Graham, the influential USA pastor who died aged 99 on Wednesday, became one of the first foreign religious leaders to visit the hermit state in 1992, when it was reeling from the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
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A Trammel Fork pastor for 40 years in the 19th and 20th century, Mordecai F. Ham Senior was the great-great-great grandson of Roger Williams.
McClendon: “Meeting him was like a divine appointment, the guy traded sections with me and you know, when something happens in your life, it’s usually for a objective”. He credits Dr. Billy Graham with changing his life.
“At five years old we started watching him and Billy Graham more or less instilled fear of God and Love of God”, said Sandra Clorie, who was a choir member during Graham’s 1978 crusades.
“We’re so fortunate to have that be apart of our history here at Trammel Fork Church here in Allen County”, said Paris.
Graham also has been credited with helping hasten the end of segregation in his native south by refusing to preach to segregated audiences after 1953. He says Graham’s son Franklin Graham will perform the eulogy.
“I turned and kind of faced him and he actually looked up at me and smiled just as I snapped the picture”, Sprinkle said. She is right. While there are flashes in the pan of charismatic leaders who briefly catch our attention, few have sustained success in unifying such a broad, diverse and unruly movement. More people heard him in his life than all the Apostles put together a thousand times over.
“He would throw the baseball with Franklin and me in the front yard of their home”, he said. At the heart of his vision was the simple belief that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the needed answer for a struggling world. He is known as “America’s Pastor”.
“I will live it, I will teach it, I will preach it, I will share it because he showed us, that we can”, she says.
He shared the gospel of Jesus Christ to almost 215 million people in live audiences in more than 185 countries and territories.
Calvin Mercer, a former city councilman who is a professor of religious studies at ECU, emphasized how important Graham was for evangelicals and for American Christianity.
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Billy Graham had a once in a generation gift for communicating the gospel with simplicity and passion. Over the next 57 years, Graham would hold more than 400 crusades on six continents, his final one being in 2005 when he was 86.
