Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

  Tasmania and New Zealand

  Following the Melbourne meetings, we embarked on a series of brief stops in Tasmania and New Zealand. In Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, an electrical failure cut off the floodlights and plunged the platform and much of the arena into a faint dimness. The crowd could barely see the platform, and I could sense them growing restless. When I got up to preach, I tried talking to them about the delicious Tasmanian apples that I had been enjoying. Still the restlessness continued. At that point, a small boy walked up the steps of the platform, paused to ask Bev a question, then stepped forward and presented me with a fine, big apple. His openness delighted the crowd, and from that moment on I had their undivided attention.

  In Wellington, on New Zealand’s North Island, I spoke at the university. Among many other things, I touched on the reality of Hell. After that meeting—in fact, it was shortly before midnight, and Cliff and I, who were sharing adjoining rooms, were almost ready for bed—we heard a loud knock on our door. There stood one of the students, and he was angry—very angry.

  “What do you mean coming over here from America and talking about Hell? I don’t believe in Hell, and you have no right to come over here and talk about it!”

  “Let me ask you a question,” I responded. “Suppose you went to Auckland to catch a plane for Sydney. And suppose they told you there was a 10 percent chance the plane would not make it but was going to crash. Would you get on?”

  “No,” he replied, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, what if there were only a 5 percent chance the plane wasn’t going to make it? Would you get on then?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Now suppose there’s only a 10 percent chance—or even just a 5 percent chance—that Jesus was right and there is a Hell. Do you think there’s at least a 5 percent chance that He might have been right?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose there is.”

  “Then is it worth taking the risk and ignoring those odds?”

  “No. No, it isn’t,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Then will you receive Christ and begin to follow Him?”

  He paused for a moment. “No, I can’t, because I find that’s not my problem. My real problem is that I don’t want to live up to the standard that Jesus demands.” He thought his problem was an intellectual one, but in reality, as with so many other people, his problem was one of the will. Before he left, Cliff and I prayed with him, but we never knew if he ever came to Christ.

  In Australia and New Zealand, we made use of our associate evangelists more than ever before. In New Zealand, for example, Grady preached in Auckland, the country’s largest city, and found a very warm reception. Leighton Ford, a highly effective evangelist as well as my brother-in-law, spoke in Wellington to large crowds, in spite of blustery weather. Christchurch, founded by the English on South Island, responded equally well to Joe Blinco, who had grown up in a non-Christian home in northern England and had a real gift for communicating with people of all backgrounds. These associates would preach for a week, perhaps for two; then I would close the series with a final meeting. They also spoke in schools, prisons, factories, and dockyards—anyplace I was unable to include in my schedule. Altogether, one-fifth of the nation’s population attended a Crusade meeting.

  Sydney

  At Sydney University, I had a direct confrontation with the Devil. As I talked to 4,000 students about the necessity of faith, we all heard a sudden, loud bang and saw a puff of white smoke. A figure appeared dressed in a flaming-red costume, complete with horns and a tail. When he walked up to me, I laughed and shook his hand. I took a small Bible out of my pocket, and with one hand on the zealous impersonator’s shoulder, I outlined the Gospel to him. After I left the meeting, he told his fellow students that he still didn’t believe in Jesus. The next day, the Sydney Daily Mirror put a picture of us on the front page.

  At the final meeting in Sydney, on May 10, the crowd of 150,000 broke attendance records for the Sydney Showground and the adjoining Sydney Cricket Ground. In addition, an estimated 1 million-plus people listened to that service over radio and via landline broadcasts in homes, churches, and halls all over Australia—in places with such intriguing names as Bunbury, Manjimup, Pingelly, and Wubin. But rather than confirming the popularity of the visiting Team, interest indicated to me, as I told the people, “absolute proof of Australia’s great spiritual hunger.”

  That final meeting in Sydney was really two simultaneous meetings. The setup at the Showground was duplicated at the adjoining Cricket Ground—speakers’ dais, choir risers, and so on—and both sites had a thousand-voice choir. Both sessions began at three in the afternoon. Bev and other program participants shuttled between the two places by car; to preach to both audiences, I did the same. I was expected to shorten my sermons under those circumstances, but I’m not sure that I did. The results were very encouraging. St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, for example, received six hundred people to follow up.

  Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane

  Perth was a continent away, in Western Australia. To accommodate the swelling crowds in that city, seating at the Claremont Show-grounds had to be supplemented by more than a mile of planks laid across a thousand kerosene cans, almost a thousand ammunition cases, and a thousand gasoline drums. Grady had begun the Crusade, and I came at the end. One night, at the Invitation, an archbishop wanted to come forward. Grady suggested that such an action might be confusing to his flock and counseled the man personally.

  At Adelaide, attendance held well above average throughout the Crusade; Joe was particularly effective with students at a meeting in the university’s Union Hall. At Brisbane, Leighton addressed large audiences at the Milton Tennis Courts on weeknights; I preached at the Exhibition Ground for the closing weekend meetings, which were carried by landline relays to seventy towns and cities in Queensland.

  It was in Adelaide that I met Rupert Murdoch for the first time. He was virtually unknown outside Australia and was just starting his career in publishing, but his quiet intensity impressed me. We later became friends, and he has been very supportive of our work through his publications in many parts of the world.

  By the end of our final Australian meeting, which was in Brisbane in May, three and one-third million people had attended the meetings in person (including the meetings led by associates), and there had been 150,000 inquirers.

  During our long time away, Cliff and I both missed our families intensely. Billie sent Cliff a photograph of one of his young daughters, but it didn’t help much since it showed her sitting in the picture window of her home, crying for her daddy.

  Billie herself had her spirits buoyed when a friend sent her a television set on which she could see a newscast of her husband and me trekking about Australia. But before she could turn it on, she had to climb up on the roof of their home to erect the antenna!

  We did have a bit of leisure time in the midst of our heavy schedule. Lee Fisher and I played golf together frequently. He was a jack of all trades, able to do many things well, including play a number of musical instruments. He had been an evangelist; but after the death of his wife, he took a tour of the world, during which he did not live for the Lord. When he got back, he developed a stutter, which he thought was God’s judgment on him for his disobedience. He married again and returned to the Lord. He had a great sense of humor and even managed to improve my golf game.

  Once, between meetings, we decided to take advantage of a day off. Cliff, Paul Maddox, Walter Smyth, and I drove to a resort development called Surfers’ Paradise. Somewhere along the road, we pulled up at a beautiful stretch of sandy ocean beach. We were all alone, as far as the eye could see—or so we thought. We had a time of prayer and Bible reading. Then Cliff and I went swimming. We were enjoying being pounded by the waves when all of a sudden we heard Walter and Paul yelling, “Sharks! Get out—sharks!” We looked out and saw fins coming toward us. Apparently, we had not quite reached Surfers’ Paradise.

  Re
ligion became front-page news across Australia. However, the real story of the Australian Crusade was written in the lives of Australians who would never be the same because of their encounter with Christ.

  I heard about one man who was a safecracker, actively involved with a gang planning a theft. He decided to come to a meeting, and there he gave his life to Christ. Later he and his counselor met with the gang to tell them what had happened to him and explain why he would no longer be part of their plans.

  Another night I was preaching on the home. A divorced man was there with the girlfriend who had been the cause of the breakup of his marriage. The message penetrated his heart, and as he looked up during the Invitation, he saw his former wife going forward to give her life to Christ. With tears of remorse, he went and stood beside her, becoming reconciled not only to God but to the wife he had rejected.

  One man who came forward in Sydney had embezzled a large sum from the bank where he worked. Though it hadn’t been detected, he confessed the next morning to the bank manager, offering to make restitution even though he knew he faced almost certain dismissal and prosecution. The manager was so impressed with the man’s change of heart that he not only kept him on staff but went to the Crusade that night and gave his own life to Christ.

  And then there was Ron Baker. He had almost everything going against him, including functional illiteracy and a speech impediment brought on by a violently abusive childhood. An alcoholic and a confirmed gambler, Ron was also deeply involved in witchcraft. He stopped by his local bar every night, arriving home some hours later drunk and in a foul mood. He abused his poor wife; she threatened divorce.

  By profession Ron was a bus driver, and on several nights during the Crusade, he was assigned by his employer to drive delegations to the meetings. Disgusted, he traded routes with another driver. One night, working late, he missed his nightly visit to the bar altogether and arrived home cold sober. A friend to whom he was indebted was there to invite him to the meetings. His wife urged him to go, saying that she had attended the Crusade four days before and made her own commitment to Christ. Although that news sent Ron into a towering rage, his friend was able to quiet him down again and eventually convinced him to attend—but only on the condition that they sit as far away from the platform as possible.

  “I thought that the message was the greatest load of garbage I had ever heard,” Ron wrote later. But God was at work. God spoke to him that night, and he made his own commitment to Christ. He struggled with his alcoholism for two years, but gradually Christ changed him from within. He began to study, and with the help of a Christian speech therapist, he overcame his impediment. Sensing his call to Christian service, Ron went to Bible college and then seminary. A few years later, as an ordained pastor, he formed his own evangelistic team; since then he has had a powerful ministry as an evangelist throughout Australia and in other parts of the world.

  In New Zealand, a man with deep family and financial problems got into his car, determined to commit suicide by running it into a bridge abutment outside town. As he drove, he turned on the radio and found it was tuned to the Crusade broadcast. The message on the Twenty-third Psalm arrested his attention, and he drove instead to the local Crusade office, where someone led him to Christ.

  Stories like this could be repeated from any other Crusade, but I never tire of hearing them. I have never ceased to be thrilled at the transformation that comes when a person opens his or her life to Jesus Christ.

  However, God alone must get the glory, for only He can penetrate the hardness of our hearts and bring us to faith and commitment and new life. As I said on our last day in Brisbane, “For what has happened in Australia, I want to give the glory and praise to God. . . . I hope you will soon forget about us except to pray for us. When you take pictures and applaud, I know it is from your heart, but you’re applauding the wrong person, you’re taking pictures of the wrong person; I’m here to represent Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords: to Him be the glory and the praise and the honor.”

  Heading Home

  From Australia we went to Europe, where Ruth and I were reunited in Paris. Before leaving for home, we crossed the English Channel to London; I wanted to hold a press conference there to let the English know about our meetings in Australia. However, the press seemed lethargic, uninterested in anything we had done Down Under. But when I told them that Ruth and I had walked across Hyde Park and that with all the couples locked in intimate embrace, it looked like a bedroom, the press perked up. Almost before we got outside, or so it seemed, the newspapers were already on the street, with my Hyde Park remark as the headline! That headline even sparked a hot debate in Parliament.

  A few days later, somewhat embarrassed, Ruth and I met with Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace for tea. As always, she was very interested in our work, expressing special pleasure as we recounted what God had done in Australia, over which she was the earthly sovereign. She did not mention the headline, nor did I.

  Since 1959 we have returned to Australia three times—in 1968, 1969, and 1979. In addition, several of our associate evangelists have had frequent ministry there. In 1996 my son Franklin held Crusades in several Australian cities, including Sydney and Bris-bane, and he has received a number of invitations to return.

  AFRICA

  At the beginning of 1960, most of the countries on the vast continent of Africa were still under foreign colonial domination; some, like Nigeria, were due to receive independence later in the year. The cry of freedom was on the lips of people everywhere. And yet we also detected a great deal of nervousness: with the colonial structures collapsing and the old ways of life disappearing, no one knew exactly what the future would hold.

  Africa in those days was undergoing great economic and social change. Old ways of life were disappearing forever as millions moved from small villages and tribal areas to the continent’s few mushrooming cities. Relative prosperity in some regions was creating new classes and new expectations. The old social structures were being challenged by a new generation of leadership. Many knowledgeable people with whom I talked said that a philosophical and political vacuum was developing across the continent.

  By 1958 we had accepted invitations for a trip to that great continent beginning in January 1960. After much prayer, we decided on eleven countries: Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, and the Congo in western Africa; Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe); Kenya, Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), Ruanda-Urundi (now Rwanda and Burundi), and Ethiopia in eastern Africa; and Egypt in northern Africa. We also scheduled brief stopover meetings in several other countries—informal gatherings at airports, for example, where we would preach.

  Jerry Beavan, Howard Jones, and Charlie Riggs crisscrossed the continent arranging the meetings and training counselors. Paul Maddox helped take care of the myriad details that were involved in our complex travel arrangements. Grady Wilson, Cliff Barrows, and Joe Blinco accompanied us to preach in places that I could not visit.

  Some countries, such as Sudan, remained closed to us for political or religious reasons. Churches in another nation, South Africa, strongly urged us to come, but I refused; the meetings could not be integrated, and I felt that a basic moral principle was at stake.

  Liberia

  Liberia, a democracy founded by freed American slaves in the early nineteenth century, was our first stop in Africa on January 19. As we landed, I wondered if it might be the last stop I would ever make. One of the plane’s four motors was spurting dark smoke. With sirens wailing, airport fire engines raced toward us. The combustion, I was happy to see, subsided before we reached the terminal.

  Vice President William R. Tolbert met us. A noted Baptist leader, he stopped at a small church on the fifty-mile drive into Monrovia. We had a brief prayer session there, sang a hymn, and recited the Twenty-third Psalm.

  Liberia’s president, William V. S. Tubman, was also a professing Christian, a Methodist; so it was not too surprising that our Liberian visit w
as the first ever that was government-sponsored rather than church-sponsored. We were housed in the government’s official guest house, and we were received by the president in the gleamingwhite executive mansion. He expressed his hope that his people’s souls would be refreshed through the ministry of our meetings.

  Dr. Tolbert accompanied me everywhere, even presiding at our meetings in Monrovia’s Antoinette Tubman Stadium.

  My associate Howard Jones had already started the Crusade when we arrived. He and his wife, Wanda, were establishing a home in Monrovia. That would enable him to preach regularly on the powerful new Sudan Interior Mission radio station ELWA in Monrovia and to conduct evangelistic crusades all over Africa. The radio station was located on a beautiful beach; fronting it were some lovely missionary homes and a school for children.

  In the week preceding our arrival, Howard preached to large audiences. I preached the final two nights of the Crusade, with many thousands in attendance, resulting in 1,000 inquirers. It was an encouraging start to our African journey.

  President Tubman invested me, while in the country, as a Grand Commander of the Humane Order of African Redemption, the nation’s second-highest honor. The title commander was misapplied, I was sure, but the words humane and redemption meant a great deal to me, in view of my pursuit of God’s calling for my life. I knew that Africa could move in any of several directions—Communist, Islamic, animistic, or Christian—and I was there to promote the last.

  Ghana

  Only three years earlier, Ghana had become the first African nation to get free of European colonialism. It was a small country, but it had many tribes and languages. One Ghanaian I met stood in the middle of the road and said, “I can’t understand the people across that hill, and they can’t understand us (or the people across the next hill to them).”