New York revival likely last for Graham

UNIONDALE, N.Y. -- Now 86 and in frail health, the Rev. Billy Graham is all but certain that his revival meeting in New York City next week will be the last he ever leads in the United States -- and probably the last that the famed evangelist does anywhere.

"In my mind, it is," he said during an interview at a Long Island hotel where he's resting up for the June 24 to 26 event.

"I wouldn't like to say 'never,"' Graham added with a chuckle. "Never is a bad word."

The elder statesman of the evangelical movement is soft of voice those days, but alert, amiable as ever, and appears in conversation to be bearing up well under a host of ailments. He's brought his simple but powerful message of salvation through Christ to over 210 million people in 185 countries -- and is still in demand.

Churches in London, where he made his first international splash a half-century ago, have asked to him preach there around his 87th birthday in November. The odds of that? "I'd say a slight possibility," Graham said.

His son, Franklin -- now the leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association -- will stand by in New York as substitute preacher in case of emergency. But the elder Graham fully expects to speak for about 35 minutes at all three rallies, and to do so without sitting down.

"When I stand up and touch that podium the Holy Spirit comes, I believe, in power to help me. If it weren't for that, I would not have attempted to do these three nights," he said. "I'm just totally dependent on the Lord and the prayers of thousands of people."

Even if there are no more mass meetings, Graham might still give occasional talks. But his pace has been slowed considerably by advancing age and infirmities. After six decades on the road, he now spends most days at his mountainside home in Montreat, N.C., where wife Ruth is largely bedridden.

His worst health problem is hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, which is relieved by implanted shunts. He also has Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer, and uses a walker due to a pelvic fracture last year.

Cautious even in his more active years, Graham now seeks to shun all public controversies -- preferring a simple message of love and unity through Jesus Christ. Asked about gay marriage, for instance, Graham replied that "I don't give advice. I'm going to stay off these hot-button issues."

Even when he occasionally speaks by phone with President Bush, the evangelist welcomed to the White House by every president since Truman doesn't chat to influence "but only to say I'm praying for him and to give him a verse of Scripture."

He also sidesteps the opportunity to dispute Franklin's 2001 remark that Islam is "a very evil and wicked religion."

Instead, Graham says that he's proud of his son's leadership, yet recalls that when he arrived for a Fresno, Calif., revival a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, his first step was to visit a mosque where some people had been throwing rocks -- in order to express solidarity with local Muslims.

"I don't throw rocks at anybody," he said. "That's not my message. My message is the Gospel of Christ."

After Sept. 11, the "crusade" label for Graham's mass meetings was dropped due to Muslim sensitivities, but local sponsors revived it at Pasadena's Rose Bowl last year and for the New York City event because the term is closely associated with Graham's ministry.

Are evangelicals getting too deeply enmeshed in political issues? "I don't give it much thought, to tell the truth," he said. "My thought is getting ready to go to heaven and to keep myself as fit as possible physically."

In quietly confident, reflective tones Graham said that he's fully prepared for heaven when the time comes. He recalled a night four years ago while he was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., having a brain shunt implanted.

"I thought I was dying. The doctor wasn't sure whether I was or not, but late at night I knew that that was the end. At least I thought it was. And I prayed and all of a sudden all my sins throughout my life came into my mind. And I asked the Lord to forgive me and I had the greatest peace that I've ever had, and that peace has never left me, because I put it all in the name of Christ."

The world's best-known Protestant preacher was glued to the TV during Pope John Paul II's funeral: "He taught us how to live, I think, how to suffer and how to die." Graham said he was asked by the Vatican to lead the American delegation to the pope's funeral, but his health wouldn't permit it.

If New York or London are indeed his last crusades, they are fitting places for Graham's finale.

Scanning his career, the evangelist takes special satisfaction in his 1957 New York City crusade and the 1954 campaign in London, his international breakthrough.

"We stayed 12 weeks in London. They had hoped to have four or five weeks," he recalled. In New York, "we were amazed. We didn't have any empty seats except one or two nights for the whole 16 weeks."

He said he's returning to New York this time because area Christian leaders told him that since the terrorist attacks "there was a new receptivity and quest for purpose and meaning in peoples' lives."

Looking back, the son of North Carolina farmers said one regret is that he didn't join the battle for civil rights more forcefully. Graham ordered racial integration of seating at his meetings in the South a year before the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling.

But "I think I made a mistake when I didn't go to Selma" with many clergy who joined the Alabama civil rights march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "I would like to have done more."

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On the Net:

New York crusade details: http://www.billygraham.org/NYCrusade--Cover.asp