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Even In His Golden Years, Graham Draws A Crowd BY MICHAEL MARTINEZ - Chicago Tribune SOURCE: The Chicago Tribune / The Biloxi Sun Herald, MS WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/4jpca Posted on Thu, Nov. 18, 2004 PASADENA, Calif. - (KRT) - The great American preacher came full circle Thursday. Now white-haired and ailing, the Rev. Billy Graham took to the pulpit again near the City of Angels, where his crusades first gave him a national stage 55 years ago when the much younger pastor pitched a tent in downtown Los Angeles. With the once peripatetic evangelist now using a walker and battling Parkinson's disease, a four-day gathering of the faithful began Thursday evening in the Rose Bowl, an event with doubly emotional significance: It surely is one of Graham's final crusades, and it comes on the heels of a presidential election influenced by voters' "moral values." Not unlike the 84-year-old Pope John Paul II, the 86-year-old Graham is a man of God widely believed to be in the final steps of his earthly travels. A 1943 graduate of Wheaton College, Graham had to postpone this week's visit from the summer because he broke his hip and pelvis in two separate falls. Just the chance to hear the fading voice of the famous preacher, whose sermons are shorter now, was enough to draw thousands of devotees to the 93,000-seat Rose Bowl. In the past 60 years, Graham has held 416 crusades in which he extends "the Invitation" to his audience to declare themselves for Christ. While local television ads have urged followers to see him "one last time," Graham told a local reporter this week that "if the Lord gives me the strength here, it will be an indication" that he may be able to preside over one more mammoth revival, in New York City next year. In a local radio interview earlier in the day, Graham reiterated that his message is an old one, "for people to get right with God," but added he supported the latest movement urging more religion in public life as an antidote to moral decay. "Yes, I think it's a mistake when we take the Bible out of our schools and God out of our pledge of allegiance," Graham said. A supporter of the Vietnam War, he said of the Iraq War, "I stand back of our troops." In the open-air bowl stadium, the assembly carried an unmistakable murmur about how the importance of moral values seems to be rising in the country. Values were cited by 22 percent of voters in this month's presidential election as the all-important issue. Many worshipers at this event were delighted to see matters of faith more openly embraced, but curiously, a good measure of the crowd was skeptical, stating that voters' claims of being more religious can be at odds with actions in their personal lives. "Christians have been weak in this area in (exercising) their right to vote, but in this election, people saw their right and privilege to vote," said Rev. Phillip Lam, 69, pastor of Chinese Evangelical Free Church in Monterrey Park, Calif. Tommie Raney, 66, a retired railroad crane operator from Dougherty, Calif., said a religious revival was clearly sweeping the land. "And it's going to be more so even around the world," said Raney, who was joined by his wife, Ruth, in praying in several sections of the stadium prior to the Thursday night event on behalf of the attendees to come. But many attendees dismissed any political context for measuring a country's religiosity. "We don't need to say that because (President) Bush won, we now have a 51 percent Christian nation. God runs on his own time, not on the political calendar," said Rev. Sam Gamboa Jr., 45, pastor of Good Shepherd Family Bible Church in Whittier, Calif. Florine Oliver, 64, of Pasadena, said she wondered if many voters citing moral values were serious enough to live in accordance with their values. She said many of those voters probably cast their ballots based on personalities of the candidates, using religion as a pretext. Merely citing religious values "doesn't have the impact of believing and serving a living God," Oliver said. "You can tell if people show their love and they will go the extra mile and won't turn you off after three miles." While Graham entered political frays early in his career, supporting Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to run for president, he says he eschews national politics today. In an interview this week with the Los Angeles Times, he said he is a friend of President Bush and called to congratulate him on his re-election victory, "but I never told anybody who I voted for." Added spokesman A. Larry Ross: "Mr. Graham has said everywhere he goes he finds an unprecedented search for meaning, some of it post- 9/11. Mr. Graham remains non-partisan. His gospel hasn't changed. He often speaks to how the Bible speaks to personal and societal problems." In all, Graham, whose birthday was Nov. 7, has preached to more than 210 million people in more than 185 countries and territories, the most devotees for whom anyone like him has preached the Gospel before live audiences, his staff says. Since last year, he has held his signature assemblies in San Diego, Oklahoma City and Kansas City, where last month 155,000 people flocked to Arrowhead Stadium over several days and 8,600 came forward to take Graham's invitation to commit to Christ. Graham began much of his ministry in Chicago in the mid-1940s, when, after graduating from Wheaton College, he founded Christianity Today magazine in the DuPage County seat and later served as pastor of Western Springs Baptist Church. He held large revivals in Chicago in 1962 and 1971, but the L.A. area remains his most favored destination - this weekend's events will mark his ninth crusade here. In Pasadena, 20,000 volunteers and 1,400 churches representing 100 denominations have helped organized the $5.4 million crusade, whose sermons will be translated into 26 languages, from Amharic to Vietnamese, on 17,000 headsets, receivers and low-power radios in the arena. One follower, RedCloud Foster, 27, a prayer leader with Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena who is part Apache Indian, said he and several church members from across Los Angeles assembled at 6 a.m. every weekday for the past nine months - "a full term, like giving birth to a baby," he added - to pray in anticipation of Graham's arrival. "He's in his twilight. A lot of people aren't coming for a sense of Christianity but because of a sense of history," said Foster, who likened Graham to the biblical Jacob on his deathbed. "That's what could happen here: Rev. Billy Graham could pass a patriarchal blessing upon the church and pass on the baton to the next generation." --- Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com SOURCE: The Chicago Tribune / The Biloxi Sun Herald, MS WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/4jpca * * *Murray Charters <[log in to unmask]> Please place this address in your address book Please purge all others Web site: Parkinsons Resources on the WWWeb http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn