magazine
A SURPRISING REVOLUTIONARY
Billy Graham has been on the scene for one-fortieth of Christian history, and he will go down in history as the best-known, most traveled, most influential, and in many ways most representative evangelical Protestant of these past five decades.
Certainly I am not alone in suggesting that when he first came on the scene—a bit brash, unripe, over-apocalyptic, judgmental in some of the wrong ways, and evoking old revivalist chords—almost everyone in our business dismissed him as a mutation, a celebrity who would have his hour and then be gone.
Instead, he has stayed and helped revolutionize the evangelical element in world Christianity. And no one has been more ready than he to say that he did not do it alone. In fact, his outreaching, ecumenical, and cooperative spirit made him capable of neutralizing most criticism and achieving credibility among Catholics and mainstream Protestants.
Had he not shared in the awakening of many kinds of evangelicalism, I fear that North American Protestantism might have gone the way of tired, late-establishment Anglo-European Protestantism, with its empty monumental cathedrals and its often listless parish churches. (In fact, where Europe is "alive," Christianly speaking, many would credit him for helping it remain so, or helping it to come alive.)
That he is slowing is no secret. That we signal a hope that he will not stop, or have to stop for seasons and seasons to come, is a mark of fervency in a desperate time.
—Martin E. Marty Professor, University of Chicago Divinity School Senior editor, "The Christian Century"I have never known a greater man among men. Yet his simplicity, his common touch, his childlike compassion for his fellowman is the source of his greatness.
—Johnny Cash Singer March, 1992Billy just isn't normal. He's got too much energy.
—Morrow Coffey Graham Billy's motherA SPIRIT-EMPOWERED ETHOS
To be sure, Billy Graham will not go down in either secular chronicles or ecclesiastical annals as a theological giant like Karl Barth or a formative thinker like Reinhold Niebuhr or an institutional change agent like Pope John XXIII. Yet who will presume to estimate his impact on the spiritual experiences of multitudes around the world and his influence as the spearhead, the voice, the icon of Reformational Christianity?
Billy's commanding presence and his magnetic delivery have not been the primary factors that have opened minds and hearts to the saving truth in so many different countries and cultures. Rather, his ethos of utter integrity, his understandable simplicity, his unaffected humility, and his own evident commitment and faith have opened those doors.
God's Spirit works through gifted agents who seek no glory for themselves—and Billy never has. His Spirit-empowered ethos has been steadily augmented by his relationship of love and devotion to his wife, Ruth, by his moral transparency, and by his spotless reputation with its total freedom from the least taint of self-seeking or scandal.
—Vernon Grounds Former president, Denver SeminaryBEYOND 15 MINUTES
What impresses me most about Billy Graham is his discipline. He sticks to what he believes God is calling him to do. His life reflects the apostle Paul's "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel of Christ." In a celebrity culture, he has not had Andy Warhol's 15 minutes but 50 years; yet he has not been regarded as a celebrity among celebrities but as the most respected person in America. Imagine all the self-serving things that he could have done—which most people would have done—with that measure of fame and influence.
He advanced ecumenism not by promoting ecumenism but by being ecumenical in the way that matters most-namely, by calling all of us to the Christ who cannot be limited to any ecclesial structure. Call it discipline. Call it faithfulness. Call it one of the more remarkable ministries in the long two thousand years of Christian history.
—Richard John Neuhaus President, Religion and Public Life InstituteTHE THEOLOGIAN MEETS THE EVANGELIST
My meeting with Billy Graham, who was at that time holding his huge evangelization crusades in the Los Angeles stadium, was of great importance to me. I at first had reservations about accepting his invitation to sit next to him on the balustrade. When I then did indeed do so on the insistence of my friends, I kept my eyes wide open critically. As the people came forward in their thousands to confess their faith, however, I was aware only of calm meditation on the part of his crew and detected no expressions of triumph. His message was good solid stuff. Afterwards I wrote him a thank-you letter in which I confessed that whenever I had previously been asked for my opinion of him I had said that I felt that many essential elements were lacking in his proclamation of the gospel; he advocated an individualistic doctrine of salvation, and even this took place only in relation to the initial stages of faith. … I found the answer he gave me extremely significant. I was, he said, completely right in my criticism. What he was doing was certainly the most dubious form of evangelization. But what other alternative did he have if the flocks that had no shepherds would not otherwise be served? This answer gave him credibility in my eyes and convinced me of his spiritual substance.
—Helmut Thielicke in Notes From a Wayfarer: The Autobiography of Helmut Thielicke (Paragon House, 1995)When I think about Billy Graham, I think about a true Point of Light. I think about a man who has served his fellowman with compassion. I think about a man who has dedicated himself to the Lord's work.
So I am proud to be among those saluting Billy Graham for his half a century of selfless service to others. The Bush family will always be grateful for his friendship and counsel.
—George Bush Former President of the United StatesAT HOME IN TENTS OR CONGRESS HALLS
Billy Graham is Christianity's best-known evangelist, who literally carries the gospel to the ends of the earth, focuses clearly on Jesus Christ as the only savior of mankind, and invokes the Bible as God's inerrant Word. He is at home in tent meetings, in stadiums, and in Congress halls. His presence at the 1966 World Congress of Evangelism in West Berlin on the rim of Marxist Eastern Europe attests to his courageous dedication to the gospel.
Among television evangelists he maintains a spotless reputation for fiscal integrity. The evangelical strand of twentieth-century Christianity owes to him an incomparable challenge and debt. One can only wonder how many football fields would be crowded if converts who found spiritual regeneration and renewal through his ministry were numbered.
—Carl F. H. Henry First editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAYGOD GAVE IT TO HIM
Someone asked me about how I felt the [1957] Billy Graham Crusade in New York City would go. I said what I seriously believed: "It is going to be a success because God didn't sponsor no flops." That same night I went and found that it was a fulfillment of something I had been seeking for years.
When I first heard him there was something about him that sounded so good. I didn't think any white preacher could be that good. His voice is compelling, and that wasn't acquired. That wasn't got in no seminary. God gave it to him, and no one can take it from him.
—Ethel Waters Singer; October, 1970The spirit of reconciliation we sense in many hearts of South Africans can be traced back directly to the Billy Graham meetings held in Durban and Johannesburg in 1973. He was the one who demanded total integration for all of his meetings, and it was done. From that moment on we were on the road to reconciliation.
—Bishop Alpheus Zulu of Zululand Johannesburg, South Africa, 1985WITHOUT SHADES OF GRAY
I've known Billy Graham for 60 years, and some time ago, he said to me, "I don't know how much longer I can keep going at this speed." I responded, "Billy, the difference between you and me is that you are 76 years old and I am 76 years young." He returned, "If I didn't have any more to do than you do, I'd feel young, too!" The man has a sense of humor.
In 1950, when he went to the Mayo Clinic the first time, thinking something was drastically wrong with him, he asked me to accompany him. Then a strange thing happened; they turned him loose and kept me. During my surgery, the doctors allowed Billy to come in and observe. One of the doctors gave me some sodium thiopental—truth serum—and said, "Now is the time for us to find out what preachers have done in their past."
Billy told me later that "I stood over you, ready to club you at a minute's notice. I didn't care what you said about yourself, but I didn't want you to incriminate me!"
Stories aside, Billy is honorable and open in the area of personal ethics. I have been with him when people have offered him homes, airplanes, and all kinds of other things. He has always responded, "I cannot accept any personal gifts." He wants no gray areas in his life—he is a man of integrity.
I also know one movie producer who offered him a fantastic salary if he went into the motion-picture business. Billy turned him down, explaining that God had called him to preach the gospel. Billy is a man of singular vision.
—T. W. Wilson Billy Graham Evangelistic AssociationWhen I first met him, I was impressed by his genuineness, his enthusiasm, and his obvious excitement for ministry. As I have worked with him these past five decades, his kindness, genuine compassion, loyalty, and humility have left an indelible imprint upon my heart and life. His fidelity to the Word of God and his unswerving commitment to his call as an evangelist have been a continuing source of inspiration and encouragement to me and to countless numbers around the world.
—Cliff Barrows Songleader, Billy Graham Evangelistic AssociationCopyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
