He had an ability to reach across denominational lines and \u2018speak to the common believing heart.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\nYou know the miraculous life of Louis Zamperini, whose story was told in Laura Hillenbrand\u2019s epic, lovely book, \u201cUnbroken.\u201d Louis was the delinquent, knockabout son of Italian immigrants in Torrance, Calif., who went on to run for America in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, then joined the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor. He crashed in the Pacific, drifted in a raft on open sea for 47 days, came near death\u2014shark attacks, storms, strafing by Japanese bombers\u2014and survived, only to be captured by enemy troops. He spent two years in Japanese prison camps\u2014beaten, tortured, brutalized as much as a person can be and still live.<\/p>\n
He came back a hero, shocked to be alive. But his life went from rise to descent\u2014rage, alcoholism, destruction. He couldn\u2019t focus enough to make a living, couldn\u2019t stop the downhill slide. His wife, Cynthia, announced she was leaving. One day a neighbor told them of something going on in town, in L.A. An evangelist named Billy Graham had set up a tent and invited the public. Cynthia grabbed at the straw, but Louie refused. He wasn\u2019t going to watch some con man screaming. Cynthia argued for days and finally fibbed. Billy Graham, she said, talks a lot about science. Louie liked science. So he went, grudgingly, and they sat in the back. The following quotes are from \u201cUnbroken.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what Billy Graham looked like:<\/em> \u201cHis remarkably tall blond hair fluttered on the summit of a remarkably tall head, which in turn topped a remarkably tall body. He had a direct gaze\u201d and \u201ca southern sway in his voice.\u201d Studio chiefs saw a leading man and offered him a movie contract. Graham laughed and said he wouldn\u2019t do it for a million a month. He was 31 and had been traveling the world for years.<\/p>\nThis is what he hid: <\/em>He was wearing out. \u201cFor many hours a day, seven days a week, he preached to vast throngs, and each sermon was a workout, delivered in a booming voice, punctuated with broad gestures of the hands, arms, body. He got up as early as five, and he stayed in the tent late into the night, counseling troubled souls.\u201d His weight dropped and there were circles under his eyes. \u201cAt times he felt that if he stopped moving his legs would buckle, so he took to pacing his pulpit to keep himself from keeling over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It cost him to be Billy Graham. He wanted to end his crusades, but their success convinced him \u201cProvidence had other wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what Billy Graham was not like:<\/em> Elmer Gantry. Louie expected \u201cthe sort of frothy, holy-rolling charlatan that he\u2019d seen preaching near Torrance when he was a boy. What he saw instead was a brisk, neatly groomed man two years younger than himself.\u201d This man was . . . serious. \u201cHe asked his listeners to open their Bibles to the eighth chapter of John. \u201d<\/p>\nThis is what Billy Graham said:<\/em> \u201cHere tonight, there\u2019s a drowning man, a drowning woman . . . a drowning boy, a drowning girl that is lost in the sea of life.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
He spoke of the Pharisees surrounding Jesus that day in the temple and presenting the woman taken in adultery. Moses in the law commanded us, they said, that she should be stoned. What say you? Jesus stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground, as if he hadn\u2019t heard. They pressed; he wrote. He lifted himself and said: \u201cLet him who is without sin cast the first stone.\u201d They were convicted by their own conscience and left. Jesus, alone with the woman, asked: \u201cHas no one condemned thee?\u201d No man, she said. He said, \u201cNeither do I condemn thee. Go now and sin no more.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what was Jesus writing on the ground? Graham suggested Christ was enacting the writing of the facts of our individual lives: \u201cGod takes down your life from the time you were born to the time you die.\u201d He will see the truth. \u201cYou\u2019re going to say, \u2018Lord, I wasn\u2019t such a bad fellow.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Louie felt something tighten. He felt \u201ca lurking, nameless uneasiness,\u201d like \u201cthe shudder of sharks rasping their backs along the bottom of the raft.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so began his conversion. He went on to a life of greatness, helping boys as lost as he\u2019d once been.<\/p>\n
That is the importance of Billy Graham. We talk about the \u201cfriend of presidents\u201d who \u201cmoved among the powerful,\u201d but he was a man who wanted to help you save your soul whoever you were, in whatever circumstance. And there would have been millions.<\/p>\n