by Billy Graham
In the eighteen months since arriving at Florida Bible Insti-tute, I exercised some gifts and began to develop some skills that I did not know I had. I knew that I loved to tell people the good news of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. On Sundays I often preached on the streets of Tampa, sometimes as many as five or six times a day.
But in those days, the greatest ministry that God opened up to me was the trailer parks. One of them, the largest (or close to it) in the country, was known as Tin Can Trailer Park. Two ladies there had gotten the concession to hold religious services on Sunday nights, but they had no preacher; they asked me if I would come. The crowds ran anywhere from 200 to 1,000. They would take up a collection, which I think the ladies kept and used for some worthy project, and they would give me $5—a tremendous help to my meager budget.
Many people responded to my preaching by confessing faith in Christ and being converted. My teachers and classmates seemed to affirm that this ministry was good and right for me. But did I want to preach for a lifetime? I asked myself that question for the umpteenth time on one of my nighttime walks around the golf course. The inner, irresistible urge would not subside. Finally, one night, I got down on my knees at the edge of one of the greens. Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. “O God,” I sobbed, “if you want me to serve you, I will.”
The moonlight, the moss, the breeze, the green, the golf course—all the surroundings stayed the same. No sign in the heavens. No voice from above. But in my spirit I knew I had been called to the ministry. And I knew my answer was yes.
From that night in 1938 on, my purpose and objectives in life were set. I knew that I would be a preacher of the Gospel. I did not yet know how or when, however.
My next preaching assignment seemed a long time in coming. I so badly wanted to preach, but nobody asked me to. The schoolyear was over. Students had left for the summer. I decided to stay on in Tampa, hoping to help Dr. Minder with the conferences at Lake Swan or to be kept busy with pulpit engagements while I worked at odd jobs on the campus. I applied to one church after another, but they either did not have openings or did not want an inexperienced student. A week went by, and I began to wonder nervously whether I had been truly called to preach or not.
Then, on one Saturday afternoon when I was down by the river cutting grass, I saw Mr. Corwin wandering about the campus. He operated the West Tampa Gospel Mission in the Hispanic section and always used Institute people to assist him. I had begun to think he would never ask me.
I dropped to my knees behind a bush and prayed, “Dear Lord, please let me preach at his mission tomorrow.”
When I looked up, the kindly old man was coming right toward me. “Mr. Graham, a student had to cancel his appointment at the last minute,” he said. “Would you mind coming to my mission to preach for me tomorrow?”
Having accepted Mr. Corwin’s invitation gladly, the next day I spoke to a couple dozen Hispanic teenagers in Tampa, talking as loudly as I could for them. Whether it was my volume or my message I wasn’t sure, but Mr. Corwin was impressed enough to ask me back the next Saturday, and many times after that.
Talking to those young men had given me a full head of steam. I asked Mr. Corwin after the mission service if I could go out and preach on the street. That day I preached seven sermons outdoors, and I continued to do that every weekend for the next two schoolyears, usually in front of saloons.
On Saturday nights, I would speak in the Tampa Gospel Mis-sion off Franklin Street to whoever wandered in; Brunette Brock, Dr. Watson’s secretary, and some other musicians from school helped me out from time to time.
I was also invited to preach on a Sunday morning at a small Methodist church some forty miles from Tampa, where Roy Gustafson and a musical trio from school were conducting a week of meetings. Then came the big break I had been longing for.
Dr. Minder’s old friend Cecil Underwood arranged for me to preach for a week of evenings at East Palatka Baptist Church. And not only in the church but also over radio station WFOY in nearby St. Augustine, live every morning. By now I had prepared and practiced about fifteen sermons—full-length ones—and I was ready to go!
During my stay in Palatka I lived in his home. I walked the streets practicing my sermons. I found a nearby church that was empty during the day and fine-tuned my sermons in there. By the time evenings came around, I was worn out from preaching to those empty pews.
Every night a congregation of 150 filled the church building. I became irritated at some of the young people who always sat in the back pews and cut up during the services. I scolded them from the pulpit and even threatened to go back there and throw them out bodily.
At that, the son of a leading member of the church jumped up, shook his fist at me, and stalked out, slamming the screen door behind him. I let the people know I could do other things besides preach, threatening that if there was a repeat performance of that behavior, I would give the boy a whipping. I think he came back two nights later. Fortunately, I wasn’t challenged to make good on my threat.
Despite my immaturity, the Lord graciously moved 80 people to profess conversion that week, and many of them joined the church. I could not doubt that His hand was on me, which made me practice my sermons all the harder every day. I was so keyed up that I could hardly sleep at night, and yet I had to drive on a rural road the twenty-eight miles from Palatka to St. Augustine and back in the morning in order to preach on the radio.
A by-product of my Palatka experience was my third baptism! In accordance with their Presbyterian covenant theology, my parents had presented their infant son for baptism by sprinkling in 1919 at Chalmers Memorial Church back home. I had never questioned the validity of that solemn act of commitment on their part, born of a heart desire to have their child identified with the household of faith. Years later as a youngster, after studying the catechism, I was “confirmed” in the faith by declaring my personal allegiance to the Lord. That background contributed to my checking “Recommitment” when I went forward in the Mordecai Ham meetings; that, I feel, was the moment when I truly put my trust in Christ as my Savior and was born again.
In Florida I had become convinced that I should be baptized by immersion and had arranged quietly for Dr. Minder to do that. It was an adult act, following my conscious conversion, and signified my dying to sin and rising again to a new life in Christ, as Paul described it in Romans 6.
But preaching in Southern Baptist churches raised a problem for me. Cecil Underwood pointed out that for Southern Baptists to invite preachers from other denominations—especially Presbyte-rians—into their pulpits was like defying a sacred tradition. Al-though he did not care one way or the other, not being a strict denominationalist himself, he thought that if I did not want to have a row with the deacons, I would be wise to be immersed under Southern Baptist auspices.
I pondered the question and prayed. It certainly seemed redundant, if not superfluous, to be baptized a third time. I did not believe there was anything magical or automatic about another baptism, as far as changing my heart. Baptism was only, to use the standard terminology, an outward sign of an inward grace. I knew that God had already made me a member of the Body of Christ, visibly expressed on earth in the Church, and that human labels could not affect my standing with Him one way or the other. On the other hand, I did not want anything to be a stumbling block or barrier in the minds of those I was seeking to reach.
In late 1938, therefore, Cecil Underwood immersed me in Silver Lake, with people from the church on the shore to wit-ness the ordinance. I waded down into the water, where he lowered me under and lifted me out in less than three seconds. I waded ashore again and went into a little shanty bathhouse to change into dry clothes.
Early in 1939, Woodrow came to me and said, “I think you ought to be ordained. That would give you a standing in the Baptist Association and be of great benefit to you in many ways.”
Woodrow and I talked it over and prayed about it. We agreed to get in touch with Cecil Underwoo
d, who was still pastor at Peniel Baptist Church near Palatka. Cecil was glad to call together four or five neighboring pastors to form an ordination council. On a Sunday in February after I preached at one of the churches, we went to Peniel for the two o’clock session.
The little white frame church, about four windows long, was hot, and I was nervous. The handful of rural Southern Baptist pastors took their responsibility seriously, and under Cecil’s considerate direction commenced to question me in a kindly way about my background and beliefs.
One brother took it on himself to probe a bit into my theological views. After all, he must have reasoned, they were dealing here with a youngster who only recently had seen the light and converted from Presbyterian to Baptist. I am afraid my patience ran short. “Brother,” I said, “you’ve heard me preach around these parts, and you’ve seen how the Lord has seen fit to bless. I’m not an expert on theology, but you know what I believe and how I preach, and that should be enough to satisfy you.”
He chuckled, along with the others, and reckoned it was so. They approved me for ordination, and the service was held that night in the Peniel church. Cecil presided, and Woodrow preached the ordination sermon on the text, “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3, KJV).
I knelt on the little platform in front of a small congregation and was encircled by a half-dozen country preachers. I felt the light touch of their outstretched fingers and calloused hands on my blond head and bony shoulders as they prayed me into their distinguished fellowship. When I stood up again, I was an ordained Southern Baptist minister in the St. John’s River Association.
Being ordained meant lots of things. Now I had sanction to perform weddings, conduct funerals, and officiate in church activities not open to me before. Far more important, though, by that simple act of ordination I was henceforth “set apart” for the preaching of the Gospel. Ordination did not elevate me to superiority over my fellow Christians who sat in the pews and listened, even if I stood in a high pulpit. On the contrary, it specially designated me to be their servant, their shepherd, for Christ’s sake. It was meant to nurture in me humility, not pride.
After another profitable schoolyear, the summer of 1939 brought me new and larger opportunities. I was promoted to a two-week evangelistic series in Welaka Baptist Church, surely the longest I would ever have been at one place. Welaka was a fishing village on the St. John’s River, with a reputation as a rough and tough place. Again the Lord was generous in drawing nightly crowds, and several people responded to the appeal to receive Christ. In the process, I was developing the basics of my own preaching style and my approach to giving the Invitation to come to Christ. For all of these meetings in north Florida, I stayed in the home of Cecil Underwood. While he was out working, painting houses, I would walk the streets around his house practicing my sermons and praying.
Then John Minder gave me an incredible opportunity. He needed to spend some time away that summer and asked me to be his summer replacement at the large Tampa Gospel Tabernacle. For six weeks, I would have my own church, preaching at all the regular services and carrying out pastoral responsibilities.
The embarrassments of Bostwick and Belshazzar faded into memory as I moved into the Tampa parsonage next door to the church. The neighbors were largely Cuban immigrants, most of them Roman Catholics in name if not in practice. I visited faithfully in home after home, inviting people to church. Surprisingly, many came, and listened, and responded.
I went to the Tampa hospitals and prayed for the sick. I held the hands of the dying and learned how much love and compassion a pastor must have toward his people.
And I preached. And practiced. Every Saturday I went into the empty sanctuary and rehearsed aloud the sermon I would preach the next day. Sometimes I had an audience of one, the janitor, who seemed to feel quite free to make suggestions.
One night in the parsonage, I woke up suddenly. Someone was breaking into the house. I was all alone, of course, and tensely aware that someone was in the next room. In the closet, I kept my old .22 rifle, left over from my hunting days on the farm. I eased out of bed, got the gun, put a cartridge in it, and shot it through the door into the ceiling of the next room. That loud bang was followed almost instantly by the bang of the back door as the intruder fled.
Apart from that, Dr. Minder found things pretty much in one piece when he got back. To my amazement, he appointed me to become his assistant pastor for the next year, while I was completing my education.
I was vice president of the young people’s ministry for the Christian and Missionary Alliance churches in the state of Florida, and all the CMA churches had invited me, in that role, to visit and speak to their young people. This had given me many contacts all over Florida and southern Georgia. For the balance of the summer, I did more preaching through these contacts, including Dr. Watson’s huge church in St. Petersburg. I went back to school for my final year, rejoicing in the evidence that God’s call was valid.
Then came a blow, the kind that was most damaging to the spirit of a young Christian. Dr. Watson was accused of moral indiscretions—falsely accused, I was certain. He was a man of God and one of my spiritual fathers. I did not believe for one minute that the evidence supported the charges against him. It was all circumstantial. Even the testimony of the accusers was not unanimous. The chief accuser was an employee of the school who himself had come under suspicion on a separate matter and might have been motivated by revenge. Dr. Minder and I were among the majority who stood by Dr. Watson.
The whole affair seared my soul with sorrow, both for his own pain and for the damage to the school. A few faculty and maybe a fourth of the students left. The campus was under a pall. As president of the senior class, I did what I could—which was negligible—to improve morale. Dreadful as the experience was, I was grateful that the dark cloud passed over Florida Bible Institute while I was there. It was a big learning experience for me in many ways, and it taught me to be very careful myself.
In May 1940, I graduated from Florida Bible Institute. At Class Night just before commencement that spring, one of the girls, Vera Resue, read the traditional “prophecy”—a passage that she had composed for the occasion: “Each time God had a chosen human instrument to shine forth His light in the darkness. Men like Luther, John and Charles Wesley, Moody, and others were ordinary men, but men who heard the voice of God. Their surrounding conditions were as black as night, but they had God. ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Romans 8:31). It has been said that Luther revolutionized the world. It was not he, but Christ working through him. The time is ripe for another Luther, Wesley, Moody, ______. There is room for another name in this list. There is a challenge facing us.”
I did not think my name was the one to be added to that list, but I did know that I was a human instrument and that God had chosen me to preach.
During that summer after graduation, classmate Ponzi Pennington and I went north to York, Pennsylvania, where pastor Ralph Boyer had invited me to preach in his church for a week in July.
We did not dare drive that far in my decrepit 1931 Oldsmobile, whose tire blowouts, broken piston rods, and exhausted spark plugs were enough to try the patience of Job. So we left it in Charlotte and borrowed my father’s 1937 Plymouth.
The meetings in York went well. We were invited for one week, and the series was extended for a second week. In our room at the YMCA, I had to think up and pray through more messages, since I had already preached all my evangelistic sermons. There was a good response to the Gospel, even though my heavy accent made it difficult for some people to understand me. I tried speaking louder than usual, but a few still did not get what I was saying. I wanted to blame the poor communication on their spiritual deafness, but it had to have been my dialect.
While in York, we drove up to New York and spent a day at the World’s Fair. It was the first time I ever saw television. They had a camera there, and as you walked by, you could see yourself o
n a screen. We never thought it would amount to anything, though. It seemed too incredible!
On our way back from York, on the Skyline Drive in Virginia, a farmer in a pickup truck pulled out in front of us without warning, forcing me off the road and into a ditch. He towed us into Galax, where we waited six hours for the car to be repaired. It took all my money, and as I was fishing the bills out of my wallet, I heard faint echoes of my father talking, telling me how many automobile mishaps I’d had and how he’d had to come rescue me with the mules. When I told him in person, however, he understood and mercifully traded my old blue Oldsmobile in for a new car for himself; the green Plymouth he gave to me.
As for me, the certainty about a call to preach motivated me to desire further education. An accredited college of liberal arts seemed to be the next step. I had a particular one in mind because of two visitors to Temple Terrace in the winter of my senior year.
4
Northern Exposure
Wheaton College, the Tabernacle 1940–1943
While I was a student at Florida Bible Institute, a Chicago attorney, Paul Fischer, stayed in the Institute’s hotel section with a business friend, Elner Edman, and Mr. Edman’s mother. Fischer’s brother Herman was chairman of the board at Wheaton College, just west of Chicago, and Edman’s brother Ray was a history professor and interim president at the school. After hearing me preach, they talked to me about getting further training at Wheaton College.
I had heard of the school, of course, but Chicago and its suburbs were in another world from the South. Would the college even admit me from a Bible institute, and with the kind of grades my high school transcript would show? Would I ever survive in frigid Illinois?
Paul Fischer astonished me when he offered to pay my tuition at Wheaton for the first year, and Elner Edman volunteered to help with other expenses. As to being admitted, I could hardly have had more influential references. Things began to look hopeful.