By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

His was the voice that I heard each night as I drifted off to sleep, though no one knew he ever entered my room.

I was probably a sophomore in high school when I first came across his voice at 10:30 p.m. each evening on the AM radio channel. Everyone knows that the unwritten commandment of the teen years is “Be thou cool.” It wasn't cool to think about religion, it wasn't cool to be suspected as being spiritual, and it certainly wasn't cool to listen to Billy Graham night after night on his “Hour of Decision” radio program (which was actually only half an hour long). Yet, something about his voice, his intensity, his passion drew me to tune in.

As far as teenage boys go, I was pretty typical. I was a good, solid “C” student in high school. Ascertaining correctly that I would never again make use of chemistry, algebra or geometry, I never cracked a book and studied only to barely pass crucial exams. I played football throughout high school, finally earning a starting berth as an offensive center, unsuccessfully tried out for the shot-put on the track and field team, and was one of the best fighters on the brand-new school karate team. I generally dated the same four girls throughout high school and mostly kept to a small circle of close friends, many of whom were in the Methodist youth group I attended on Sunday nights. I was so typical, I was elected as the “1969 Typical Teen” at Dobyns-Bennett High School.

Yet, there was a secret side to my life. The war in Vietnam was raging, the civil rights movement was in full bloom, and Woodstock was on the horizon. I had seen two Kennedys gunned down and a peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr., murdered. Two of my friends were killed in the war and my next-door neighbor, a smiling kid two years my senior, was horribly and permanently wounded in the sweltering jungles of that land so far away. Life beyond high school looked very scary ... terrifying, in fact. The secret side was that I was afraid of the future and I was looking for something to give life meaning.

It was my nightly ritual to turn on the radio and drift off to sleep listening to the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Temptations, the Monkees, the Rolling Stones and other favorite groups of the period. Music then, as now, could offer a temporary escape from the realities of life.

One night, while trying to find a station, I happened upon the Baptist preacher who was so familiar to all. I don't remember what he said but I do remember that his words were comforting somehow, full of hope and promise. In a world that was spinning madly out of control, Billy Graham seemed to have it all together. He became my new bedtime ritual, although I carefully guarded that fact. Listening to Billy Graham was not “cool” by any standard.

From Billy Graham, I learned the importance of the holy scriptures, not as an antique or an artifact, but as a living, powerful, Word. I learned to pray imitating the great evangelist's prayers and learned to see the simple, yet profound, truths proclaimed in the Bible. I learned that God was not a concept or a force but a Father who desired communication with his children.

I learned, from Billy Graham, that God was not, as Bette Midler says, “watching from a distance,” but was as close as a breath or a heartbeat. Above all, I learned from Billy Graham that, “God loved the world so much that he sent his very own Son that whoever would believe in Him should not die but would live forever.” Sometime later, as a 19-year-old Marine, that truth came home as I knelt and surrendered my life and entrusted my uncertain future to God.

Later, when I became the pastor of a Methodist church at 23 (no one that young should be allowed to be a pastor!), I bought a book of Graham sermons and preached them nearly verbatim to that first congregation. Later still, when prominent evangelists would fall into sin and shame, I could look to the now-aging evangelist and take heart that it was, indeed, possible to live a life of integrity.

This week, I discover that Christian History magazine has named Billy Graham as one of the “top ten influential Christians in the world during the 20th century.” I'm not at all surprised. I never met the evangelist, never went to a Billy Graham crusade, never walked the aisle at his invitation. But I was significantly influenced all the same.

It is probable that millions of people have experienced the reality of an encounter with God through the ministry of Billy Graham. When one thinks of Graham, one thinks of packed stadiums, of magnificent choirs, or crowded altars. But not me. I think of an AM radio station and a solitary kid, looking for answers, in a bedroom in Tennessee.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church in the south Atlanta area. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.comor at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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