Billy Story

After reading Franklin Graham's biography recently I thought I would also read his Dad's story titled Just As I Am. Though he wasn't perfect, I'm a big admirer of Billy. He is a good example of what someone sold out for Christ looks like. Anyway, I'm reading and I came across this story (p. 123-124):

It was October 1948 and we were in Augusta, Georgia about to conclude a fairly successful two-and-a-half-week citywide Campaign. Though I had recently taken on the presidency of Northwestern Schools, I was still on the road a great deal, speaking at YFC rallies, conferences, and evangelistic campaigns.

Our Augusta Campaign clearly was not having any impact on the people in the hotel. An automobile dealers' convention was in town that Saturday night, and around one in the morning a wild party erupted in the next room, awakening me from a deep sleep. Grady came to my room to complain.

"I can't sleep."

"I can't either, and tomorrow's a big day," I said to him. "I'm going over there to put a stop to this." I wrapped my bathrobe around me and went out and pounded on their door.

"Whad'ya want?" asked the drunken man who responded to my knocking.

"I want to speak to this crowd!"

I had intended just to tell my neighbors to stifle the noise, but I guess the preacher in me took over. I yelled for silence into the crowd of thirty or forty carousing man and women behind him. Startled they quieted down.

"I'm a minister of the Gospel," I began. Pin-drop silence. This was a bunch of South Carolina auto dealers who knew a Bible Belt evangelist when they saw one, even in his bathrobe.

"I'm holding a revival Campaign in this town. Some of you may have read about it in the paper."

Not a reasonable assumption.

"I daresay most of this crowd are church members. Some of you are deacons and elders. Maybe even Sunday school teachers. I know your pastors would be ashamed of you, because you're certainly not acting like Christians."

I got bolder: "I know God is ashamed of you."

"That's right, preacher," one of them piped up. "I'm a deacon." "And I'm a Sunday school teacher," a woman confessed.

Well, I stood there and preached an evangelist's sermon to the crowd. I don't know what happened to the party after I left, but there was no noise for the rest of the night.

That was not my usual pattern, of course, although I have endured more noisy hotel rooms than I care to remember. But sometimes an evangelist has to be bold, and sometimes he comes across as brash!


The image of Billy Graham in his bath robe breaking up a late night party makes me chuckle. May we all have the guts to confront our brothers and sisters in Christ when they forget that being a Christian means acting like one.

May Light increase!