Let’s pause to remember the remarkable life of Billy Graham, who on February 21st changed his address. As a young man growing up in the 1970s, his influence was striking. Even my precious Greek-Orthodox, rather spiritually disinterested, father would watch Graham speak. My closest personal encounter with Billy Graham occurred at the 1981 InterVarsity Urbana Student Missions Conference in Champaign, Illinois. Later, in 2004, I brought my children, Elizabeth, James and Josh, to hear Graham at Kansas City’s Royals Stadium. At the invitation to come forward for counseling, my daughter – already a follower of Christ – declared, “Let’s all go down there. I want to be where the action is!”
One attribute of Graham that I most admire is how throughout his eighty-year career he kept the focus of his message on the Good News of Christ. This was in spite of innumerable distractions and potential secondary causes. No doubt we have not heard the last from Billy Graham, who declared, “Some day you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”