It’s the end of the world as we know it. Or at least that’s what the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will focus on in 2009.
“The Bible teaches that Jesus is coming again,” writes Billy Graham, “And I don’t see any other hope, because we’re heading toward a catastrophe in our world.”
Even Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, is getting in on the act. She recently spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters convention: “I believe we’re living in the last generation before he comes back.”
No theological qualms with the BGEA’s focus (though perhaps with Lotz’ emphasis—how many preachers throughout history have said what she did?), but is it really news? Billy Graham has talked about the end times his entire career, including at least three books on the subject (World Aflame, 1965; Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1983; Storm Warning, 1992). The second coming of Christ is hardly new ground for Billy Graham.
“I have had the privilege of preaching the gospel on every continent in most of the countries of the world. And I have found that when I present the simple message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, with authority, quoting from the very Word of God—he takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart.”
-Billy Graham
(Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador)
In 2007, Billy Graham’s wife of 63 years, Ruth Bell Graham, passed away at their home in Montreat, N.C.
“I am so grateful to the Lord that He gave me Ruth, and especially for these last few years we’ve had in the mountains together,” Billy Graham said in a statement released at her death. “We’ve rekindled the romance of our youth, and my love for her continued to grow deeper every day. I will miss her terribly, and look forward even more to the day I can join her in Heaven.”
As a continuing testament to their love, Ruth is never far from Billy’s mind.
An e-mail interview asked what life is like without Ruth, and Billy Graham responded: “Not a day, or even an hour, goes by that I don’t think about her and miss her. I rejoice that all the suffering she endured those last years is over, and that she’s safely in Heaven now with the Lord she loved and served almost her whole life. But I miss her very much, and I look forward to the time when we will be reunited.”
Just in time for Valentine’s Day we have Billy Graham’s response to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. In 1952 Kinsey released his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female report to overwhelming controversey.
Billy Graham weighed in with the booklet The Bible and Dr. Kinsey, opening with this quick and clear condemnation:
Nearly every magazine and newspaper has carried a review of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s newest book. He has used over eight hundred pages to give the most intimate details of the private lives of 5,940 women. No details are spared. It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the already deteriorating morals of America.
The moral laws governing marraige have been scorned and immorality advocated. Young people are encouraged to have pre-marital experiences.
Happily married husbands and wives are going to start suspecting each other when they read that one out of every four wives is unfaithful to her husband. Doctor Kinsey’s report shows itself to be completely lopsided and unscientific when it says that seven out of ten women who had pre-marital affairs had no regrets. He certainly could not have interviewed any of the millions of born-again Christian women in this country who put the highest price on virtue, decency and modesty.
I saw an awesome Google ad on my site today: “Is Franklin Graham Sexy? The world’s 50 sexiest men over 50—Did Franklin Graham make the list?”
The answer is yes. According to wowOwow’s 50 Sexiest Men Over 50 list, Billy Graham’s oldest son Franklin made the cut: “[Franklin] is best known as Billy Graham’s rebel son. The title rebel automatically denotes sexy in our book.”
Admittedly that’s only one opinion (and who the heck is wowOwow?), but it’s not the first time. Lark News included Franklin Graham in its 2004 “Sexiest Man Alive in Christ” poll. So is this perhaps the first serious sexiest man list Franklin has made?
No disrespect intended, but Franklin Graham as sexy? Really? Others have pointed to Franklin’s suspicious hair which may disqualify him.
I know Billy Graham was quite the looker in his day, but I don’t think they ran ’sexiest men’ lists back then.
The ‘25 Things’ meme is sweeping the nation (or at least Facebook), with an estimated 5 million people taking part. So maybe it’s time for 25 Things About Billy Graham:
Billy Graham’s first formal sermon lasted eight minutes and included four separate sermons, the only ones he knew.
As a senior in high school a young Billy Graham found himself in a dark classroom with a girl who begged Graham to have sex. Instead of rounding the bases, Graham made like Joseph and ran away.
In 1964 Billy Graham’s name came up as a potential presidential candidate. His wife, Ruth, put a stop to any consideration of forsaking his call to evangelism: “If you run, I don’t think the country will elect a divorced president.”
In 1937 Billy Graham fell in love with Emily Cavanaugh and proposed to her in the summer. She had to think about it and eventually said yes in the fall. But by 1938 she was having second thoughts and in the spring she dumped Billy Graham for one of his classmates, Charles Massey.
Billy Graham served as a pastor to Western Springs Baptist Church in Western Springs, Ill., for a year in the 1940s. It was the only time he would officially pastor a local congregation. During his time there he changed the name to the Village Church since there were few Baptists in the area.
In 1979 the Mexican Navy detained Billy Graham for trespassing. At the time he was wearing nothing but a borrowed swimsuit belonging to George H.W. Bush.
In 1948 Billy Graham became the youngest college president in history as president of Northwestern College in Minneapolis.
As early as the 1950s Billy Graham held integrated crusades, at one point tearing down ropes that separated white sections from black sections, causing the head usher to resign in protest.
Billy Graham attended Bob Jones University for one semester and upon leaving Bob Jones Sr. predicted nothing but failure for Graham.
At Florida Bible Institute Billy Graham would paddle out to a small island in the Hillsborough River to practice his sermons and preach to the alligators and birds, like a St. Francis of Florida. If the animals wouldn’t stop to listen, he’d preach to a captive audience of cypress tree stumps.
On his wedding night Billy Graham had trouble falling asleep in the bed, so he crawled out of bed and fell asleep on the floor. In the morning Ruth woke up to find her new husband gone—it took her a few minutes to find him curled up on the floor, sound asleep.
During World War II the U.S. Army rejected Billy Graham for the chaplaincy program because he was three pounds underweight.
Billy Graham left on a trip the day his first child was born, dismissing Ruth’s insistence that the baby would come soon and he should stay home. Billy predicted it would take another two or three weeks. Virginia “Gigi” Graham was born that evening.
He has always tried to minimize his own prominence, to the point that he strongly resisted naming his organization after himself in 1950 and when the Billy Graham Library opened in 2007 he declared there was “too much Billy Graham.”
In 1993 Billy Graham participated in an AOL chat session, his first foray into the world of online evangelism.
Billy Graham once loaned money to then-president Richard Nixon. When the offering plate was passed at a 1970 crusade in Knoxville, Tenn., the president didn’t have any money on him, but Graham discreetly slipped the president a few bills. A few months later Nixon repaid the loan.
Billy Graham is one of the few Americans who can get mail that’s simply addressed, “Billy Graham, America.”
“Ruth and I don’t have a perfect marriage, but we have a great one. In a perfect marriage, everything is always the finest and best imaginable; like a Greek statue, the proportions are exact and the finish is unblemished. Who knows any human beings like that? For a married couple to expect perfection in each other is unrealistic. We learned that even before we married.
“The unblemished ideal exists only in ‘happily ever after’ fairy tales. I think that there is some merit to a description I once read of a married couple as ‘happily incompatible.’ Ruth likes to say, ‘If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.’ The sooner we accept that as a fact of life, the better we will be able to adjust to each other and enjoy togetherness.”
-Billy Graham
(Ruth Bell Graham memorial site)
In 2002 Bono, the frontman for the rock band U2, visited the Grahams in their Montreat, N.C., home. Decision magazine published a photo of Bono reading poetry to an ailing Ruth Bell Graham. He presented her with that book of poetry, a volume by poet laureate Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It seems that Bono wrote a poem of his own inside that book. The book is now on display at the Billy Graham Library and thanks to a visitor’s review we can see the first line of that poem:
“The journey from Father to friend is all paternal loves end. It was sung in my teenage ears in the voice of a preacher loudly soft on my tears.”
Bono has joined a cast of other celebrities in expressing thanks to Billy Graham. As an added Billy Graham-Bono connection, there are pictures of Billy Graham, Bono and Franklin Graham taken that day during Bono’s 2002 visit. To my knowledge, those photos have never been made publicly available.
Bessie is an animatronic cow that greets visitors to the Billy Graham Library. Seriously.
She has the Southern twang and low, sugary voice of an old black woman (an early voice over was determined to be “too Yankee”) and serves to draw kids into the experience. Bessie talks with pride of young ‘Billy Frank’ and emphasizes how God used Billy Graham. She also urges kids to take a quiz and exchange it for a prize at the end of the tour.
Dedicated on May 31, 2007 with a crowd of dignitaries and former U.S. presidents,the Billy Graham Library is a vital stop on any Billy Graham pilgrimage tour. Located next to the BGEA headquarters, the Library is part museum, part memorial and part on-going crusade. But that’s not how the BGEA would prefer to describe it.
“The new Library will not be a memorial to Billy Graham,” said BGEA board member Graeme Keith. “Nor will it be a museum. It will be a ministry that we believe will touch and change the lives of thousands of people in the years ahead as they visit this facility.”
Though the memorial aspect of the Billy Graham Library is hard to miss, especially since Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham, is buried at the Library and Graham himself will be buried next to her when he dies. Ruth Graham had reservations about being buried at the Library, calling it a “circus” and a “tourist attraction,” before apparently relenting and agreeing to be buried there.
"I'm counting totally and completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on Billy Graham. I'm not going to heaven because I've read the Bible, nor because I've preached to a lot of people. I'm going to heaven because of what Christ did." Learn more about Jesus > >
In 2007, Billy Graham’s wife of 63 years, Ruth Bell Graham,
I saw an awesome Google ad on my site today: “Is Franklin Graham Sexy? The world’s 50 sexiest men over 50—Did Franklin Graham make the list?”
The ‘25 Things’ meme is 
In 2002 Bono, the frontman for the rock band U2, visited the Grahams in their Montreat, N.C., home. Decision magazine published a photo of Bono reading poetry to an ailing Ruth Bell Graham. He presented her with that book of poetry, a volume by poet laureate 
Dedicated on May 31, 2007 with a crowd of dignitaries and former U.S. presidents,the 
