Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

  Our first night with Bishop Jacob, I was awakened about four in the morning by amplified music blaring outside. I had been dreaming I was on an airplane, and when this booming started, I thought the plane had crashed. When I looked out of my window, I realized that the music was coming from the roughly 5,000 people who had already gathered for a prayer service.

  Palamcottah

  Attendance figures were comparable in the other cities we visited. In Palamcottah crowds were waiting to cheer us, but they almost turned over our car as we tried to make our way to the cathedral for a meeting of women. At a later meeting for ministers in the same cathedral, I had to crawl out a window after speaking because the crowd was so great, both inside and outside.

  I also became aware there of another problem that concerned me very deeply. “Jack Dain,” I wrote in my diary, “is fearful that many of the Hindus are beginning to accept me as a god. Many of them fall down and practically worship me as I come by. Many of them try to get in my shadow. I told them time after time, very much as Peter, that I am not a god but a man.”

  One of the most moving experiences for me personally during our stay in Palamcottah was a side trip we took to a place called Dohnavur, made famous by the work of one of the century’s great Christians, Amy Carmichael. Ruth and I had treasured Miss Carmichael’s devotional writings for years and prayed for her work among youth who had been abandoned by their parents and dedicated to a life of sacred prostitution in a Hindu temple. Although Miss Carmichael had died a few years before, the loving family spirit among those who lived and worked in Dohnavur moved me to tears. In the room where she had breathed her last, I was asked to pray. I started but could not continue. I had to ask John Bolten to finish for me.

  New Delhi

  In New Delhi, 15,000 people gathered on the grounds of the YMCA. We were honored by the presiding of a Christian government leader, Minister of Health (Princess) Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, daughter of a prince. She had been in British prison with Jawaharlal Nehru, where they became friends; he later made her a cabinet officer in his government. Rajkumari was the person who had the most influence in our coming to New Delhi, and she opened many doors for us. She also entertained us at a dinner with a number of influential people.

  Through her influence I also had the privilege of meeting Prime Minister Nehru. This assisted us in other ways, because once you have been received by the head of state in a country like India, mayors and governors are more likely to welcome you to their area.

  Bald except for a fringe of white hair, Nehru wore that famous jacket to which his name was given, with a high open collar and buttons all down the front.

  It was a very awkward interview initially. When we first sat down, he did not say anything. He simply waited for me to speak.

  I thanked him for seeing me and said that I knew many Americans respected him, although they did not fully realize the great problems he faced. He made no response; he just sat there twiddling a letter opener in his hands. Not quite knowing what to do next, I embarked on a summary of our Indian trip. Once again he made no response.

  After a few moments of silence, I decided to tell him what Christ had meant to me and how He had changed my life. Imme-diately, Mr. Nehru’s attitude changed, and he began asking questions and making well-informed comments about Christianity in India. He added that he was not opposed to the work of missionaries, although those who became involved in political matters (as some apparently had done in northern India) would not be welcome. He even commended us on our trip, saying in sincerity that he thought we had done good work. I appreciated the comment.

  After thirty-five minutes, we ended on a very cordial note.

  One day in New Delhi I was in a taxi that turned a corner rapidly and accidentally hit a baboon, which screamed and then lay still. A crowd gathered immediately and began to throw stones at the car, and the driver said we must get out of there at once or we could be killed. Animals are sacred in the Hindu religion, and I was very concerned that if the Indian people thought I had killed an animal it might close the door to any future ministry there. Nevertheless, I was impressed by how friendly and loving the Indian people can be, and whenever I am asked what country I would like to go back to, I reply “India.”

  In New Delhi, my interpreter into Hindustani was a scholar by the name of Dr. Akbar Abdul-Haqq. His father had walked all over that part of India, staff in hand, proclaiming Islam; but while in a mission hospital for medical treatment, he had forsaken his Islamic priesthood and been converted to Christ. Dr. Abdul-Haqq himself was a Methodist who had received his doctorate from Northwestern University in Chicago; he was head of the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies in Aligarh, India. He admitted that he was not particularly supportive of my visit at first, and for two or three weeks turned down the strong request that he be my interpreter. But after the first night, seeing the responsiveness of the Indian people to the biblical Gospel, he made a confession: “I believe God has called me tonight to be an evangelist.”

  Several months later, he joined our Team as an associate evangelist and has had a great impact on many lives, not only in his native India but throughout the world, especially in universities.

  By now I had developed a certain amount of skill in preaching through interpreters. That was due in part to Dr. Oswald J. Smith, the noted preacher from Peoples Church in Toronto. In the late 1940s, when he and I were in Europe, he showed me the value of short sentences and a fairly rapid delivery when preaching through an interpreter. I also learned the importance of having an interpreter who was a Christian and knew Scripture thoroughly, since I often spontaneously interpolated Scripture passages and thoughts in my sermons that were not included in my prepared text.

  Christians made up a large part of those Indian audiences, I was sure, but there were many Hindus too, who simply recognized Christ as a great religious figure alongside Buddha. That did not make them Christians, though.

  I knew I was not qualified to pass judgment on some of the things I heard and saw, so I tried to be complimentary as much as possible. I thought the sari worn by Indian women was a beautiful garment, for example, and told them I was taking one home to Ruth.

  THE PHILIPPINES

  In mid-February we left India and met with missionaries in Bangkok, Thailand; in the whole of that country at that time, there were not more than a few hundred Christians and just a handful of missionaries. When I returned there years later, I was grateful to see that the churches were growing.

  After Bangkok we went to Manila for a couple of days. That required another cultural adjustment as we coped with a different variety of circumstances. I was grateful to be invited by President Magsaysay for a pleasant conversation together at the palace.

  It was not Communists who opposed our visit to the Philip-pines; it was the Catholic Archbishop of Manila, who told his people to stay away from the meeting. As is often the case, the climate of controversy got people’s attention. I think the Archbishop’s opposition contributed more to the Manila experience than all the careful planning, which one paper thought rivaled that for a bullfight.

  In this land that had only 700,000 Protestants, the 25,000-seat Rizal Stadium was absolutely jammed, both in the stands and on the grounds. Ours was the largest Protestant-sponsored meeting in the history of the Philippines; several government leaders attended. Cliff directed 1,000 people in the choir, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 responded to the Invitation. We later learned that 30 percent of those who had committed themselves to Christ that day were Catholics. In that era, we—Protestants and Catholics—were slowly growing in our understanding of each other and of our mutual commitment to those teachings we hold in common.

  My experience in the Philippines, and in other countries where the Roman Catholic Church had significant influence, taught me that most people were not going to take us seriously if we spent all our time debating our differences instead of uniting at the Cross.

  HONG KONG, FORMOSA (TAIWAN), JAPAN, AND
KOREA

  The last two weeks in February were a whirlwind as we held meetings in Hong Kong, in Formosa (now Taiwan), in three Japanese cities—Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka—and in Seoul, Korea. I enjoyed meeting Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek in Taipei, Formosa, and Prime Minister Hatoyama in Tokyo, where he postponed his appearance at a session of Parliament for a half-hour in order to accommodate me.

  In Japan we also had the opportunity to hold meetings for American armed services personnel, with senior officers in attendance from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. The Army even hosted a luncheon for us. We held pastors’ conferences as well and met at one point with 1,200 missionaries.

  We could hardly get inside the 15,000-seat Kokusai Stadium in Tokyo for one of our meetings because of an overflow crowd of several thousand waiting outside in the bitterly cold weather. At that meeting, there were a thousand decisions for Christ.

  When we returned home, after a stopover rally in Honolulu on March 11, I knew beyond a doubt that the Far East would feature in our future plans somehow.

  On my return to the United States, I went through Washing-ton and brought President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon up to date on the details of my visit to India. I mentioned that when Soviet leader Khrushchev had given Nehru a magnificent white horse, that fact was reported on the front page of all the Indian newspapers. But when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles offered India $50 million, that offer appeared only as a small item at the back of Indian newspapers. I felt the average person in India had no concept of $50 million but could readily understand and appreciate a white horse. Hence, I suggested to the president that we give not only wheat, but also a distinctive white train to deliver it from one end of India to another, so the people would know the gift came from the United States.

  “I want you to talk to Dulles about it,” said the President. I did so, but nothing came of the suggestion.

  However, Dulles kept me a long time because he wanted to hear every detail of our visit to Asia as well as my impressions of India and Nehru. He also wanted to talk with me on a personal matter. Before becoming secretary of state, he was active in the Federal Council of Churches, an antecedent to the National Council of Churches. He told me that his son Avery had just decided to become a Jesuit priest.

  My conviction about the place of Asia in our ministry turned out to be true. Since that first tour, we have returned to India and other parts of Asia repeatedly. Many of those trips are still fresh in my memory, as if they happened only yesterday, although the details of all but a few are too copious to include in these pages.

  I recall, for example, the closing service of our Crusade in Seoul, Korea, in 1973. Well over 1 million people crowded Yoido Plaza on an island in the Han River; that was the largest live audience we ever addressed at one time. (The number was not an estimate; the people were grouped in squares, and hence easily countable; and there was electronic tabulation too.) My interpreter, Billy Kim, had just graduated from Bob Jones and had received a letter from Dr. Bob warning that if he interpreted for me, his support from America would be cut off. However, Billy Kim did interpret for me and said that he had never seen a Korean audience so still and so attentive. There were no toilet facilities on the vast grounds. After the meeting, when the people left, there were little spots all over the landscape. What sacrifices they had made to come!

  And I recall our visits to Taiwan and Hong Kong, which fell within a few weeks of each other in late 1975. Our Crusade director for Asia, Henry Holley, masterfully managed to organize preparations for both Crusades in spite of the enormous logistical problems. Our return visit to Hong Kong in 1990 was carried by satellite and video to more than thirty countries throughout Asia, with interpretation into forty-eight languages. Further Crusades in Manila (1977), Singapore (1978), and Japan (1980, 1994) also stand out in my memory.

  INDIA REVISITED

  One trip to India, in 1972, deserves more than passing mention for several reasons.

  President Nixon, at the request of the American consul in New Delhi, had personally asked me to seek an interview with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in part to find out from her what kind of ambassador she wanted from America. He asked me to notice every single thing about her—the movement of her hands, the expression on her face, how her eyes looked. “When you’ve finished the interview,” he said to me, “go to the American embassy and dictate your report to me.”

  And so, when I visited with Mrs. Gandhi in the Indian capital, I put the question to her. She told me she wanted someone who understood economics, who had the ear of the President, and who had influence in Congress. This I reported to the President. He later appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Whether my report influenced the President’s decision, I never learned.

  Our purpose in going to India was to preach in Nagaland, an isolated area tucked in the mountainous, jungle-covered northeast corner of India near the Burmese border. The area was home to a dozen separate tribes, each with its own dialect and often with a history of headhunting. Tensions among Nagaland’s tribes, and an armed guerrilla movement bent on independence from India, made it a highly unstable area. During Akbar Abdul-Haqq’s crusade five years before in Nagaland’s largest town (and capital), Kohima, three people had been killed during an assassination attempt against the Indian government’s chief representative.

  On one hand, because of Nagaland’s instability, very few foreigners were granted government permission to visit the area. On the other hand, Nagaland was home to one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India; at the time of our visit, more than half the population of 500,000 were Christians, almost all living in villages. November 1972 marked the hundredth anniversary of the coming of Baptist missionaries to Nagaland, and we were invited to Kohima as part of that celebration.

  Almost miraculously, the Indian government in New Delhi granted a permit for us to enter Nagaland in late November. This permission was in response to an appeal from a delegation headed by the Reverend Longri Ao and other church leaders from Nagaland. (Assisting them was a gifted young Indian clergyman named Robert Cunville, who was head of the North East India Christian Council and had been invited to be director of youth evangelism for the World Council of Churches; he later joined our Team as an evangelist and has had a wide ministry not only in India but in many other parts of the world as well.) Nevertheless, by the time we got to Bangkok on our way to India, news came of renewed guerrilla activity in the area, with several soldiers killed in an ambush.

  Reluctantly, I decided to cancel the trip; I feared that the tens of thousands of people expected to travel to Kohima would be too tempting a target for the guerrillas to resist. Others also urged me to cancel because they were afraid I would be an easy target for assassination, something I had never paid much attention to in the past. Finally—just a few days before our scheduled arrival in Kohima—I asked Walter Smyth to release a press statement in New Delhi announcing the cancellation.

  When word reached our hosts, they were deeply concerned and immediately called to prayer the thousands already gathering in Kohima. Most had come several days’ journey on foot, bringing their own food and bedding.

  Early the next morning, I answered an insistent knock from two men at my Bangkok hotel door. One was a Nagaland layman, Lhulie Bizo, who happened to be traveling through Bangkok when he heard of our decision; the other was a former American missionary to Nagaland, Neal Jones. They strongly urged me to reverse the decision, pointing out the great harm that would be done to the churches if the meetings were canceled. They challenged me to trust God for the safety of the meetings. Believing that God had sent them, we agreed to continue with the original plans and went on to Calcutta that afternoon to arrange the final details.

  I was met at the airport by the American consul. He was a friend of Mother Teresa’s, and he took me to visit her in the home where she and her co-workers ministered to Calcutta’s dying. I was deeply touched not only by her work but also by her humility a
nd Christian love. She mentioned that she had held five dying people in her arms the night before and talked with them about God and His love as they were dying. When I asked her why she did what she did, she quietly pointed to the figure of Christ on the Cross hanging on her wall.

  From Calcutta, Cliff, Tedd Smith, singer Archie Dennis, Charlie Riggs, T. W. Wilson, and I flew to Dimapur. Then we were driven the last three hours up a rough, twisting, dusty mountain road to Kohima. We were in convoy, with well-armed troops ahead and behind us. Brush along the roadside, favorite cover for armed guerrillas, had been cleared away by the Christians. A week or two before, on this very road, a fatal ambush had taken place.

  Kohima, at 7,000 feet above sea level, had a population of about 30,000. There was no access to the capital except by car and helicopter. The countryside was lush with greenery, where I was told I could find banana trees, snakes, and Bengal tigers—everything a good dense jungle should have.

  As we rounded a curve about three or four miles from Kohima, we came upon crowds of people—tens of thousands of them lining the road to welcome us. They waved and hit the sides of the vehicles with their hands. I got out and started shaking hands with the people, but other hands, the hands of police, grabbed me and pulled me back into the car; the officers felt I was in great danger.

  A few hours later, when we arrived at the soccer field at which we were scheduled to hold our meetings, there were 90,000 people already inside, with thousands more outside. They were arranged by tribe, and each tribe had its own interpreter with a public address system pointed to their area. As I spoke, I paused after each sentence. There followed a cacophony of sound as all seventeen bullhorns blared at once, each in a different dialect.