Intoxicating, with film star looks and a voice to match: The day I attended Billy Graham's last sermon
More than any other person in the 20th century, Billy Graham, who died this week aged 99, was the voice of America.
And what a voice! When I saw him give his last sermon in New York in his last ‘crusade’ in 2005, he was 86 and suffering from fluid on the brain, prostate cancer, a pelvic fracture and Parkinson’s disease.
Yet you wouldn’t have known it: he looked film-star terrific with his flowing mane of snow-white hair, sober dark suit and crisp, white shirt.
And then there was the voice – resonant and thick with the southern accent of his native Charlotte, North Carolina.
Graham was no sweet-talking huckster like Jim Bakker, the televangelist jailed in 1988 for embezzling money from his South Carolina Christian theme park. That evening in New York, he did have the backing of a 1,200-strong choir, belting out Amazing Grace behind him. But really, that 80,000-strong crowd in Flushing Meadow, Queens, were entranced by the voice of one man alone.
Source: Yahoo News
And what a voice! When I saw him give his last sermon in New York in his last ‘crusade’ in 2005, he was 86 and suffering from fluid on the brain, prostate cancer, a pelvic fracture and Parkinson’s disease.
Yet you wouldn’t have known it: he looked film-star terrific with his flowing mane of snow-white hair, sober dark suit and crisp, white shirt.
And then there was the voice – resonant and thick with the southern accent of his native Charlotte, North Carolina.
Graham was no sweet-talking huckster like Jim Bakker, the televangelist jailed in 1988 for embezzling money from his South Carolina Christian theme park. That evening in New York, he did have the backing of a 1,200-strong choir, belting out Amazing Grace behind him. But really, that 80,000-strong crowd in Flushing Meadow, Queens, were entranced by the voice of one man alone.
Source: Yahoo News
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