Billy Graham Essays - Billy Graham, Free Essays, Term Papers

Billy Graham Essays - Billy Graham, Free Essays, Term Papers Billy Graham This is the Hour of Decision with Billy Graham, coming to you from Minneapolis Minnesota Billy Graham, has preached to more than 210 million people through a live audience, more than anyone else in history. Not only that, but Mr. Graham has reached millions more through live televison, video and film. This has led Billy to be on the Ten Most Admired Men in the World from the Gallup Poll since 1955 a total of thirty-nine times. This includes thirty-two consecutive more than any other individual in the world, placing him as the most popular American for about forty years. This essay is going to talk about Graham's personal life, and what kind of family he grew up in and im also going to talk in detail about how he became an evangelist, because I feel it is very important yet interesting. His accomplishments in the fifties are uncomparable, so I will be including a considerable amount of information concerning that topic. Finally I will be talking about his personal achievements, books written, and how he has been a companion to some of the American Presidents. William Franklin Graham Jr. was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 17, 1918. Graham was raised on a dairy farm by William Franklin (deceased 1962) and Morrow Coffey Graham (deceased 1981). In 1943 he married his wife Ruth McCue Bell, and had four children Virginia 1945, Anne Morrow 1948, Ruth Bell 1950, William Franklin, Jr. 1952, and Nelson Edman 1958. At age eighty, he keeps fit by swimming, playing with is nineteen grand children, and from aerobic walking, in the mountains of North Carolina, where he currently lives. (Billy Graham Best Sellers, 1999) Billy Graham told Time Magazine in one article about his life before becoming a preacher. I lived on a farm. The only difference was I had to get up early in the morning and go milk cows. When I came back from school that day, I had to milk those same cows. There were about twenty cows I had to milk. By hand. That was before they had those machines. I loved being a farmer. But God called me to this work that I'm in now. I knew it was God calling. I said, Yes. I will follow what God wants me to do. And so I went to two or three schools to get education. Then I became a pastor of a church. Then I went into evangelism. (Graham, 1999) Graham got his first lesson of the worlds way of the mysterious God, while he was a teen working on his father's farm. Graham's father who was a working man had a calling to go out and to become a preacher, but because of the farm, he never got the chance to do so. Instead he tried to live his own passion through his son, Billy Graham. He was raised by two strict Calvinist parents, who showed him that hard work and honesty was the way all people should live in Gods World. Although Graham rejected these views by his parents, he was still influenced spiritually from his upbringing. At age seventeen, Graham was in the position just like many other seventeen years old's he knew. Graham was popular in high school with the girls, played sports such as basketball and baseball, but was lost on what his future would have in store for him. During this time an evangelist named Mordecai Ham came to Charlotte, to have a three-month revival. He never took too much to the idea, because he did not want to be stuck in a long and boring job that would make him sorry he was ever born. When all of Graham's options for summer nights ran out, he decided to go to the revival, and to see what it was all about. All the time keeping in the back of his mind how he grew up in such a religious family, and how his father always wanted him to take up preaching. One night Ham was speaking out against sinners, and Graham felt that he was talking directly to him, although he was considered a good kid. So to escape the direct gaze of Ham, he joined the revival