Billy Graham, evangelist pastor and counselor to presidents, dead at age 99

CLOSE Rev. Billy Graham died at the age of 99. He was known for his charisma, but said "I despise all this attention on me...I'm not trying to bring people to myself, but I know that God has sent me out as a warrior." USA TODAY

The Rev. Billy Graham speaks to the crowd on a rainy night on October 7, 2004, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo. (Photo: Larry W. Smith, Getty Images)

The world's best-known evangelist, the Rev. Billy Graham, died Wednesday. He was 99.

From the gangly 16-year-old baseball-loving teen who found Christ at a tent revival, Graham went on to become an international media darling, a preacher to a dozen presidents and the voice of solace in times of national heartbreak. He was America's pastor.

Graham retired to his mountain home in Montreat, N.C., in 2005 after nearly six decades on the road calling people to Christ at 417 all-out preaching and musical events from Miami to Moscow. His final New York City crusade in 2005 was sponsored by 1,400 regional churches from 82 denominations. In recent years, he was plagued by various ailments, including cancer and pnemonia.

He took his Bible to the ends of the Earth in preaching tours he called "crusades." Presidents called on Graham in their dark hours, and uncounted millions say he showed them the light.

"The GREAT Billy Graham is dead," President Trump tweeted Wednesday. "There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man."

The world's best-known evangelist, the Rev. Billy Graham, has died. He was 99. He was photographed on the porch of his mountaintop cabin in Montreat, N.C., on May 12, 2005. (Photo: ROBERT DEUTSCH, USA TODAY)

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, noting Graham's humble beginnings, said that "because he yielded himself to God, he was used to accomplish the extraordinary — forever impacting the lives of countless people."

On the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance following the 9/11 attacks, Graham spoke of the "mystery of iniquity and evil," of "the lesson of our need for each other" and, ultimately, of hope.

"He was so real, he made Christianity come true," said Susan Harding, an anthropologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz. "He was homespun, historical and newsworthy all at once. He could span the times from Christ to today, from the globe to you, all in one sentence."

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Grant Wacker, a Duke University professor of Christian history, says Graham represented "what most decent churchgoing people thought and ought to think."

His reputation was untouched by sex or financial scandals. When anti-Semitic comments came to light as transcripts of conversations with Richard Nixon surfaced, Graham was promptly and deeply apologetic.

He never built a megachurch, set up a relief agency, launched a political lobby or ran for office. Yet he redefined American Protestant life by popularizing Christianity's core message — Christ died for your sins — downplaying denominational details and proclaiming the joys found in faith.

Graham was, however, drawn to power. Eventually, he met, prayed with, comforted and joked with 12 U.S. presidents. He found a fine balance that allowed him to become America's pastor, Democrat or Republican. North or South.

President Obama meets with Rev. Billy Graham at the evangelist's home, along with Graham's son and successor Rev. Franklin Graham, right. (Photo: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)

When President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky came to light, Graham called for forgiveness. Clinton told Peter Boyer of The New Yorker, "He took sin seriously. But he took redemption seriously. And it was incredibly powerful the way he did it."

Former president George W. Bush has said it was a conversation with Graham that turned him from his drinking ways when he was young.

"I've never called him on a specific issue, but his influence is bigger than a specific issue, as far as I'm concerned. He warms your soul," Bush told an ABC 20/20 special on the preacher and politics.

Graham emphasized the joy to be found in belief, in contrast to evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who routinely issued glowering condemnations of politicians or blamed natural disasters on modern culture. However, Graham did take an uncharacteristically political stand before the 2012 presidential election. He authorized full-page ads in major newspapers in October urging people to vote for politicians who opposed same-sex marriage on "biblical principles."

He brought to the microphone a "corny but effective humor," Wacker says, which made him a convivial talk-show guest. Graham logged more than 50 radio or television interviews with Larry King alone. YouTube has a tape of Woody Allen interviewing the evangelist, who draws almost as many laughs as the caustic, agnostic comedian.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association he founded, now led by his son, Franklin, used every communications innovation possible to carry the Gospel to any willing heart on Earth. More than 214 million people in 195 cities and territories heard God's call in Graham's voice and witnessed him deliver the Gospel in person or by satellite links. His projects included founding Christianity Today magazine in 1956 and writing more than 30 books.

High among his numerous honors: The Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Billy and his beloved wife, Ruth, in 1996, the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to him in 1983 and the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion in 1982. He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"Fundamentalists saw him as excessively liberal, and liberals saw him as too literalist in talking about sin and salvation. His wonderful balance between them is critical to his legacy," says John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, a sister publication of Christianity Today magazine.

Graham's last decades were slowed by illness and injury. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1989, felled by broken bones, bouts of hydrocephalus and rounds of pneumonia.

Age, illness and bone-breaking falls left him struggling to deliver 20-minute sermons.

Graham's last crusade, in June 2005 in New York City, drew 242,000 people to Flushing Meadows; 8,786 made a new commitment to Christ and thousands more renewed or rejoiced in their faith.

Then he retired to his Montreat, N.C., mountaintop log cabin home where his five children grew up mostly without their traveling father to spend his days with Ruth. They shared Bible study, devotions and an endless recycling of the movie musicals she loved to watch. Those were bittersweet days, with Ruth bedridden and Billy relying on a walker. Their frequent prayer was, "Help me, Lord."

At her funeral in June 2007, Graham called Ruth the finest Christian he ever knew.

Though Graham's shoes could likely never be filled, his son, Franklin, has taken over in some aspects — leading The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and becoming a confidant of President Trump, including speaking at his inauguration.

Billy Graham delivers a sermon at age 27. (Photo: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)

But Franklin's message has swayed from his father's, leaving a mixed legacy for the Graham name.

Franklin has mocked both Islam and LGBT rights. He uses his following on social media to raise funds for "persecuted Christians," boycotts businesses that use gay couples in advertisements and blasts the separation of church and state as the godless successor to Cold War communism.

But his father's words for years offered peace and perspective.

Billy Graham lived through the explosion of religious diversity in America, the rise of the human potential movement and the trend to personalized spirituality. He also lived to see many tire of lonely seeking or a high-minded hopscotch from church to church, religion to religion.

Yet he remained steadfast in his response. In 1996, when he and Ruth were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, he once more shared his faith in God with some of the most powerful men on Earth:

"As Ruth and I receive this award, we know that some day we will lay it at the feet of the one we seek to serve."

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The Rev. Billy Graham, the charismatic North Carolina pastor who took his evangelizing crusades around the country and the globe, died on Wednesday morning, according to officials of his organization. He was 99.

Graham achieved a reach unlike any other evangelist, serving as a counselor or minister to a dozen U.S. presidents. He preached to an estimated 215 million people in 185 countries around the world during his life, and his message reached millions more as he maintained a near-constant presence on radio, television and the internet.

Graham also wrote more than two dozen books, including his 1997 memoir, "Just as I Am," which was a New York Times best-seller.

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Graham was a steady presence among top leaders in this country, providing prayer and personal advice to every president starting with Harry S. Truman. In recent years, he took on a reduced role, but still earned the praise of President Donald Trump, who in a tweet after the reverend's death called him the "GREAT Billy Graham" and wrote: "There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man."

Graham died just before 8 a.m. at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, surrounded by family, according to a spokesman for Samaritan's Purse, the nondenominational evangelical Christian organization headed by Graham's son Franklin.

His following was undeniable: The longtime evangelist appeared on Gallup’s list of the most admired men and women 60 times since 1955 — every year the research company asked the question.

Born William Franklin Graham on Nov. 7, 1918, “America’s pastor” came from modest means and grew up on a dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina. He found his spiritual path at 16, charmed by the traveling minister and temperance movement leader Mordecai Ham. Graham later moved to Florida and was ordained there in 1939.

He met his future wife, Ruth McCue Bell, while they attended Wheaton College, and they married in 1943. Together they would raise five children, and she would become a trusted adviser.

“When it comes to spiritual things, my wife has had the greatest influence on my ministry,” Graham said of Bell, who died in June 2007.

Billy Graham addresses the crowd in 1955. Keystone / Getty Images

Graham was known for his sense of humor and for maintaining a nonpartisan Christian view, which earned him some criticism. But his dedication to ministry and unity was most evident in his refusal to pay heed to segregation policies, forcing churches to integrate for his services.

Martin Luther King Jr. counted Graham as a close friend and ally, once remarking, “Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.”

Photos - Billy Graham: The evangelist pastor's life

Still, Graham's reputation was not without controversy. It was rumored in the 1990s that he had been caught on tape agreeing with anti-Semitic comments made by then-President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Graham vehemently denied that he had, until the tapes were made public in 2002.

The Jewish ''stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain,'' Graham said, according to a 2002 New York Times article.

Graham, 83 at the time, apologized for the remarks.

As Graham aged, his son Franklin took over his ministries, while Graham returned to a quiet life in North Carolina — not far from the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.

"My home is in Heaven," Graham habitually said. "I'm just traveling through this world."

Condolences poured in in the hours after Graham's death, with Vice President Mike Pence calling him one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century.

"Billy Graham's ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his matchless voice changed the lives of millions," the vice president said in a statement.

Graham at his home in the mountains of Montreat, North Carolina, on July 25, 2006. Charles Ommanney / Getty Images

Former President Barack Obama tweeted that Graham was a "humble servant who prayed for so many — and who, with wisdom and grace, gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans."

Televangelist Joel Osteen remembered Graham as a "hero" and tweeted, "Next to my own father, Reverend Graham was the most humble and gracious man I ever knew."

And the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, recalled the influence Graham had on his household in the 1950s and 1960s.

"There was no question that the Dolans were a Catholic family, firm in our faith, but in our household there was always respect and admiration for Billy Graham and the work he was doing to bring people to God," Dolan said in a statement.

"Whether it was one of his famous Crusades, radio programs, television specials, or meeting and counseling the presidents, Billy Graham seemed to be everywhere, always with the same message: Jesus is your Savior, and wants you to be happy with Him forever."

Graham is survived by five children and multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“If I get on these other subjects, it divides the audience on an issue that is not the issue I’m promoting,” he said in an interview at his home in North Carolina in 2005 while preparing for his last American crusade, in New York City. “I’m just promoting the Gospel.”

A Mass Media Megaphone

Mr. Graham took the role of evangelist to a new level, lifting it from the sawdust floors of canvas tents in small-town America to the podiums of packed stadiums in the world’s major cities. He wrote some 30 books and was among the first to use new communication technologies for religious purposes. During his “global crusade” from Puerto Rico in 1995, his sermons were translated simultaneously into 48 languages and transmitted to 185 countries by satellite.

Mr. Graham’s standing as a religious leader was unusual: Unlike the pope or the Dalai Lama, he spoke for neither a particular church (though he was a Southern Baptist) nor a particular people.

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At times, he seemed to fill the role of national clergyman. He read from Scripture at President Richard M. Nixon’s funeral in California in 1994, offered prayers at a service in the National Cathedral for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and, despite his failing health, traveled to New Orleans in 2006 to preach to survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

His reach was global, and he was welcomed even by repressive leaders like Kim Il-sung of North Korea, who invited him to preach in Pyongyang’s officially sanctioned churches.

In his younger days, Mr. Graham became a role model for aspiring evangelists, prompting countless young men to copy his cadences, his gestures and even the way he combed his wavy blond hair.

He was not without critics. Early in his career, some mainline Protestant leaders and theologians accused him of preaching a simplistic message of personal salvation that ignored the complexities of societal problems like racism and poverty. Later, critics said he had shown political naïveté in maintaining a close public association with Nixon long after Nixon had been implicated in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in.

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Mr. Graham’s image was tainted in 2002 with the release of audiotapes that Nixon had secretly recorded in the White House three decades earlier. The two men were heard agreeing that liberal Jews controlled the media and were responsible for pornography.

“A lot of the Jews are great friends of mine,” Mr. Graham said at one point on the tapes. “They swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country.”

Mr. Graham issued a written apology and met with Jewish leaders. In the interview in 2005, he said of the conversation with Nixon: “I didn’t remember it, I still don’t remember it, but it was there. I guess I was sort of caught up in the conversation somehow.”

In the last few decades, a new generation of evangelists, including Mr. Graham’s elder son, Franklin Graham, began developing their own followings. In November 1995, on his 77th birthday, Mr. Graham named Franklin to succeed him as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His daughter Anne Graham Lotz and his grandsons Will Graham and William Graham Tullian Tchividjian are also in ministry.

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Franklin Graham has drawn criticism since the Sept. 11 attacks for denigrating Islam. His father, however, retained the respect of vast numbers of Americans, enough to earn him dozens of appearances on Gallup’s annual list of the world’s 10 most admired men and women.

Repent and Be Born Again

With a warm, courtly manner that was readily apparent both to stadium crowds and to those who met him face to face, Mr. Graham could be a riveting presence. At 6-foot-2, with a handsomely rugged profile fit for Hollywood westerns, he would hold his Bible aloft and declare that Scripture offered “the answer to every human longing.”

Mr. Graham drew his essential message from the mainstream of evangelical Protestant belief. Repent of your sins, he told his listeners, accept Jesus as your Savior and be born again. In a typical exhortation, he declared: “Are you frustrated, bewildered, dejected, breaking under the strains of life? Then listen for a moment to me: Say yes to the Savior tonight, and in a moment you will know such comfort as you have never known. It comes to you quickly, as swiftly as I snap my fingers, just like that.”

Mr. Graham always closed by asking his listeners to “come forward” and commit to a life of Christian faith. When they did so, his well-oiled organization would match new believers with nearby churches. Many thousands of people say they were first brought to church by a Billy Graham crusade.

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At the dedication of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C., in June 2007, former President Bill Clinton said of Mr. Graham, “When he prays with you in the Oval Office or upstairs in the White House, you feel like he is praying for you, not the president.”

Mr. Graham was by no means unique in American history as a popular evangelist. George Whitefield in the mid-18th century, Charles G. Finney and Dwight L. Moody in the 19th century, and Billy Sunday at the turn of the 20th were all capable of drawing vast crowds.

But none of them combined the ambition, the talent for organization and the reach of Mr. Graham, who had the advantages of jet travel and electronic media to convey his message. In 2007, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association estimated that he had preached the Gospel to more than 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories since beginning his crusades in October 1947 in Grand Rapids, Mich. He reached hundreds of millions more on television, through video and in film.

“This is not mass evangelism,” Mr. Graham liked to say, “but personal evangelism on a mass scale.”

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Ball-Playing Dreams

William Franklin Graham Jr. — Billy Frank to his family and friends as a boy — was born near Charlotte on Nov. 7, 1918, the first of four children of William Franklin Graham and Morrow Coffey Graham. He was descended on both sides from pre-Revolution Scottish settlers, and both his grandfathers were Confederate soldiers.

Though the Grahams were Reformed Presbyterians, and though his father insisted on daily readings of the Bible, Billy Frank was an unenthusiastic Christian. He was more interested in reading history, playing baseball and dreaming of becoming a professional ballplayer. His worldliness, his father thought, was mischievous and devilish.

It was the Rev. Mordecai Ham, an itinerant preacher from Kentucky, who was credited with “saving” Billy Graham, in the autumn of 1934, when Billy was 16. After attending Mr. Ham’s revival sessions on a Charlotte street corner several nights in a row, Billy walked up to Mr. Ham to make a “decision for Christ.”

“I can’t say that I felt anything spectacular,” Mr. Graham recalled years later. “I felt very little emotion. I shed no tears. In fact, when I saw others had tears in their eyes, I felt like a hypocrite, and this disturbed me a little. I’m sure I had a tremendous sense of conviction: The Lord did speak to me about certain things in my life, I’m certain of that. But I can’t remember what they were.”

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Returning home with a friend that night, Mr. Graham said, he thought: “Now I’ve gotten saved. Now whatever I do can’t unsave me. Even if I killed somebody, I can’t ever be unsaved now.”

After he graduated from high school in 1936, Mr. Graham spent the summer selling Fuller brushes door to door before spending an unhappy semester at Bob Jones College, then an unaccredited, fundamentalist school in Cleveland, Tenn. (It is now Bob Jones University, in Greenville, S.C.) He then went to another unaccredited but less restrictive institution, the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College), near Tampa.

It was there, he wrote in his 1997 autobiography, “Just as I Am,” that he felt God calling him to the ministry. The call came, he said, during a late-night walk on a golf course. “I got down on my knees at the edge of one of the greens,” he wrote. “Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. ‘O God,’ I sobbed, ‘if you want me to serve you, I will.’ ”

“All the surroundings stayed the same,” he continued. “No sign in the heavens. No voice from above. But in my spirit I knew I had been called to the ministry. And I knew my answer was yes.”

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A Wife, Then a Pulpit

After graduating from the Bible Institute, Mr. Graham went to Wheaton College in Illinois, among the nation’s most respected evangelical colleges. At Wheaton, from which he received a degree in anthropology in 1943, he met Ruth McCue Bell, a fellow student whose father was Dr. L. Nelson Bell, a prominent Presbyterian missionary surgeon who had spent many years in China.

Soon after marrying Ms. Bell in 1943, Mr. Graham accepted the pulpit of the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Ill., a Chicago suburb. (It later changed its name to the Village Church.) He imbued his sermons with the brand of interdenominational appeal that was to be his hallmark.

It was also in 1943 that he was invited to take over “Songs in the Night,” a Sunday hour of sermonizing and gospel singing broadcast by a Chicago radio station. The program introduced him to electronic evangelism. Its principal singer, the baritone George Beverly Shea, who died in 2013, would earn fame as a member of the “Billy Graham team.”

In the mid-1940s, Mr. Graham became the chief preacher for the Youth for Christ rallies organized by the Rev. Torrey M. Johnson, a radio evangelist, and George W. Wilson, the owner of a religious bookstore in Minneapolis and a lay leader of the First Baptist Church there. With them, he established the Graham Youth for Christ, which found moderate success holding “crusades” across North America and in Britain.

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Mr. Graham’s fortunes took a career-building turn in 1949, thanks in no small measure to the power of the Hearst press. He was holding a three-week “mammoth tent crusade” in downtown Los Angeles inside a 6,000-seat “canvas cathedral” pitched on a vacant lot. The newspaper ads proclaimed him “America’s sensational young evangelist.” But what really caught the attention of the aged newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst was that Mr. Graham was preaching a fiery brand of anti-Communism.

From his retreat in San Simeon, Calif., Mr. Hearst is said to have issued a terse directive: “Puff Graham.”

“The Hearst newspapers gave me enormous publicity, and the others soon followed,” Mr. Graham said years later. “Suddenly, what a clergyman was saying was in the headlines everywhere, and so was the box score of commitments to Christ each night.” Time, Newsweek and Life magazines followed suit.

Flocking to his ‘Crusades’

Mr. Graham began taking his “Crusade for Christ” on the road. In 1957, he drew more than two million people to a series of rallies, extended to 16 weeks, at Madison Square Garden in New York. The crusades became international: One, in West Germany, was televised live in 10 other European countries. In 1966, he preached to nearly one million people in London.

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As Mr. Graham’s popularity grew, so did his stature with Christian critics who had dismissed his interpretation of Scripture as overly literal. He told his audiences, for example, that heaven was a physical place, though not necessarily in this solar system.

Early on, he abandoned the practice, common among Southern fundamentalists, of speaking only before racially segregated audiences. He refused to “preach Jim Crow,” as he put it, and in the turbulent 1960s he made several “visits of racial conciliation” to the South.

Mr. Graham pledged to local church sponsors that all donations would be used for crusade expenses, with any excess going to his Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His own compensation, he said, would be limited to his expenses plus “the salary of a fairly well-paid local minister,” or about $50,000 in 1980 (the equivalent of almost $160,000 today). The association’s books were always open to inspection.

By maintaining fiscal integrity and personal probity — he stuck to his rule never to be alone with a woman other than his wife — Mr. Graham kept himself untarnished by the kind of sex and money scandals that brought down evangelists and religious broadcasters like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart in the 1980s.

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The Grahams lived on a 200-acre mountain retreat in Montreat, N.C. His wife, Ruth Bell Graham, died in 2007. He is survived by his sons, the Rev. William Franklin III and the Rev. Nelson Graham, known as Ned; three daughters, Virginia Tchividjian (known as Gigi), Anne Graham Lotz and Ruth Graham McIntyre; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A Kinship With Presidents

Recognizing his influence, presidents made a point of seeking friendly relations with Mr. Graham; Lyndon B. Johnson did so assiduously. Mr. Graham was a frequent guest of Ronald Reagan, and in January 1991, George H. W. Bush invited him to spend the night at the White House the day before American-led forces began bombing Iraq. Mr. Clinton asked Mr. Graham to offer prayers at his inauguration in 1993.

President George W. Bush said that it was after a walk with Mr. Graham at the Bush family’s compound in Kennebunkport, Me., that Mr. Bush, as a younger man, decided to become more serious about his faith and quit drinking. President Barack Obama visited Mr. Graham at his North Carolina home in 2010.

Former President Jimmy Carter released a statement on Wednesday saying that he had counted Mr. Graham among his advisers and friends, adding that the minister had “had an enormous influence on my own spiritual life.” And President Trump tweeted: “The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man.”

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Of the presidents, Mr. Graham was most closely associated with Nixon. The two had met in the early 1950s, when Nixon was a senator from California. As vice president, Nixon addressed a capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium for the closing meeting of Mr. Graham’s New York crusade in 1957.

In the 1960 presidential campaign, Mr. Graham, a registered Democrat, was strongly sympathetic to Nixon, a Republican, and offered him advice in his campaign against Senator John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic. At one point, concerned that a Kennedy administration would be influenced by the Vatican, Mr. Graham invited more than two-dozen Protestant leaders to a meeting to discuss ways to defeat him.

He went on to endorse Nixon in the 1968 presidential race and allowed that endorsement to be used in television commercials. He gave the invocation at Nixon’s 1969 inauguration and came to be described as Nixon’s unofficial White House chaplain.

Mr. Graham said he had been “innocently unaware” of the storm gathering over Watergate. But when the extent of the scandal became known — disclosures of the break-in and the subsequent cover-up orchestrated by the White House — Mr. Graham tended to look the other way, his critics said.

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In 1982, Mr. Graham displeased the Reagan administration when, after a visit to the Soviet Union, he spoke in favor of universal nuclear disarmament. He also visited Russian churches, and his comment that he had seen no evidence of religious repression by the Soviet authorities created a furor among conservative church members in the United States.

It was during this period, in his sixth decade as an evangelist, that Mr. Graham and his organization experimented with new technologies. In 1986, in Paris, he used direct satellite transmissions to carry his sermons to about 30 other French cities. With his crusade in San Juan, P.R., in 1995, he expanded his satellite reach more than sixfold.

Mr. Graham also broke ground by going to places where religious activity was officially restricted, including China and North Korea. The first of his 30 books was “Peace With God,” published in 1953; his last was “Nearing Home,” in 2011.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association continues to organize crusades. It also produced Mr. Graham’s “Hour of Decision” global radio program and prime-time television specials, trains thousands of evangelists and missionaries, and publishes Decision magazine. A rapid-response team deploys chaplains to disaster areas.

Why it all came about remained a puzzle to Mr. Graham. In his autobiography, he wrote: “I have often said that the first thing I am going to do when I get to Heaven is ask: ‘Why me, Lord? Why did You choose a farm boy from North Carolina to preach to so many people, to have such a wonderful team of associates, and to have a part in what You were doing in the latter half of the 20th century?’ ”

“I have thought about that question a great deal,” he added, “but I know also that only God knows the answer.”

(CNN) Evangelist Billy Graham -- a confidant to presidents, a guiding light to generations of American evangelicals and a globe-trotting preacher who converted millions to Christianity -- died Wednesday at the age of 99, his spokesman confirmed to CNN.

Graham passed away at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, spokesman Jeremy Blume said.

The skinny preacher with the booming voice evangelized to nearly 215 million people over six decades and prayed with US presidents from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks with Graham and his son Franklin during a visit to Montreat in 2012.

US President Barack Obama meets with Graham at his Montreat home in 2010.

Graham and his son Franklin attend the Metro Maryland Festival in 2006. The three-day program was led by Franklin.

Graham leads his "last crusade" at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York in 2005. He spoke to more than 230,000 people.

Graham speaks to a crowd at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2004. Over the course of his career, Graham preached to more than 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush meets with Graham in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2000. Years earlier, Bush said, a conversation with Graham had helped lead him to give up drinking.

Former first lady Nancy Reagan greets Graham at the gala dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

In 1997, Graham gave the invocation at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

Graham gestures as he speaks to a capacity crowd at Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1996.

Pope John Paul II meets with Graham at the Vatican in 1993. Graham had often been called the "Protestant Pope."

Graham preaches in New York's Central Park in 1991. It was his first appearance in New York City since 1970. The crowd was estimated at 200,000.

Graham takes a boat ride with US President George H.W, Bush near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1989.

Graham and his wife visit her birthplace in Huaiyin, China, in 1988. They were married for 64 years until her death in 2007.

Graham speaks at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1978. Inclement weather had forced the crusade to the nearby Mid-South Coliseum, but when the clouds lifted, Graham went to the stadium to speak to those who could not get into the smaller indoor arena.

Graham speaks to a crowd of 18,000 on the closing night of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1974.

Graham is flanked by US President Richard Nixon, left, and Vice President Spiro Agnew as they bow their heads in prayer in 1969. Graham was speaking at Nixon's inauguration.

Graham addresses an audience in 1967. He was frequently listed by Gallup as one of the "Ten Most Admired Men in the World."

Graham speaks to more than 5,000 US troops in Vietnam in 1966.

Graham addresses the congregation at the opening of a 32-day London crusade in 1966.

Graham appears in the 1963 documentary "The World's Greatest Showman: The Legend of Cecil B. DeMille."

Graham dictates a synopsis of his evening sermon into a tape recorder in 1962. Secretaries would then type the synopsis for distribution to the press. Graham was conducting an eight-day crusade in Fresno, California.

Graham gets a kiss from his wife, Ruth, after they returned to the United States following a tour in Africa and the Middle East.

Supporters greet Graham upon his arrival in New York in 1959. Graham and his wife were returning from a six-month speaking tour that included stops in Australia and the Soviet Union.

US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits with Graham at the White House in 1957.

Graham embraces his family upon his return from his "Crusade for Christ" tour in the 1950s. With him from left are his wife, Ruth, and his daughters Anne, Virginia and Ruth (Bunny).

Graham speaks to soccer fans in London during halftime of a match between Chelsea and Newcastle United.

Graham reads on an airplane during a "Pulpit in the Sky" trip in 1953.

Graham preaches in the early 1950s. He said he became "born again" after hearing an evangelist at a tent meeting in 1934.

A school portrait of Graham, age 17, in 1935. After high school, Graham moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Tennessee to enroll in the conservative Christian school Bob Jones College. He then transferred to the Florida Bible Institute. He was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1939 and quickly gained a reputation as an evangelical preacher.

Evangelist Billy Graham, who reached millions of people through his Christian rallies and developed a relationship with every US president since Harry Truman, died Wednesday, February 21, at the age of 99.

He was tall and handsome, with a disarming aw-shucks demeanor and a Southern twang to his voice. But Graham's influence, historians say, was monumental. Some called him "America's pastor," others referred to him as the "Protestant pope."

Graham is reported to have persuaded more than 3 million people to commit their lives to Christianity and his preaching was heard in 185 of the world's 195 countries, according to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

"He was probably the dominant religious leader of his era; no more than one or two popes, perhaps one or two other people, could come close to what he achieved," said William Martin, a former historian at Rice University and the author of "A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story."

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Condolences

People across the world mourned Graham's death.

President Donald Trump said in a tweet that "the GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man."

The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2018

Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement that "Karen and I were saddened to learn of the passing of one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century, Reverend Billy Graham."

"We send our deepest condolences to the Graham family. Billy Graham's ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his matchless voice changed the lives of millions. We mourn his passing but I know with absolute certainty that today he heard those words, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' Thank you Billy Graham. God bless you."

Former President Jimmy Carter said in a statement that he and his wife Rosalynn "are deeply saddened" at the news of Graham's death and that he was "pleased to count Reverend Graham" as a friend and adviser.

"Tirelessly spreading a message of fellowship and hope, he shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide," Carter said in a statement. "Broad-minded, forgiving, and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve. He had an enormous influence on my own spiritual life."

Former President George H.W. Bush called Graham "America's pastor" and said he was a mentor to several of his children, including former President George W. Bush.

"His faith in Christ and his totally honest evangelical spirit inspired people across the country and around the world. I think Billy touched the hearts of not only Christians, but people of all faiths, because he was such a good man," the elder Bush said in a statement

Bush said he was "privileged" to count Graham as a "personal friend."

"He would come to Maine to visit with Barbara and me, and he was a great sport. He loved going really fast in my boat. I guess you could say we had that in common. Then we would come home and talk about life."

Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said on Twitter that Graham was "the most important evangelist since the Apostle Paul."

"He preached Christ, not himself, not politics, not prosperity," Moore said, adding that Graham also "carried unimpeachable personal integrity."

RIP Billy Graham, a good and faithful servant. He fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. — Ron DeSantis (@RepDeSantis) February 21, 2018

"RIP Billy Graham, a good and faithful servant. He fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith," US Rep. Ron DeSantis, who represents Florida's 6th District, said on Twitter.

Televangelist Joel Osteen told CNN that Graham was his hero, and said the best way to honor him is for Christians to continue what he started.

"Preaching good news and letting people know about Christ and the love and respect that we can show one another. I think it's to continue on in that passion. He took great steps of faith. He paved the way for young ministers like myself."

The creation of a ministry

Graham built his ministry by bringing the gospel message of tent-revival preachers into the modern media age, using any tool at his disposal -- from telegrams to telephones to satellites and the Internet -- to "win souls for Christ."

In doing so, Graham formed a bridge between the itinerant preachers like Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday who once crisscrossed the country in search of lost souls and contemporary Christian pastors like Joel Osteen, Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes.

"He saw himself as using new media to deliver a very old message," said Randall Balmer, an expert on American religious history at Dartmouth College.

That message, as Graham said during thousands of altar calls, was that salvation is offered to one and all, black and white, rich and poor, men and women, sinners and saints, so long as they believed in Jesus.

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Crusades and cathedrals

Avoiding the types of public scandals that befell other prominent preachers was key to Graham's long-running success, said Martin.

In 1948, at the beginning of his rise to fame, Graham and his tight circle of traveling evangelists gathered in California and catalogued the sins that had destroyed the careers of other Christian preachers. Money, sexual temptation and hubris topped the list.

Their pledge to avoid all three came to be known as the "Modesto Manifesto" and was later adopted by other ministers looking to avoid public disgrace.

In return for his scandal-free life, Americans regularly put Graham at the top of "most-admired" people polls. In 2013, he tied for fourth among most-admired men with former President Bill Clinton. It was his record-setting 57th appearance in the top 10, according to Gallup.

"In my favorite poll, I believe it was the Ladies' Home Journal, he was chosen second only to God in achievements in religion," Martin said.

Missionary work

Graham began his missionary work in 1944 by speaking at rallies for the Youth for Christ Campus Life ministry.

Five years later, he branched out on his own, holding a tent crusade in downtown Los Angeles. Originally scheduled for three weeks, the crusade drew such large crowds that it was extended to seven; a radio disc jockey, a small-time mobster and an Olympic athlete were among those who accepted his altar call under the "Canvas Cathedral."

The next year, Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

The crusades, which soon became the signature feature of his global ministry, frequently blended well-known hymns, preaching and patriotic displays.

"His sermons contained just the right mix of patriotism and reproof," said Molly Worthen, a religious historian at the University of North Carolina. "He urged Americans to stand strong against 'godless communism' but also criticized American hubris."

Graham told an audience in Charlotte in 1958 that, "We have an idea that we Americans are God's chosen people, that God loves us more than any other people, and that we are God's blessed. I tell you that God doesn't love us any more than he does the Russians."

Graham's crusades mobilized hundreds of volunteers not just from his own evangelical movement but also from liberal Protestant congregations and Catholic parishes.

His inclusive message -- he said that theological differences were less important than Christian comity -- angered some fundamentalists, who fulminated when he shared the stage with Catholic or liberal Protestant ministers.

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The traveling messenger

Graham was seldom still, holding crusades in more than 80 countries, according to Martin, often for weeks and months at a time. He missed the birth of his first daughter, Virginia, because he was away on a preaching trip, the biographer said. At other times, he failed to recognize his own children because he had been away from home so long.

Graham led a 12-week crusade in London in 1954 and a 16-week revival in New York in 1957, which drew tens of thousands to Madison Square Garden.

At the time, Graham praised New York's religious diversity, saying, "Almost every religion you can think of in the whole world is represented." His "last crusade" in June 2005 in Queens, New York, drew a total of 230,000 people.

In addition to his traveling crusades, Graham hosted a weekly Sunday radio program called "The Hour of Decision" and wrote an advice column, "My Answer," that was distributed by Tribune Media Services. In 1956, he founded the magazine Christianity Today, a leading publication among evangelicals.

Presidents and critics

William Franklin Graham Jr. was born November 7, 1918, and raised on a dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. He said he made a personal commitment to God in 1934 after hearing an evangelist preach in the Southern city.

He graduated in 1940 from the Florida Bible Institute, now Trinity College, with a bachelor's degree in theology. Graham was ordained that year by a Southern Baptist church in Florida. A few years later, he took over a Chicago radio program, "Songs in the Night."

While in Florida, Graham met relatives of V. Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. After they told Edman how impressed they were with Graham's preaching ability, Edman arranged for him to attend Wheaton.

Graham graduated in 1943 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology.

At Wheaton, he met fellow student Ruth Bell, his future wife. She was the daughter of the Southern Presbyterian missionary and surgeon L. Nelson Bell, and Ruth had spent her childhood in China and Korea.

The couple married in 1943 and moved to Montreat, North Carolina, two years later. They had five children: Virginia Leftwich, Anne Morrow, Ruth Bell, William Franklin III and Nelson Edman.

Graham was said to have enjoyed the recognition that came with providing counsel to several U.S. presidents, and he also became a de facto chaplain to Washington's elite.

Graham urged Dwight Eisenhower to run for president in 1952 and served as an unofficial adviser to the former general after he was elected. He also became close friends with President Lyndon Johnson and preached at the former president's funeral. President George W. Bush credits Graham with helping him change from a lukewarm Christian with a fondness for beer to a serious and committed evangelical.

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Critics accused Graham of becoming too involved with politics.

His association with President Richard Nixon led to embarrassment in March 2002, when tapes of private conversations between Nixon and Graham revealed the evangelist joining the president in making anti-Semitic remarks. Graham apologized.

"After Watergate, Graham understood that he had been used to support Nixon and his policies when the White House was more interested in his support than his love," said Martin, the biographer.

Some critics also charge that Graham was not active enough during the civil rights movement.

But during at least two crusades in the early 1950s in Tennessee and Mississippi, Graham literally removed the racial barrier -- taking down the ropes that separated blacks and whites -- according to Martin and Cliff Barrows, Graham's longtime music and program director for the Evangelistic Association.

"Billy himself went and took the rope down and said, 'We don't have segregated meetings, whatever their reason for segregating them. They can sit wherever they want to.' And he took a stand for his belief that every man is equal before Christ and the gospel was for everyone."

At his Madison Square Garden crusade, Graham asked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver a prayer. Although Graham preached that racial segregation was unbiblical, he was criticized by some civil rights leaders for not being more involved in the movement.

A week after the deadly bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, Graham told fellow evangelicals: "We should have been leading the way to racial justice but we failed. Let's confess it, let's admit it, and let's do something about it."

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Among the honors bestowed on Graham were the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 1983; the Congressional Gold Medal in 1996; and an honorary knighthood from Britain for his contribution to civic and religious life.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were on hand for the dedication of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte in June 2007.

In addition, the Billy Graham Center on the campus of Wheaton College has an archive, museum and library dedicated to the study of evangelism, as well as an Institute of Evangelism and other efforts aimed at promoting evangelistic work throughout the world.

The love of his life

In 2005, Graham opened up to CNN about his wife, Ruth. "I don't think I could have ever married anybody that would have been more helpful to my work and ministry than she has been," he told Larry King.

She died in 2007 at the couple's home in Montreat.

"Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team," Graham said in her obituary. "No one else could have borne the load that she carried."

Ruth Graham was buried at the foot of a cross-shaped walkway in the Prayer Garden on the grounds of the Billy Graham Library. The couple had agreed that they would be buried side by side.

Asked what he'd like people to say about him when he died, Graham said, "I want to hear one person say something nice about me and that's the Lord, when I face him. I want him to say to me, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'"

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