by Billy Graham
On September 21, in the southern city of Pecs, I participated in a first for us in eastern Europe: an unrestricted outdoor Gospel meeting. To meet the legal technicality of holding the event on church grounds, I preached over a powerful public address system from the steps of the Roman Catholic cathedral. Bishop Cserhati introduced me. The crowd stretched farther than I could see, well beyond the limits of church property. Halfway down the street loomed a gigantic Diamond Vision TV screen. The sponsors had been permitted to import it from England for this occasion, enabling people several blocks away from the church to see close up in broad daylight.
An even more astounding breakthrough occurred the next day back in Budapest; we were given use of a 12,500-seat public sports arena in the center of the city. It was the first time in many decades, to our knowledge, that a public venue had been used for an evangelistic meeting in eastern Europe. I couldn’t explain that in any other way than God’s doing. Perhaps his unwitting agent might have been Janos Berecz, the third-ranking official in Hungary’s government. I had developed a pleasant acquaintance with him on a previous visit. Although a Communist, he collected miniature Bibles and other books as a hobby. I gave him several old miniature Bibles, including a few Russ Busby had found in London.
Four hours before the start of the September 22 meeting, every seat in the indoor arena was taken; many had to stay outside to listen over loudspeakers. The Hungarians’ love of music is legendary, and a large choir, accompanied by a volunteer symphony orchestra, had been recruited for the event from virtually every Christian denomination. Even without special political insight, I felt that eastern Europe was on the brink of massive change.
THE SOVIET UNION
Four years after our 1984 tour, we returned to the Soviet Union, this time to join with others in the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church in June 1988. Although the schedule was crammed with services and other meetings, the heady climate of glasnost and perestroika under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev added new dimensions to everything.
In some ways, I wasn’t surprised at the changes Mr. Gorbachev was making. Some months before, while he was in Washington for a state visit, I met him and was impressed by his charm and his new perspectives. As soon as I entered the Russian Embassy for a small reception in December 1987, former Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin made a beeline for me, wanting to make sure that I met Gorbachev.
“Oh, yes, I have heard about you,” he said as he greeted me warmly. “You’ve been in our country, and when you come back, we will welcome you again.”
Gorbachev spoke to all of us at that 1987 reception for over an hour. I was seated only a few feet in front of him at a small round table, with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on one side of me and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on the other.
A reporter asked me afterward if I had noticed anything special about Gorbachev’s eyes at that close range. They were not cold eyes, I replied, but warm and dancing. Gorbachev spoke with animation and laughed, I added, and he impressed me as being sincere.
What also caught my attention was that three times, when speaking to us about the need for a sense of values or a moral base for his proposed reforms, he used the word spiritual. “You know,” one U.S. senator said to me later, “he was talking about religion.” And when Gorbachev stepped off the plane in Washington at the beginning of that visit, he said, “May God help us.”
Not by any stretch of the imagination did this imply that he was a Christian. But in his secularist or Marxist way, it seemed to me he reflected a hazy yearning for the kingdom of God. So many of his phrases, as he described what the Soviet Union could become through glasnost and perestroika, sounded almost biblical.
As Gorbachev was concluding, I became a little uneasy; we were due at the White House for the state dinner soon, and I still had to go dress in my tuxedo. As it turned out, Ruth and I were among the last to arrive for the dinner.
The 1988 celebration in Russia commemorated the time a thousand years ago when Prince Vladimir of Rus, founder of modern Russia, embraced Christianity and promptly ordered all his subjects to be baptized in the Dnieper River near Kiev.
From then until the Bolshevik Revolution, Orthodox Chris-tianity was the official Russian state religion. Now the Russian Or-thodox Church was celebrating its millennium. I gladly accepted the Orthodox invitation to participate in their celebration; all who professed to believe and follow Christ deserved whatever encouragement in the faith we could give.
I did not accept without a few misgivings, though. For one thing, some Ukrainians in America were sensitive about developments in their homeland and did not look too favorably on my projected visit to Kiev, Orthodoxy’s birthplace. Furthermore, my more conservative American colleagues were still troubled by what struck them as compromises I was making with a nondemocratic government and a nonevangelical religious body.
That a religious anniversary could be celebrated at all in the Soviet Union was certainly a sign of the changing times. In fact, during his visits to Moscow to prepare for our trip, Alex Haraszti had perceived a sharp split within the Soviet government over whether the thousandth anniversary should be acknowledged or totally ignored. At the very most, it was argued by some, it should be downplayed. I am convinced that the final decision to give public prominence to the occasion did much to foster later changes in that society.
At the churches where I spoke, old restrictions were overthrown. Loudspeakers were set up outside to carry the message to people who could not get in, reaching even the people a block or more away.
Far from restricting religious observances to church facilities, the government gave permission to hold two main events of the millennial commemoration at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Shevchenko Theater in Kiev. At the Bolshoi, Mrs. Raisa Gorbachev sat in the first row, just four seats away from the pulpit, while I gave my address. And for the first time, a religious event—the millennial celebration—was featured extensively in the Soviet media.
In recognition of our presence, the Kremlin arranged for us to be received by the longtime foreign minister, Andrey Gromyko. He spoke to us in the Presidium council chamber about the impact of new policies on church life. At an appropriate moment afterward, we were able to distribute the Russian Bibles we had brought along for high-level officials, each handsomely bound in leather and personalized with the name of a Politburo member embossed on the cover. Both Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Gorbachev were among those who were given personal copies.
The next day our caravan of cars traveled the forty or fifty miles to Zagorsk to visit a special council meeting of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church. The ancient monastery in Zagorsk has been cherished for centuries as the center of Russia’s spiritual life. There Patriarch Pimen, host of the millennial celebration, greeted us warmly, although he was ill and clearly in failing health. Mr. Konstantin Kharchev, the new head of the government’s Council for Religious Affairs, was present too and to my surprise thanked me for urging liberalization of government policy toward churches. I had done little, but it was encouraging to hear him say that a common desire for higher moral principles was leading to a new era of church and state cooperation.
“We have never found ultimate truth,” he said wistfully. “I would like to believe it exists somewhere.”
“Ultimate truth,” I responded, “does exist in the Person who said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’” (John 14:6, KJV).
I gave him a Bible and told him I would pray for him.
From Moscow we flew to Kiev in a Russian-built plane (similar to a 727) that looked as if it were falling apart. A number of church leaders attending the millennial celebration were on board. I remember sitting on the floor talking with Cardinal John O’Connor of New York about the way Protestant–Roman Catholic relations had changed.
The largest audience I spoke to in the Soviet Union was at the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev, where 15,000 people not only packed the huge build
ing but also spilled out into the surrounding courtyard. That service received coverage on national radio and television and in the two official newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia. The metropolitan there extended me every courtesy.
A fascinating sidelight did not make the newspapers. In the course of preparing for the service, church officials realized that the electrical system in the cathedral wouldn’t be up to the demands of the television lights and the special sound system that were to be installed both inside and outside the building. At the request of those church officials, therefore, and almost certainly with the permission of political and military authorities in Moscow, the Red Army trucked in one of its large portable generators and parked it outside the church.
As the congregation approached the cathedral that evening, their eyes must have popped at the sight of military vehicles around the cathedral—and at the friendliness of the military personnel. If the Christians were amazed, so were the Red Army technicians, I suspect! This sort of church-state cooperation surely was a first in the Soviet Union.
In Kiev I spoke also at the little Baptist church that normally held several hundred. A few thousand were packed inside and around the whole neighborhood outside the church. We could hardly get our car through the crowd to the building.
Later about fifteen of us met with members of the Politburo of the Ukraine. The prime minister, a woman, sat with us and answered our questions. She said immediately—for the benefit of her colleagues and the tape recorders, I suspect—that she was a Com-munist and an atheist. Afterward, though, she took me aside and conversed in excellent English.
“You know, Dr. Graham, I always go on a certain day to see my mother, who lives beyond the Baptist church where you preached. I’m always amazed as I pass that church that it’s so filled with young people.”
She paused.
“I have my driver stop the car sometimes just so I can watch them.”
She paused again.
“There’s something about the Baptists that attracts young people.”
A RETURN TO HUNGARY
One year after the millennial celebration in Russia, we returned once again to Hungary, in July 1989. In what can only be described as a miracle, we went to hold a huge evangelistic rally in Hungary’s largest outdoor stadium. Months in advance, we were permitted to send one of our Crusade preparation teams there to help organize the details of the meeting. We also were permitted to translate and publish our counseling materials and to advertise the meeting—the sort of preparations we always made for Crusade meetings back in the States.
All attendance records were broken at that rally; every seat was taken, and people also packed the grassy perimeter of the playing field. Statistics never tell the whole story, of course, but everyone was astonished that an estimated 110,000 people attended.
When the Invitation was given, 35,000 people jammed the playing field and overflowed onto the running track. Never in our ministry had such a high percentage responded. The sponsors had been optimistic; 25,000 counseling packets had been prepared in advance. The supply ran out, of course, and in the crush of the crowd no one could get through to pass them out. Instead, people just tossed them over their heads to those behind. Despite that seeming chaos, about 20,000 inquirers managed to turn in, or mail in, cards with their names and addresses for follow-up by the Hungarian churches.
My four visits to Hungary in twelve years absolutely fixed my conviction that the Holy Spirit was releasing a spiritual force in that part of the world that was bound to challenge the atheistic philosophy that had dominated nations in that region for decades.
MOSCOW
In July 1991, I was in Moscow again. In the intervening three years since the 1988 millennial celebration, a virtual revolution had taken place in the Soviet Union. Old ideas and old restrictions were swept aside in every area of life, including religion. Things that would have been impossible—even inconceivable—a few years before were now a reality.
This time I presided at an evangelism training conference that the BGEA sponsored. The Orthodox Church did not participate officially, although it was Patriarch Pimen (recently deceased) who, in a way, had invited me to conduct evangelism training in the Soviet Union. When he was lying ill at the Zagorsk monastery in 1988, he asked me to pray with him. I sat by his side for a long time and held his hand. He told me again, as he had on an earlier visit, that he wanted his priests to learn how to preach evangelistic sermons. I prayed for him as my brother in Christ.
Pimen’s successor, Patriarch Alexei II, the Estonian who had welcomed us when he was metropolitan in Tallinn, was cautious about giving his official endorsement to our training conference. He was new in office and facing an evangelical Protestant resurgence that worried some of his own bishops and priests. But he was as cordial as ever toward me, sending a messenger to ask if I could meet with him that Saturday. Regrettably, it was my departure day, and my schedule simply couldn’t be stretched any further.
If ever there was a miracle, the Moscow School of Evangelism was it. More than 4,900 Soviet Protestant pastors, lay preachers, and teachers gathered to hear a number of speakers from various countries on evangelism. Among them were my son Franklin and my daughter Anne Graham Lotz. We convened in an atmosphere of optimism that was almost intoxicating. Delegates went into the streets and onto buses, boldly witnessing for Christ, open Bibles in their hands—an amazing sign of the changes taking place.
And there were other signs of growing religious freedom throughout the country: the importation of Bibles and other Chris-tian literature was rising almost to flood level, and Soviet children were again allowed to attend churches and to receive religious instruction.
The Moscow School of Evangelism wasn’t without its difficulties, however. In fact, we were not certain it would even be held until almost the last minute. We had arranged for the use of an indoor sports arena next to Lenin Stadium, as well as for housing and food for our delegates at the nearby Moscow State University, but negotiations over the details continued up to our arrival. Some officials, having cast off the old ways of doing things, were now much more concerned about money (especially hard currency). As a result, disagreements arose over financial arrangements that we considered morally and legally questionable.
From Europe en route to Moscow, we had many telephone conversations with members of our executive committee and staff, and with John Corts, our chief operating officer, with whom the primary responsibility rested. Some of our staff and legal counsel joined us in Europe, where we spent two days in prayer and discussion. We affirmed that if the contract could not be negotiated in a totally legal and ethical way, we would cancel even at this late date. I realized that scores of delegates were already on their way from outside Moscow, and there would be great disappointment. It was one of the low spiritual and emotional moments in my ministry. However, at the last minute the arrangements worked out—honorably and ethically.
The conference itself was almost beyond belief. Seldom have I seen such eagerness to learn the Bible and to develop practical skills for evangelism. A surprising number of the participants were highly educated people—schoolteachers, engineers, artists, and other professionals—who grew up under atheism but became Christians within the last year or so. Previously, most Christians in the Soviet Union had been barred from higher education and from positions of influence.
Although I was busy with the conference, I also had several unprecedented opportunities with the media. The top interviewer over the main channel, Channel One, gave me a good going-over, asking penetrating questions about God and the nature of faith. I sensed that he was inquiring from a personal as well as a professional standpoint. Curiosity about religion seemed widespread: for the first time, people in the street felt free to talk about religion, and many openly expressed their longing for some type of spiritual reality.
The last day of the conference General Secretary Gorbachev received me in his office for about forty minutes, the first time I had been with him
in that setting. Our two-minute appearance together before the television cameras was shown throughout the USSR in all eleven time zones on a top-rated news show. The subject of spiritual values in society was uppermost in our conversation. A friend of mine who headed the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, the Reverend Grigori Komendant, was at my side. Serving as chairman of the Moscow School of Evangelism, he could hardly believe that, for the first time in his remembrance, a Soviet evangelical leader was inside the Kremlin freely talking with the head of state.
On July 13, the day before I left for America, I was unexpectedly invited to meet with Boris Yeltsin at his office in the Kremlin. We talked together for an hour. I got the impression that he was even more interested in the religious side of things than Mr. Gorbachev. He did not hesitate to tell me that he no longer was a Communist. I thought he sounded pleased when he volunteered that his three granddaughters all wore crosses now.
Only a few weeks after we left the Soviet Union, old-line Communist leaders attempted a coup. For several days, the fate of democratic reform in the USSR hung in the balance. I could not help but thank God for the opening He had given us for training so many during the School of Evangelism. What might they be facing in the future?
As an anxious world watched, the coup collapsed on August 21, with a minimum of bloodshed. Three days later, General Secretary Gorbachev, at Yeltsin’s insistence, disbanded the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, effectively ending not only Gorbachev’s own leadership but also seven decades of Marxist rule.
A new day had truly dawned, not only politically but also religiously, in what had once been the world’s strongest bastion of atheism. And with those changes, new opportunities for the proclamation of the Gospel opened up.