World Leaders Mourn Evangelist Billy Graham
World renowned American Evangelist, Billy Graham who died on Wednesday is being celebrated across the world, with US President Donald Trump tweeting that “the GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions.”
President Trump described Graham as “a very special man,” following the famed preacher’s death at 99 in his Montreat, North Carolina home.
In his statement, US Vice President Mike Pence said; “Karen and I were saddened to learn of the passing of one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century, Reverend Billy Graham.”
“We send our deepest condolences to the Graham family. Billy Graham’s ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his matchless voice changed the lives of millions. We mourn his passing but I know with absolute certainty that today he heard those words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Thank you Billy Graham. God bless you.”
Similarly, Former US President, Jimmy Carter said he and his wife Rosalynn “are deeply saddened” at the news of Graham’s death and that he was “pleased to count Reverend Graham” as a friend and adviser.
“Tirelessly spreading a message of fellowship and hope, he shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide,” Carter said in a statement.
Carter described the late preacher as; “Broad-minded, forgiving, and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve. He had an enormous influence on my own spiritual life.”
Also, Former President George H.W. Bush called Graham “America’s pastor” and said he was a mentor to several of his children, including former President George W. Bush.
According to a statement issued by the elder Bush, “His faith in Christ and his totally honest evangelical spirit inspired people across the country and around the world. I think Billy touched the hearts of not only Christians, but people of all faiths, because he was such a good man.”
Bush said he was “privileged” to count Graham as a “personal friend”, adding; “He would come to Maine to visit with Barbara and me, and he was a great sport. He loved going really fast in my boat. I guess you could say we had that in common. Then we would come home and talk about life.”
For the President, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, Graham was “the most important evangelist since the Apostle Paul.”
Moore wrote on his Twitter handle that “He preached Christ, not himself, not politics, not prosperity,” adding that Graham also “carried unimpeachable personal integrity.”
Confirming his death to CNN on Wednesday, Spokesman Jeremy Blume described the deceased as “a confidant to presidents, a guiding light to generations of American evangelicals and a globe-trotting preacher who converted millions to Christianity.”
The preacher with the booming voice reportedly evangelized to nearly 215 million people over six decades and prayed with US presidents from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.
Several presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, relied closely on his spiritual counsel.
In recent years, Graham had been treated for cancer, pneumonia and other ailments.
Graham is credited with transforming American religious life through his preaching and activism as his message and service to U.S. presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush earned him the nickname “America’s Pastor.”
In 1995 his Evangelistic Association designated his son William Franklin Graham III as the ministry’s leader while his wife, Ruth, died in 2007.
Graham reached more than 200 million through his appearances and millions more through his pioneering use of television and radio.
His voice rang out, insistent and resonant in the drawl of his native North Carolina. He used the same artful persuasion that once had made him a top Fuller-brush salesman.
His books are also popular among Christians across the world including Nigeria. Graham was nicknamed “God’s machine gun,” and he did not find it offensive at all.
On the contrary, the U.S. televangelist with a rapid-fire delivery and booming voice always wanted to be considered a fighter, a soul-catcher.
With his so-called “crusades” alone, the former Baptist pastor reached a worldwide audience of 215 million people in person, and countless found their faith through him.
In spite of his conservative positions on morals, he was considered for decades the “Pope” of US Protestants and was by far the leading mass evangelist of the 20th century.
His “matchless voice changed the lives of millions,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said in remembrance.
When he bid farewell to his supporters in 2005, in a three-day mass show in New York with a cumulative audience of over 230,000 people, he said he was happy to be seeing God’s face soon.
Graham’s impact rests on a simple message delivered to the public for six decades: “Jesus loves you. Let him into your life and your sins will be forgiven.”
With brilliant rhetoric, simple words and clear examples from everyday life, he adapted this message for all walks of life.
He renounced racial segregation early on, saying there was basis for it in the bible, while railing against communism and what he saw as the widespread decline of values.
In post-war times, he supported the hunt for communists of the McCarthy era, and later the US waging of the Vietnam War. In the 1980s he increasingly gave up on addressing political issues and focused on what one critic called a “soft-focus” fundamentalism.
Graham was at the centre of a scandal in 2002, when a home recording of a dialogue between him and then US president Richard Nixon in 1972 was made public.
The preacher, one of the the country’s great moral institutions, spoke of an alleged Jewish “stranglehold” of the media that had “got to be broken.”
Graham later apologised for these comments, which he said he did not remember having made.
The influential pastor was socially conservative but presented himself as non-partisan, serving as an advisor and confessor for other presidents besides Nixon, including Democrat Lyndon Johnson, and Republicans Gerald Ford and George H W Bush.
He was reported to have helped President George W Bush overcome alcohol abuse in the 1980s, through faith.
Born in 1918, the son of a humble Presbyterian North Carolina farmer, Graham was himself converted by a travelling evangelist when he was 16.
After being trained as a pastor, he launched his work in “awakening” and achieved notoriety with his first religious “crusades” in 1949: an event in Los Angeles, originally planned to last for three weeks, ran for over eight weeks because the marquee was packed full everyday.
He continued to rise from there, with the not-negligible help of conservative publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
In 1950 he founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which his son Franklin now runs.
For over 50 years, his radio programme Hour of Decision was broadcast every Sunday by more than 700 radio stations around the world.
There were also television programmes, films, daily newspaper columns, more than 30 books, and above all evangelization around the world, having held hundreds of “crusades” around the world.
He travelled to Germany five times, and kicked off in 1993 the massive ProChrist project broadcast by satellite to over a thousand points around Europe on nearly an annual basis since then.
“My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which, I believe, comes through knowing Christ,” Graham once said.
His personal integrity helped him win over his supporters. He lived with his wife Ruth for over 60 years until her death in 2007.
He has three daughters, two sons, 19 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
Time magazine put Graham in the list of the 100 most important personalities of the 20th century.
“If there is an indigenous American religion – and I think there is, quite distinct from European Protestantism – then Graham remains its prime emblem,” said powerful US cultural critic Harold Bloom.(NAN/Agency report)
