On Wednesday of this week, US evangelist Billy Graham died aged 99. He was arguably one of the most influential and globally recognised preachers/Evangelist of the 20th Century. It was reported that during his 60 years as an evangelist, it is estimated that he preached to hundreds of millions of people around the world as a true voice in the wilderness.
Upon the announcement of his passing, tributes flooded in, ranging from fellow Christians to former presidents. President Trump defined him simply as a “great” and a “very special man”. Billy Graham was the first Christian preacher to utilise the medium of the TV to preach the gospel to millions of worshippers worldwide. Graham was of humble beginnings, born 1918 and raised on a family dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Billy Graham became a committed Christian at the age of 16 after hearing a travelling evangelist. Little did this travelling evangelist know that under his ministry would be the birth of the man who would later be dubbed God’s Ambassador.
In 1939 aged 21, he was ordained as a minister of the gospel. Aged only 31 in 1949, Graham held a two-month ministry in a giant tent in Los Angeles, which then raised his public profile in the United States. As his notoriety began to grow, his global mission took him to all corners of the world, spanning from Nigeria to even include communist North Korea. He first came to the UK in 1954 where he preached to a crowd of over 12,000 worshippers in Harringay Arena, London.
Billy Graham was sympathetic to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s as his sermons began to reach more racially integrated and diverse congregations. Graham was deeply opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion and refused to be influenced by the sweep of theological modernity that so swept the 20th/21st century. In 2005 in New York aged 86, Graham preached his final revival meeting with the same conviction he had as a youth. Billy Graham wrote,
“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.”
It can be said of Billy Graham ” I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” (Timothy 4:7-8) The question we must ask of ourselves, is what will be said of our lives when we die? Have we preached the gospel and kept the faith? If not, why not start today? May the Lord richly reward this great champion of the gospel of Jesus Christ.