By William Martin March Comments. I can scarcely remember a time when revivals and revivalists did not fascinate me. 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.

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. 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: 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. 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. 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, 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 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.

I love every one of you! 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. 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. Then he began what for centuries has been the hallmark of revival preaching: 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. Billy Graham, a member in good standing, despite his poor attendance record, of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, has spoken to more people about Jesus Christ, in person and electronically, than any other human being, living or dead. His crowds appear to be as large and the proportion of inquirers as high today as in the fifties.

Several of his books, published in many languages, have sold over two million copies apiece, a fact that helps explain the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth among Doubleday editors when Graham left them last year for Word, Incorporated, of Waco.

His film company, World Wide Pictures, has produced, in addition to documentary records of crusades and numerous short films, such commercially successful efforts as Time to Run , The Restless Ones , The Hiding Place , and Gospel Road , an account of the life of Jesus set to the music of Johnny Cash, Joe South, and John Denver. His syndicated column is carried by over daily newspapers with a circulation of 29 million. For two years in the mid-fifties, more newspaper and magazine copy was devoted to him than any other person in the U.

In an informal survey by the liberal ecumenical publication, Christian Century , conducted to see how many religious leaders were known to American churchgoers, Graham ranked sixty-two percentage points ahead of his nearest colleague.

He has been a friend of movie stars, athletes, and politicians, including every president since Truman, been honored by the police, military chaplains, the American Football Coaches Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and is the only living person depicted in stained glass in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.

Beauty Pageant in Niagara Falls.

Billy Graham Net Worth

William Franklin Graham, Jr. His parents hoped their firstborn might enter the ministry but acknowledged it seemed a long shot. The following summer he worked for the Fuller Brush Company and became an exceptional salesman.

Still hoping for a baseball career, Graham enrolled in Florida Bible Institute at Temple Terrace, near Tampa and the spring training grounds of several major league teams. Unhappily, his athletic abilities did not match his aspirations and, no doubt influenced by his strong fundamentalist environment, he began to consider the ministry.

Franklin Graham’s Salary, the IRS Change to Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Should Churches be Supporting “Operation Christmas Child?” | Wondering Eagle

Apparently, he was still not a spiritual stand-out; in fact, a young woman he loved broke up with him because she did not think him sufficiently devout. Not long afterward, while wandering alone on a golf course late at night, he had a moving religious experience on the eighteenth hole and made a firm commitment to become a preacher. After a successful revival at a Baptist church near Tampa, he was ordained a Baptist minister and went on to attend Wheaton College in Illinois where he received a B.

Nelson Bell, had been a medical missionary in China from to While converting thousands of young people, he also formed valuable ties with evangelical leaders throughout the hemisphere. In the process he began to assemble the team that is still with him today—George Beverly Shea, Cliff Barrows, George Wilson. Then, in , came the revival that was to make Billy Graham a national celebrity.

The team was better prepared for this revival than for previous ones and had begun to utilize the techniques of organization that his predecessors had developed and perfected over the previous century. Attendance was good and decisions came at an acceptable rate.

A flood of publicity followed, including feature stories in major news magazines and wire services. Crowds and conversions mounted, reaching a total of , in attendance and decisions by the end of eight weeks.

A few weeks later Henry Luce went to Columbia, South Carolina, to hear Graham in a crusade and pledged the support of Time , Life , and Fortune. In November , at the urging of two successful advertising men, Fred Dienert and Walter F. Bennett, whose agency handled several religious accounts, Graham launched a weekly radio broadcast simulating a crusade service on ABC affiliates.

By the end of the year, the Hour of Decision was receiving the highest Nielsen ratings ever of any religious program, and within five years would be heard on hundreds of stations around the world.

Graham and his associates predictably claim that only divine assistance can account for his unparalleled success. It is worth noting, however, that he possesses in abundant measure three additional advantages that appear essential to evangelistic stardom: Like all authentic evangelicals, Graham believes the Bible is the true, inspired, and infallible word of God, and as such, the final authority for Christian faith and practice.

Similarly, his early descriptions of hell and the devil burned more brightly than those of today, and he waffles a bit on the nearness of the Second Coming: Those who wish to have fellowship in his crusades and other ventures must accept the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection as literal facts.

And despite his sensible refusal to set dates, he clearly believes The End is a good deal nearer than it ever has been before: The population increase is frightening. Racial tension is increasing throughout the world. Billy is not just making all this up. Sorokin of Harvard and the famous psychiatrist Erik Erikson and the British historian Arnold J. Then again he gets a lot of information first-hand since he has been everywhere and knows just about everybody. There is, however, some good news:.

Man—distressed, discouraged, unhappy, hounded by conscience, driven by passion, ruled by selfishness, belligerent, quarrelsome, confused, depressed, miserable, taking alcohol and barbiturates, looking for escapisms—can come to Christ by faith and emerge a new man.

This sounds incredible, even impossible, and yet it is precisely what the Bible teaches. Billy not only soft-pedals the doctrines, some of them by no means minor, that divide evangelicals into denominations, but has been a major force behind a growing evangelical ecumenicity. Before he will accept an invitation to hold a crusade, for example, he insists that a strong majority of the evangelical churches in an area pledge their support.

Then, during each crusade, he sponsors a tuition-free school, directed by Dr. Working a combination Jesus never quite mastered, he manages to comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable. His decision to hold a crusade in New York City in , for example, was reached in the boardroom of Mutual Life Insurance of New York; the executive committee for the crusade included the board chairman at MONY, his counterpart at Chase Manhattan, and the presidents of RCA and Genessco.

Billy does not, however, put a divine stamp of approval on all that is American and middle-class; on the contrary, with clenched fist and pointing finger, with glaring eyes and accusing voice, he rings thundering disapproval down on much that he sees. Still, he offers forgiveness and everlasting life to those willing to accept it, without calling on them to make great personal sacrifices.

If they love Jesus as he does, they may travel first-class, as he does. In , after it became clear he was not just another temporary wonder, Graham moved to put his ministry on a solid, businesslike basis. At the suggestion of associate George Wilson, he formed the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inc. BGEA , a non-profit corporation headquartered in Minneapolis.

Today, with Wilson as chief executive, a staff of approximately processes the mail, donations, and correspondence courses, publishes and distributes Decision magazine, and provides counseling-by-mail for those who write Graham with their problems. Films from World Wide Pictures are distributed from Minneapolis, but studios and production facilities are located in Burbank, California. Crusades are planned and executed out of Minneapolis. In addition to these, the Graham organization maintains smaller operations in London, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong, Kyoto, and Winnipeg.

Not surprisingly, he receives many more invitations to hold crusades than he can possibly accept. In the past, the strategic importance of the city in question was a key criterion. Is it a major population center? Does it have great political or economic importance? Will a crusade there win coverage in the newspapers of other cities?

A crusade in the South, for example, is many times less expensive than one in the North. In the North, things cost a lot more, labor unions run the cost up, whereas down in the South you get things donated. Several months before a crusade begins, the Graham association sends members of its team to open an office in the host city and involve as many people as possible in various facets of the crusade. A finance committee is charged with raising a sizable chunk of the quarter million dollars or so the crusade will cost.

A prayer committee will set up daily meetings in thousands of homes. In Jackson, for example, three thousand groups averaging eight members apiece—more than 10 per cent.

To spur these groups to keep their commitments, the crusade team sponsors a prayer program each morning at As laymen are organizing in this fashion, the Graham team holds a series of meetings to enlist the support of as many Protestant clergymen and their. A three-week Bible study program, classes for counselors, and a series of one-shot rallies, prayer breakfasts, and orientation sessions enable the Graham team to involve thirty to forty thousand, and sometimes as many as eighty thousand people in one or another facet of a crusade.

As Graham offers the invitation, the aisles fill not only with inquirers, but also with counselors. Insofar as possible, a counselor seeks out an inquirer of the same sex and approximately the same age group and asks him or her to check the item on a decision card that most nearly matches the reason he or she has come forward—first-time commitment, rededication, special problem, etc. After a two- or three-minute review of the Gospel, the counselor presents the inquirer with a small packet of materials, which includes the Gospel according to John, a Bible study lesson, a devotional guide, and several Scripture verses printed on small cards to facilitate memorization.

Finally, the counselor helps the inquirer complete the decision card, suggests they pray together, and. There the cards are sorted into broad categories, such as denomination and type of decision, then passed on to researchers who fill in missing items with the help of zip-code books, criss-cross directories, and special computer print-outs prepared by the crusade team.

Though Graham is not anti-Catholic, he still regards his ministry as distinctly Protestant and. The Graham organization is sensitive to the justifiable criticism that revival fires rapidly burn out and seeks to sustain them as long as it can. Beginning the day after the crusade closes, the radio station that has carried the prayer broadcasts begins a series of morning and evening programs dealing with what it means to be saved and how to live as a Christian.

Three weeks later, all inquirers are contacted by telephone and asked about any difficulties they may have had, urged to attend church and join a Bible study group, and encouraged in the continuing struggle against sin.

The fact that a high proportion of inquirers list a pastor or church on their decision cards raises an issue that has been around since D. Moody, a nineteenth-century evangelist, began to keep track of responses to his preaching. If a substantial number of church folk whose light has begun to dim are plugged back into church systems on a high-voltage line, the crusade has performed an important function. Any preacher with the sense to keep his theology simple and the foresight to surround himself with able associates could probably achieve moderate success.

But these alone do not produce an evangelistic superstar, any more than a good piano and high-quality lessons will turn out a Horowitz. He is attractive, forceful, and confident, to be sure, but one would hardly describe him as colorful; in fact, he seems almost dynamically bland. He seldom turns a memorable phrase, his mind seems innocent of complexity, and his observations are thoroughly predictable.

All of us know several people who are intrinsically more interesting. And yet he is undeniably one of the authentic All-American Heroes. These were crucial, certainly, but despite the enormous boost they provided, it is important to remember that Hearst and Luce were not making a random selection or engaging in creation ex nihilo.

Their empires had been built on a singular genius for matching a communication medium to the receptivity of a mass audience, and in Billy Graham they saw a man who not only had that same talent, but was himself the medium. People are drawn to Graham for his personal style and character.

He is personable, charming, and, I believe, absolutely sincere. He is apparently even humble, expressing wonder at what he has done, awe at the responsibility of his position, and doubt that he is up to it. He works so hard that he has high blood pressure, can perform no heavy lifting, has thrombophlebitis and a recurring intestinal ailment, and from time to time has had to slow down because of an eye problem related to exhaustion.

He leads a life of considerable personal discipline, rising early, reading five Psalms and one chapter of Proverbs, watching the Today show during breakfast, spending an hour in Bible study after breakfast, then working, jogging, writing, and closing the day with another round of devotions—the very sort of existence most evangelical Christians feel they should lead but seldom manage.

He also appeals to the people in the pews because they feel at home with him intellectually. In fact, he has openly admitted that when he suffered a period of doubt in , he resolved it not by working through the problems that troubled him but by making a conscious decision not to think about them any more. This simplicity pervades the literature Graham publishes and apparently reflects the concerns of his readers. A question-and-answer column in Decision magazine regularly deals with such chestnuts as why people no longer live as long as Methuselah did, where the sons of Adam and Eve got their wives, and whether the Garden of Eden can be located on a map.

Billy Graham A False Shepherd, False Prophet

Thus, what one writer has said of Charles Finney, a well-known evangelist in the s, may be equally true of Billy Graham: It would be fatuous, of course, to imply that Billy Graham is the hero of all the people. And to others who are cynical toward any who profess to live by lofty ideals or bone-weary at repeated disappointment in those they had dared trust, Billy Graham is simply not believable.

In time, they are confident he will be exposed, and they will dance at his disgrace. It would be unfair, however, to contend that Billy Graham always takes a conservative line on social problems. In the early years of his ministry, he sidestepped the racial issue, but by he insisted his crusades be completely open to all races, even in the Deep South, and refused invitations to South Africa for years.

When he finally held crusades in Durban and Johannesburg in , blacks constituted at least half of the audience and sat where they wanted to. At the risk of offending a sizable segment of his supporters, Graham toured Latin America in with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The particular Quaker sect in which he was reared was not greatly unlike the fundamentalist and evangelical churches from which Graham draws most of his following. As the corruption in the Nixon Administration came to light, Graham acknowledged Nixon may have abused their relationship, but refused to abandon his disgraced friend, a stance that was hardly motivated by a desire to enhance his own public image.

Prophets are sent away from the court, cast into jails and cisterns, and threatened with death. Evangelists, like salesmen, hesitate to make a potential customer feel uncomfortable in a way that might risk loss of the sale. He has avoided any hint of the sexual scandal that has tainted several other ministries by making certain he is never alone with a woman other than his wife or a close relative even for a few minutes. And, throughout most of his ministry, he has been a model of financial integrity.

At the close of his Atlanta crusade, the Atlanta Constitution carried two photographs side by side. One showed Graham waving goodbye to the city. The insinuation rankled Graham and his team, and he quickly accepted a recommendation that he scrap the love-offering system and place himself on an annual salary to be set by his board. In addition to his salary, of course, he receives full expenses while away from home, plus income from his writings. Although he has established trust funds for his children, much of the considerable income from his books has gone either to charitable causes or back into his ministry.

He is thus financially comfortable, but has not taken advantage of his position to build a personal fortune. Because the BGEA is incorporated as a church, it is not required to file an IRS return and has not published a financial statement for the benefit of its donors. The reporters claim they asked George Wilson if a list of organizations related to the ministry was complete and were told it was.

Wilson also told them the organization owned no stocks or bonds and had no land holdings other than those directly related to operations. Though he used WECEF money, the Observer reported, Crawford did not mention Graham or any of his organizations while making the purchase. Further , when owners of land next to the tract asked if Graham or any of his people owned the land, they were told no as recently as the spring of That WECEF was a Graham organization is beyond question.

Almost all of its funds have been funneled into it from BGEA. WECEF, he insisted, had been established for three purposes: He also pointed out that the fund had not been kept a complete secret. Its creation in was announced at a news conference in Minneapolis. The Religious News Service and several religious journals mentioned the fund in the first year or two of its existence, and Peter Geiger, a respected religion reporter, interviewed Graham and mentioned the fund in a story in the Akron Beacon-Journal , a paper in the same chain as the Charlotte Observer.

Furthermore, Graham claimed he had given the story to the Asheville Citizen just a few weeks before the Observer printed its account.

The WECEF flap was unfortunate and embarrassing, but not the debacle some anticipated. The recent controversies, added to the strains of dueling with the devil for decades, have wearied Billy just a bit.

He admits he is sometimes tired and lonely and, exhibiting clear confidence in the message he brings, claims that the prospect of death sometimes seems welcome. I want to stay and do what he wants me to do. Obviously, he does not think the Lord is ready for him to lay his Bible on the shelf just yet. In the last six months he has held gatherings in Cincinnati, Manila, Calcutta, Hyderabad, and Madras, in addition to his widely publicized visit to Hungary.

He admits he has made some inquiries about a crusade in the Soviet Union and says he might even accept an invitation to preach in Rome if the Colosseum could be fixed up and made safer for Christians than it was the last time they used it extensively. If his health holds and the Lord tarries, we can reasonably expect Billy Graham to remain active for at least another ten years.

My personal prediction is that the current evangelical revival will level off by the end of the seventies, then enter a gradual decline, at least in this country, for several decades.

Eventually, some young man or woman with just the right combination, a combination easy to describe but apparently harder to embody, will arise to join the elite ranks of world-class heavyweight evangelists. It may be that developments in communication and transportation will enable the new light to shine more brightly than Billy ever could, just as radio and television and jet power have enabled him to reach more people than any of his predecessors could have dreamed possible.

Brother David Terrell is one of the last of the full-fledged, fire-breathing fanatics—he would not think the term uncomplimentary—on the revival circuit. For years he has been urging people to leave the corrupt cities and settle in rural areas, where they can raise their own food when the famine comes. Terrell has offices in Fort Worth, but he is hard to pin down anywhere and is usually uncooperative with representatives of the media.

His descriptions of world conditions—sample: Though he presses his disciples to turn over most of their possessions to his ministry, he does not make a heavy push for funds either through the mail or at his meetings.

Most observers think him extreme but sincere. The easiest way to sample his preaching is to tune him in at 9: A conservative Baptist, James Robison operates a flourishing independent ministry out of Hurst, Texas. Abandoned by his mother as an infant, Robison led a tough, transient childhood that left its mark on him. He professes to be shy outside the pulpit and talks of salvation with the relief and gratitude of a man who has just escaped a galloping terror.

Young, athletic, and attractive, and with an appealing sense of humor, Robison enjoys great popularity. Real or imagined, his shyness disappears when he hits the pulpit. In addition to a crowded schedule of one-night rallies and full-scale, stadium-packing crusades, Robinson produces a weekly television program that is seen on about fifty stations across the country.

He is clearly on the way up. Frances, who is a natural storyteller, spices up their informal, sometimes rambling discourses with her humor, while Charles radiates an intense sincerity. Come early to get a seat; stay late to get the Spirit. He has held crusades in over fifty countries and has been particularly successful in India, where he has drawn crowds of over , Panos has added a new twist to evangelistic fund raising by selling jewelry his followers have donated to his ministry.

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