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We are all aware that Graham's career is in its closing years. Regardless of who assumes leadership of BGEA, no one is going to step readily into Billy Graham's place as the world's most famous evangelist. It just doesn't work that way. Charisma cannot be bequeathed. It may be that in 10, 20, or perhaps 50 years from now, some young man or woman with just the right combination—a combination easy to describe but apparently harder to embody—will arise to join the elite ranks of world-class heavyweight evangelists. It may be that developments in transportation and communication will enable the new light to shine more brightly than Graham's ever could, just as jet power and radio and television and satellite technology have enabled him to reach more people than any of his predecessors could have dreamed possible. But unless and until that happens, Billy Graham has to be regarded as the best who ever lived at what he does-"a workman," as Scripture says, "that needeth not to be ashamed."

William Martin is a professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and the author of A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (William Morrow).

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./Christianity Today Magazine

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November 13 1995, Vol. 39, No. 13