c. 2005 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ New York was ready to say goodbye to Billy Graham. His three-day crusade was billed as his last in the city and Graham suggested in interviews it could be his last anywhere.

On Sunday (June 26), the Rev. A.R. Bernard, the chair of the New York crusade committee, told a crowd of 90,000 on the event’s last day, “We are celebrating the end of 60 years of ministry with Dr. Graham.”

But Graham, 86, surprised everyone with a statement that appeared to put his retirement indefinitely on hold. “This is not the end,” Graham said moments before launching into his Sunday sermon. “They may think so, but I don’t.”

Even Graham’s team doesn’t know where the sawdust trail will end. Publicist A. Larry Ross said in a pre-crusade interview that Graham will defer a decision about a November revival in London until the elderly preacher sees “how much gas he has in the tank.” After 24 years of fielding the question “Where will it end?” Ross has given up trying to come up with an answer.

“For years he has said that he won’t retire until God retires him,” said Ross. “One of these crusades will be his last.”

Art Bailey has been setting up massive crusades for Graham for 20 years.

“Our internal joke is that we’ve been doing the last crusade for 10 years,” he said.

Graham, who will turn 87 this year, has long been struggling with the challenges of age. Last year he broke his hip twice. He suffers from Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer and has undergone three surgeries for hydrocephalus, or water on the brain.

Despite this, he appeared vibrant and relaxed in the pulpit. He welcomed former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton, as well as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Saturday night.

Graham gave a sermon on each of three days, despite heat that became downright punishing, touching on his trademark themes of personal salvation and the need to be born again.

His audience in New York, estimated at 230,000 over three days, gave him a standing ovation at every appearance. The crowd represented a culturally diverse New York, with sermons translated into 20 languages. The venue was Flushing Meadows Park, in the heart of a Queens neighborhood where more than 100 languages are spoken. During his messages every night, Graham said he was thankful for the multi-cultural crowd and asked audience members to try and make a friend of someone with a different ethnic background.

New York has historically turned out record crowds for Graham. In 1991, more than a quarter of a million people turned up in Central Park to hear him preach, his largest single audience in North America. Bailey, who organized that event, said he thought at the time it was a goodbye to the Big Apple. But Graham returned in force this summer, and spoke about returning yet again in the future.

“There are no plans for that,” Bailey said. “But God is sovereign. There were no plans to extend the 1957 crusade.”

Graham’s 1957 crusade in New York was slated to last six weeks at Madison Square Garden but was eventually extended three times. During the 96 nights of that marathon summer Graham preached to more than 2 million people, catalogued more than 50,000 “decisions for Christ” and lost more than 20 pounds.

Whether Sunday in Flushing Meadows was Graham’s last crusade, the crowd listened to his words with particular attention. He returned to a topic that has been a favorite over the years _ the end of the world.

“You’ve come to this crusade expecting to live many more years,” Graham said. “This may be the last opportunity for you. This is the moment.”

That message may go a long way in explaining his 10 years of goodbyes. For Graham, every crusade is the last crusade. Preparing for the end of the world has been a part of his message since his earliest sermons under the shadow of the Cold War. In 1950 he told the Georgia legislature that that he never expected his young daughters to reach high school.

On this theme, he managed in New York to work in a joke about his failing health. “If I die right now _ and that’s a possibility _ I’d go straight to heaven and see Jesus,” he said.

William Martin was in the audience, working on an additional four chapters of his Graham biography, “A Prophet With Honor,” which first came out in 1991. He has thought his work was finished several times. “I have attended some of those last crusades,” he said.

But Martin believes that New York would make a fitting final chapter. The three early successes that made Graham a household name in the 1950s were in Los Angeles, London and New York. “It’s almost a storybook way to end up a career, to visit the three cities that have been meaningful to his crusade,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if he went to London,” Martin said, referring to the much anticipated, but not yet finalized, crusade. “I would be surprised if he went to another crusade in the U.S. That would be surprising, and it would be an anticlimax.”

London, meanwhile, is waiting expectantly to hear whether Graham will hold his next “last crusade” in their city. A London pastor was on the platform when Graham gave his sermon on Sunday.

“Our heart is very much to have Billy Graham,” said Coreen Williams of London’s Evangelical Alliance, which represents more than a million British evangelicals. “We’ve put dates in the diary _ we’re expecting him.”

If so, the Graham crew will likely swing into action. The Graham who appeared on Larry King seemed frail and said that London was a “small possibility.” But the Graham who appeared in front of almost a quarter of a million people in Flushing Meadows seemed filled with the spirit, almost unstoppable.

“I was asked in an interview if this is the last crusade. I said it probably is _ in New York!” said a smiling Graham, to laughter and applause. “But I also said, `I never say never.”’

Graham called his two close friends to the podium, Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea. The two have shared the stage with him for the last 60 years. George Beverly Shea, who always sings just before Graham preaches, had this to say about the future.

“I was 37 when I went with Mr. Graham. Now I’m 96,” said Shea with a perfect deadpan. “That means I’m almost through it.”

KRE/JL END ANTHONY

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos of Graham’s New York crusade as well as historic shots of his 1957 crusade there.