On Feb. 21, 2018, world-renown evangelist Billy Graham took his last breath. Counting the nine months he lived his mother’s womb, God gave Graham 100 years of life on this side of eternity.
Yesterday, on the four year anniversary of Graham’s death, TBN featured Graham’s last recorded message, titled “Are You Ready to Die?”, with footage of him preaching at his crusades throughout his lifetime.
Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, shared, “Four years ago this Monday, my father went home to Heaven. Before he died, his heart burned with the desire to share the Gospel one last time.”
“The moment you read in the paper that Billy Graham is dead, you’ll know that he is more alive than he’s ever been before and I’m in heaven,” Graham could be heard saying in a clip from a previous sermon.
Before the video got to the evangelist’s last sermon, it showed clips of Graham’s funeral procession and the prisoners who built the casket he was buried in. “It’s just something for that man to even want me to build his casket,” one prisoner told the camera.
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Sitting in the fireside room of his North Carolina, mountaintop home, Graham shared that he never thought he’d become friends with so many people from all over the world. God’s plan was to have his devout servant preach and share the gospel with large audiences, something Graham said he had no idea was the case. “God has done this,” he said.
“Of all the things that I have seen and heard, there’s only one message that can change people’s lives and hearts,” Graham said in his last recorded message. “I want to tell people the meaning of the cross. Not the cross that hangs on the wall or around someone’s neck. But the real cross of Christ that’s scarred and bloodstained.”
Knowing he was near his physical death, Graham told those who would listen to his last message that he wanted to leave them with the truth.
Graham said that America is in great need of a spiritual awakening while sharing that he has wept numerous times while traveling from city to city, because he’s witnessed how far people have wandered from God. “People don’t want to hear that they’re sinners—to too many people it’s an offense. The cross is offensive because it directly confronts the evils which dominate so much of this world.”
