Billy Graham’s four-day Los Angeles crusade ended Nov. 21 with more than 80,000 people converging on the Rose Bowl on a chilly Sunday afternoon. They were among the 312,000 people who attended the four-day revival.
“People have said this could be the last sermon I will ever preach,” Graham told the largest non-sporting event crowd in the stadium’s history. “And it may be. But I don’t know. That’s all in God’s hands.”
Graham, 86, then jokingly reminded the audience that his longtime friend George Beverly Shea — who had just sung “Softly and Tenderly” — was nearly 10 years older than he.
“And it is certainly not the last time he is going to sing,” Graham told the audience that was both laughing and clapping by that point.
Graham has preached the gospel to 210 million people in person, more than anyone else in history.
Estimates of the number of people making personal professions of faith during the Pasadena crusade range from 12,000 to 13,400, according to wire services and crusade organizers.
The crusade had been originally scheduled for July but was postponed after doctors decided Graham needed more time to heal from a fall he suffered in May, Baptist Press noted.
The iconic evangelist’s first California crusade was 55 years ago under a pitched tent and over a sawdust floor in a post-World War II Los Angeles in 1949. He drew an estimated 350,000 people during the eight-week event, which is only 38,000 more than those attending the four-day event held in November of this year.
Los Angeles has changed dramatically since Graham’s first visit: The region had 5 million people and was surrounded by barren hills and orange groves in 1949. Today, the same region is a sprawling city packed with 16 million people who speak hundreds of languages. But despite the changes Graham preached the same message.
“The gospel hasn’t changed and people’s hearts haven’t changed — they’re still in need of the affection the gospel can give,” he told Associated Press in a phone interview.
The L.A. crusade was orchestrated with the help of 1,200 churches from nearly 100 denominations, which for the past year have contributed more than 20,000 pastors and volunteers to plan the event.
Crusade organizers worked hard to advertise to the city’s hundreds of thousands of non-English speakers, and trained more than 12,000 volunteers in 19 different languages to serve as counselors.
The crusade spent $1.4 million of its $5.4 million total budget on advertising, most of it in non-English media.
Michael Reagan, son of the late President Ronald Reagan, helped introduce Graham with a powerful testimony about his own salvation. The Christian band “Jars of Clay” provided music before Graham’s closing Sunday night sermon.
First Baptist Church, Temple City, Calif., member John Ernest, said, “It was great to be a part of this.” He served as a counselor and sang in the crusade choir.
“I grew up knowing about Billy Graham,” Ernest noted. “I had attended a couple of other (Billy Graham) crusades but this was the first time that I was able to serve at one.”
Willie Jordan, who attended every day of the 1949 revival as a 16-year-old, told the Associated Press that she will never forget the preaching that led her to God.
“Every night that tent was packed. I remember the crowds of people — you could see them coming for miles,” said Jordan, the 71-year-old president of a humanitarian organization called the Fred Jordan Mission on the city’s Skid Row. “It was a greater sight than any of us had ever witnessed before. It was clear that God had placed his hand on Billy for something special.”
Graham’s final event is scheduled for June 23–26, 2005, in New York City, according to Graham officials.
(Compiled from wire services)
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