Kathie Lee Gifford Gives the Best Billy Graham Tribute

Billy Graham Tribute
Screengrab Youtube @Today

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Billy Graham lived his life sharing the good news of Christ, and even in news of his death the gospel is being shared.

On a segment on NBC’s Today Show, Kathie Lee Gifford gave a clear and convincing explanation of Christ’s salvation to a national audience while sharing her stories about Billy Graham.

Gifford said her whole family came to faith in Jesus thanks to Billy Graham. Her mother and sister accepted Christ while watching a Billy Graham Crusade on television. Gifford said she came home to find her sister and mother on their knees and crying in front of the television. “And I asked ‘who died’ and it was, no, who was born.”

Gifford says she met God in a movie theatre watching a production by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association titled The Restless Ones.

Segment host Megyn Kelly asked Gifford about the “joy of belief” she shared with Graham.  

“What just happened for Billy happened for my husband, it happened for my mother, for my father, everyone who dies in Christ goes immediately into the arms of Christ for eternity,” Gifford responded. “That is the hope of the Christian faith… It gives us the peace that passes all understanding, and if there’s anything we need in this world now it’s peace.”

She told Kelly she was sharing the Gospel at 4:30 that morning on Twitter with a man who was struggling. Gifford told him his hope was in Christ. He asked her, “How can I know your Jesus?”

“People ask me why I’m so bold, about my faith. I say, ‘If you had the cure for cancer would you keep silent? I have the cure for the malignancy of the soul, and he has a name and it’s Jesus.’”  

Gifford said she feels privileged to share the good news, telling the national audience “and I’m not talking about a religion, I’m talking about a relationship with a living God. We don’t need more religion, we need more Jesus.”

And while she talked about the unique person that Billy Graham was and his love for God and the people around him, she reminded the viewers that God has his people everywhere who are talking about the salvation that is available through belief in Jesus Christ. She told them, “The good news is the doctor is in and he conquered death for all time for every one of us and it’s free.”

Gifford also told some humorous stories about Graham, who she had come to know well.  She said he appeared on her first Christmas special on CBS back in 1995 reading the Christmas story from Luke. The program was taped in her home. Before the filming began, Frank Gifford, Kathie Lee’s late husband, asked Billy if there was anything he’d like before they got started. Graham asked, “Anything?” Yes, he was told. “I’d like a Big Mac,” the evangelist responded.  

Frank Gifford went out to a neighborhood McDonalds and bought Big Macs for Graham and everyone on the set. Kathie Lee said, “He was human like everyone else.”

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Bob Ditmer
Bob Ditmer has worked in Christian media for more than 20 years including positions with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and Focus on the Family.

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