Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

  FILMS

  Almost all of our early films were intended to be shown in churches. But we could not sit back and wait for the unchurched to come to church, so in time we began to do films that could be shown in theaters—full-length features with a spiritual message. These included Two-a-Penny, starring British pop star Cliff Richard; Joni, starring Joni Eareckson Tada as herself; and The Hiding Place, with Julie Harris and Jeannette Clift George. They were dramatic films— stories of youth and sex, pop culture and rebellion, physical handicaps, and wartime civilian heroism and tragedy—dealing with moral and spiritual problems from the Bible’s standpoint.

  Most successful was The Hiding Place, the true story of Corrie ten Boom and her family during the Second World War. Committed to hiding Jews who were fleeing from Hitler’s terror in Holland, the ten Boom family underwent terrible suffering. When they were discovered, Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were imprisoned in the Nazi death camp of Ravensbrück; Betsie died there. Corrie is one of the great Christian heroines of the century. We met her in Switzerland, and her story made such an impression on Ruth that she recommended it to writers John and Elizabeth Sherrill. They jumped at it; and the book and film that followed brought home the horror of those days and the triumph of Christ’s love in the midst of virulent hatred.

  All that came home to us during the film’s 1975 world premiere at the Beverly Theater, at the corner of Beverly Drive and Wilshire Boulevard. Shortly before the film was to start, someone threw a tear-gas canister into the theater, forcing the crowd to evacuate. The showing had to be postponed. We held an impromptu street meeting out in front while the police and fire departments attempted to find out what had happened. I spoke to the crowd and prayed.

  At a reception later that evening, Corrie ten Boom spoke in her distinctive Dutch accent: “People asked me tonight, ‘What did you feel about this [tear-gas] bomb that was falling?’ I was touched. I was sad. Do you know why? Not only because there was in some way disappointment for people who had hoped to see the film but because on that bomb was the Hakenkreuz, the [Nazi] swastika. . . . What we have to do is love these people who hate us—love them, pray for them. These people are wounded people who have hate in their hearts. They need forgiveness. They need the Lord. . . . That is the answer we must give.”

  In God’s providence, the furor over the tear-gas canister created enormous interest in the film. It premiered the following night without incident and has become the most widely seen motion picture we’ve ever produced.

  Another of our films from this period deserves special mention. As plans began to take shape for the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, we were approached by the fair’s chief planner, Robert Moses, about the possibility of having some type of exhibit. It sounded like an unusual opportunity; at least 50 million people were expected to attend the fair’s two-year run.

  We determined to go ahead. As our plans developed, however, I began to have second thoughts. For one thing, the whole fair seemed overwhelming. Someone calculated that if people spent only twelve minutes at every exhibit, it would take them two weeks to see the whole fair. In addition, I doubted if we could raise the funds to build a separate pavilion, staff it for two years, and develop a film that would be adequate for an event this massive. I wrestled with the decision for months. In a moment of discouragement—I was ill at the time—I wrote the BGEA board telling them I thought we should cancel. Dr. Edman, the president of Wheaton College whose wisdom I respected so much, immediately wrote back that he thought I was wrong. He saw this opportunity as “a great challenge put before us by our Lord.” He also told me that Dwight L. Moody’s greatest impact may have been through the extensive campaign he ran in connection with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

  So we went ahead, developing a seventy-millimeter wide-screen Todd-AO film entitled Man in the Fifth Dimension. (The name came from the film’s theme: life has a fifth dimension to it, the dimension of the spiritual.) Using spectacular photography to tell the story of God’s creation and His love in Christ, scriptwriter Jim Collier and director Dick Ross put together a presentation of the Gospel that touched thousands of lives.

  Our pavilion included an exhibit area, which 5 million people visited in the course of the fair, and a 400-seat auditorium where the film was shown hourly, complete with translations into six major languages. Pavilion director Dan Piatt reported that the film was seen by 1 million people.

  World Wide Pictures became the largest producer of religious films in the world, with translations into dozens of languages. Someone once calculated that at any hour of the day or night, a WWP film is being shown somewhere in the world. In the last few years, the head of our international film ministry, Paul Kurtz, has been able to get some of our films on television and in theaters in the former Soviet Union and in countries in eastern Europe. For all of this, we give thanks to God.

  At the same time, the film work admittedly has been one of the most difficult parts of my ministry. For one thing, motion pictures by their nature are enormously expensive to make, especially if they are done well. Almost all of our pictures (with the exception of The Hiding Place and perhaps a few others) have had to be heavily subsidized by the BGEA. The task of constantly raising money for these was never easy. And occasionally, we faced organizational snafus and difficulties.

  In the early years, Ruth reviewed every script; often we held up production until we were convinced that the Gospel message came through with clarity. In recent years, Cliff Barrows has taken fuller responsibility for World Wide Pictures, working first with Dick Ross’s successor, Bill Brown, and then overseeing WWP’s move from Burbank to Minneapolis.

  One film we were involved with—we did not produce it but obtained it after completion—starred Johnny Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash . . . and therein lies a tale.

  In 1971 June dreamed she saw her husband on a mountain with a Bible in his hand, talking about Jesus. The next year, they made a movie about the life of Jesus called The Gospel Road. Holiday Inns expressed interest in sponsoring it as a TV special, but the corporation wanted artistic as well as financial control. The Cashes said no; they wanted to tell the story their way. That meant they had to finance it themselves.

  Johnny got his friends together—Kris Kristofferson and the Statler Brothers, among others—to write songs that would tell the story of Jesus. June played Mary Magdalene; Johnny himself narrated. Robert Elfstrom, who had directed the television special “Johnny Cash: The Man and His Music,” was the cinematographer; he also took the role of Jesus.

  A few months and a million dollars later, the Cashes sold the work to Twentieth Century–Fox. I had seen a rough cut of it, and from time to time I asked Johnny how the movie was coming. He finally told me it had been sold.

  But the news wasn’t good: the Hollywood studio was having trouble marketing the movie.

  “Well, Johnny,” I said to him, “we’ll just buy it from them.”

  The studio wanted to get its money back, of course, but eventually they came down on their price. As I recall, they sold it to us for about $250,000. Since then, it has been one of the best evangelistic film tools that the BGEA has had, with hundreds of prints in circulation. Missionaries are using it in video vans in Africa, India, and elsewhere.

  WORLD EMERGENCY FUND

  One footnote to our work during the 1960s and early 1970s was the formation in 1973 of a special fund within the BGEA to bring humanitarian aid to places facing natural disasters or other emergencies. For many years we made it a practice to give away a large part of our undesignated income for the support of other evangelistic enterprises and organizations in various parts of the world, including those trying to meet emergency needs. In 1973 we named our effort the World Emergency Fund.

  Over the years, I became more and more convinced of the importance of demonstrating our love through acts of compassion. I knew Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, of course, and had always believed in our responsibility to do whatever we can as indiv
iduals to help those in need.

  As I studied and traveled, however, I came to realize that we had a larger responsibility. My travels brought me face to face with the stark reality of human suffering and with the fact that many millions of people live on the knife-edge of starvation or chronic illness or disaster. We also realized that compassionate help often opened the door to opportunities in evangelism, as people saw Christ’s love in action.

  I recall, for example, the earthquake in Guatemala in 1976. At the time, Ruth and I were in Mexico, where she was recovering from an illness. As soon as I heard of the disaster, I contacted our board to see what we could do through the World Emergency Fund. Then we arranged to travel to the devastated areas. The president of Guatemala put two helicopters at our disposal. His son traveled with us, along with Cliff and a friend of ours, the Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau.

  When we touched down in San Martín Jilotepeque, we saw at once that virtually every building had been destroyed. Of the town’s 18,000 residents, 3,800 were dead in the ruins. Another 4,000 were badly wounded, but there was almost no medical help. Ruth and I felt utterly helpless as we watched thousands wandering about in a daze looking for food or lost relatives.

  Back in Guatemala City, I spoke to 500 Christian leaders and missionaries to assure them of our prayers and support. We were meeting in the partially destroyed Central Presbyterian Church. Even as I was talking, a sharp aftershock hit and pieces of the ceiling began to fall on us. The clergy got up and ran out, thinking it might be another earthquake. Later that day, I was invited to speak on the national television network. The BGEA, through the World Emer-gency Fund, flew in a dozen planeloads of food and medicine to help with the relief effort. As in almost every other emergency situation where we have tried to help, we worked with established organizations and local Christian agencies to ensure that the supplies went where they were most needed.

  Just as heartbreaking in its effects, but far more extensive, were the cyclone and tidal wave in India in late 1977. A wall of water eighteen feet high and fifty miles wide had swept inland for upward of thirty miles, completely destroying almost everything in its path. Hundreds of coastal villages in the state of Andhra Pradesh were wiped out, and 100,000 people lost their lives. In one village, only six dogs survived.

  In God’s providence, we were in the country for a series of Crusades when news came of the disaster. No outsiders—not even journalists—were being allowed in. President Reddy, whom I had met on another occasion (and who was from Andhra Pradesh himself), graciously granted us permission to see the site and supplied a helicopter to take us there. Most villages in that part of India were surrounded by thick, tall thorn bushes to keep out wild animals. As we looked down, we could see bright bits of color snagged by the thorns surrounding dozens of villages. These were fully clothed bodies—thousands of them—already beginning to decompose in the humid tropical heat. When we landed, a man ran up to me and grabbed me by the legs, shouting and refusing to let go. “Kill us or help us rebuild,” he kept saying.

  We took his cry literally. Through the World Emergency Fund, we provided for the rebuilding of one village—285 cement-block homes and a 500-seat church; this became a model for the rebuilding of other villages. The Andhra Pradesh Christian Relief and Rehabilitation Committee oversaw the project. In 1980 Walter Smyth and my son Franklin went to India for the formal dedication of the new town. Against my wishes, the inhabitants insisted on calling it “Billy Graham Nagar [Village].”

  The BGEA’s World Emergency Fund continues to minister in places of need: famine-ravaged Ethiopia, war-torn Rwanda, the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, and the areas of South Carolina and Florida decimated by Hurricane Hugo and Hurricane Andrew. In such instances, we often give the money through organizations like the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and Samaritan’s Purse. We have visited many of these disaster areas personally to try to bring hope and encouragement in the name of Christ. We know we cannot do everything that needs to be done, but in a world that is never free of turmoil, Christ calls us to do what we can.

  24

  My Quaker Friend

  President Richard M. Nixon

  Richard Nixon had tears streaming down his face. It was October 3, 1967, and we were standing in the simple Friends meeting house in East Whittier, California. The Quaker minister and I had just conducted a funeral service for his mother, Hannah. I had already delivered a eulogy for the crowd who attended. The people had filed by the closed casket for the last time and left. The casket was then reopened, and his wife, Pat, and daughters, Julie and Tricia, gathered around. I stretched my arms around their shoulders while the son tearfully expressed his tribute to his mother and the loss he felt at her death. Then I offered a prayer for their comfort.

  Almost twenty years before, after our 1949 Los Angeles Cru-sade, I met Hannah Nixon when I preached in Whittier. She was a godly woman who reared her family to fear the Lord and honor His Word. She told me that her late husband once took his three young sons to Los Angeles to hear evangelist Paul Rader from Chicago. That evening, at the Invitation to commit their lives to Christ, Richard and his brothers walked forward.

  In his youth, Richard taught a Bible class in the Whittier Friends meeting and sung in the choir. He played the piano for Sunday school each Sunday morning and went to Christian En-deavor youth meetings each Sunday night. His spiritual legacy from that quiet Quaker tradition of “friendly persuasion” helped shape the way he looked at the world. These experiences made him a very private person, one who was not prone to exhibit his deep feelings. Tears in public were rare for him. Who knows how many more he shed in private.

  From the start of our acquaintance, when he was the freshman senator from California, this godly heritage probably did as much as anything to make us compatible.

  Our friendship began one day in 1950 or 1951, when I was in Washington, D.C. North Carolina Senator Clyde Hoey had invited me to join him for lunch. A patrician southern gentleman with a mane of white hair almost to his shoulders, he was born and reared about sixty miles from my home. As we ate together in the Senate dining room, he pointed out to me several legislators in the room whose names I was familiar with from the headlines.

  “There’s young Richard Nixon from California.”

  “I’ve met his mother,” I replied.

  “Would you like to meet him?”

  At my assent, Senator Hoey sent a waiter to ask Nixon to come over to our table at his convenience.

  He soon joined us. His warm smile and firm handshake impressed me.

  “You’ve held some wonderful meetings in our state and are well known there,” he said, looking me right in the eye. “As a matter of fact, my mother has written me about you.”

  We had chatted only a few minutes before he asked me an unexpected question: “Do you play golf?”

  “Yes, sir, I try.”

  “We’re going to play a round at Burning Tree this afternoon, and we need another partner. Would you join us?”

  I was delighted with that outing. Because he knew the course so well, he gave me suggestions on almost every shot. Maybe because of that, our score was fairly even. When we finished the game, he drove me to his home and introduced me to Pat and to his little daughters.

  It was not just friendship that put me in Nixon’s camp mentally as he rose to national prominence, although we were good friends. I sincerely thought his two terms of administrative experience and privileged access to information as Vice President in the White House environment made him well qualified to succeed Eisenhower. I knew he had a tremendous grasp of world affairs and from our many conversations together I knew he had formulated a well-studied philosophy of American government. He exhibited both courage and patience, which gave him a long-range view of domestic and international problems. However, I kept my thoughts concerning his suitability for the presidency to myself, except in a few private conversations. I also saw him as a modest and moral man with spiritual sensitivity. I had he
ard of the controversies in Cali-fornia politics, but I formed my own opinions of him based on firsthand observation of the man.

  Looking back these forty-five years later, considering all that has intervened, I wonder whether I might have exaggerated his spirituality in my own mind. But then, in my presence, he always made ready references to his mother’s faith and the Bible that she loved so much. Where religion was concerned with him, it was not always easy to tell the difference between the spiritual and the sentimental. In retrospect, whenever he spoke about the Lord, it was in pretty general terms.

  At the time Nixon was defeated by Kennedy in 1960, many commentators felt he had been hurt by those celebrated television debates. Others questioned the accuracy of the election results, believing that Nixon might actually have won. As a matter of fact, I was told Eisenhower offered to impound all the ballot boxes in several states for a recount. Nixon refused.

  I did not publicly endorse Nixon in the 1960 election, but I reluctantly gave in to a plea from James Byrnes, former secretary of state (and then governor of South Carolina), to pray at a Nixon rally in Columbia, South Carolina. Many people took it as an implied endorsement.

  Two years later, he lost his bid to become governor of Califor-nia. There too, although I still wanted to maintain political neutrality, I inadvertently lined up on his side before the election. Nixon seemed lackluster about campaigning. His publicist, Paul Keyes, was discouraged. They were not getting much photographic coverage, and he thought the news photographers might be interested in a shot of the candidate and me together. I consented. A picture was taken of the two of us playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Bel Air, near Los Angeles—a game that had been scheduled before the photo request came through. The next morning the picture appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Neither of us ever wondered out loud if my public identification with him was more of a jinx than a boost to his cause, but it certainly crossed my mind.