He was known to the world as Billy Graham but his real name was William Franklin Graham Jr. From Baptist background, he became a famous evangeli
- He was known to the world as Billy Graham but his real name was William Franklin Graham Jr. From Baptist background, he became a famous evangelist after World War 11 in 1948.
- His father made him have strong aversion for alcohol. In 1933 at 14, father forced him and his sister Katherine to drink beer until they got sick. This created such an aversion that both avoided alcohol and drugs for the rest of their lives.
- Graham gave his life to Christ at age 16 after he was accused of being too worldly to be admitted as a member of a youth group. He was led to Christ by an evangelist called Mordecai Ham.
- His sojourn as a preacher began when he was disenchanted with the rules and coursework in Bob Jones College. In 1937, he transferred to Florida Bible Institute in Temple Terrace, Florida, near Tampa where he preached his first sermon that year at Bostwick Baptist Church near Palatka, Florida, while still a student. In his autobiography, Graham wrote of receiving his calling as a preacher through that first sermon. He was ordained by a group of Southern Baptist clergymen at Peniel Baptist Church in Palatka, Florida.
- All through this time, Graham was still in doubt about the Bible being the true word of God. But in 1943, Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois where he graduated in anthropology, he decided to accept the Bible as the infallible word of God. Today, a memorial marks the site of Graham’s decision.
- Graham got married on August 13, 1943 to his Wheaton classmate, Ruth Bell, who died on June 14, 2007, at the age of 87. The Grahams were married for almost 64 years. They had five children, 19 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
- Graham did not plan to become an evangelist. His goal was to become a chaplain in the armed forces but, shortly after applying for a commission, he contracted mumps which knocked him out.
- Having pastored two different churches, his friend, Torrey Johnson, a pastor who had a radio programme, Songs in the Night, told him he was about cancelling the programme due to lack of funding. On January 2, 1944, Graham took over the programme with the support of his church and still retained the name, Songs in the Night. There the journey to world relevance began.
- Graham spent six decades preaching around the world through live crusades, radio, television and the internet. He hosted the annual Billy Graham Crusades, which ran from 1947 until his retirement in 2005. He also hosted the popular radio show Hour of Decision from 1950 to 1954. He was called the most influential preachers of the 20th century.
Graham conducted more than 400 crusades in 185 countries and territories on six continents, reaching more than 215 million people. He also reached hundreds of millions more through television, video, film and webcasts. More than 3.2 million people responded to Graham’s altar call. As of 2008, Graham’s estimated lifetime audience, including radio and television broadcasts, topped 2.2 billion. He preached to more people in person than anyone in the history of Christianity.- Graham contributed to the civil right movements in America during the demonstrations led by Martin Luther King. He insisted on racial integration for his revivals and crusades in 1953 and invited Martin Luther King Jr. to preach jointly at a revival in New York City in 1957. Graham bailed King out of jail in the 1960s when arrested in demonstrations.
- During a 1953 rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Graham tore down the ropes that organizers had erected to separate the audience into racial sections. He recounted in his memoirs that he told two ushers to leave the barriers down “or you can go on and have the revival without me.” He warned a white audience, “we have been proud and thought we were better than any other race, any other people. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to stumble into hell because of our pride.”
- Robert H. Schuller, a televangelist and the founding pastor of the Crystal Cathedral thanked Billy Graham for talking him into doing his own television ministry.
- My Answer, an advice column by Graham has appeared in newspapers for more than 60 years as of 2017. One wonders how many columns have lasted that long anywhere in the world. Many of his books became instant hits and bestsellers. In the 1970s,
The Jesus Generation sold 200,000 copies in the first two weeks after publication;
Angels: God’s Secret Agents had sales of a million copies within 90 days after release;
How to Be Born Again was said to have made publishing history with its first printing of 800,000 copies. - Behind Graham’s success are destiny helpers like George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows. Shea, the bass-baritone musician, was the first staff member hired by Graham as his director of radio ministry. Shea sang at the unofficial launching of Graham’s crusades in November 1947. Cliff Barrows, the choir director, platform emcee and radio-television program director.
- Shea and Billy Graham are the prime examples of an evangelical Christianity with mainstream appeal after World War II. Previously, the evangelicals and fundamentalists were on the fringes of American religion; Shea and Graham put it in the mainstream.
In 1948, Shea, along with Graham, Barrows and Grady Wilson, formulated a set of ethical guidelines, later designated The Modesto Manifesto, which became the cornerstone of the BGEA. Shea, along with Graham, Barrows, Grady Wilson and George Wilson, is one of the five directors of the BGEA.- In each crusade, Shea brought a quiet solo immediately preceding … Graham’s message. His solo serves as a transition from the song service into the message. Shea’s solos set the tone for the preacher’s messages. With his full, rich baritone, Shea not only charmed audiences, he also touched them with the message of each song he chose. According to Billy Graham in a 2002 interview in The Ottawa Citizen, Shea always prepared his crowds by singing before the message, and he felt the song was more powerful than the sermons.
- The break came for Graham when he scheduled a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles in 1949. The crusade which was scheduled for three weeks ran for eight, by which time Graham became a national figure with heavy coverage from the wire services and national magazines.
- In Moscow, in 1992, one-quarter of the 155,000 people in Graham’s audience went forward at his call. Graham had crusades in London, which lasted 12 weeks, and a New York City crusade in Madison Square Garden in 1957, which ran nightly for 16 weeks.
- In 1950, Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) with its headquarters Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1999. BGEA ministries have included:
• Hour of Decision, a weekly radio program broadcast around the world for more than 50 years
• Mission television specials broadcast in almost every market in the US and Canada
• A syndicated newspaper column, My Answer, carried by newspapers across the United States and distributed by Tribune Media Services
• Decision magazine, the official publication of the association
• Christianity Today was started in 1956 with Carl F. H. Henry as its first editor
• Passageway.org, the website for a youth discipleship program created by BGEA
• World Wide Pictures, which has produced and distributed more than 130 films
• My Hope with Billy Graham which started in April 2013, is the largest outreach in its history, encouraging church members to spread the gospel in small group meetings after showing a video message by Graham. - Graham consistently refused to visit South Africa during the apartheid era until its government allowed integrated seating for audiences. During his first crusade there in 1973, he openly denounced apartheid. Graham also corresponded with imprisoned South African leader Nelson Mandela during the latter’s 27-year imprisonment.
- Interested in world evangelism, in 1983, 1986 and 2000 he sponsored, organized and paid for massive training conferences for Christian evangelists from around the world.
- Graham suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 1992, which gradually led to his retirement in 2005. By April 2010, at 91, Graham had suffered substantial vision and hearing loss.
- One of the most marvelous observations made of the troika of Graham, Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea is their length of years. Cliff Barrow spent 89, Graham, 99 years and George Beverly Shea, 104 years. God gave these soul winners long lives. Psalm 91: 16.
- Graham was a spiritual adviser to 12 consecutive American presidents, from the 33rd US president, Harry Truman in 1945 to Barack Obama in 2017.
- Graham was a registered member of the Democratic Party. In 1960, he was opposed to the candidacy of John F. Kennedy because as a Catholic, he was bound to follow the Pope. Graham worked “behind the scenes” to encourage influential Protestant ministers to speak out against him though Kennedy eventually won.
At another time, Graham supported Richard Nixon of the Republican Party whom he became friendly with when he was Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower. He did not completely ally himself with the later religious right, saying that Jesus did not have a political party. He gave his support to various political candidates over the years.- Graham was a political heavy weight in America. During the tenure of President Lyndon Johnson, he became the main White House pastor. At one point, Johnson considered making him a cabinet member and grooming him to be his successor, though Graham insisted he had no political ambitions and wished to remain a preacher. Richard Nixon, who succeeded Johnson, wanted Graham to be the ambassador to Israel which he also refused.
- Graham died from natural causes on February 21, 2018, at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, at the age of 99. Graham had said much earlier that, “Someday, you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”
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By Bola Adewara
Follow me @bolaadewara
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