Heaven, Hell & Judgment Day

Evangelist Billy Sunday's likeliest successor was hard at work last week rounding up souls in the South. With a final rally that overflowed the 36,000-capacity University of South Carolina football stadium, hawk-nosed, handsome Evangelist Billy Graham climaxed a three-week revival at Columbia, S.C. that had stirred a total of 7,000 people to make "decisions for Christ."*

As he had in Los Angeles (TIME, Nov. 14), Billy Graham worked hard for the Lord. Flailing his arms, crouching and pointing, coiling his big (6 ft. 2 in.) frame around the Bible he read from, or passionately wrestling with the microphone, he gave his audiences not a moment's emotional letup. But to oldtimers who remembered another generation of revivalists--Sam Jones, Gypsy Smith, Sunday himself--Graham and his entourage looked disturbingly like something out of Hollywood. His sharply cut double-breasted suits and high-decibel ties, like those of his Co-Evangelist Grady Wilson, 30, and black-haired, 26-year-old Platform Manager Cliff Barrows, were a smooth contrast to the rumpled, homespun approach of the old school.

"Puff Graham." Thirty-one-year-old Billy Graham has been preaching ever since he was converted 14 years ago at a revival meeting in his home town, Charlotte, N.C. He became a revivalist only five years ago, and his big break did not come until last fall in California. His Los Angeles audiences were no more than moderately large until his activities suddenly attracted the attention of William Randolph Hearst. At a meeting one evening, says Graham, he noticed "reporters and cameramen crawling all over the place. One of them told me they had had a memo from Mr. Hearst which said Tuff Graham,' and the two Hearst papers gave me great publicity. The others soon followed."

Graham calls himself "Dr." on the strength of two honorary degrees--a D.D. from King's College at New Castle, Del. and a D. Hum. from Fundamentalist, unaccredited Bob Jones University at Greenville, S.C. He also holds an A.B. from straitlaced Wheaton College, where he majored in Physical and Cultural Anthropology. Currently he is paid $8,500 a year as president of Northwestern Schools at Minneapolis, Minn., where he spends about a fifth of his time.

Graham was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1939 when, evangelizing at a small Baptist church in Palatka, Fla., he was told that he could not continue the meeting unless he became a Baptist. But his education and upbringing were Calvinist, and his preaching still shows it. Last week he treated his predominantly middle-aged audiences to first-hand glimpses of Heaven, Hell and Judgment Day.

Gates of Pearl. "Heaven is a literal place " he said. "Christians go there the moment they die, and there will be wonderful reunions as loved ones are recognized up there . . . What a glorious place it will be--with streets of gold, the gates of pearl . . . and the trees bearing a different kind of fruit every month. Think of that--you farmers--twelve crops a year!" His detailed picture of Heaven brought 145 listeners to their feet to pledge themselves to Christ.

But 350 signed up on the night he described Hell: "There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I believe . . . that there is literal fire in Hell, but if there is not literal fire in Hell, then the Bible is talking about something far worse when it speaks of the flames of Hell. What ever it is going to be is so horrible that it cannot be expressed in the language of man."

Evangelist Graham's is the oldtime religion, even though it comes through a public-address system. But he spruces it up with streamlined metaphors of his own. Said he of Judgment Day: "God is going to say, 'Start up the projector!' Because from the cradle to the grave God has had His television cameras on you. God has every sinful word on His recording. The only thing that can save your soul is to let Jesus Christ come into your heart. Are you ready?"

* In a 1923 revival, Billy Sunday garnered 25,000 converts at Columbia.

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