Just As I Am

by Billy Graham

  So a plan was hatched with the help of some members of the CICCU to make sure no kidnapping took place. They had formed, it appeared, a miniature Scotland Yard in order to safeguard my movements. And they were having fun with it: one of them was dressed as Sherlock Holmes; another, as Dr. Watson.

  On the appointed day, Lord Luke, whom I had first met during the 1954 London Crusade, picked me up and drove me to a village near Cambridge. I quickly changed to the unmarked CICCU car and was driven via back roads to town. At a certain street, we were to look for a proctor (a university employee dressed in black and wearing a bowler hat whose job was to enforce discipline, sometimes even to act as a bouncer). If he waved to the right, there was trouble and we were to keep going straight. If he waved to the left, we were to proceed directly to the hall, where I was to meet the masters of the colleges. When we found him, he waved left, and I arrived without incident at the university’s gorgeous setting—a winding river (the Cam), spreading lawns, and ancient buildings.

  On Saturday I spoke to the senior members of the university in the afternoon and to the CICCU in the evening. Among the professors I met privately with that day was C. S. Lewis. A decade before, he had captured the imagination of many in England and the United States with his remarkable little book The Screwtape Letters; in 1947 he had been on the cover of Time magazine.

  John Stott was very anxious for me to meet Professor Lewis and went with me. Lewis was not as well known in the United States as he would become in later years, particularly after his death in 1963. But I had read Screwtape, and Ruth would later read the Chronicles of Narnia series.

  We met in the dining room of his college, St. Mary Magdalene’s, and we talked for an hour or more. I was afraid I would be intimidated by him because of his brilliance, but he immediately put me at my ease. I found him to be not only intelligent and witty but also gentle and gracious; he seemed genuinely interested in our meetings. “You know,” he said as we parted, “you have many critics, but I have never met one of your critics who knows you personally.”

  For the first three nights of the public meetings, beginning on Sunday, November 6, I felt as if I were in a straitjacket on the platform, and very little happened. Great St. Mary’s was packed beyond capacity with students in academic gowns; students also filled two other churches, which were equipped to carry the meetings by public address system. One-fourth of the student body attended each evening, listening intently, but there seemed to be little spiritual impact.

  Then, on my knees with a deep sense of failure, inadequacy, and helplessness, I turned to God. My gift, such as it was, was not to present the intellectual side of the Gospel. I knew that. What those students needed was a clear understanding of the simple but profound truths of the Gospel: our separation from God because of sin; Christ’s provision of forgiveness and new life; and our hope because of Him.

  Finally, on Wednesday night, I threw away my prepared address and preached a simple Gospel message on the meaning of the Cross of Christ. That night more than 400 Cambridge students stayed behind to make their commitment to Christ. (On the advice of the CICCU students, I used a different approach at Cambridge from that used in most of our Crusades; I asked those who wanted to receive Christ to stay behind after the end of the meeting.) For the rest of the week, I strove to be as simple and yet as direct as possible, and the response continued to surprise us all. I also enjoyed the informal discussions we held in many of the residence halls, where students felt free to ask all kinds of questions.

  John Stott was one of 30 missioners who joined us during the week, speaking in the various Cambridge colleges; others included Dr. Paul Rees and Dr. David Cowie from the United States, the Reverend Tom Allan from Scotland, and the Reverend Maurice Wood from England itself.

  The Cambridge mission of 1955 opened my eyes as well as my heart to the opportunities for campus evangelism. Immediately afterward we went to Oxford, where the visit originally scheduled to last a few days was extended to a week.

  Those months overseas in 1955 convinced me that our ministry henceforth had to be worldwide. But could Crusade evangelism be effective in non-Western countries, which were the home of the world’s great non-Christian religions? We would never know the answer to the question without trying.

  On January 15, 1956, we headed for India and other Asian destinations.

  Part Four

  1956–1967

  To the Ends of the Earth

  15

  Into Asia

  India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Formosa (Taiwan), Japan, Korea 1956

  When we toured Japan and Korea during the Korean War, most of our meetings were held for the United Nations forces stationed there, especially the American troops. I was fascinated by what I saw of Asia’s culture, and Korea’s wartime devastation and poverty had moved me greatly, but I knew that we had only begun to glimpse Asia’s rich diversity and complexity. Now, as 1955 drew to a close, we found ourselves preparing for a much more extended journey among the teeming populations and cultures of that vast region.

  INDIA

  “Billy Graham was cutting through India like Gabriel in a gabardine suit.” That was the way Time described me in the February 13, 1956, issue. It was nice to get some coverage in the Luce magazine, but I preferred the Associated Press wirephoto of me astride an elephant in Kottayam, looking far from angelic as I held on for dear life to the tough hide behind those huge floppy ears.

  For years now, even as far back as my anthropology studies at Wheaton, I had been fascinated by India, with its vast multireligious and multicultural population of (at that time) over 400 million people, and I had prayed that someday God might open the door for us to go there.

  Plans for an extended series of meetings in India actually crystallized in my thinking during the week-long May 1955 Crusade in London’s Wembley Stadium, which was a follow-up to the Har-ringay meetings of the previous year. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Londoners trekked to the chilly stadium in Wembley each evening, in spite of the fact that it poured rain five of the seven nights—weatherwise, one of our bleakest Crusades ever.

  One morning during those Wembley meetings, I asked Jack Dain to join me at the Kensington Palace Hotel for breakfast. A former lay missionary in northern India and an officer in an Indian Gurkha regiment during the war, Jack was now serving as Overseas Secretary for the Evangelical Alliance in London. (He later was ordained and became an Anglican bishop in Australia, where he assisted us greatly in some of our visits there.) I told him that I had recently received an invitation from all the major Protestant denominations in India to hold a series of meetings.

  Grabbing his napkin—neither of us had a blank piece of paper—Jack quickly sketched a map of India and marked six cities scattered around the country that he felt would be the most strategic for us to visit: Bombay, Madras, Kottayam, Palamcottah, New Delhi, and Calcutta. Each one of the six cities, he pointed out, had a small established Christian population that would provide a foundation for preparations and follow-up.

  Shortly before leaving the United States for India—and just a half-year after that meeting with Jack—I was able to meet with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles for a briefing on relations between the United States and India. He felt that it was especially important for me to know that the visit to India of Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin two months earlier had had as its sole purpose drawing India into closer ties with the Communist bloc.

  On January 15, 1956, we left for India from New York. The Team for this trip was a small one, but it did include a Christian newspaper reporter from Chattanooga, George Burnham, selfdescribed as “an ex-alcoholic.” Six hundred newspapers had signed up to carry George’s stories, and later he wrote a book about the trip.

  It took us a couple of days by plane to cover the eight thousand miles to India. Grady Wilson, Jerry Beavan, and John Bolten were accompanying me. John was upset by the length of the flight, but he had no recourse but to settle down. During a stopover in Athens
(at three in the morning, local time), we began talking about the Apostle Paul’s visit to that ancient center of culture and philosophy, remembering how the apostle had adopted a special approach in his sermon on Mars Hill (see Acts 17) in order to build a bridge to his pagan audience and win a hearing for the Gospel.

  “Billy,” John said, “you are on your way to India, a country that has no conception of God. You will need a special approach to break into people’s thinking, because they know nothing of the Bible or of God. Do you have such an approach in mind?”

  Admitting that I didn’t, I suggested that we make that issue a matter of concentrated prayer.

  Shortly after taking off from our next stopover, which was Cairo—we had already been traveling about thirty hours—we flew near Mt. Sinai, where God had entrusted the Ten Commandments to Moses. Off in the distance we could see Israel, where Jesus had been born and lived. Suddenly it came to me: Jesus had been born in the one part of the world where the three great continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe intersect.

  That was the answer to our prayer for an approach to the people of India.

  “I am not here to tell you about an American or a Britisher or a European,” I said everywhere we went. “I am here to tell you about a Man who was born right here in your part of the world, in Asia. He was born at the place where Asia and Africa and Europe meet. He had skin that was darker than mine, and He came to show us that God loves all people. He loves the people of India, and He loves you.”

  We could see people’s eyes light up as they realized that Chris-tianity was not exclusively for Europeans or the white race but that Christ came for all.

  Bombay

  When we arrived in Bombay on January 17, 1956, the situation was not promising. In violent political riots unrelated to our visit, just before our arrival, two people were killed outside the stadium where we were scheduled to hold a meeting. The riots got worldwide headlines, but it was not the kind of publicity we needed! When, as part of those same ongoing riots, a rock-throwing mob attacked the police station after several Christian leaders had conferred there with government officials, it was clear that our own event had to be canceled, although I met privately with ministers and other Christian workers. Alone in my hotel room afterward, all I could do was cry out to God to help me love those people as Christ did.

  Out on the street, as one mob swirled by, I asked a young man with a rock in his hand why he was rioting.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Someone told me to.”

  Later I saw some young men beating an old shopkeeper who had refused to close his stall. Altogether, we later learned, fifty people were killed during the riots, and hundreds were injured in violent clashes between the rioters and the police.

  Although I had read about the destitution of India frequently enough, nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming poverty we saw on every hand.

  Later, in my diary, I recorded my reaction: “It was one of the most heartbreaking scenes that I had seen since I left Korea [during the Korean War]. . . . The missionaries and others, and even the Indian leaders, had warned us already not to give money. . . . It’s a most difficult thing, however, to turn your back on such poverty as this. Some of them may be able to do it, but I can’t. I gave as many rupees as I possibly could to as many people as I saw in need. However, the missionaries and Indian leaders were right—we soon collected a great crowd who were begging and screaming and fighting for money. Only with considerable effort were we able to break away from the dangerous near-riot I had caused.”

  But there was at least one light moment in Bombay. Outside my hotel one day, I saw a man with two bags go out into the middle of the street. From one bag he let out a cobra, which immediately wrapped itself into a coil and struck out at everyone who approached. He let out a mongoose from another bag, which went right after the cobra. During the tussle that followed, the man took up a collection from the crowd.

  I went outside to take in the scene more closely. Standing next to me was a congenial American. He invited me back into the hotel for a cup of tea. He was Reuben Youngdahl, pastor of the largest Lutheran church in Minnesota, and we became good friends.

  Madras

  At our next stop, Madras, the city was jammed with people who had traveled long distances to participate in our meetings. I read, for instance, that 100 people from Hyderabad had ridden the train for days to get there. With the translators standing beside me—Mr. Titus for the Telugu and Mr. J. Victor Manogarom for the Tamil—I preached to integrated crowds of 40,000 in which all the rigid lines of caste and gender were temporarily ignored. We also had two choirs—one for each language—which repeated each number (including the “Hallelujah Chorus”), adding to the length of the service.

  At one point in my address, I knew that I had said something awry. Talking about Jesus, I had said, “He’s alive!” Mr. Titus promptly rendered that in Telugu, but Mr. Manogarom faltered. I repeated the expression several times. Finally, he uttered, “Avan poikaran.” The Tamils gasped. As I learned afterward, the best Mr. Manogarom could make of my North Carolina accent was, “He was a liar!” No great harm was done, for the mistake evened itself out in the next few sentences.

  As I continued, I tried to assure my listeners that it was wrong to think of Christianity as a Western religion. It had been in India long before America was discovered, going back as far as a visit by the Apostle Thomas in a.d. 52, according to tradition. Out of 100,000 who heard me speak in three days, 4,000 recorded their decisions for Christ. We could have used more counselors, but we made up for that shortcoming by distributing twelve thousand copies of the Gospel of John. Such a result witnessed to the spiritual power generated by the twenty-four-hour prayer chains that had preceded our visit.

  Rooms in the city were at a premium during our Crusade meetings. Hundreds slept in the streets at night and camped at the meeting site all day. Our morning services were at seven; the evening ones, at six. In addition to those services, we also met with a variety of different groups at other locations. One day, for example, I spoke to a student gathering of 7,500 out of which 250 responded to the Invitation to commit their lives to Christ. Many were from non-Christian backgrounds.

  In both Bombay and Madras, I had some opportunity to observe the practices of Hinduism, one of the dominant religions in India. In Bombay we watched the funeral of an old man whose body was placed on a pile of wood and burned. As the flames died down, the son took a stick and punched a hole in the skull, hoping to release the man’s spirit. In Madras we visited a Hindu temple dedicated to the worship of Siva—a form of worship that was (I discovered as soon as I entered the temple) phallic. We also watched people offer their sacrifices to the priests. I recorded my reaction in my diary: “We stood and watched it and almost wept, longing that these people might know the forgiveness that is in Christ.”

  In my messages, I did not directly attack the views of those who adhered to other religions; I was not in India to stir up controversy. Instead, I concentrated on presenting in a positive way the message of Christ as simply and forcefully as possible. Throughout my ministry to date, I had seen that the message of Christ, if accepted, had the power to replace false ideas and beliefs. However, it was necessary at times in India to explain that Christ wasn’t just another deity who could be added to the list of thirty thousand gods and goddesses already worshiped by Hindus in general. He was uniquely God in human flesh, and He alone was worthy of our worship and commitment.

  Our visit to Madras gave me a glimpse into something else that I found upsetting: the Ugly American. One day in our hotel, Jerry saw three half-drunk Americans loudly berating and abusing the mail clerk, a kindly little man who had been very helpful to us. In my diary, I recorded my heated reaction: “These are the types of American tourists that are giving us a bad name and making people hate us all over the world. . . .”

  Kottayam

  In Kottayam, at the southern tip of India, the support for our presence was almos
t unbelievable. Any doubts I might have had about the relevancy of the Cross in a cultural setting so different from everything I had known were instantly dispelled.

  Girls with baskets, working as a labor of love, had carved out the entire side of a hill into a giant amphitheater with three levels so that the people could sit comfortably on the ground; in accordance with Indian custom, which we were not in a position to change, women had to sit on a different level from the men. From where we were staying we could see the greenest rice paddies I have ever seen, and beyond that —after a dotting of little green houses—was the jungle, with all of its palms. I can imagine few places in the world more beautiful.

  Kottayam itself had a population of only 50,000, yet a preliminary service that had gotten almost no publicity drew 25,000 people. The next night, at the first scheduled meeting, 75,000 people came. Three days later—the crowds having continued to grow with each passing day—the final crowd was 100,000. In our few days there, a third of a million people heard the Gospel.

  They were all dressed in white, and tens of thousands of them brought along large palm leaves to sit on. Those traveling from a distance, in order not to rely on the local stores, brought their own food. As for the Team, we were fearful after hearing stories about foreigners who had gotten sick because they were not acclimated to India’s food and hygiene. Most of us, therefore, ate enormous quantities of bananas every day of the trip, and we peeled them ourselves. I myself had few problems, but I wrote in my diary that “I’ve eaten so many bananas until I feel like I’m going to turn into a banana.”

  Jerry, Paul Maddox, and I were staying in the nearby house of Bishop Jacob, a tall, gray-haired, commanding figure who was clearly loved and respected as the leader of the Church of South India. At first I liked the idea of staying in a private residence. Then the bishop casually let it drop that some snake charmers had captured twenty-six cobras in his yard the week before! He tried to quiet our fears by assuring us that cobras seldom came into the house.