The Evangelist

by Lewis Drummond Narrated by Maurice England

Overview

How much can one man do to influence the world for Christ? How do we begin to measure the worth of his work? In this documentary, evangelism scholar Lewis Drummond examines the Billy Graham ministry phenomenon of the last half of the 20th Century-spiritually, culturally, and historically. As a personal friend and student of the Graham family, Drummond has compiled a book that is a great resource for any student, pastor, or layperson seeking a better understanding of the Graham ministry.

Appendixes are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159763471
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

An Epic Begins

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"Do the work of an evangelist."

— 2 Timothy 4:5

Can this really be happening? We've never seen anything like this before! Do you think this is truly of God? I don't know. Will it last? Such were the questions and exclamations that surrounded the phenomenon taking place in late September, 1949, on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Hill Street at the edge of the skyscraper district of Los Angeles, California. A large tent, affectionately called the Canvas Cathedral, had been erected on the site and people were flocking to it by the thousands. A casual observer might have thought that because of its proximity to Hollywood a magnificent entertainment program was in progress. Nothing was farther from the truth. Incongruously, the tent housed an evangelistic campaign being conducted by a thirty-year-old North Carolina farm boy named Billy Graham.

The Beginnings and Background

It had all begun some months earlier through the means of a concerted prayer effort for California. A local Lutheran minister, Armin Gesswein, who had shared in the 1937 religious revival in Norway, challenged evangelical believers in the Los Angeles area to give themselves to prayer. He said, "Whenever God is going to do any kind of work, He always begins with prayer." Another lesser-known personality who was significant in helping stimulate this prayer effort in Los Angeles was a young Baptist minister by the name of Joe Stevens. Others also had leadership roles in creating an atmosphere of prayer. They had discovered the secret that God moves in reviving power essentially in answer to prevailing prayer. As the old biblical commentator Matthew Henry said, "When God is about to pour out unusual blessings, He first sets His people a-praying." Los Angeles, in many respects, had fallen on its knees.

In the same general time frame, a group of Christian laymen felt a concern and burden that Los Angeles needed an evangelistic crusade, somewhat comparable to the former Billy Sunday meetings in the earlier decades of the twentieth century. They met and formed a committee to investigate such a possibility. Their critics saw it as a futile effort. The prevailing temperament of many Christians after the end of World War II centered in the conviction that the days of mass evangelism were over. Many argued that the world would be addressed with the gospel primarily through personal witness and by the ministry of local churches. The great American evangelists of the past such as Jonathan Edwards of America's First Great Awakening, Charles Finney of the Second Revival, and well-known evangelists like D. L. Moody and the aforementioned Billy Sunday were now relics and icons of the past. The days of people meeting en masse to hear the gospel preached seemed to have ended.

Yet it can be correctly said that all forms of mass evangelism had not ceased. Youth for Christ rallies were being held across America during the war and in the immediate postwar period. Young people were responding at these rallies. Yet while there were a number of evangelists ministering during these years, no significant personality had arisen that epitomized crusade evangelization as had happened in the past. Were the critics right? Was the time for that brand of evangelism really over? Unperturbed by this question, the Los Angeles committee invited Billy Graham to come and hold an evangelistic crusade.

As we look back now and reflect on this effort at mass evangelism in Los Angeles four years after the fall of Germany and Japan, we see that God was once again about to do a marvelous work of grace. Exciting days lay ahead. But who was this evangelist named Billy Graham whom God was about to raise to world prominence?

The Evangelist

Billy Graham had no unusual background to commend him to the task; at least so it would seem. Born into an ordinary Presbyterian farming family in 1918, Billy Frank, as his family and friends called him, grew up on the family dairy farm. He was reared in the typical Southern culture of Charlotte, North Carolina. He came to faith in Christ in an evangelistic crusade in the fall of 1934, under the preaching of evangelist Mordechai Fowler Ham. Sixteen-year-old Billy Frank experienced a truly transforming conversion. In the same crusade in Charlotte, two friends, brothers Grady and T. W. Wilson, stepped out in a new commitment to Christ. God in sovereign grace began, even at this early stage, putting together a team that would have an ultimate impact on the globe.

When Billy Graham finished high school, he went for a short time to Bob Jones College in Cleveland, Tennessee. But he soon left Bob Jones and enrolled in Florida Bible Institute at Temple Terrace, a suburb of Tampa. Dr. Bob Jones, founder and president of the college in Tennessee, was disappointed and disturbed with Billy Graham's decision to leave his school. The president told the young man, "Billy, if you leave and throw your life away at a little Bible school, chances are you will never be heard of. At best all you could amount to would be a poor country preacher somewhere out in the sticks." How wrong he was.

One night, while at the Bible institute in Temple Terrace, Billy wandered out onto the golf course. On the eighteenth green he fell to his knees and fully surrendered himself to do God's will, to preach His gospel, and to follow the Lord Jesus Christ wherever He may lead. God got His man!

Early Ministry

Billy Frank finished his studies at the Bible institute in Tampa and moved to Wheaton College west of Chicago, Illinois. There he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology. At Wheaton he also met his future wife, Ruth, a medical missionary's daughter. After college, Billy became pastor of a small Baptist church in Western Springs, Illinois. His life seemed set. A definite call to preach had come and now God had opened the door for him to become a pastor. Before long, however, he began to travel extensively in America as well as serving as pastor of the Baptist congregation in Western Springs. He also started broadcasting Songs in the Night, a religious radio program that featured George Beverly Shea as vocalist. The program met with success. In the mid 1940s, Billy also traveled to England, extending his ministry of itinerant evangelism overseas.

Soon Billy Graham became involved in the evangelistic ministry of Youth for Christ International, and became convinced that he should leave the Western Springs church and devote himself entirely to itinerant evangelism. His wife, Ruth, had longed to go back to the Far East and serve in Tibet, but Billy felt no such call and gave himself more and more to evangelism.

At the same time, Dr. W. B. Riley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis, Minnesota, urged him to accept the presidency of the Northwestern Schools that Riley had founded. Somewhat reluctantly, Billy Graham agreed and became an educational administrator along with his itinerant evangelistic ministry.

Around this time, at a spiritual life conference in North Carolina, Billy met Cliff Barrows. Cliff led the singing for the conference and he and Billy quickly became friends.

The ties between Billy Graham and the Wilson brothers also continued to deepen, with Grady Wilson also spending a year studying at Wheaton College. In Grady Wilson, George Beverly Shea, Cliff Barrows, and Billy Graham, a team was coming together, and things were ready to erupt to the glory of God in Los Angeles. Yet, a significant spiritual step in the young Billy Graham's ministry took place just before the Los Angeles crusade opened.

A New Step

Billy Graham had another close friend, a fellow Youth for Christ evangelist named Charles Templeton. He, too, was a young man with outstanding ability and a keen intellect. Although Billy himself had previously assumed he would go on to seminary after graduation from Wheaton College, his ministry developed so rapidly that he never made the decision to acquire further theological training. On the other hand, Charles Templeton was convinced that the message they had been preaching was far too simple and they had to sharpen their respective theological swords. Templeton enrolled in Princeton Theological Seminary and pressured Billy to follow him. This threw Billy Graham into a quandary of indecision. Should he pursue his call to evangelism, or should he seek further training?

To compound the problem, in discussions with Charles Templeton and others, Billy had begun to entertain some doubts about the total truthfulness and authority of the Scriptures. That was on an intellectual level, but on a practical level Billy noticed that when he quoted the Bible in a sermon, convicting power gripped people in the audience. The Bible had a power over people that was impossible to explain outside of the notion that it contained God-generated words. Billy Graham grappled with the conflict between his conscience and his sharp inquiring mind. He knew he had to come to a definitive resolution; either the Bible was the Word of God, or it was just words about God.

Just before the Los Angeles meetings in 1949 were scheduled to begin, Billy served as a featured speaker in a student conference at Forest Home, a retreat center in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles. At Forest Home, Billy again faced his friend Charles Templeton, who was also a speaker. The two men debated the validity of the Bible, but the discussion only deepened Billy's inner conflict.

In turmoil one evening, Billy Graham went for a walk in the pine forest surrounding the retreat center. He trudged about fifty yards off the main trail and sat down on a large rock. He spread his Bible out upon a tree stump in front of him. Struggling with his doubts, he had to face the question of the validity of the Scriptures and make a decision. In a spirit of absolute surrender before God, in something of the same spirit he exemplified on the eighteenth green at Temple Terrace, he cried out, "Oh, God, I cannot prove certain things. I cannot answer some of the questions Chuck is raising and some of the other people are raising, but I accept this Book by faith as the word of God." Billy Graham made his choice. Faith became the key component, the factor that allowed him to accept the Bible as the fully truthful, authoritative Word of God. And with that decision, his ministry was transformed. The stage was now set for what took place in Los Angeles a few days later in September 1949. Billy made his way to Los Angeles to start his campaign in the Canvas Cathedral. The eruption of God's mercy that occurred in that tent shook Los Angeles in a fashion that had not been seen since the dynamic days of America's First and Second Great Awakenings.

The Crusade

The great Los Angeles crusade was scheduled to last for three weeks. The organizers wisely pitched the tent in a strategic location, a well-known intersection. There a large tent could not but catch the attention of passersby. Still, few expected what actually transpired, least of all Billy Graham and his team.

Although Armin Gesswein had challenged believers in Los Angeles to fervent prayer, Grady Wilson, when he arrived on the scene, really got the prayer chains organized. As well, prayer groups were established in churches, and entire days for prayer were set aside. There were also all-night prayer meetings, as well as much fervent individual prayer. The Spirit of God was setting the stage.

As the evangelistic services began to unfold, nothing of particular significance appeared to take place. But as one week followed the other, things picked up considerably and it began to become clear that God was starting to move. Encouraged, Billy Graham wrote in a letter to a friend: "We are having by far the largest evangelistic campaign of our entire ministry. You would have been thrilled, if you could have seen the great tent packed yesterday afternoon with 6,100 people and several hundred turned away, and seen the scores of people walking down the aisle from every direction accepting Christ as personal Savior when the invitation was given."

The "Christ for Greater Los Angeles" campaign, as it was called, faced an important decision: Should the services end on a high note or should they carry on? As the committee addressed the issue, several felt the effort should stop. They reasoned it would be best to end on a positive note. Others, however, felt convinced that the work should be continued. People were still responding, and there seemed to be an ever-rising interest. The committee referred the question to a subcommittee of three. They in turn left it to Billy.

The evangelist found himself in a state of hesitation. He really did not quite know what God wanted him to do. He and Cliff Barrows prayed earnestly that the Holy Spirit would show them His will in an unmistakable way. They did as Gideon in the Old Testament ventured to do; they "sought a sign." They put out a fleece, praying and watching for a sign from heaven. And it came. Not with a wet fleece as in Gideon's case, but with a telephone call in the early hours of the morning.

The "Wet Fleece"

Stuart Hamblen was a most unlikely candidate to become God's "fleece." Hamblen was a massive Texan in his late thirties, who had become one of the most popular radio stars on the West Coast. This was before television emerged as the main media, and his program was the most listened to radio broadcast in California. Tens of thousands of people tuned in to his program every day. He rose to become something of an icon to Westerners. He had also won the Pacific rodeo, was a successful racehorse owner, a big gambler, and a heavy drinker. His father had been a Methodist preacher in Texas, but when Stuart moved West he said he left it all behind. Yet his radio program was called the Cowboy Church of the Air. This made Hamblen a hypocrite, a fact he would gladly acknowledge later.

Stuart Hamblen's wife, Suzy, was a dedicated Christian with a vibrant faith. She had prayed for her husband for sixteen years. When Henrietta Mears started the Hollywood Christian Group for Bible study, Suzy Hamblen enticed her husband to attend the sessions from time to time. When Billy Graham's crusade began in September 1949, Hamblen promised his wife that he would go hear the young evangelist. Stuart Hamblen, though, tried to back out, which led to a bitter argument with his wife.

Suzy eventually won the argument, though she got the time of the service wrong, causing them to arrive an hour early for the meeting. For some unknown reason, Billy Graham also found himself at the tent an hour early, and the two men got to talking. While Billy found Stuart Hamblen to be loud and uncouth, there was something likable about him, something that reminded him of his Southern roots.

As the tent began to fill, Stuart Hamblen made Billy Graham an offer: "Come and be on my radio show. I can fill your tent ... for you." The next day Billy Graham went down to the Warner Brothers studio for a live interview on KFWB. After the interview Stuart Hamblen summed up by urging his audience to go to the tent meeting. He added, "I'll be there too."

True to his word, Stuart Hamblen showed up at the tent that evening. He enjoyed the sense of power he gained when many of his listeners showed up for the service. Later that night he took the entire Billy Graham team out to China Town for dinner.

As Hamblen continued to attend the meetings, he became very agitated. Conviction was setting in. Everything Billy Graham said seemed to be directed at him. When Billy said, "There is somebody in this tent who is leading a double life," Hamblen felt publicly exposed.

One night he could take it no longer. He retreated to the Sierras to go hunting and did not return until the supposed final Sunday of the crusade.

That night a grumpy Stuart Hamblen was back in the front row. As the service proceeded he found fault with everything. In his view, the singing was off key, the offering was emotional manipulation, and to top it all off, Billy Graham was only a few minutes into his preaching when he announced, "There is a person here tonight who is a phony." Hamblen could not stand it any longer. He shot out of his seat, shook his fist at Billy Graham and stormed out of the meeting.

Away from the crusade, Stuart Hamblen stomped defiantly from bar to bar. Alcohol, though, did not soothe his conscience. Finally, as he headed for home, he conceded that Billy Graham was right: He was a phony and he needed to get right with God.

About 2 A.M. Billy Graham's phone rang. On the other end was a drunk, sobbing man. Graham told him to get his wife to bring him over. Stuart Hamblen arrived at the door a few minutes later. He wasted no time with niceties. "I want you to pray for me," he blurted out.

Billy shook his head. "No, I'm not going to do it," he said.

Hamblen clenched his fists, fighting the urge to take a swing at the evangelist.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Evangelist"
by .
Copyright © 2001 Thomas Nelson.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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