With the death of evangelist Billy Graham, the world turns to theologians and historians to measure his impact. But perhaps we should turn first to the everyday people who filled the stadiums, arenas and parks where he preached for a half-century or who heard him on simulcast — 215 million people in all, from his breakthrough crusade at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1957 to his last, in 2005, at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.
At those places and others, the faithful whose lives he touched could have most eloquently expressed why we mark Graham’s passing with gratitude and grief: He offered the promise and comfort of Jesus to the last person in the last row in the most distant venue on Earth.