New York – The Rev. Billy Graham, global ambassador for Christ and the most prominent American evangelist of the past century, concluded what might be his final U.S. crusade Sunday with a sermon both apocalyptic and hopeful before a throng in a New York park.
On a hazy, sun-scorched afternoon, Graham, 86 years old and long in failing health, rallied his strength to mesmerize 90,000 people at the former World’s Fair site at Flushing Meadows in Queens. He used his frailty to underscore the urgency of repentance, as the end – of a person’s life, and of the world – may very well be imminent.
After thanking his 96-year-old musical associate, George Beverly Shea, Graham said: “I know that it won’t be long before both of us are going to be in heaven. You know, Jesus said, ‘Be ready, for in such an hour that you know not, the son of man comes.’
“In Amos, the fourth chapter, it says, ‘Prepare to meet your God.’ Are you prepared? Have you opened your heart to Jesus? Have you repented of your sins?”
But even as he dwelt on death, Graham, who seemed to gain strength over the three days of the campaign, held out the possibility of a crusade in London, where he has been invited, and of perhaps even returning to New York, where a marathon crusade at Madison Square Garden helped bring him to prominence 48 years ago.
“We hope to come back again someday,” he said. “I was asked in an interview if this was our last crusade. I said, ‘It probably is – in New York.’ But I also said, ‘I never say never.’
“‘Never’ is a bad word, because we never know.”
More than 230,000 people attended the crusade over the three days, Graham officials said, adding to the 83 million who have seen him preach in person in his 417 crusades over the years. On Sunday, the rapt audience spread across 93 acres, filling a vast lawn ringed by trees and overflowing into three more sites where Graham’s electrifying visage, rugged and worn but still startlingly handsome, spoke to them from enormous video screens.
The people came from around the city and therefore around the world, and in one section of the great lawn marked with signs on stakes, Graham’s words were simultaneously translated into a dozen languages – including Polish and Cantonese, Vietnamese and Romanian, Portuguese and Arabic. Seated in folding chairs or spread out on picnic blankets, the faithful clutched bottles of water against the heat and Bibles against more dire threats, which Graham reminded them of again and again as he retold the story of Noah.
“Almost everyone today understands that we’re approaching a climactic moment in history,” he said midway through his 25-minute sermon. “There’s going to come an end to the world. Not the Earth, but the world system in which we live, which the Bible calls ‘of Satan.’
“Jesus Christ said, as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of man be. When the situation in the world gets the way it was in Noah’s day, you can look up and know that Jesus is close to coming.”
The harsh words were a departure from Graham’s sermons at the park Friday and Saturday, which centered on Jesus’ abiding love.
Graham freely admits he has been preaching the same two or three sermons for more than 60 years, changing only the topical references to keep them current. When he preached at Madison Square Garden in 1957, he spoke of the scourge of communism. When he preached to a crowd of 250,000 in Central Park in 1991, he offered succor to a city ravaged by crack and crime.
But though several of the introductory speakers at Sunday’s service mentioned the continuing wounds of Sept. 11, Graham did not mention the calamity. He simply cited a few national headlines – the disappearance of an 18-year-old Alabama woman in Aruba, the three children in New Jersey found dead in a car trunk last week – as evidence that end times are near.
“I believe today God is warning us,” he said.