March 1978
The Power And The Glory of Billy Graham
How a towheaded kid from North Carolina became God’s best salesman.
I can scarcely remember a time when revivals and revivalists did not fascinate me. As a small boy in Devine, Texas, in the late forties, I relished having the visiting evangelist over to our house for dinner during the annual “gospel meeting.” When the Baptists held a revival down the street, I often dropped in for a sermon or two, and numerous times I stood at the edge of a Pentecostal tent, wondering what might be going on inside the minds and bodies of the folk being whipped into a holy-rolling frenzy by the sweating, shouting, shirt-sleeved man striding back and forth on the flimsy little stage.
I didn’t hold any revivals myself until I was fourteen, but they were authentic for their time and place—held in the open air, illuminated by yellow bulbs, with the crowd seated on wooden-slatted church pews and singing from tattered softback songbooks. Not all of my outings were a success. One dismal, week-long revival seldom brought more than a dozen people out to sit in the oppressive August heat, and it was hard to be confident I had the full attention even of this faithful remnant, since the bare, unfrosted floodlight directly over my head not only drew hundreds of night bugs but, with the intense glow of its high wattage, fairly baked my crew-cut scalp and forced my auditors to look off to one side to avoid permanent damage to their stricken eyes.
Still, I was a pretty good speaker and my sermons were of sufficient quality to have merited previous publication—one of my favorites featured a stinging attack on the Bolsheviks—and when nice ladies said, “I’d sure love to hear you preach twenty years from now,” I never doubted that they would have the chance. As it happens, I don’t preach much anymore, but I am still intrigued by those who do and are really good at it. So I felt more than normal anticipation as I stood not long ago in the crowded lobby of the Jackson Hilton Hotel, waiting for a ride out to Mississippi Memorial Stadium to hear the world’s most famous preacher, Billy Graham.
For despite the small-town ambience and the Deep South setting, this was not some jackleg country preacher we were going out to hear, and the service would not have much in common with an old-fashioned camp meeting. This was, measured by results achieved during his own lifetime, the most successful evangelist in the history of Christianity. And the same sermon we would hear in a few minutes would eventually be heard and seen on television broadcasts around the world. Given their attitude toward popes and such, evangelicals are not likely to elect a pope anytime soon, but if they did, the only possible choice would be Billy Graham, who has been for almost thirty years not just the unquestioned symbol but also the single most dominating influence and power within the evangelical movement.
I caught a ride with a carful of Baptist preachers, who worried about the dark rain clouds, counted buses bringing pilgrims in from all over the state, and wondered whether the Lord could draw a bigger crowd with Jerry Clower than he had two nights earlier with Johnny Cash and June Carter. At the stadium, the late evening sun and heavy overcast made the turf appear intensely green and heightened the sense that this was a numinous event. In the center of the field, backed up along one sideline, was the large blue-draped platform from which Billy Graham would speak. Light and sound towers stood in front on each side, and a small television studio had been built into the rear portion of the structure. Stretched across the top of the stadium a banner proclaimed, “He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—John 14:6.” The audience, over 99 percent white, did not appear to be heavily weighted with pagans. Many carried Bibles; none looked out of place. The hairstyles and fashions of the women were those one stereotypically associates with Southern white ladies—neat, modest, feminine. Their husbands tended to favor double-knit sport outfits accented by white belts and shoes. Their children looked like pleasant little kids and were urged to act like it, too: “Michael, Becky, wave at Mr. Mac and Mrs. Jo.” “T.C. be still! You don’t realize you bother people, son!”
As is his custom, Dr. Graham spent the hour before the service in a small trailer tucked behind a temporary fence in one corner of the stadium visiting with friends, dignitaries, and others. Those others, on this occasion, included me. It was strange to be in such a small space with Billy Graham. He seemed somehow out of scale. The impeccably tailored suit, the instantly recognizable features now heightened by television makeup, the familiar North Carolina voice, and the sheer, undeniable presence of the man left me feeling it would be more comfortable to talk with him in a larger room—the Astrodome, for example.
Momentarily it was time for the service to begin, and I took my position on the platform directly behind famous soloist George Beverly Shea. Graham sat down too, television floodlights came on, and the atmosphere on the platform tightened as cameras began to record the service for worldwide syndication a few months later. The television crew would attempt to produce a usable tape approximately one hour long, although minor editing would be required to meet precise time requirements and to reduce weak spots in the presentation. It would be tougher than usual this evening, since rain had begun to fall at almost the exact moment the cameras started rolling. The Graham organization did not want to lose this program. A substantial portion of the $100,000 expense of producing four tapes goes toward renting and transporting equipment and film crew. The team will settle for three good tapes from four nights of meetings, but if the fourth tape is usable, it costs little more than materials and crew expenses for one day and is therefore a real bargain. Several of Graham’s associates conceded that had it not been for this crucial economic factor, he might simply have offered a brief invitation and dismissed the crowd. But given the circumstances, every reasonable effort would be made to salvage the program.
Before the service, I had heard several people say that surely God would not allow it to rain on 25,000 of his children gathered to worship Him. The Graham team was unwilling to press its doctrine of special providence quite this far and had come prepared for the worst. Within seconds, the organ and piano were covered, a plastic canopy on four aluminum poles was erected over the pulpit area, and most platform guests donned raincoats and hoisted umbrellas thoughtfully placed at the side of their chairs. With Cliff Barrows leading them, the 5000-voice chorus sang as if the sun had just risen on Easter morning. If Billy Graham noticed it was raining, he did not show it. Instead, he sat in his familiar pose—left elbow resting on the arm of his chair, lips pressed to his doubled fist. For the first time, I noticed that not only were his sideburns snowy white, but that his hands had liver spots. Billy Graham is 59 years old, a grandfather several times over. Yet his power and magnetism are still such that, as far as I could tell, not one person showed the slightest intention of heading for cover as long as the man they had come to hear held his ground.
Barrows introduced storyteller and comedian Jerry Clower, who got a standing ovation from his fellow Mississippians. Clower whooped and hollered. “Whooee!” he wound up, “I have done turned my hang-ups over to the One what was hung up for my hang-ups, and ain’t I having fun! Thank you! I love every one of you! Whoo!” Next up was H. L. Hunt’s daughter, June Hunt, who is attempting a career as a professional entertainer. Her feeble jokes and rambling testimony had some of the Graham team muttering, “Sing, June, sing!” Eventually, she not only sang well enough but put her umbrella aside to give the television cameras a better shot, a gesture that won the mutterers back to her side: “Bless her heart, she did that for TV .”
When June finished, Dr. Graham, now wearing a tan trench coat, commended the crowd for sitting through the rain, assured them he no longer preached long sermons, thanked the governor of Mississippi for attending, and made a brief appeal for funds. By the time he began preaching on “The Wrath of the Lamb,” the canopy above his head had gathered enough rainwater to sag ominously. A man beside me said, “They better take care of that or it will split and drown ol’ Billy .” A member of Graham’s staff borrowed a pocketknife and deftly punctured the canopy twice, leaving Graham trapped between the sheet of rain falling in front of him and the double spout directly behind. His pants were soaked to the knee and he occasionally stepped back into the streams behind him, but the only time he interrupted his forceful discourse on God’s wrath toward sinners was when a bolt of lightning moved him to switch from a lapel microphone to the free-standing pulpit mike. He apparently felt that it would not be prudent even for Billy Graham to be attached to a live electrical wire during a lightning storm.
Billy drove his few points home with the stabbing forefinger of his right hand and the limp-backed Bible brandished in his left; he sprinkled in anecdotes and simple jokes and wound up with dark warnings of a devil’s hell. Then he began what for centuries has been the hallmark of revival preaching: the call for a decision—now, tonight, before it is everlastingly too late. “Christ has died for you and you do not want hell and you do not want judgment. The Bible says, ‘Now is the acceptable time.’ You may never have another moment like this. If you want Christ with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, the rain will not stop you.”
A young girl, then a boy on crutches, then dozens, and finally hundreds of people left the stands and crossed the field to gather in front of the platform. Most carried some type of umbrella but many simply stood drenched in the downpour. As they came, they were joined by trained counselors who gave them booklets, helped them fill out decision cards, led them through the “plan of salvation,” and explained the correspondence course and other materials they would soon receive from the Graham Association. Graham appeared moved. “We will never forget . . . ” he began, and the microphones went dead. When power was restored he led them in a brief “sinner’s prayer,” then left the stadium as a local clergyman pronounced the benediction.
