Consider it Billy Graham’s last crusade, one that will draw the faithful long after America’s most famous religious figure is gone.
On a wooded site in his hometown of Charlotte, N.C. — just off Billy Graham Parkway, no less — the Billy Graham Library opened June 5.
It garnered national media coverage May 31 at a private dedication ceremony featuring former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
The ex-presidents were upstaged, though, by the guest of honor. The 88-year-old evangelist came from his mountain home in Montreat, N.C., for a rare public appearance to address the crowd of 1,500 invited guests and assorted national media.
Noting he felt like he had attended his own funeral, Graham — who can barely hear or walk and whose vision is poor — echoed a message his ministry hopes visitors take from the library. That message is: the glory should go to God rather than the lanky farm boy who preached the gospel to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
And yet, once visitors get a look at the old photos and crusade footage that fill the 40,000-square-foot library, it might be a tough sermon to sell.
Even for Billy Graham.
“He doesn’t want attention to go to him,” said Graham’s younger sister, Jean Ford, of Charlotte. “And yet it just does.”
The Graham organization estimates that 200,000 visitors a year will tour the library, which has free admission, and restored Graham boyhood home, both beside the headquarters of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The ministry, now run by Graham’s son, Franklin, raised $27 million in private funding to present what Franklin Graham has called “the truth of the gospel.”
Franklin Graham, 54, said the goal of the library mirrors the gospel on which the ministry is based.
“I want to preserve for another generation what God did through one man, a man who said yes to the Lord Jesus Christ,” the younger Graham said in an interview.
“And to emphasize what God can do through anyone who says yes to Him.”
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