Evangelism: Graham Meets Communism

Billy Graham has preached before more than 170,000 listeners at a time (in Rio de Janeiro). But last week he described a rally of fewer than 3,000 as “the greatest meeting of my entire ministry.” The gathering took place in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, and was the high point of Billy’s first preaching venture in a Communist country.

Graham had long tried to crash the Iron Curtain. In 1959, he undertook a five-day visit to Moscow but, as he tells it, “I was not allowed to preach because they said I didn’t have a preaching visa.” Last summer Poland denied him an entry visa after he had made tentative plans for crusades in Warsaw and Cracow. Last fall, while attending an evangelical congress in West Berlin, Graham accepted a preaching invitation from Yugoslavia’s Baptist Federation. Surprisingly, the Tito Red regime did not object.

In Zagreb, headquarters for his crusade, he was greeted by church officials with gifts of bread and salt—a Yugoslav symbol of welcome—and quickly became known as “Gospodin Billy (Mister Billy).” In pouring rain, at a soccer field owned by a local Roman Catholic seminary (the government barred Graham from conducting his crusade in a public stadium), he spoke through a translator to a huddled crowd that represented more than one-tenth of Yugoslavia’s 20,000 Protestants. A sodden banner proclaimed in Serbo-Croatian, “Jesus said: I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Graham skirted politics on his trip, announcing “I am not a representative of any government. I represent the Kingdom of God.” But he made several pointed references to the problem of believers living in “difficult” situations. “Christians will always suffer persecution,” he said, “but every tear we shed here adds to our glory in heaven.”

When Graham asked those who wished to make a “decision for Christ” to raise their hands, 500 timid hands rose. Billy, who hopes eventually to mount crusades in Poland and Czechoslovakia, was unperturbed. Said he: “Wherever the Gospel is preached, whether to one person, one thousand, or one million, there is success.”