The United States Postal Service says there are a handful of Americans, along with the current President of the United States, who will be delivered mail that simply reads their name and the country. Our next honoree is one of them. His name and address: “Billy Graham, America.”

Billy Graham has preached the gospel to live audiences of nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories through 41 crusades and various meetings since 1947. Graham has reached hundreds of millions more through television, video, books, articles, film, and webcasts. No man has extended more personal invitations to know Jesus, than has Billy. By show of hands, how many men here today, prayed to receive Jesus watching or attending a Graham crusade?

Born 89 years ago on a dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy says he was saved at age 16 during a tent revival meeting in town. He had been persuaded to attend at the urging of an African-American man who worked at the Graham farm.

After high school, Billy attended several colleges. He was almost expelled from one, its founder warning Billy,

At best, all you could amount to would be a poor country Baptist preacher somewhere out in the sticks… You have a voice that pulls. God can use that voice of yours. He can use it mightily.

Billy eventually attended Wheaton College in Illinois graduating in 1943. It was during his time at Wheaton that Graham committed to the Bible as the infallible word of God. It was at a mountain retreat led by Mrs. Henrietta Mears of Hollywood Presbyterian Church, that settled the issue.

That same year, Billy married Wheaton classmate Ruth Bell, whose parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China. Billy met Ruth at Wheaton:

I saw her walking down the road towards me and I couldn’t help but stare at her as she walked. She looked at me and our eyes met and I felt that she was definitely the woman I wanted to marry.

Ruth thought that he “wanted to please God more than any man I’d ever met.” They married two months after graduation and later lived in a log cabin designed by Ruth in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Montreat, North Carolina.

While still at Wheaton, Billy served briefly as pastor of the Village Church in Western Springs, Illinois, and hosted a radio show called “Songs in the Night.” He had intended to become a chaplain in the armed forces, but shortly after applying for a commission he came down with a severe case of mumps. After a period of recuperation in Florida, Graham went on to co-found Youth for Christ and began to travel the United States as an evangelist.

Billy scheduled a 3-week series of revival meetings in Los Angeles in 1949. He erected circus tents in a parking lot on Hill and Washington streets. William Randolph Hearst, a major media mogul in the 30’s and 40’s had a house maid who attended one of the nightly LA tent meetings. Hearst sent a telegram to his newspaper editors reading “Puff Graham” during Billy’s LA crusade. The result of the increased media exposure from Hearst’s newspaper chain and national magazines caused the crusade event to run for eight weeks.

At the Los Angeles revival, a fellow evangelist accused Graham of setting religion back 100 years. Graham replied,

I did indeed want to set religion back, not just 100 years but 1,900 years, to the Book of Acts, when first century followers of Christ were accused of turning the Roman Empire upside down.

Billy was offered a five-year, $5 million contract from NBC to appear on television opposite Arthur Godfrey, but he turned it down in favor of continuing his touring revivals.

A year later, Billy founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headquartered in Minneapolis and later relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. BGEA Ministries have included:
• Hour of Decision, a weekly radio program broadcast around the world for over 50 years
• Crusade television specials which are regularly broadcast in prime time in almost every market in the U.S. and Canada
• A newspaper column, My Answer, carried by newspapers across the United States
• Decision magazine, the official publication of the Association
• Christianity Today magazine founded in 1956
• World Wide Pictures, which has produced and distributed over 130 film productions

Billy opposed segregation during the 1960s and refused to speak to segregated auditoriums, once dramatically tearing down the ropes that organizers had erected to separate the audience. Graham said,

There is no scriptural basis for segregation…The ground at the foot of the cross is level, and it touches my heart when I see whites standing shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the cross.

Billy paid bail money to secure the release of Martin Luther King, Jr., from jail during the 1960s civil rights struggle; he invited King to join him in the pulpit at his revival in New York City in 1957. During that 16-week stint, Billy was heard by 2.3 million listeners, who gathered to hear him at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and Times Square.

During the Cold War, Billy became the first Christian to speak behind the Iron Curtain, addressing large crowds in countries throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, calling for peace. During the Apartheid era, Graham consistently refused to visit South Africa until its government finally allowed attending audiences to sit desegregated. His first crusade there was in 1973, during which he openly denounced apartheid.

At one revival in Seoul, South Korea, Graham attracted an audience of one million to a single service. He appeared in China in 1988—for Ruth, this was a homecoming, a return to the place where she had been born seventy years earlier.

On September 14, 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Billy led a prayer and remembrance service at Washington National Cathedral attended by President Bush and many other past leaders. He similarly spoke at the memorial service following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. On June 2005, Billy began what he announced would be his last North American crusade, at Flushing Meadows Park in New York City. But duty called again, and on the weekend of March 11, 2006 Billy attended the “Festival of Hope” with his son, Franklin Graham. The festival was held in New Orleans, which was recovering from Hurricane Katrina. It was a year ago July that Graham spoke at the Metro Maryland Franklin Graham Festival, held a few miles away in Baltimore at Camden Yards.

Graham has continually received honors. Between 1950 and 1990, he appeared on Gallup’s list of most admired people more than anyone else.

He has received the Congressional Gold Medal from the United States Congress and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan, America’s highest civilian honors. In 2001, he was presented by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth with an honorary knighthood for his international contributions to civic and religious life over 60 years.

He has received the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion. He was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood walk of Fame. Billy has received 20 honorary degrees and refused at least that many more.

Billy and Ruth have 5 children, 19 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren.

Why do we honor a man like Billy in this way, on a day that honors God? Because God lives in Billy and magnifies himself through a faithful man. The men of 2007 honor Billy Graham, for his love of Jesus, his commitment to his marriage and to living a God-honoring life, and his passion to share Jesus in person, by radio, by TV, by film by the internet.

Stand in the Gap 2007
Washington, D.C.
October 6, 2007