Dr BILLY GRAHAM (1918-2018)

William Franklin Graham Jr, better known as Billy Graham, was an Evangelist.

He was close to & a spiritual adviser to multiple U.S. Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, who said it was a conversation with Graham that led them to become committed Christians.

He was number seven on ‘Gallup's list of most widely admired people of the 20th century’.

He preached in person to more people around the world than anyone who have ever lived.

As of 1993, more than 2.5 million people had stepped forward at his crusades to "accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior."

As of 2002, his lifetime audience, including radio & television broadcasts, topped two billion.

In 2007, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association estimated that he had preached the Gospel to more than 215 million people in more than 185 countries & territories since beginning his crusades in 1947.

For many years he wrote a daily advice column ‘à la Dear Abby’, where every reader's dilemma was answered with the same ultimate advice: ‘Come to Christ’.

His 30 books include ‘How to be Born Again’.

In 1953, he started World Wide Pictures, a Christian studio that has been cranking out Christian films ever since.

In November 1995, on his 77th birthday, Mr. Graham named his son Franklin to succeed him as head of the BGEA. His daughter Anne Graham Lotz and his grandsons Will Graham & William Graham are also in ministry.

- (aksermonillustrations.blogspot.in)

Graham's last decades were slowed by illness & injury. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1989, felled by broken bones, bouts of hydrocephalus (accumulation of fluid in the brain), prostate cancer & rounds of pneumonia.

Age, illness & bone-breaking falls left him struggling to deliver 20-minute sermons.

The Rev. Billy Graham, a North Carolina farmer’s son, the nation’s best-known Christian evangelist for more than 60 years, died on Wednesday, 21^st Feb, 2018 at his home in N.C. He was 99.

(News clipping)

“My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world.” – Billy Graham.

2 Tim 4:5 (HCSB): “But as for you, be serious about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”