Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

  The reception I got in Ghana was quite different from my reception in Liberia. An editorial writer in Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah’s party newspaper said I should address my messages only to the European Christians living in that country; they were, in his words, “the worst form of oppressors and hypocrites history has ever recorded.”

  The Crusade had already been opened in the capital of Accra before my arrival by Leighton Ford. Among the 14,000 people who came to hear me preach in Accra Stadium, many understood English, but I had two interpreters anyway. I explained that I was not a politician; I was an ambassador of Jesus Christ. And I tried to be diplomatic: I expressed admiration for the leadership (but deliberately kept silent about the policies) of Ghana’s prime minister—the nation’s founding father, whom I looked forward to meeting in a day or so.

  I repeated what I had said in India: that Christ was not a white man; he was a Middle Easterner, darker than I and lighter than they. I pointed out to them that when Jesus fell while carrying His cross, it was an African, Simon of Cyrene, who was pressed into service to carry it for Him. Jesus’ parents, I noted, had fled to Africa after He was born.

  Many people in other parts of Africa and elsewhere had grave concerns about Mr. Nkrumah, fearing he was turning Ghana into a dictatorship. The prime minister’s strong language against the European colonial powers and his strong nationalism were undergirded by an aggressive personality cult that in some eyes bordered on the idolatrous. Carved on his statue in the center of Accra was a blatant parody of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all other things shall be added unto it.”

  The time might soon come, one Ghanaian pastor told us, when “Ghana’s Christians may have to choose between Christ and the nation.”

  Mr. Nkrumah received me cordially when I visited him in his official residence. It was, I believe, my first experience with a political leader who held such a tight rein on the hearts and minds of his people. I knew I could not hope to sort out all the political crosscurrents involved with his philosophy, nor was that my calling. I was, however, deeply concerned about the future of the Christian church under his rule.

  After the preliminary courtesies were over, I told Mr. Nkrumah I knew he was concerned for the future of his people and that every truly great nation cherished religious freedom. I expressed the hope that this would be the case with his nation as well. He assured me it would be, as long as churches refrained from interference in political affairs. I knew that Christian believers would need great wisdom to avoid difficulties in the future.

  Worried as I was about this matter, I was blindsided by an altogether different issue in Ghana. At that time, many Africans were in a rage about an atomic test blast planned by the French in the Sahara Desert. Ghanaians feared that the harmattan wind from the north would waft radioactive dust over their land. Local reporters did everything they could to squeeze a comment out of me.

  My silence—partly a result of an effort to abide by Mr. Nkrumah’s injunction against meddling in politics—made them jump on me all the more. Ghanaian reporters, in saying that I was a good actor and a good psychologist, implied that I was little more; the Associated Press quoted one of them as saying, “Nkrumahism is the highest form of Christianity.” The reporters even turned my own words against me. As journalist Tom McMahan, who accompanied us, wrote in his account of our trip, Safari for Souls, they declared that “Christian civilization is today busily dragging Christ to Golgotha, and an African . . . is bearing the cross for the son of man. This African is Kwame Nkrumah.”

  The whole issue was, I knew, a complex one, and I doubted that I could avoid offending people on one side or the other no matter what I said. The controversy did not follow us elsewhere, fortunately.

  Our audience my second (and final) night in Accra was only a third of what it had been for my first meeting; the response to the Invitation, though, was nearly the same on both nights.

  The drive to our next stop, Kumasi, a city northwest of Accra, was spectacular; the road was flanked by giant mahogany trees. We were warmly received in Kumasi by citizens wearing colorful tribal clothing. Some 8,000 had gathered, but a torrential tropical downpour shorted out the public address system, and the crowd had no alternative but to disperse. Afterward we were invited to a buffet dinner given in our honor. Most of our Team members were completely soaked and had no change of clothing or shoes. Five of them—all over six feet tall—were forced to borrow trousers from a much shorter missionary and had to appear at the buffet barefoot. We were thankful, though, that this was the only meeting in our entire trip that we had to cancel.

  Nigeria and the Congo

  The flight from Ghana to Lagos, Nigeria, in the middle of the night was one of the most harrowing I’ve ever taken. The Ghana Airlines DC–3, an old Dakota plane, had previously been owned by several other airlines, their names still visible under successive coats of paint.

  An English lord in Bermuda shorts was sitting beside me on the plane; I tried to witness to him, but he was not interested in the slightest.

  In mid-flight the pilot, who was European, came back to talk to the non-Africans on the plane. While he was chatting, the aircraft entered a violent thunderstorm. As he returned to the cockpit, the lightning flashed razor-bright. The plane shook, rattled, and rolled; in fact, it did everything but turn over. I didn’t think the wings could possibly remain attached to the fuselage.

  The Englishman grew as nervous as I, and he asked me to repeat what I had said about salvation earlier. I asked him if he would receive Christ. He said he would give it a thought.

  Charlie Riggs was sitting across the aisle from me, trying to talk above the storm to a well-dressed African. But the African was yelling back; certain that we would crash in the storm, he was praying that we would not crash over water; if his body could not be found, his heirs would not inherit.

  When we arrived in Lagos on January 27, Grady was already in Nigeria, holding preliminary meetings. At one place, he was told that some Europeans had been killed the night before. His Nigerian hosts had the questionable taste to put him up in the very tent one of those Europeans had died in. Grady got a big knife for himself and kept it by his side during the night. Fortunately, he spent a peaceful night (aside from his own anxiety) and did not have to face the ethics of whether he should actually use it.

  We faced hostility, however, from another source. At our first Crusade meeting in Lagos, with 25,000 people present, pamphlets written in the Yoruba language were distributed without our consent to the crowd. Originating from the office of the chief Muslim missionary in West Africa, they essentially denied all biblical teachings about Jesus. We objected, and the hostile literature did not show up again. The Muslim leader attended our services, but we did not accept his challenge to a public debate. I was not there to argue; I just wanted to preach the Gospel.

  With independence forthcoming in the fall of 1960, Nigeria was nervously looking forward to an uncertain future. While talking drums reverberated between the villages, television antennas were rising in the cities of Nigeria. So, as I spoke to 40,000 at the second service, I urged the need for building spiritual and moral strength in the nation.

  I felt the excitement of the transition in all six Nigerian cities we visited—Lagos, Ibadan, Kontagora, Kaduna, Enugu, and Jos—especially in the 5,000 inquirers who came forward to make commitments at our meetings.

  From Lagos, we traveled to Ibadan, the largest city in Nigeria, and the Nigerian headquarters for several mission agencies, including the Sudan Interior Mission. There we met the local king, an old man on a big throne surrounded by his court. He entertained us royally. While there I spoke at University College, which was built along the British design. The architect was English, and hence the buildings were designed to withstand cold weather. But we were close to the equator, the temperature nearing one hundred degrees. The auditorium was beautiful, and it easily held a thousand students, but I nearly burned to a c
risp.

  I gave the college audience the Gospel. Some of my listeners were disgusted with what I was saying, but others were receptive. When I asked for hands to be lifted up at the Invitation, several hundred people responded.

  The day following our meetings in Ibadan, we traveled to the town of Kontagora, situated in the Muslim-dominated area of northern Nigeria. There I was privileged to say a few words and help dedicate a new hospital given by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, on which I was serving at the time; we were told there was only one fully trained doctor for every 200,000 people in that part of the country.

  Our next stop was the city of Kaduna, a district capital. While there we visited a nearby village of conical mud huts whose residents were Christians. As we drove there, a missionary told us that the villagers had been threatened a few years earlier after they had constructed a tiny church. One day a gang of toughs invaded with machetes. The village leader, a Christian for only four years, boldly stopped them: “Young men, over there are our crops. You may burn them if you wish. Yonder are our homes. You may tear them down if you must.” Then he opened his robe and bared his neck. “Here are our lives,” he said. “You can kill us, but you cannot take our Christ from us.” And the invaders fled.

  When we arrived, I discovered that the villagers had constructed a “brush arbor”—a shelter made of poles and brush that would accommodate about 100 people—for our meeting. It was full, some of them having walked fifteen miles to participate. As I spoke, I knew I had gained far more from them and their dedication to Christ than I could ever give them.

  Kaduna was the Muslim headquarters for Nigeria. Because it also had the major airport in that area, it was where all the planes came to refuel. The noise from the sky was continuous and often deafening during our stay there.

  The sultan was considered the king of Kaduna. He was a big man in flowing white robes before whom his people knelt to conduct their business. I had a ninety-minute interview with him. He already knew all about me and what I was doing. I told him about my faith and what Christ meant to me.

  “Within ten years,” he said to me, “you Christians will be pushed into the sea. We are going to take over all of Africa.”

  “That’s in God’s hands,” I replied.

  He agreed with that.

  About six months later I read in a newspaper that he was dead; an assassin had slit his throat from ear to ear.

  After meetings in Kaduna and Enugu, we went to Jos. I was able to speak at a public meeting. At a large mission rest station there, we met with missionaries and others who had been in Africa for a number of years. Our hosts told us about their mission work, and I felt very humbled by their dedication.

  After preaching one day in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, we flew almost across the continent to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, where we changed to an old leased plane to go to Livingstone, near Victoria Falls, for a few days of rest.

  “We can fly high and have a smooth flight,” said the pilot, trying to be helpful, “or we can fly low and take a chance on seeing some animals.”

  “Fly low,” said Cliff and I at the same time.

  “But you probably won’t see any,” warned the pilot with the voice of experience.

  Low it was, and extremely bumpy. Howard Jones tried to sink into the baggage, he was so nervous. But we did see several herds of water buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, and elephants, including one giant herd of two hundred. We couldn’t hear them, but we could see that they were roaring and trumpeting at us.

  “That was the most game I’ve ever seen in one day in all my years of flying this country,” the pilot said when we finally landed.

  Rhodesia

  When we got to Livingstone, at the southern border of Northern Rhodesia, we registered at a small hotel. The next morning, I opened the window, and there on a tree sat a dozen baboons; they were so close, I could reach out and touch them. What friendly creatures, I thought, but I was admonished by our host that one should never open a window like that. The baboons could come right in, make themselves at home, and tear the room asunder.

  Cliff and I wanted to see nearby Victoria Falls—on the Zambezi River at the border between Northern and Southern Rhodesia—close up. We were persuaded that the best way to do that was to take a $5 ride in a small, French, pre–World War II trimotor. The pilot took us up the Zambezi through the mist rising up from the falls, allowing us to look down through rainbows at one of the great natural wonders of the world. Then he took us down the Zambezi, flying so low that he ruffled the water. Every time he came to a hippo—both Cliff and I swore to this afterward—the pilot had to pull back a little on the stick to avoid hitting the animal. It wasn’t a relaxing flight for a couple of itinerant evangelists, but in retrospect it was exciting and indeed exhilarating.

  Although I was supposed to be resting during our few days there, I couldn’t help but accept the local pastor’s invitation in Living-stone—named after the pioneer missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who had discovered Victoria Falls—to preach one evening. And I was glad I did; the people were warm and receptive.

  From Victoria Falls, we flew—in a 1931-vintage biplane—to Bulawayo, one of Southern Rhodesia’s largest cities, for a multiracial meeting, said to be the largest one held in that country to date.

  We held similar meetings in Salisbury (now Harare, Zim-babwe), where some of the Europeans urged us not to provide any translation into the African languages. We refused, knowing that a lack of translation would discourage black attendance, as it was intended to do. It was deeply moving to watch hundreds of blacks and whites come forward together at the Invitation. The discourtesy, disdain, and paternalistic attitudes toward the Africans by some of the white population in Rhodesia was very disturbing to me. We bent over backward to stress that God’s love extended equally to all, regardless of race or background.

  In Salisbury we were the houseguests of the British governor-general. Also staying with him was Commonwealth Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who later became the prime minister of Great Britain. We immediately became good friends and crossed paths a number of times in later years.

  One night, listening to the BBC World Service on my portable shortwave radio, I heard the announcer say that a demonstration had broken out against Grady Wilson, who had been speaking in Kitwe, Northern Rhodesia. I was relieved to hear that Grady was fine but was concerned for the next meeting; I was due to speak there the following night.

  The meetings in Kitwe were being held in a crude facility with tin sides and a tin roof. Grady showed me around and tried to prepare me for the mood I would encounter. “You’ll hear the demonstrators when they’re about a mile away,” Grady said. “They’ll start marching here just about the time you’re ready to give the Invitation. When rocks start hitting the tin roof and walls, be ready to leave. We’ll have a way out all organized for you.”

  Sure enough, that was exactly what happened. As soon as I gave the Invitation, the tin roof began to resound. We slipped out and got back to the hotel safely. But the irony was that the demonstrators had no idea who we really were. They thought we were part of a United Nations delegation there to discuss the political future of the country!

  Tanganyika, Kenya

  One of our briefest visits in Africa was also one of the most spectacular in terms of the setting: the town of Moshi on the slopes of Africa’s tallest mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro. As I looked over the audience of 35,000, which filled the grass field and even climbed nearby trees, I could see the majestic white-capped peak, 19,340 feet high, on one side in the distance. On the other side, only several hundred yards away, were the white spires of the local mosque, by far the most splendid building in town. My interpreter was a schoolteacher named Festo Kivengere, a personal friend who later became an outstanding Anglican bishop and one of the finest speakers and preachers in Africa.

  Later, in a couple of Land Rovers and with a guide, we went through one of the game preserves. At one point, we came
upon a pride of lions just finishing off a zebra carcass in the middle of the road. Our African driver said it was wiser to wait until they were finished than risk antagonizing them by interrupting their meal. We readily agreed.

  We went back from Moshi to Nairobi, which was a convenient center from which we traveled to other places for meetings. We also held public meetings in Nairobi at the agricultural fairgrounds and had a ministers’ meeting there arranged by the Anglican bishop of Mombasa.

  Ruanda-Urundi

  A harrowing experience occurred later on a flight from Kenya to Usumbura, the capital of Ruanda-Urundi. Because no scheduled air service was available for the last lap of that journey, Jerry Beavan was forced to charter an aged DC–3. It wasn’t supposed to go over 12,000 feet because the cabin was unpressurized. The mountains, though, went up to 14,000 feet; as a result, we found ourselves gasping for breath. Then we ran into clouds so dense that we could barely see the wingtips. Shortly afterward, the pilot came back to tell us that both radios had gone out. He couldn’t tell where we were, he said, and we didn’t have enough fuel to turn back. I asked everyone to gather round for a time of prayer. We had several reporters along, from Time, the Associated Press, and Life; they gave the loudest amens as I prayed. Finally, a hole in the clouds appeared, revealing Lake Victoria below. The pilot dove through the clouds and finally got his bearings; he was then able to land without further incident.

  When we taxied up to the terminal, several thousand people made a rush for the plane to welcome us, many of them wearing Watusi native dress and carrying spears. But we noticed that some of them were also waving banners and signs; once again we had been confused with another group, this time a visiting United Nations delegation led by Dag Hammarskjöld, who later became a friend of mine. I met some of the city’s leadership but almost didn’t get to speak at our own meeting; the local governor took almost half an hour to introduce me!

  Ethiopia

  Ethiopia’s 20 million people were ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie, whose ancient dynasty claimed to be descended from a union between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church, which was formerly the Coptic Church, traditionally traced its lineage back to the Ethiopian eunuch who was converted to Christ during an encounter with Philip the evangelist, recorded in Acts 8.