Billy Graham in Salisbury and Durban
Profile by Dr CUTHBERT CHIDOORI
My First General Conference of the Assemblies of God
The Congress on Mission and Evangelism held in Durban
W F P Burton and some Congo Missionaries
Nicholas
Bekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu
– His Youthful Dreams
– His Preaching
- Bhengu and Education
- Bhengu and Money
- Miraculous Experiences
- Spiritual Happenings
- The Sanctifying Spirit of God
– His Departure
Bhengu’s “Isinthunzi”
- Government and Politics
– Some Faults, Virtues and the Burden
of His Heart
President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana
William
Frederick Mullan
The Fairview Assembly
Fred Mullan and the Gifts of the Spirit
A Miracle and a Vision
The Revival in Norwood
James E Mullan
Paul O Lange
William Branham in Durban
Oral Roberts in South Africa
Billy
Graham in Salisbury and Durban
The American Missionaries from Springfield, Missouri
C. Austin Chawner and the Portuguese Work
August Kast and the Mount Tabor Mission Station
Colin
La Foy and the Coloured Leadership
The Work in Zimbabwe
Mauritius and Reunion Island
Special
Answers to Prayer – 1
Special
Answers to Prayer – 2
A Beautiful Square with Good Vibes
Prayer and the Hippie Revival
The Young Turks
Tensions within the Group
The Split
of 1981 – Part One
The Split
of 1981 – Part Two
The Beginnings of the Faith Movement in South Africa
The Statement of September 1989
The Charismatic Renewal
The Start of the Pentecostal Revival World Wide and The Swedish Pentecostal Assemblies
Epilogue
APPENDIX 1 : How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit
APPENDIX 2 : The National Church by Nicholas Bhengu
APPENDIX 3 : Article from the Argus 5/02/1981
APPENDIX 4 : Pointers to the future of the Assemblies of God in the New South Africa (10/06/94)
The
results of the Branham and the Oral Roberts crusades in South Africa
on the life of the Assemblies of God were both imponderable and
vast, not to be measured statistically but by their impact on the
vision of the ministers of our movement.
Billy Graham’s ministry was equally so but its effect was more profound,
and at least in one respect it affected the Assemblies of God more directly.
It assisted us in what has been described as “our ecumenical journey”.
When in 1949 Billy Graham started
on his great career as America’s leading revivalist, our own work
in South Africa operated somewhat in a spiritual ghetto. Evangelical
churches had fixed ideas that speaking in tongues was of the Devil. The
larger more liberal-minded churches who didn’t much talk about
the Devil looked down on the evangelicals as ignorant obscurantists and
they relegated groups like the Assemblies of God to being little more
than a fanatical sub-culture to be despised and not associated with.
More than any other person, Billy Graham changed that.
My first direct experience of Billy Graham was in 1961 when he visited
Salisbury (now Harare) for a one-night crusade. His single appearance there
was preceded by a six-week program of training for the participating churches
and a week of tent meetings held by an associate evangelist, Joe Blinco.
A committee of local church leaders was given the task of inviting the
co-operation of interested churches. The Baptist Church, Billy Graham’s
own denomination, were prominent on the organising committee. As true-blue
anti-Pentecostal evangelicals, they used their position to exclude the
Pentecostal churches (among them the Assemblies of God) from participating.
When Billy Graham heard of that, he reacted. The word went out, “Bring
in the Pentys. Put Pentys in ‘or there will be no crusade. I simply
won’t come’”. Thus we found ourselves co-operating as
a denomination with the wider church in a way that had never previously
been granted to us. It started a trend that has continued to the present
day. Now few people recall that there ever was a time when we were black-balled
as “tongue-speakers”.
We enjoyed Joe Blinco’s week of meetings. He was a pleasant personality
and a witty speaker. But we decided in our conceit as those but newly emerging
from our sectarian Pentecostal ghetto that Joe Blinco was not filled with
the Spirit. He certainly struggled in the altar calls. Each night he managed
to cajole only two or three converts to respond to the Gospel appeal. It
made us wonder what would be the case when Billy Graham had his meeting.
We were warned to be prepared for an avalanche of souls. “They’ll
tread on each other to come to the front”, we were told.
On the great night we sat on chairs in an open field. It drizzled. I suspect
Billy Graham curtailed his sermon because of the rain. He preached for
about 20 minutes. Press photographers rudely clambered onto the platform
for pictures, letting off their dazzling flash-bulbs in his face. Then
he bowed his head in a Gospel appeal. And we gawped. People did stream
out in their hundreds. It certainly was nothing like Joe Blinco’s
toiling efforts.
One criticism of Billy Graham’s ministry is that of the thousands
who respond to the preaching, few link up with any church. Does that mean
that his success is merely a matter of temporary emotion?
In Salisbury the Assembly of God was given only six names of unchurched
people who had signed Billy Graham’s decision cards. We assiduously
followed up on these decisions. Every one of the six proved to be a genuine
convert, born-again and eager to be part of our church. Most of the cards
signed were returned to the denominational churches to which the signatories
belonged as formal members. One church had to cope with great numbers of
newcomers. To get them active in the congregation, the minister deemed
it wise to have a special youth night once a week where the young could
dance and socialise in a sheltered atmosphere. After a little while the
youth night ceased. Most of the converts drifted away. One thinks regretfully
that if they had been followed up with clear instruction on discipleship,
they would have been absorbed into the body of the church to become committed
Christians just as our six had done. The comparison was a strong indication
to me that Billy Graham’s preaching was not at fault, but more likely
the follow-up of the churches was deficient. Possibly something similar
could be argued with regard to the results of the Branham and Oral Roberts
meetings.
That visit to Salisbury by Billy Graham had a more direct impact on me
personally. He addressed a meeting for ministers in which he stressed the
need for preachers to become academically qualified. He made his point
by comparing the theological richness evident in British churches and the
comparative shallowness of much American preaching. He pointed out that
in England the minister’s sanctum would be called his “study”,
but in America his “office”. In actual fact I think his sentiment
did not strictly reflect the true position. But he said it, reminding us
that he is an American.
Not long afterwards, a similar point was made by Dr Edwin Orr, an Irish
evangelist associated with Billy Graham. In his twenties, Edwin Orr had
set out a-preaching on a world-wide tour. He confessed that in his youthful
brashness he uttered many foolish words which congregations overlooked
in kindness and even laughed at because he was young, enthusiastic and
gauche. But, he said, when he turned 30 he realised that congregations
would demand more from an older man. He determined to remedy his situation.
He went to Oxford University from whence he emerged with a doctor’s
degree in divinity.
I was then about 40 years old. I had been in the ministry for 17 years.
Through all those years I had been dogged by a wish to study, but the prejudice
of my early Pentecostal background forbade it. Yet I was haunted by a doubt
in my own qualifications as a trained minister. The advice of Billy Graham
and of Edwin Orr was uttered in public meetings of ministers, but I took
it as a personal word to me. I enrolled with UNISA ( The University of
South Africa) which in that very year had launched a course leading to
a bachelor’s degree in theology. I studied in my spare time, labouring
the while in the Salisbury Assembly as minister and in a sense as jack-of-all-trades,
building a church for the assembly and also helping the newly-formed African
work that developed out of Bhengu’s Back-to-God Crusade in 1959.
I was capped in Pretoria in 1964, being in fact the first person to get
that degree from UNISA. I don’t think that having a degree added
all that much to my preaching ability, but it did give me a sense of security.
I felt that where there had been gaps in my knowledge, now they were filled
in, and I no longer needed to be abashed in the presence of my denominational
confreres. I often said in banter that having a degree did not stop me
talking rubbish, but at least I now knew when I was talking rubbish, a
knowledge many preachers for their part could profit by.
I next was exposed to Billy Graham’s ministry at the Congress on
Mission and Evangelism in Durban in 1973. A massed rally was held at Kingsmead
Sports Stadium. There, a racially mixed gathering of 30000 gathered to
hear him. The event was unique in those days of strict government disapproval
of any infringement of racial segregation. Quietly, Billy Graham had made
a political statement by refusing to address a segregated gathering and
the government had not reacted negatively. Nor was anyone seen to be worse
for the experience.
At Salisbury my wife Enid and I went to the airport in a gesture of farewell
to the evangelistic team. In a moment of temerity, Enid asked a team member
if he would use her camera to take a photo of the great man. The team member
said, “No! Take it yourself! Here, Billy, come and have your picture
taken by this lady.”
He came across obediently, all six and a half feet of him, and stood before
Enid who is only five foot one inch tall. He posed politely in a friendly
manner. Alas, Enid was so nervous, her hands shook. The photo never came
out.
Billy Graham is a truly great man filled with the Spirit, humble and unassuming.
Time magazine lists him among the “100 heroes and icons of the century”.
A recent book, “Great Souls” by David Aikman numbers him as
one of the six people who have most influenced this century for good. Of
all the evangelists I have heard, he has impressed me the most.