by Billy Graham
Once we paid a visit to Admiral Richardson’s aircraft carrier, Kitty Hawk. The weather was bad throughout our stay, but a couple of pilots were willing to take us up. The takeoff provided an incredible feeling—what our singer Jimmie McDonald later described as “the world’s largest slingshot.”
Bob Hope asked us to join up with him and his company who were in Vietnam with their Christmas program. When we reached the spot where we were supposed to land, the pilots told us they had no idea where the airstrip was. The cloud cover was hanging so low that the mountain peaks stuck up all around us. I heard the crew debating what to do over my headset.
“Captain, I don’t know whether we ought to try to land here,” I said as calmly as I could. “If I was going to preach the Gospel, I’d say let’s go in no matter what the weather. But it’s just the Bob Hope show. I’m just going to tell a joke or something, and I’m not all that eager to smash into a mountain just for that.”
“Mr. Graham,” said one of the pilots, “I come from a long list of living cowards. I’m not going to go down there if I don’t think I can make it.” He did make it, through a hole in the clouds, and I did appear in a skit.
After each show, Bob and his troupe went back to the safety of Bangkok. I and my group, which included Cliff and Bev, stayed in Vietnam. Some wit was quick to quip that the difference between Bob and me was that he had the hope but I had the faith.
Another flight, this one skittering over the treetops, was just as hair-raising. The weather was worse that time, and only one volunteer—a colonel—came forward to fly the Team to some spots near the front. The plane was a two-motor job with a big hole in the back. At one point, the colonel and I both let out a roar when a mountain appeared right in front of the windscreen. He pulled back on the stick as hard as he could, and I heard the back of the plane scrape the treetops. We finally made an impossible landing at a remote site, and not a moment too soon for my taste. I led a short service with the troops, and Bev sang a hymn. Then the colonel made an impossible takeoff for another spot fifteen minutes away. And so it went throughout the day. I was in a state of perpetual fright, but Bev? He just sat back, singing songs.
The last weekend the Johnsons were in the White House, before Nixon’s first inauguration in 1969, Ruth and I were their only guests. Our daughter Anne and her husband, Danny Lotz, joined us as we walked together through quiet rooms emptied of personal possessions. After the Johnsons came back from a good-bye function, we watched a movie together, The Shoes of the Fisherman; it was about a fictitious pope, played by Anthony Quinn, who tried to bring peace to the world. In the previous four years, I had watched a lot of movies with President Johnson, but he almost always slept through them. After this particular one, I went to the back of the little White House theater and asked the projectionist to save the film. I wanted Mr. Nixon to see it too.
We attended church together, and on Monday I gave an inaugural prayer at the Capitol. As the distinguished guests on the platform followed President Nixon out after the swearing in, the two Johnson girls, Lynda and Luci, broke protocol when they stopped in the line and kissed me.
Some said I was instrumental in the transfer of authority from Johnson to Nixon. As a friend to both, I might have said or done some things that helped in the transition, but I served in no official or even implied capacity.
I will always treasure a letter Johnson wrote to me when he got back to Texas: “No one will ever fully know how you helped to lighten my load or how much warmth you brought into our house. . . . My mind went back to those lonely occasions at the White House when your prayers and your friendship helped to sustain a President in an hour of trial.” If that was so, it was a great privilege for me.
Once out of office, Johnson was much more relaxed. On one occasion in 1970, we were driving all over his ranch, as usual, raising dust because of a long dry spell. “Billy,” he said, “how about offering a little prayer for rain?” I took him seriously and prayed briefly. No sooner had I finished than a couple drops hit the windshield. In minutes it was raining so hard that the former President stopped the car and turned to me again. “Billy, we’re gonna have a flood! I’ve got two pumps down in the river that are gonna wash away! See if you can’t stop it!” I laughed and assured him it was out of my hands.
In the 1972 election, Johnson, in my opinion, was secretly in favor of Nixon. He called me one day just after the Democratic running mates—George McGovern and Sargent Shriver—had visited him at the ranch. “Billy, they’re just now leaving,” he said. “I want to tell you some things to pass on to our mutual friend.”
He meant Nixon, of course, and his major piece of advice was that Richard Nixon should aggressively ignore McGovern during the campaign. “Tell him to respond to nothing McGovern says. Act as if he’s not even a factor.”
Some would say LBJ was being a disloyal Democrat, but I suspect he considered his party’s 1972 ticket too liberal to fully support.
LBJ’s premonition of his own death was right on the mark. He died of heart disease early in 1973. Lady Bird called and asked which service I would like to speak at, the funeral in Washington or the burial in Austin. I told her of his request, and we settled on the burial.
After the state funeral in Washington, which President Nixon attended, Johnson’s body was flown to Texas. I met Lady Bird in Austin. At her request, I rode with her and the Johnson daughters to the ranch two hours away. It was bitterly cold, and I put on long underwear under my suit and wore a heavy topcoat. I rode in the back seat between Lady Bird and Lynda and nearly burned up!
On our way out of the city, hundreds of people lined the roads, many of them holding signs. One banner brought tears to our eyes. Two white students held one side of the banner, and two black students the other. “forgive us, mr. president,” it read. Student protests over the Vietnam War had grieved Johnson’s heart and had helped end his administration four years before under a cloud of unfinished business in Southeast Asia.
At the grave site, John Connally delivered the eulogy. I gave a short sermon, in which I spoke of President Johnson’s accomplishments and pointed to the hope we have in Christ because of His resurrection from the dead. As I spoke my tribute and shared God’s words of comfort, I looked at the flag-draped casket under the oaks by the Pedernales and thought, Here, indeed, was a Texan who was tall timber.
Like every other administration, his will get mixed reviews from historians. But historians will never be able to ignore LBJ. His Great Society did not accomplish all that he had hoped, but for him personally it was more than a dream. He wanted to harness the wealth and knowledge and greatness of this nation to help the poor and the oppressed here and around the world. That hope must be revived by every President and kept alive in the hearts of all citizens.
23
Reaching Out to a Broken World
Miami Rock Festival, Universities, Ireland and South Africa, Television and Films, Disasters 1960s–1970s
MIAMI ROCK FESTIVAL
It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, but I was most definitely not in church. Instead, to the horror of some, I was attending the 1969 Miami Rock Music Festival.
America in 1969 was in the midst of cataclysmic social upheaval. Stories of violent student protests against the Vietnam War filled the media. Images from the huge Woodstock music festival that took place just six months before the Miami event near Bethel, New York—for many a striking symbol of the anti-establishment feelings of a whole generation of rebellious youth—were still firmly etched in the public’s memory.
Concert promoter Norman Johnson perhaps hoped my presence would neutralize at least some of the fierce opposition he had encountered from Miami officials. Whatever his reasons, I was delighted for the opportunity to speak from the concert stage to young people who probably would have felt uncomfortable in the average church, and yet whose searching questions about life and sharp protests against society’s values echoed from almost every song.
“I gladly
accept your kind invitation to speak to those attending the Miami Rock Festival on Sunday morning, December 28,” I wired him the day before Christmas. “They are the most exciting and challenging generation in American history.”
As I stepped onto the platform that Sunday morning, several thousand young people were lolling on the straw-covered ground or wandering around the concert site in the warm December sun, waiting for such groups as the Grateful Dead and Santana to make their appearance. A few were sleeping; the nonstop music had quit around four that morning.
In order to get a feel for the event, for a few hours the night before I put on a simple disguise and slipped into the crowd. My heart went out to them. Though I was thankful for their youthful exuberance, I was burdened by their spiritual searching and emptiness.
A bearded youth who had come all the way from California for the event recognized me. “Do me a favor,” he said to me with a smile, “and say a prayer to thank God for good friends and good weed.” Every evening at sunset, he confided to me, he got high on marijuana and other drugs.
“You can also get high on Jesus,” I replied.
That Sunday morning, I came prepared to be shouted down, but instead I was greeted with scattered applause. Most listened politely as I spoke. I told the young people that I had been listening carefully to the message of their music. We reject your materialism, it seemed to proclaim, and we want something of the soul. Jesus was a nonconformist, I reminded them, and He could fill their souls and give them meaning and purpose in life. “Tune in to God today, and let Him give you faith. Turn on to His power.”
Afterward two dozen responded by visiting a tent on the grounds set up by a local church as a means of outreach. During the whole weekend, the pastor wrote me later, 350 young people made commitments to Christ, and two thousand New Testaments were distributed.
As I have reflected on my own calling as an evangelist, I frequently recall the words of Christianity’s greatest evangelist, the Apostle Paul: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known . . .” (Romans 15:20). Paul not only spoke in houses of worship, but also felt equally at home preaching to crowds in the central marketplace in Athens, small groups on a riverbank or in a jail cell in Philippi, curiosity-seekers in a rented public hall in Ephesus, and fellow passengers on the deck of a sinking ship off the Italian coast. I once told an interviewer that I would be glad to preach in Hell itself—if the Devil would let me out again!
My visit to the Miami Rock Festival was not an attempt to add variety to my schedule. True, it was not a typical setting for our ministry, but neither was it an unexpected setting, especially in light of the times. In some ways, in fact, it was symbolic of much of our ministry during the 1960s and early 1970s.
No doubt future historians will debate endlessly about the causes of the social upheaval that shook America during that tumultuous period, particularly among the youth. The word counterculture entered our national vocabulary during that time, as a whole generation questioned the values and ideals of their parents, often searching for meaning in bizarre ways—or giving up the search altogether. The tragic assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963 and five years later of his brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led to widespread disillusionment and cynicism. The growing civil rights movement made us aware of America’s moral failure in the area of racial equality and enlisted many in the fight to end segregation, often through demonstrations and protests. The sexual revolution and the rise of the drug culture likewise influenced an entire generation.
On the international front, events like the Cuban missile crisis and the seemingly endless war in Vietnam contributed to an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and even mindless escapism. The political upheaval surrounding Watergate likewise undermined the confidence of many youth in traditional institutions and values.
As I look back, our schedule during those years was as packed as at any other time in our ministry, with large-scale Crusades in dozens of cities across the world, from Los Angeles and Seoul to Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong. Much of my time, in fact, was spent overseas, often visiting, in depth, areas that we had only touched earlier. Nevertheless, the rootlessness of the sixties generation burdened me greatly, and I was determined to do whatever I could to point young people to the One who alone gives lasting meaning and purpose to life.
Whether it was at a rock festival in Miami, a spring break on the Ft. Lauderdale beaches, or a university mission, almost everywhere we went we sensed a deep hunger for spiritual reality on the part of many young people. Not all were open to the Gospel, of course, but we still saw God redirect the path of many who found in Christ the answer to their search.
UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES
When I announced plans to spend a part of the winter of 1963–64 holding missions on university campuses, I received one hundred invitations in the next ten days, two hundred more in the next few weeks. Invitations also came from half the theological seminaries in America. I wished I could have been ten men; even then I could never have covered them all. In the end, I accepted only Harvard, Princeton, Wellesley, the University of Michigan, and a few smaller colleges near my home that year, with others the next year.
As the sixties wore on and student unrest accelerated on many campuses, I determined once again to spend as much time as possible at universities, in spite of our commitment to a full schedule of Crusades. On some campuses, we joined with Campus Crusade for Christ, which Bill and Vonette Bright founded (partly at my urging) years before.
“Billy,” he told me one night in Hollywood, where he lived, “I don’t know what to do with my life.”
“What’s your interest?” I asked him.
“Well, I’m really interested in students, and Vonette is as well.”
“Well, I’d give my life to the students,” I suggested.
Bill has often said that I wrote him a check for $1,000 to help him and his wife get their program started. I don’t remember ever having $1,000 during those early years, but I will take his word for it.
In 1967 he and I spoke at the University of California at Los Angeles and at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. With InterVarsity and Campus Crusade staff and students saturating the campuses, interest was high. When I spoke at UCLA, 6,000 students came to one meeting, the largest gathering to hear a speaker in the school’s history up to that point. Some 8,000 showed up for one outdoor meeting at the Greek Theater at Berkeley. Although Berkeley was a hotbed of student unrest, there were only a few demonstrators; most students listened with rapt attention.
A year later, in 1968, I found myself speaking to another group of students in a much different setting. The American Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, asked me if I would come to his official residence in Paris and meet with some of the student leaders from the University of the Sorbonne and elsewhere.
“I think it will be an interesting evening,” he said cautiously.
I flew over and stayed up talking with the students until the early hours of the morning. Some had been leaders in the student riots. Cynical about the answers society had given them, they were searching elsewhere for answers and adopting new and seemingly attractive philosophies like existentialism. Some of them, at least, were beginning to be disillusioned about everything. The ambassador’s wife, Eunice, sat fascinated through the early part of the discussions and went upstairs to bring her young children down to eavesdrop. After Ambassador Shriver and I went outside to say a final good-bye to the students, he turned to me and summed the evening up: “You know, Billy, the basic problem these young people are facing is religious.”
I agreed, adding that the same could be said about students almost anywhere. The basic questions of life are ultimately religious in nature.
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?
Is there any meaning to my life?
Only the God who created us can give us an ultimate answer to
those questions.
Since those student missions in the 1960s, I have spoken at dozens and dozens of colleges, seminaries, and universities— everywhere from the military academies at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, to Kim Il Sung University in Communist-dominated North Korea.
Perhaps nowhere has the potential embodied in the youth of our world been demonstrated more forcefully than at some of the special events at which I spoke during the 1970s. I recall, for ex-ample, the following: Explo ’72, with 80,000 students in Dallas’s Cotton Bowl, sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ; Spree ’73 in London and Eurofest ’75 in Brussels, both of which we helped sponsor and which drew tens of thousands of youth from all over Europe for challenge, inspiration, and intensive training in evangelism; and the Brazilian youth congress Generation ’79, with 5,000 gathering in São Paulo.
Of a slightly different nature is the Urbana Missions Confer-ence, held every three years over Christmas break on the campus of the University of Illinois by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Still ongoing, this event now brings as many as 18,000 university students together from across the world—with many more having to be turned away for lack of space—to focus on the challenge of world missions.
One personal incident at an Urbana conference is worth recounting. I was one of several speakers at a plenary session that year. My left leg began to hurt during the session, and I kept lifting it and twisting it in an attempt to relieve the pressure.
Sitting down front was a medical student who sent a note to the platform asking to see me. I turned the note over to David Howard, director of the convention. The pain got worse, and after I finished talking, I left the platform.