God in the Garden

"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of New York; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of New York." The words were the prophet Isaiah's--about Sodom and Gomorrah--but the voice was the Southern smoothness of Billy Graham coming over the 18 loudspeakers in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. The voice beat upon more than 18,000 people --seekers and servers of the Lord as well as the merely curious--and it etched itself upon the sliding ribbons of the tape recorders set up by radiomen. The evangelist of the mid-century set out last week on his toughest "crusade"--to bring salvation to New York's 8,000,000 sinners.

Campaign's Head. If the heart of the crusade is Madison Square Garden, its head is a seven-room suite in Times Square where 35 permanent staff members, 30 temporary employees and more than 200 volunteer clerical workers control a hectically complex organism. Automatic typewriters clack out letters appealing for prayer; duplicating machines roll out instructions and memorandums. On wall maps of New York, the U.S. and the world, red, blue and green pins and tapes spot churches (1,510 in Greater New York) and prayer groups supporting the campaign. Staff members: 1) channel the activities of 108,415 "prayer partners" in the U.S.; 2) keep tab on 158,817 prayer partners in 48 other countries; 3) ride herd on the "active" cooperating ministers, the "partial-supporting" ministers and the "undecided" ministers; 4) process applications for blocks of seats ("Lancaster, Pa. wants 2,000").

Long before the crusade began, the personal counseling staff signed up 4,000 applicants in eleven centers throughout the city for a nine-week course in Scripture, how to apply Bible lessons, how to handle people's problems. (Among the carefully drawn-up list of traits that disqualify applicants for counseling posts: "inability to communicate," argumentative or surly attitude, unkempt appearance, halitosis.) Of the applicants, 3,800 stuck the course to the end. 2,143 qualified as counselors, 350 were held in reserve. The counselors are Evangelist Graham's shock troops.

Campaign's Heart. New Yorkers who came to the Garden for the beginning of the crusade last week--many in buses chartered by their own church organizations--had several surprises. First was the strange sensation of walking into the Garden without a ticket and, even stranger, being directed to a seat by a polite, quiet-voiced usher who seemed to know the difference between a shepherd and a sheepherder. Second was the clear air of the Garden's interior without its usual blue haze of cigarette smoke; hot-dog stands throughout the building were cigaretteless for the duration, and strips of cardboard covered the signs that normally announce "BEER" (a checkroom was converted to a Bible shop). Third surprise was the crowd itself: quiet, well-dressed, all ages--there was nothing to distinguish it from the audience at the Radio City Music Hall.

And there was little to distinguish the atmosphere of what followed from that of a church. Choir Director Cliff Barrows led a 1,500-voice mixed choir in the old gospel hymn, Blessed Assurance, and then called upon the whole audience for All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name. A Scripture lesson was read, an offertory prayer said, the collection taken (in delicatessen buckets of waxed cardboard, quieter than wood or metal). Suddenly, there was Billy Graham.

His handsome hawk face tanned beneath his wavy blond hair, his silk suit in faultless press as he paced and prowled the platform, waving, folding and pounding a limp bound Bible, Graham was a new kind of evangelist, without the crowd-pleasing tricks of Billy Sunday or the trappings of Aimee Semple Macpherson. His evident sincerity, efficiency and unfaltering faith in his dependence on the power of God are far more important influences on the people who hear him than the things he says or the way he says them.

The Invitation. Those who had heard him before found Graham at the start of his New York campaign a shade more subdued than usual. He was passionate, particularly when he expounded the sinfulness of man, his long arms hammering in all directions at the crowd,, with the words: "You are guilty! You are guilty! You are guilty!" He was warmly appealing, as when he offered the Gospel as balm for mankind's illness, as the solution for spiritual and personal problems. But each time Graham achieved a high pitch of emotion he deliberately eased his listeners down again with a pulpit joke or a homely family anecdote--such as the time he bought his wife a bargain diamond which under the lens turned out to be flawed ("God looks at you too with his magnifying glass and sees your faults").

Most crucial and moving part of every evening's preaching is the "invitation"--when Graham calls for those moved to commit their lives to Christ to come forward to the platform. The moment is carefully planned: "When asked to bow your head and close eyes, do so," say the mimeographed instructions to counselors. "Then open your eyes and watch as unnoticeably as possible . . . Watch for those of your own sex and age who are responding, and accompany them to the front ... DO NOT

BLOCK THE AISLE AT ANY TIME." Graham's words now vary little, from evening to evening, and he delivers them hunched forward over the lectern--tensely, urgently, often a trifle hoarsely:

"I'm going to ask you to do something that I've seen people do all over the world. I've seen the Congressman, the governor, the film star. I've seen lords and ladies. I've seen professors. I'm going to ask every one of you tonight to say: 'Billy, I will give myself to Christ, as Saviour and Lord. I want to be born again. I want a new life in Christ. I want to be a new creation in Christ tonight. I'm willing to come to the Cross in repentance.' If you say that, I'm going to ask you to do a hard thing. Nothing easy. The appeal of Communism today partially is because it's a hard thing. They demand great things. Jesus demanded no less.

"I'm going to ask every one of you to get up out of your seat--over here, in the balcony, everywhere--and come, quietly and reverently. I don't want a person to leave the Garden, not one person. I'm not asking you to join a church tonight. I am not asking you to come to some particular denomination. I am asking you 'that need Christ, your heart is hungry for Christ.

"You may be a deacon or an elder, I don't know. You may be a Sunday-school teacher. You may be a choir member. You may be an usher, but you need Christ tonight. Young man, young woman, father, mother, whoever you are, come right now. Just get up out of your seat and come now. Quickly right now, from everywhere you come, from up in the balconies all around, up here, back there. All of you that are coming, come right now, we're going to wait. You come on now."

The Dialogues. They come. Streaming down from all over the Garden, old and young, poker-faced and moist-eyed, respectable and not so respectable--they come silently and slowly to stand before the fern-banked platform while Billy's voice goes on. Then, when it seems that all who will "decide for Christ" that night have come forward, Graham and the counselors direct them downstairs to the "Inquiry Tent" in the Garden's cellar. There Graham or another speaker joins them for a brief talk. Then the counselors take over.

The murmured dialogues between the "inquirers" and the counselors are timeless with man's hope and the need to help his fellow. One night last week a grey-haired, smartly dressed counselor said to the woman beside her: "Honey, you're on your way to heaven!" A fiftyish male counselor: "You're not giving up anything to believe in the Lord . . ." "I know," replied a sprightly man of 60: "He's giving things up to take me in!"

A ten-year-old Negro girl in a bright pink dress bowed her head with her counselor, a plain, smiling girl of not more than 16. Together they murmured the Ten Commandments, alternating verse by verse, their hands clasped in the childish position for prayer. When they had finished, they looked up and smiled at each other. "Congratulations," beamed the counselor.

A plump, plain girl with glasses sobbed silently. "I'm crying because my mother died," she explained. "This doesn't make me sad . . . it's just that I always think of her."

A dark girl with wavy black hair spoke intently in a French accent to a thin, pale girl. "You will be possessed . . . possessed with God. And when the Devil, he come to you, what you say?" "No?" the girl offered, shyly. "Right. You will say: 'Devil, you can't come in here, God is here!' It is my one interest in life, to tell people this."

More & More People. Counselors leave their evening's charges a kit that includes the first two lessons of a Bible course, Bible verses to be memorized, and a Gospel of John. They also fill out a card with particulars of the inquirer's religious background, to be forwarded to an appropriate minister. Within 48 hours the counselors are supposed to follow up with a letter, a phone call or a visit. In most campaigns counselors are expected to nurture their charges until the minister takes over, but in New York this practice cannot be followed punctiliously. "Just too many people," says Counseling Director Lome Sanney. "But we'll do our best."

Opening night of the crusade netted 704 decisions for Christ--a record for the start of any Graham campaign in the U.S. The first week brought 2,613 to the Inquiry Tent. "It takes us about two weeks to get established in a city," says Billy. "Then more and more people begin to come. And the thing that brings them isn't the preaching. It's the fact that all through the city more and more people are going to be hearing from people who have found God here in the Garden. And people want God. So they'll come."

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