Six years ago, Billy Graham passed away. He was 99. I’m sure I heard him preach a hundred sermons in our home through his radio program. Years ago, my secretary said, “George Beverley Shea is on the phone.” I knew he wouldn’t be calling little old me, so I grabbed the phone and said, “Ya right, Vance! What do you want?” A deep baritone laugh followed. It was Billy Graham’s soloist. That laugh, he told me, helped Billy and his team through many hard times. I thanked him for laughing, and far more, for modeling integrity through the years.
When I first began traveling and speaking, temptation was like a schoolyard bully. Never far away. Without knowing it, Billy Graham became a long-distance mentor to me.
He knew about the lure of money.
In the late 1950s, NBC offered him a million a year to host a show. During a citywide campaign, a cynical press grilled him on finances and asked if he expected to make substantial money from the city. Billy pulled out a telegram from Hollywood. It was a lucrative movie offer. “If my interest was in making money,” he smiled, “I’d take advantage of an offer like this.” Texas billionaire H.L. Hunt offered him six million to run for president. But the lure of money never changed Billy’s calling. He kept his focus on Christ.
He knew about the lure of pride.
Billy was movie star handsome with piercing blue eyes. Between 1955 and 2017, he won a spot on the Gallup Organization’s roster of “Ten Most Admired Men” 61 times. Presidents and royalty welcomed his friendship and counsel. Yet he wrote, “The first question I am going to ask when I get to heaven is this: ‘Why me, Lord, why did you choose me, a farm boy from North Carolina, to preach to so many people?’” He repeatedly gave credit to God for any good that came from his ministry.
He knew about the lure of immorality.
So he made himself accountable. Even his critics admired this. And he had plenty of them. Those who accomplish anything worthwhile make mistakes. But he was quick to ask forgiveness, express regret for things said and done, and treat failure in others with kindness and grace.
Graham often used humour. He told of the man who got up to preach but wouldn’t stop. The guy who introduced him couldn’t stand it. Finally he picked up a gavel and threw it at the speaker. It missed the speaker and hit a man in the front row. Before blacking out, the man said, “Hit me again, I can still hear him.” Billy once said, “A keen sense of humour helps us overlook the unbecoming, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable.”
“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead,” he famously wrote. “Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”
I hope to look up that address one day and thank Billy for mentoring me in how to leave the right footprints. Heaven is looking sweeter all the time.
