As Mr. Graham and his team proclaimed the love of Jesus Christ night after night in city after city, the response was overwhelming. The Sydney Morning Herald called the Crusade “one of the most remarkable religious phenomena ever experienced in this city.”
Exactly 60 years later, Billy Graham’s oldest son Franklin Graham is holding an evangelistic tour across Australia. As you pray for the Holy Spirit to move powerfully across the nation, enjoy reading five of the most remarkable stories from Billy Graham’s landmark Crusade, as documented by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 1959.
A Broken Marriage Restored
On one night of the Crusade, Billy Graham was preaching about family life and the home. He told the following account in his autobiography:
A divorced man was there with the girlfriend who had been the cause of the breakup of his marriage. The message penetrated his heart, and as he looked up during the Invitation, he saw his former wife going forward to give her life to Christ. With tears of remorse, he went and stood beside her, becoming reconciled not only to God but to the wife he had rejected.
Compound Interest
As the Crusade was going on, a Chinese businessman was surprised to receive a check from a former business associate. The check was for a little over £85 (the equivalent of about £1,900 or $2,400 today).
Seven years earlier, the man who wrote the check had “borrowed, without returning, samples of linen worth £40.” He received Christ at a Crusade meeting and returned the original amount—plus more than £45 of compound interest (computed at 10 percent).
After receiving the check, the Chinese businessman decided to attend the Crusade. He ended up donating the £45 of compound interest to the cause of the Crusade and expressing a desire to know Christ.
From Witchcraft to the One True God
Ron Baker “had almost everything going against him, including functional illiteracy and a speech impediment brought on by a violently abusive childhood,” Billy Graham wrote. “An alcoholic and a confirmed gambler, Ron was also deeply involved in witchcraft.”
Ron was a bus driver who ended each night by getting drunk at his local bar, coming home in a rage and often abusing his wife.
Like many bus drivers across Australia, Ron had been assigned to transport people to and from Crusade events—an assignment which disgusted him.
One evening he worked later than usual and missed his nightly appointment at the bar. He arrived home—stone cold sober—to find a friend waiting to invite him to the Crusade. Ron’s wife had committed her life to Christ at the Crusade just a few nights before and encouraged Ron to give it a chance. He flew into a fit of rage but eventually calmed down and agreed to go—as long as they sat as far away from Billy Graham as possible.
“I thought that the message was the greatest load of garbage I had ever heard,” Ron wrote later. But he couldn’t deny that the message had rattled him.
“God spoke to him that night,” Mr. Graham wrote, “and he made his own commitment to Christ. He struggled with his alcoholism for two years, but gradually Christ changed him from within.”
In the years that followed, Ron overcame his speech impediment, began to study the Bible, completed seminary and became an evangelist. The Lord has used him to reach countless others with the hope of Christ.
God makes all things possible. Put your faith in Him today.
SOURCE: BGEA