6 Interesting Things You Didn't Know About Billy Graham..
His death was confirmed by Jeremy Blume, a spokesman for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
He was ordained a minister in 1939, aged 21.
Graham's public profile was raised in the United States when he held a two-month ministry in a giant tent in Los Angeles in 1949.
His global mission took him to all corners of the world including Nigeria and communist North Korea.
An early sermon outside the US took place before 12,000 worshippers in 1954 in Haringay Arena, London.
At first ambivalent about the civil rights movement in the US, he became more sympathetic in the 1950s, preaching to racially integrated congregations.
Mr. Graham spread his influence across the country and around the world through a combination of religious conviction, commanding stage presence and shrewd use of radio, television and advanced communication technologies.
A central achievement was his encouraging evangelical Protestants to regain the social influence they had once wielded, reversing a retreat from public life that had begun when their efforts to challenge evolution theory were defeated in the Scopes trial in 1925 .
But in his later years, Mr. Graham kept his distance from the evangelical political movement he had helped engender, refusing to endorse candidates and avoiding the volatile issues dear to religious conservatives.
“If I get on these other subjects, it divides the audience on an issue that is not the issue I’m promoting,” he said in an interview at his home in North Carolina in 2005 while preparing for his last American crusade, in New York City. “I’m just promoting the Gospel.”
In his younger days, Mr. Graham became a role model for aspiring evangelists, prompting countless young men to copy his cadences, his gestures and even the way he combed his wavy blond hair.
He was not without critics. Early in his career, some mainline Protestant leaders and theologians accused him of preaching a simplistic message of personal salvation that ignored the complexities of societal problems like racism and poverty.
Later, critics said he had shown political naïveté in maintaining a close public association with Nixon long after Nixon had been implicated in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in.
Mr. Graham’s image was tainted in 2002 with the release of audiotapes that Nixon had secretly recorded in the White House three decades earlier. The two men were heard agreeing that liberal Jews controlled the media and were responsible for pornography.
“A lot of the Jews are great friends of mine,” Mr. Graham said at one point on the tapes. “They swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country.”
Mr. Graham issued a written apology and met with Jewish leaders. In the interview in 2005, he said of the conversation with Nixon: “I didn’t remember it, I still don’t remember it, but it was there. I guess I was sort of caught up in the conversation somehow.”
In the last few decades, a new generation of evangelists, including Mr. Graham’s elder son, Franklin Graham, began developing their own followings. In November 1995, on his 77th birthday, Mr. Graham named Franklin to succeed him as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His daughter Anne Graham Lotz and his grandsons Will Graham and William Graham Tullian Tchividjian are also in ministry.
After he graduated from high school in 1936, Mr. Graham spent the summer selling Fuller brushes door to door before spending an unhappy semester at Bob Jones College, then an unaccredited, fundamentalist school in Cleveland, Tenn. (It is now Bob Jones University, in Greenville, S.C.) He then went to another unaccredited but less restrictive institution, the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College), near Tampa.
It was there, he wrote in his 1997 autobiography, “ Just as I Am ,” that he felt God calling him to the ministry.
The call came, he said, during a late-night walk on a golf course. “I got down on my knees at the edge of one of the greens,” he wrote. “Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. ‘O God,’ I sobbed, ‘if you want me to serve you, I will.’ ”
“All the surroundings stayed the same,” he continued. “No sign in the heavens. No voice from above. But in my spirit I knew I had been called to the ministry. And I knew my answer was yes.”
In a 60-year career, he is estimated to have preached to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Former presidents are among the many who have been paying tribute. President Trump called him "great" and a "very special man".
After becoming one of the best-known promoters of Christianity in the US, Graham embarked on his global mission with an event in London in 1954.
Graham reached millions of worshippers through TV - the first to use the medium to convey the Christian message on such a scale.
6 Interesting Things You Didn't Know About Billy Graham.
*Graham avoided the scandals - sexual and financial - which dogged some contemporary televangelists through the decades.
*A social conservative, he opposed same-sex marriage and abortion.
Graham preached his final revival meeting in New York in 2005 at the age of 86.
*As the end of his life approached, he said: "I know that soon my life will be over. I thank God for it, and for all He has given me in this life. But I look forward to Heaven."
Billy Graham was certain of where he was going after his time on the earth.
*Chaplain to presidents
Billy Graham was close to US presidents from Harry Truman, through Richard Nixon to Barack Obama.
He played golf with Gerald Ford and went on holiday with George H W Bush. The latter's son, George W Bush, credits him with restoring his faith in 2010.
Graham endorsed Nixon for the presidency but went on to criticise him over the Watergate scandal.
Mr Obama became the 12th president to meet Graham when he visited the preacher at his hilltop home in North Carolina in 2010.
*Mr. Graham had dealt with a number of illnesses in his last years, including prostate cancer, hydrocephalus (a buildup of fluid in the brain) and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
* His fiery messages became more measured with advancing years and controversy surrounding the techniques of mass evangelism.
Tributes
President Donald Trump called him a special man.He wrote: "The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man."
Former President Barack Obama said he was a guide to millions of Americans.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tweeted that he was an example to generations of modern Christians.
UK singer Sir Cliff Richard, who announced he had become Christian at a Billy Graham event in London in 1966, said the world had lost someone special.
"Dr Billy Graham was the most honourable and honest of men. His faith was obvious and I found him inspiring to be with," the pop singer said.
"His rallies were always moving and enlightening and he presented a 'hope' to many who didn't know that one existed."
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