I've attended two Billy Graham crusades in my life, one in Oakland, California, and one in Mexico City. There was no reason to go forward at either event, since I was already a Christian. Besides, he'd already set my life on a new course long before.
I thought I would have a chance to tell him about that effect when I began working at Christianity Today and he almost visited the offices of the magazine he had founded. We had to do the "Billy drill"—clean up our offices, the manuscripts piled precariously here and there, the books stacked willy-nilly on the floor, and the coffee-stained galley sheets. It was a sign of a working journalistic office, but it didn't seem appropriate to greet our founder in such a slovenly state.
As I straightened my office, I rehearsed what I knew I would say when he shook my hand. I wanted to tell him about my mother's conversion.
She'd had a rough life, which had included a losing bout with alcohol. She had been dry for about five years by that time, and as a member of AA, she had turned her life over to God "as she understood him." Her sister, a devout Christian, had been trying to help her understand this God by introducing her to Jesus Christ. My mom had been resisting her sister's evangelistic efforts, until the day she made a bargain with God.
She and my older brother—who was in his late teens at the time—had daily arguments about matters long forgotten in tones loud and ugly. My brother was hotheaded and stubborn, an equal match for my strong-willed mother, who soon began to despair of reconciling with him. She had seen many young men turn around after a stint in the military. So at one desperate moment, she prayed, "Lord, if you will put Michael in the military, I'll accept Jesus into my life."
One lesson I learned from this incident is that one should not bargain with the Ruler of the universe. Later that afternoon, just after my mom's desperation prayer, my brother walked in the door and announced he had just signed up for the Air Force.
A few days later, a Billy Graham crusade was broadcast on a local channel. At the end, of course, he turned to the cameras and said, "You at home can invite Jesus into your life right now. Just get on your knees in front of your TV, and repeat this prayer after me. … " My mother, who believed a deal was a deal, knelt before the flickering black-and-white screen and prayed the Sinner's Prayer.
When my mother, a woman with infectious enthusiasm, got into something, the whole family got into it (well, except for my dad—that's another story). Soon my brother, my cousin (who was living with us at the time), and I joined my mom in evening Bible studies in the Gospel of John, as well as three excursions a week to the nearby Evangelical Free Church. Within five months, I found myself walking the aisle, weeping, during the church's weekly altar call.
Someone, somewhere, has a statistic about the number of people who have gone forward at Billy Graham's crusades, and perhaps they can guesstimate how many others have knelt in front of their television sets to invite Jesus into their hearts. But how many people are there like me, who have been touched, albeit indirectly, by the life and ministry of Graham? The Book of Revelation uses the number 144,000 to suggest the fullness of the number of people in heaven (12x12x1,000!). Maybe that's the number we should use for Graham's indirect influence.
That number grows exponentially when you then add the influence of those who have been indirectly influenced by Graham. I, in turn, have shaped (sometimes even positively!) members of churches I've pastored, readers I've published for, and friends and family members I've loved in the name of Christ. You can't count that sort of thing. We might say it extends Graham's count to 12x12x1,000×10.
I never got to tell Graham about his influence on me, but I'm sure he heard similar stories all the time. Everything we do reverberates beyond us, by God's grace, in ways we cannot imagine. For most of us, the influence is modest but nonetheless real. For reasons known to God alone, Graham's footprint was anything but modest, but still absolutely real. It found its way even into the nooks and crannies of a suburban California family, whose alcoholic mother knelt humbly before a television screen in the summer of 1965 and whose middle son a few months later was drawn to approach the Lord's altar himself.
Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today.
