he made his peace with his Creator in the moments before he met Him face-to-

he made his peace with his Creator in the moments before he met Him face-to-

and, if possible, your captain.

Despite affluent appearances, though, Samuel Booth's fortune was all but gone by the time William was born. Throughout William's early years, the Booths managed to keep up the air of being propertied, but poor business decisions resulted in bankruptcy. Thirteen-year-old William was pulled out of school and sent to be an apprentice for a pawnbroker named Francis Eames. William's father passed away a little more than a year later, on September 23, 1843. On his deathbed, he repented for his former lack of faithfulness to God; he made his peace with his Creator in the moments before he met Him face-toface.

Young William was a quick study and soon became an efficient pawnbroker, but watching family after family sell its treasures to make ends meet started to wear on him. He soon began to view pawnbroking as a vulture of a profession and came to hate it. Some people would sell their "Sunday best," earn enough to buy it back on Saturday, and then sell these garments again on Monday morning. They went to great expense to look good for one day. It didn't take William long to learn that trinkets and fancy clothes went first, family heirlooms and furniture next, and wedding rings last.

Poverty in England increased dramatically throughout William's childhood and early teenage years. Failed crops, rising taxes, and heavy corn levies designed to protect the income of wealthy landowners transformed Nottingham from a farming center into a stocking-weaving mill town. Workers riots were not uncommon. Prostitution and crime were rampant, as people did whatever they felt they needed to do to survive. Times were hard: the machine slowly replaced the plow, and factory-made products gradually put ordinary craftsmen and artisans out of work. Industry had no regulation to protect workers, nor did it evince any conscience—eroding the middle class, it made man just another cog in the production lines, literate and illiterate alike.

"A Soul Dies Every Minute!"

After his father died and he assumed headship of the household responsibilities, fifteen-year-old William began to search for new meaning in his life. This search led him frequently to the Broad Street Wesleyan Chapel, where, late one evening, he heard a minister by the name of Isaac Marsden. The minister's warning, "A soul dies every minute!" haunted William for some

time. Marsden had thundered at the stunned congregation, and the words sank deeply into William's heart. Though he didn't give his life to Christ that night, in the following days, he would come under a deep conviction of his need for repentance.

Unlike the other Generals of revival in this book, William Booth could not ascribe a specific date to his conversion. It was not many days after this, however, that he signed on as a Methodist and gave his life over to saving those "souls dying every minute"—something he would strive to do for the next six decades. As personal sins came to mind, he would repent and made restitution, if possible. There was the matter of a silver pencil case he had wrested from some friends through trickery. Though he had to swallow a good bit of pride to face them, he returned it. In the coming days, William reached a certainty that he belonged to God. Years later, he would describe his sense of certainty in this way:

My brethren, if you have salvation you are sure of it. Not because...you have heard it preached. Not because you have read with your eyes, or heard read by others in that wonderful book, the wonderful story of the love of God to you. Not because you have seen with your eyes transformations of character wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost; changes as marvelous, as miraculous, as divine, as any that ever took place in apostolic or any other days. These things may have led up to it. But these things, wonderful as they may be, have not power to make you sure of your part and lot in the matter of salvation. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but God Himself, by His Spirit has made this known.484

William started attending every service and Bible class he could at the Wesleyan chapel, filling himself as much as possible with the Word and fire of God. While others were assembling in the streets to riot or preach social reform, William was seeking God. With his talents and his enthusiasm, William easily might have become a successful politician or a revolutionary, had God not reached him first; but because God did get to him first, he would do more to reform the social ills of his nation than any other person in the nineteenth century.

Another Catherine the Great Is Born

Some three months before William's birth, Catherine Mumford was born on

January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the only daughter of John and Sarah Mumford. The Mumfords also had four sons, but only one of them lived beyond childhood. Catherine's mother, Sarah, was a devout believer from her youth. She and John had met at the local Methodist chapel.

Catherine was a sickly child, and she was fragile and unwell for her entire life. Yet there burned within her something that rendered such frailty rather unimportant: a compassion and intensity of feeling unparalleled in anyone but her future husband. Catherine was anything but an unhappy child. Constant illness kept her indoors most of the time, but because of this, she grew to love books—and treasured no book above the Bible. Her mother so prized God's truth that she allowed no novels or other fiction books into their household; she saw them as foolish and a waste of time. Catherine had learned to read by the age of three, and she would often stand on a stool to read aloud from the family Bible while her mother worked around the house, listening. By the time Catherine was twelve, she had read the Bible eight times from cover to cover —and out loud.

In 1834, Catherine's father moved the family back to his native Boston in Lincolnshire, England. Catherine was about five years old at the time, and she would spend most of her childhood here. The family hoped the sea air would benefit the children's health.

Catherine was not a girl marked with indifference. Again, the weakness of her health never hampered the passion in her heart, much less her intolerance for cruelty of any kind. She always defended the unfortunate and weak. One time, while riding in a carriage, she saw a boy beating a donkey with a hammer. Infuriated, she burst forth from the carriage, overtook the boy, confiscated his hammer, and sent him home with his ears still burning from her rebukes. She then dropped to the ground in a faint and had to be carried home.

Another time, when a nine-year-old Catherine was playing outside, rolling a hoop down the street, she was interrupted by a mob coming toward her. A constable was half marching, half dragging a drunken man down the sidewalk, and the mob had gathered to jeer and mock him along the way. In the face of this cruelty, Catherine immediately took pity upon him. Even though her home was an active outpost of the Temperance Society, Catherine's heart could not condemn the man; she could not stand such treatment of someone so

disoriented. So, she marched into the midst of the crowd, right up to the face of the drunkard. Everyone was caught off guard by the boldness of such a small creature, and they stopped dead in their tracks. Catherine came nose-to-nose with the man, smelling the foulness of his breath and searching his eyes for some hint of humanity behind their empty stare. Then, taking him by the hand, she turned and began to lead him in the same direction the crowd had been taking him. The man's steps became steadier, and the policeman no longer had to tug at him, but walked alongside, merely holding his arm to steady him.

Thus, Catherine and the policeman took the man to the lockup, and the crowd lost interest in their taunts. The scene was reminiscent of the biblical account of the accusers of the woman caught in adultery had lost interest when Jesus confronted them. (See John 8:2–11.)

When Catherine heard about the plight of the poor in other countries, she gave up sugar and other luxuries; the money thus spared was sent to missionary societies instead.

At the age of twelve, Catherine was finally deemed strong enough to attend school and she took to it with a scholar's eagerness. Even at this young age, Catherine's love for the truth was so strong that her teachers quickly learned to take her version of any story as the most objective and accurate one. Because of her fine organizational and leadership skills, she was appointed class monitor. She fell in love with history and geography almost instantly, desiring to visit foreign lands and experience new cultures. Mathematics took a bit longer for her to appreciate, but once she could make sense of it, she added it to her competencies.

Unfortunately, when Catherine was fourteen, she was diagnosed with a severe curvature of the spine, and had to withdraw from school. The only remedy was to lie flat for three months while her body healed itself. For most children her age, such a treatment would have been akin to solitary confinement, but Catherine had a welcome occupation—she returned to her beloved books. Although her body was inactive, her mind was not. She focused on church history and theology, devouring the writings of such revivalists as John Wesley and Charles Finney, as well as those of John Newton, who penned the lines of the hymn "Amazing Grace." While she grasped the logic of each theologian's arguments, she was struck by the fact

that they didn't always agree. She became perplexed by the question of how to determine who was correct, or more precisely, how to discern the truth so that she could live by it. Years later, she would describe her struggle in this way:

When I was fourteen years old I rejected all theories about God and religion which contradicted my innate conceptions of right and wrong. I said, "No, I will never believe any theory which represents that a course of procedure is good and benevolent in God, which in man would be despicable and contemptible. I cannot receive it." I could not then put it into this language, but I remember distinctly the feelings of my soul. I said, "No, all that there is in me akin to goodness and truth God has put there, and I will never believe that what God has put in me contradicts what He has put into this book. There must be a mistake somewhere," and thank God, I came to the Scriptures for myself, which I recommend you to do. Don't imagine that the repugnant views of the character of God which have been forced upon you by professed theologians will form any excuse for your rejections of His book or of the Divine authority of it in the great day of account. God will say, "Had you not the light for yourself?"485

In other words, she clung deeply to the truth of 1 John 2:27:

But the anointing [of the Holy Spirit] which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Her guides would be Scripture and the hand of the Holy Spirit upon her heart, whose job it was to bring her to Jesus and His teachings.

Before long, Catherine's back responded favorably to sustained rest, and her period of confinement ended. In 1844, her family moved to London, and Catherine recommenced her schooling. She still had a voracious appetite for knowledge and study, but in the next few years, she would face one of the biggest questions of her life: How could she know that she was saved?

"How Do I Know If I Am Saved?"

Catherine could not accept the idea that she had simply been saved all of her life, and she determined to know in her heart that she had been truly

converted. When she returned to school, her internal passion for righteousness at times turned to impatience and anger. While she never did anything rash—at least, outwardly—inwardly, these powerful emotions convinced her that sin still controlled her heart. She knew that a converted person would not have such a seed of corruption within her but would be spiritually born again. Though she might sin mistakenly on the outside, the root of sin within her would be gone. Catherine determined to pluck sin from her life so that she could know that she was dead to it and alive to God, following Paul's exhortation in Romans 6:11 to "reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." For her, only the gift of faith could bring her to true conversion. As she later recalled,

About this time I passed through a great controversy of soul. Although I was conscious of having given myself up fully to God from my earliest years, and although I was anxious to serve Him and often realized deep enjoyment in prayer, nevertheless, I had not the positive assurance that my sins were forgiven, and that I had experienced the actual change of heart about which I had read and heard so much. I was determined to leave the question no longer in doubt, but to get it definitely settled, cost what it might. For six weeks I prayed and struggled on, but obtained no satisfaction. True, my past life had been outwardly blameless. Both in public and in private I had made use of the means of grace, and up to the very limit of my strength, and often beyond the bounds of discretion, my zeal had carried me. Still, so far as this was concerned, I realised the truth of the words:

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow—

These for sins could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone.

I knew, moreover, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" [Jeremiah 17:9]. I was terribly afraid of being selfdeceived. I remembered, too, the occasional outbursts of temper when I was at school. Neither could I call to mind any particular place or time when I had definitely stepped out upon the promises, and had claimed the immediate forgiveness of my sins, receiving the witness of the Holy Spirit that I had become a child of God and an heir of heaven.

It seemed to me unreasonable to suppose that I could be saved and yet not know it. At any rate I could not permit myself to remain longer in doubt regarding the matter. If in the past I had acted up to the light I had received, it was evident that I was now getting new light, and unless I obeyed it I realized that my soul would fall into condemnation. Ah, how many hundreds have I since met who have spent years in doubt and perplexity because, after consecrating themselves fully to God, they dare not venture out upon the promises and believe!

I can never forget the agony I passed through. I used to pace my room till two o'clock in the morning, and when, utterly exhausted, I lay down at length to sleep, I would place my Bible and hymnbook under my pillow, praying that I might wake up with the assurance of salvation.486

This pattern continued for some time, until, on the evening of June 14, 1846, she again prayed as she let her head fall to her pillow, "Father, may it be that I awake tomorrow to an assurance of Your forgiveness of my sin."487 And the next day, she did just that. When her eyes opened, she sat up in bed and recovered her Bible and hymnal from under her pillow. As she did so, the hymnal fell open and her eyes were drawn to a verse penned by Charles Wesley:

My God, I am Thine, What a comfort Divine, What a blessing, to know that my

Jesus is mine!488

Light shot through her soul. Months of struggle were answered in an instant. Her heart was changed, and Jesus, not guilt, flooded her spirit. She later recalled,

Scores of times I had read and sung these words, but now they came home to my inmost soul with a force and illumination they had never before possessed. It was as impossible for me to doubt as it had before been for me to exercise faith. Previously not all the promises in the Bible could induce me to believe; now not all the devils in hell could persuade me to doubt. I no longer hoped I was saved, I was certain of it. The assurance of my salvation seemed to flood and fill my soul. I jumped out of bed, and without waiting to dress, ran into my mother's room and told her what had happened.489

As an affirmation that she now belonged to God, she registered for membership at the Brixton Wesleyan Methodist Church, something she had refused to do until she had the assurance of her salvation. A few months later, in September 1846, Catherine fell ill again, this time with consumption. Though her body ached and she was often delirious with fever, the knowledge of her salvation brought her comfort. Her doctors feared that she might contract tuberculosis. She was confined again to her home throughout the winter, and in May, when she was well enough to travel, she moved in with her aunt, who lived in Brighton, near the sea. She hoped that the salty air would do her some good. When she felt strong enough, she started attending services at the local Wesleyan chapel.

Changing Times, Dead Churches

Although Methodism was on the rise in the United States due to the efforts of the likes of Peter Cartwright, the movement was sinking into the mire of bureaucracy in Great Britain. It seemed that Methodism was no longer about the power of God that appeared as John Wesley or George Whitefield spoke, but that it had become more about regulation and governance. Circuit ministers were so overrun with paperwork that they hardly had time to preach. Methodists' memberships were also submitted to an annual review to ensure that members remained in good standing with the society. Calls for reform and a return to the original principles of the founders began in the 1840s, but by the conference in 1850, leaders of the reform were singled out as troublemakers and expelled. Methodism had strayed from unleashing the power of God to convert souls and focused instead on controlling the members and keeping the coffers filled. The Wesleys were probably wringing their hands in heaven, as Methodism was doomed never to regain its former power to transform lives through the preaching of the Word and the presence of God.

Though they had yet to meet, both William and Catherine fell afoul of the mainline Methodists, and they ended up with the reformers. Catherine, passionate as ever about injustice, would not be silenced about the gross unfairness of expelling these godly leaders. When her membership came up for review, her class leader withheld her ticket of readmittance. In effect, Catherine was excommunicated from the body that had been her spiritual sanctuary since the time she was born, and in being expelled, she lost many of her mentors and close personal friendships.

William offended the Methodists in a different way. His exuberance at his own salvation had not yet worn off, and the haunting statement "A soul dies every minute!" still seemed to pound in his ears. Two years after his conversion, he went to a meeting where James Caughey was speaking. The Irish-American's style was such that he seemed to breathe purifying fear with each word, and William was captivated. That night, he rededicated himself to his Lord and Savior, deciding to become a soulwinner like Caughey. William rose from his knees at the end of the service with the conviction that "God shall have all there was of William Booth."490

William was convinced that if he planned to save the souls of the poor, he could not afford to wait for them to come to him. He persuaded his good friend, Will Sansom, to preach with him in the streets. The two headed for "The Bottoms," the worst of Nottingham's slums. Young Booth cut an impressive figure standing atop a barrel or a chair to address his audiences. He was tall, with deep grey eyes, black hair, and a high, prominent nose. William's appeals did not go unanswered, but he needed a significant breakthrough if he was going to get the people of this neighborhood to follow him into a church—a building where they had been unwelcome for so long. That breakthrough was not long in coming.

He and Will went to Kid Street to preach, and, unfamiliar with the area, set up camp right in front of the home of a notorious, rowdy drunkard known as Besom Jack. The two sang a hymn, and William stood on a chair and began to address the crowd. "Friends," he cried,

I want to put a few straight questions to your soul....Have any of you got a child at home without shoes to its feet? Are your wives sitting now in dark houses waiting for you to return without money? Are you going away from here...to spend on drink, money that your wives need for food?491

Suddenly, the front door of the house behind them burst open, and Besom Jack made straight for the pair of preachers. Just as he was coming within reach, William's gaze met him straight in the eyes, and he said, "Jack, God loves your wife, and so did you once." Jack stopped dead in his tracks—the words had struck a nerve. "Can you remember how much you loved her and cherished her when you first met?" Jack's eyes were fixed on the ground before William's feet. He nodded slowly. "Well, Jack, God loves you with a

love like that, with a love far deeper and greater than that."

The crowd was hanging on every word. Jack finally looked up. "Me?"

"Yes, Jack, you." William stepped down from his chair and took Jack by the arm. "Come, Jack, kneel down here and tell the Lord you love him too, and ask him to forgive you." Jack did just that.492

William knew that these new converts needed much more than just to be saved. He knew that they needed teaching so that they could grow enough to take care of their own faith. So, the next Sunday, the two Wills headed for The Bottoms again, gathered a crowd, and marched them all to the Wesleyan chapel. They burst into the church in the middle of a service, just following the fourth hymn, and seated their "catch" in the front rows—the best seats in the house. William enjoyed the service immensely, but at the end, the Reverend Samuel Dunn came down not to congratulate William, but to reprimand him.

Rev. Dunn directed William's gaze to a row of seats tucked away behind a partition in the back of the chapel, out of sight—and virtually out of earshot of the preaching—and pointed to the obscure side door that provided access to these seats. Rev. Dunn told William that the front rows in which he had seated his "guests" were reserved for those who could contribute to the cause of Methodism—the poor, he said, were to enter through the side door and sit in the back seats. They were, by all means, welcome to attend every service, but they were to stay out of the way and were not to interfere with the other parishioners' enjoyment of the service. William accepted the rebuke humbly, but this snobbery was the beginning of the end of William's association with the Methodists.

The Young Methodist Preacher

Even though he was only seventeen, William was placed on the schedule of circuit preachers' speaking engagements. He began speaking at the Broad Street Chapel, as well as in other villages around Nottingham. Keeping up his open-air meetings, he continued to develop as a preacher over the next few years.

When he was nineteen, he finished his apprenticeship at the pawnshop and was informed that he needed to find a job elsewhere, as Mr. Eames could no

longer afford to employ him. For the next year, he looked for another job in Nottingham; finding nothing, he decided to move to London. Times were hard there, too, but he eventually found a position in a small pawnshop. Not only could he make a small wage, but he could also live above the pawnshop.

In his free time, he began attending the Methodist Chapel in Walworth, and he soon found himself registered there as a preacher. His circuit's presiding elder gave him little encouragement, and when William realized that he was finding more converts by canvassing the streets than by preaching in the chapels, he asked to be removed from the preaching rotation so that he could spend the little time he had to preach in the open air. The presiding elder grew even more suspicious and assumed that he was conspiring with the reformers, so he withheld William's ticket of membership the next time it came up for renewal. William's heart for reaching the poor with God's salvation had resulted in his eviction from the Methodist Church, just as Catherine's refusal to be quieted had resulted in her own eviction. This dismissal must have pained William greatly, for he had always believed that "there was one God, and John Wesley was His prophet."493

William may have been rejected, but he was not alone. Among the Methodists was a wealthy shoe factory owner, Edward Rabbits, and though the local Methodist elder did not prize William's ministry, Edward did. In the controversy between the Methodist mainliners and the reformers, Edward had sided with the reformers and lost his membership. When he heard that William also had been kicked out of the Methodist Church, he invited him to join the reformers and preach under their banner. Having nowhere else to go, William accepted his offer.

In the coming months, Edward Rabbits came to appreciate William's calling even more. One night, when hosting William for dinner, Edward told him that he would provide twenty shillings a week as his salary—for at least three months—if he would quit his pawnbroking job to preach full time. William was startled, but the fact was that he had been dreaming for months of doing this very thing. He heartily agreed to Edward's proposal. Within a short time, William had left his employment, found new lodging, and set out to save the world as a revivalist.

A Romance Made in Heaven

Sometime in early 1852, William was invited to a tea party at the home of Edward Rabbits. He felt that declining to attend would be remiss, even though he was not fond of such social gatherings. At the party, William was introduced to a number of other reformers, including a small, delicate, dark-haired young woman with smiling eyes. He immediately recognized her as the woman he had met after addressing a gathering of reformers at the Binfield Road Chapel in Clapham. Her name was Catherine Mumford. By way of entertainment, William was asked to present a dramatic poem about a grog-seller—a thoroughly pro-temperance subject. Not everyone present subscribed to this stance, however, and as he reached the end of the poem, William received some rebuffs from the audience. But before he could defend himself, the young woman stepped forward and presented one of the best arguments for banning alcohol that he had ever heard. Obviously, there was much more behind those shining eyes than he had initially perceived.

William Booth and Catherine Mumford were destined to meet again at a church service a few weeks later, on April 9, 1852, which was Good Friday. It was also the day before William's twenty-third birthday. At the service, they spoke together briefly, and then partway through the service, Catherine felt ill and decided to return home. If William was disappointed to see her go, his sorrow must have turned to joy when Edward requested that he escort her home to Brixton. It would be a carriage ride to change both of their lives.

Their conversation progressed rapidly from small talk to sharing their hopes and dreams with one another. Catherine would later write of their ride together,

That little journey will never be forgotten by either of us....We struck in at once in such wonderful harmony of view and aim and feeling on various matters that passed rapidly before us, that it seemed as though we had intimately known and loved each other for years and suddenly, after some temporary absence, had been brought together again. Before we reached my home we both...felt as though we had been made for each other....

It was curious, too, that both of us had an idea of what we should require in the companion with whom we allied ourselves for life; if ever such alliance should take place...and here we were, thrown together in this unexpected fashion, matching those preconceived characters, even as though we had been

made to order! We felt that henceforth the current of our lives must flow together.494

When they arrived at her house, Catherine invited William in so that they could continue their conversation. Inside, Catherine's mother joined them, and they were caught up in the conversation until it was too late for William to go home—it was too late to call a carriage, and too far to walk. Mrs. Mumford set him up in a spare room, and though William left early the next morning, he was back before evening to visit with them again—as he would be nearly every day in the weeks to come.

In some respects, William and Catherine were like fire and ice—William was the bold and often overzealous evangelist; Catherine, the quiet scholar with a well-reasoned theology—but together, they became a powerful force for God. William was the spirit; Catherine, the word. William was the liberator of souls, and Catherine was the administrator, making sure that those who were set free stayed free, found their callings, and carried on with God. William was the flamboyant leader; Catherine, the manager who structured day-to-day activities.

William was surprised by his sudden affection, fearing that it might distract him from his soul-winning efforts. He actually prayed that God would take it away, but God would do just the opposite. The more William prayed, the more he realized that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Catherine. The couple discussed the matter a great deal, knowing the folly of rushing into anything, but as they spoke together, prayed together, and pined for each other when apart, they felt sure God had created them for each other. So, on May 15, 1852, just a little more than a month after their carriage ride, having secured their parents' blessings, William and Catherine were engaged to be married. Sometime that same month, Catherine recorded her feelings for William in a letter. "My dearest William," she wrote,

I fancy I see a look of surprise...at the reception of this after such a recent visit. You will think it unnecessary and so it is....The evening is beautifully serene and tranquil according sweetly with the feelings of my soul, the whirlwind is past....All is well. I feel it is right and my soul praises God for the satisfying conviction. Most gladly does my soul respond to your invitation to give myself afresh to Him and to strive to link myself closer to you, by rising

more into the likeness of my Lord; the nearer our assimilation to Jesus, the more perfect and heavenly our union. Our hearts are now indeed one, so one that disunion would be more bitter than death....The thought of our walking through life together perfectly united, together enjoying its sunshine and battling with its storms, by softest sympathy sharing every smile and every tear, and with thorough unanimity performing all its momentous duties, is to me exquisite happiness, the highest earthly bliss I desire....We have acknowledged God from the beginning, we have sought His will...and we do now love Him more for the love we bear each other....You are always present in my thoughts. Believe me, dear William, as ever your own loving Kate.495

While many couples have long courtships and short engagements, William and Catherine would have just the opposite. During the next three years, William would venture forth to secure them a future and a steady income, and to establish his ministry to the point that it could sustain them both. By the time they were engaged, William was halfway through the three months of support that Edward Rabbits had pledged, so he turned his full attention to the remaining month and a half. Edward had already gotten William's name onto several of the reformers' preaching plans, so William set out to preach wherever he was welcome.

As fast and furious as William and Catherine's courtship had been, their engagement would be a time during which their love would grow and develop —a process that is recorded line after line in their letters to one another over the next few years. This long "written" engagement also offered them the unique opportunity to address many issues and differences of opinion. It seemed more difficult for them to carry on any harsh arguments through written correspondence, and they worked through many issues other couples do not deal with until several years into their marriages. Letter by letter, they came together on difficult points of theology, child-rearing, evangelism, and other matters, building a foundation not only for their life together, but also for their future ministry together.

Perhaps the most significant difference of opinion discussed in their correspondence related to the issue of gender equality. As Catherine put it in a letter,

I am ready to admit that in the majority of cases the training of women has

made her man's inferior...but that naturally she is in any respect, except in physical strength and courage, inferior to man I cannot see cause to believe, and I am sure no one can prove it from the Word of God.496

William's response was guarded, but he soon came around to be as avid a supporter of women in the ministry as Catherine:

Thy remarks on woman's position I will read again before I answer....I would not stop a woman preaching on any account. I would not encourage one to begin. You should preach if you felt moved thereto; felt equal to the task. I would not stay you if I had the power to do so. Although I should not like it. I am for the world's salvation; I will quarrel with no means that promises help.497

William among the Churches

In the following weeks, William found the reformers, for all their zeal, to be disorganized and fraught with many of the same problems as the Methodists. So, William and Catherine decided that they would not renew Edward's generous support. This left William without any income at all, but Catherine spoke only words of encouragement concerning their dreams. She was confident that God would provide.

The coming months were not easy, however. William threw his hat in with the Congregationalists. He and Catherine began attending the Stockwell Congregational Church, led by the Reverend Dr. David Thomas. Yet William could not reconcile his beliefs with their Calvinist theology, and although the open door looked at first to be free of doctrinal stipulations, it was not. William looked to invest himself elsewhere.

He soon found himself selling most of his furniture in order to survive. In the end, he returned for a stint with the reformers when Edward Rabbits arranged for him to take charge of a small group of churches in the Spaulding district. This provided William with a salary of eighty pounds a year—ten shillings a week—a raise from the support Edward had originally provided. William took charge of these churches in November 1852.

This new position commenced the first period of a long-distance relationship for William and Catherine; and while they agreed to write once

every week, they started sending and receiving letters once daily. Catherine might start a letter in the morning, add some lines after lunch and tea, and then include some more thoughts before she had to hand it over to the postman that evening. Each of her letters averaged about two thousand words.

Before six months had passed, William returned to London for a time to visit with Catherine. During this visit, he was offered a position with the newly organized Methodist New Connexion, another group that had formed in hopes of returning to the values and practices of their original founder. The Reverend Dr. William Cooke offered to take William under his tutelage and prepare him for the ministry. At first, William refused, but when his year in Spaulding was up, he accepted Rev. Cooke's offer. Again, William proved that he was not the scholar, but the first time that he spoke at the Brunswick Chapel, fifteen people were converted. William's unorthodox preaching techniques confounded his teacher, but he couldn't argue with the results.

At the New Connexion Conference in June 1854, Rev. Cooke nominated William to be the superintendent of a large London circuit, but twenty-fiveyear-old William felt he was still too young for such a position. They decided on a compromise: William was appointed the resident minister of a new chapel on Packington Street in Islington, another part of London, under the guidance of an older minister. Demand for his preaching grew, however, and he soon began traveling and holding revival campaigns as much as he was ministering at Packington Street. At the next Conference in 1855, William would be released from his duties at Packington Street and appointed as a fulltime traveling minister for the New Connexion. Feeling he had finally achieved a proper level of support, he and Catherine were married on June 16, 1855.

Catherine traveled with William for the first time on their honeymoon—a speaking engagement on the Isles of Wright and Jersey. Catherine found herself both taxed and amazed by the pace of William's schedule. She stayed home during his next trip, hoping to recover so that she could accompany him on the next one.

In the following years, the Booths found themselves moving frequently to accommodate William's preaching schedule. William was becoming more and more effective as an evangelist. Initially, there were handfuls of conversions at each set of meetings; then, there were dozens, and finally hundreds! In

February 1856, a month of meetings yielded 640 converts. Then, at a six-week meeting that ended in December, William saw 740 people converted. On March 8 of that year, the Booths' first child was born. They named him William Bramwell.

Troubles with the Religious Dead

William was too preoccupied with his revival work to attend the New Connexion Conference in 1857, and he was stunned when he heard what had happened there. His license as a traveling evangelist had been revoked. His detractors claimed that his meetings were too chaotic, his manner of speaking was too unorthodox, and he saved so many people, that it was all the local pastors could do to manage the horde of new believers. As one minister put it, "He is taking the cream and leaving the skimmed milk for others."498 William had been demoted by four votes. He was assigned to the run-down mill town of Brighouse in Yorkshire—the least promising district—for the next year.

Brighouse did, however, prove to have some advantages for the Booths, and it was also a good training ground for future ministry. They set up a home for the first time, and they not only could bring people to salvation, but also could work to establish these believers in their new faith. After the birth of their second son, Ballington, on July 28, 1857, William urged Catherine to begin teaching a Bible class at the church. She became a leader among the female church members. At the next Conference, in May 1858, William was again denied the right to return to fieldwork, and was requested to work one more year in a circuit. He agreed. Having been with the New Connexion for four years, he had completed his probationary period, and he was ordained a minister of the denomination. William and Catherine thus moved to Gateshead, where Catherine had an interesting experience that would shape much of the work ahead of them with the Salvation Army:

One Sabbath I was passing down a narrow, thickly populated street on my way to chapel, anticipating an evening's enjoyment for myself and hoping to see some anxious ones brought into the kingdom, when I chanced to look up at the thick rows of small windows above me, where numbers of women were sitting, peering through at the passers by, or listlessly gossiping with each other.

It was suggested to my mind with great power, "Would you not be doing

more service and acting more like your Redeemer, by turning into some of those houses, speaking to these careless sinners, and inviting them to the service, than by going to enjoy it yourself?" I was startled; it was a new thought, and while I was reasoning about it, the same inaudible interrogator demanded, "What efforts do Christians put forth, answerable to the command, 'compel them to come in, that My house may be filled?'"

This was accompanied by a light and unction which I know to be Divine. I felt greatly agitated. I felt verily guilty. I knew that I had never thus labored to bring lost sinners to Christ; and, trembling with a sense of my utter weakness, I stood still for a moment, looked up to heaven, and said, "Lord, if Thou wilt help me, I will try," and without stopping further to confer with flesh and blood, turned back and commenced my work.

I spoke first to a group of women sitting on a doorstep; and what that effort cost me, words cannot describe; but the Spirit helped my infirmities, and secured for me a patient and respectful hearing with a promise from some of them to attend the house of God. This much encouraged me; I began to taste the joy which lies hidden under the Cross, and to realize, in some faint degree, that it is more blessed to give than to receive....I went on to the next group who were standing at the entrance of a low, dirty court. Here again I was received kindly and promises were given. No rude repulse, no bitter ridicule, were allowed to shake my newfound confidence, or chill my feeble zeal. I began to realize that my Master's feet were behind; nay, before me, smoothing my path and preparing my way.

This blessed assurance so increased my courage and enkindled my hope that I ventured to knock at the door of the next house, and when it was opened to go in, and speak to the inmates of Jesus, death, judgement, and eternity. The man, who appeared to be one of the better class of mechanics, seemed to be much interested and affected by my words, and promised with his wife to attend the revival services which were being held at the chapel.

With a heart full of gratitude and eyes full of tears, I was thinking where I should go next, when I observed a woman standing on an adjoining doorstep with a jug in her hand. My divine teacher said, "Speak to that woman." Satan suggested, "Perhaps she is intoxicated" but after a momentary struggle I introduced myself to her by saying, "Are the people out who live on this

floor?" observing that the lower part of the house was closed. "Yes," she said, "they are gone to chapel." I thought I perceived a weary sadness in her voice and manner. I said, "Oh, I am so glad to hear that; how is it that you are not gone to a place of worship?" "Me," she said, looking down upon her forlorn appearance; "I can't go to chapel, I am kept at home by a drunken husband. I have to stop with him to keep him from the public house, and I have just been fetching him some drink." I expressed my sorrow for her, and asked if I might come in and see her husband. "No," she said, "he is drunk; you could do nothing with him now." I replied, "I do not mind his being drunk, if you will let me come in; I am not afraid; he will not hurt me." "Well," said the woman, "you can come in if you like; but he will only abuse you." I said, "Never mind that," and followed her up the stairs.

I felt strong now in the Lord and in the power of His might, and as safe as a babe in the arms of its mother. I realized that I was in the path of obedience, and I feared no evil.

The woman led me to a small room on the first floor, where I found a fine, intelligent man, about forty, sitting almost double in a chair, with a jug by his side, out of which he had been drinking. I leaned on my Heavenly Guide for strength and wisdom, love and power, and He gave me all I needed. He silenced the demon, strong drink, and quickened the man's perceptions to receive my words. As I began to talk to him, with my heart full of sympathy, he gradually raised himself in his chair, and listened with a surprised and halfvacant stare. I spoke to him of his present deplorable condition, of the folly and wickedness of his course, of the interest of his wife and children, until he was fully aroused from the stupor in which I found him. I read to him the parable of the Prodigal Son, while the tears ran down his face like rain. I then prayed with him as the Spirit gave me utterance, and left, promising to call the next day with a pledge-book, which he agreed to sign.

I now felt that my work was done. Exhausted in body but happy in soul, I wended my way to the sanctuary, just in time for the conclusion of the service and to lend a helping hand in the prayer meeting.

On the following day I visited this man again. He signed the pledge, and listened attentively to all I said. Full of hope I left him, to find another similarly lost and fallen. From that time I commenced a systematic course of

house-to-house visitation, devoting two evenings per week to the work. The Lord so blessed my efforts that in a few weeks I succeeded in getting ten drunkards to abandon their soul-destroying habits, and to meet me once a week for reading the Scriptures and for prayer.499

On September 18, 1858, the Booths' third child—a daughter, Little Catherine—was born. She quickly earned the nickname "Kate." That year, they saw their congregation in Gateshead swell from thirty-nine members to three hundred, and the chapel was dubbed "The Converting Shop" by the community because of the impact it was having. When reassignment came up the next year, the promise from the previous year of returning to revival work had not even been recorded in the minutes! William was reassigned to Gateshead to consolidate the work he was doing there as district superintendent.

William was not one to be pigeonholed, however. If he was to remain in leadership at Gateshead, then he would be in charge of his own revival work in the area. He began a series of revival meetings and called for a day of prayer and fasting. Then, he sponsored a ten-week campaign of intercessory prayer by writing the names of the most notorious sinners in the area on scraps of paper, which he distributed randomly to participants in the campaign. They would hold daily revival meetings and canvass the neighborhoods, going doorto-door to pass out flyers and personally invite people to come.

During the time that she spent flat on her back as a teenager, Catherine had become well-versed in Charles Finney's Lectures on Revival, and she and her husband began to use Finney's principles in their campaign. William also reinstituted the open-air meetings he had begun in his teens. People would gather in a public place to sing, he would speak briefly, and then they would form a procession and walk to the chapel, inviting any interested passersby to follow. Almost everyone who had been targeted with intercessory prayer attended at least one of the meetings and was converted.

It was a marvelous time; however, Catherine's frailty again made her sick, so the work slowed as she recovered. During this time, Catherine happened upon a pamphlet by the Reverend Arthur Ross attacking the right of women to preach. Indignant, Catherine decided to write her own pamphlet in response. She finished the pamphlet just prior to the birth of their fourth child, Emma

Moss Booth, who was born on January 8, 1860.

"My Dear Wife Wishes to Speak"

Up to this point, though Catherine was a staunch advocate of women teaching and preaching from the pulpit, she had refused to do so herself. William had always encouraged her, but she was happy to stay in the background and hide behind her shyness. Then, on Sunday, May 27, 1860, a mass outdoor meeting had to be moved to the chapel due to inclement weather, so roughly a thousand people gathered in the chapel to hear William speak. As Catherine sat in the audience with young Bramwell, the Holy Spirit spoke to her heart, "Now, if you were to go and testify, you know I would bless it to your own soul as well as to the souls of the people."

"Yes, Lord," she responded, "I believe Thou wouldst, but I cannot do it."

Another thought occurred to her, but she immediately recognized its sinister source: "Besides, you are not prepared to speak. You will look like a fool and have nothing to say."

Catherine grew indignant at this taunt. "Ah! This is the point. I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ. Now I will be one." Catherine leapt to her feet and mounted the stage, where her husband was just drawing his message to a close. William crossed the stage to help her, thinking that something was wrong. Catherine simply told him, "I want to say a word."

William was caught a bit off guard, but inwardly, he was pleased. Turning to the congregation, he stated, "My dear wife wishes to speak," and relinquished the stage to her. He found a seat, interested to hear what she had to say.500

Catherine gathered herself and addressed the audience, saying,

I daresay many of you have been looking upon me as a very devoted woman, and one who has been living faithfully to God, but I have come to know that I have been living in disobedience, and to that extent I have brought darkness and leanness into my soul; but I promised the Lord three or four months ago, and I dare not disobey. I have come to tell you this and to promise the Lord that I will be obedient to the Heavenly vision."501

With great humility, she confessed her sin of disobeying God in His promptings for her to speak in public, and she urged everyone to obey God's promptings in his own heart. When she had finished, William gained her consent and announced, "Tonight, my wife will be the preacher!"502

Thirty minutes later in the Booth household, Ballington and Kate Booth, too young to attend the service, were chasing the maid around the kitchen table and crying with joy, "The mistress has spoken! The mistress has spoken!"503 The significance of this breakthrough seemed evident to every member of the family. That night, the chapel was filled to overflowing. Catherine based her sermon on Ephesians 5:18: "Be filled with the Spirit." Her fame spread quickly, and within a matter of months, there was a greater demand to hear her speak than there was for her husband!

Striking Out on Their Own

At the New Connexion Conference of 1861, William felt he finally had to make a stand for what his heart was telling him he must do: return to full-time revival work. The Connexion did not see eye to eye with him on this, however, so after several weeks of careful consideration and prayer, and despite his lack of alternative income, William submitted his resignation to the New Connexion. This was a difficult decision for a father with four children at home and no foreseeable means to support them. It would also forever sever the Booths' formal connection with anything Methodist.

Now with no home, the Booths moved their belongings and their children to Catherine's parents' home in Brixton. When a minister in Cornwall who had been converted at one of William's earlier meetings asked him to lead a revival, he and Catherine accepted, even though they knew the minister had no money to offer them. They planned to be in Cornwall for six weeks.

But God had a different plan. Eighteen months and seven thousand converts later, the Booths were still in Cornwall. Fishermen were known to have rowed ten miles across stormy seas just to attend their meetings. "Business is no longer carried out," one local noted. "The shopkeepers and their customers are all busily engaged in the Booth meetings."504 As their ministry had picked up with no end in sight, the Booths arranged for their children to join them in Cornwall. It was there that their fifth child, Herbert Howard, was born, on August 26, 1862.

In early 1863, the Booths were invited to speak in Cardiff, Wales, but they had a hard time finding a venue large enough to accommodate the crowds they drew. Most of the churches were shutting their doors to them as if they were outlaws, but Catherine managed to find a circus tent to rent, and the meetings went on as planned. It was the first time they would use a secular facility, but it would be far from the last. For the next two years the Booths continued to travel and minister throughout the country. After their sixth child, Marian, was born on May 4, 1864, Catherine started her own revival services, which were highly successful. The novelty of "The Woman Preacher" drew considerable numbers, and she began receiving requests to minister in some of the more traditional churches that had shut William out.

The time spent apart weighed heavily on the couple, however, and in 1865, they moved to London and established a home in Hammersmith. With William shut out of all but the smallest of churches, they survived for a time primarily on money earned from Catherine's speaking.

The London they returned to was not the same one that they had left. It was far darker and sootier than it had been before. William's compassion for the poor again gripped his heart. The sight of one lifeless face put him back in the pawnshop, bartering for family heirlooms that were buying a few more weeks' worth of food for another incomeless family. One writer described East London as "a squalid labyrinth, with half a million people, 290 to an acre....Every fifth house was a gin shop, and most had special steps to help even the tiniest [children] reach the counter."505

Returning from a meeting one night early in July of that year, William came upon a small crowd gathered in the street outside of the Blind Beggar pub. A man was ministering there, and as he finished, he asked if anyone in the group wanted to share a testimony or a word of Scripture. William didn't have to be asked twice. Within minutes, his preaching had captivated those gathered there, and William felt like a teenager again, standing on a chair ministering in front of Besom Jack's house. The organizers of this meeting, the East London Special Services Committee, were so impressed by William's command of his audience that, within a few days, they offered him a temporary position as the head of their work. Despite initial reluctance, William agreed, and on July 2, 1865, he began a series of meetings in a dilapidated tent located a stone's throw from the slums of Whitechapel Road. These meetings would continue for

six weeks.

While William would bring many hearts to the Lord, he soon found he had lost his own heart to East London. He had no steady income, but seeing the jobless crowds milling about in front of the Blind Beggar's pub told him he would never be without work. These people would be his work! They needed salvation—not only from their spiritual depravity, but also from their physical depravity. Though he had no idea how he would pay for it, he wrote the following mission statement and appeal for funds:

We have no very definite plans. We shall be guided by the Holy Spirit. At present we desire to be able to hold consecutive services for the purpose of bringing souls to Christ in different localities of the East of London every night all the year round. We propose holding these meetings in halls, theatres, chapels, tents, the open-air and elsewhere as the way may be opened or we seem likely to attain the end we have in view. We purpose to watch over and visit personally those brought to Christ, either guiding them to communion with adjacent and sympathetic churches or ourselves nursing them and training them to active labor. In order to carry on this work we propose to establish a Christian Revival Association….We shall also require some central building in which to hold our more private meetings, and in which to preach the Gospel when not engaged in special work elsewhere.506

The following week, a wealthy manufacturer sent William the first onehundred-pound check that would come in to support this work. More money followed. God was faithful, as always. This was the beginning of the work that would become the Salvation Army, initially known as the East London Christian Mission.

The East London Christian Mission

Over the next few years, the Booths' work was ever changing. Within the first year, most of the people who had started the work with them had left, for one reason or another—usually because they disliked William's preaching style, his uncompromising stance on an issue, the chaos that characterized his meetings, or the poor conditions of their working environment. Since the Booths had no permanent building, they rented facilities of all sorts for their meetings—from dance halls to livery stables. One time, they even held a meeting in the back of a pigeon shop. These spaces were often uncomfortably

crowded for their clientele, and some people would leave because of the constant odors of gin and tobacco. But by the summer of 1866, William had gathered a group of about five dozen faithful people who would help to continue the work of the mission.

However staunch William was about his doctrine, he was just the opposite when it came to his methods. Given his aim of saving the lost, there were few things he wasn't willing to try. In one meeting at which the crowd seemed to have little interest in his preaching, he decided to turn the floor over to a Gypsy hawker who had recently been saved. Almost as soon as this man started to give his testimony, the crowd was transformed and seemed to hang on his every word. From that day forward, testimonies from new converts were given at almost every meeting. William also started to delegate responsibility to new converts at each meeting. He found their enthusiasm to be contagious, and as they served at each gathering, prospective converts became even more receptive to the gospel message. It later became a saying in the Army that William preached some of his best sermons through the lips of other men. "He never monopolized the meetings. He made others help him—they were as much theirs, as his. This helped to make them attractive as well as effective."507

Bands and Bar Tunes

One day, a man and his three sons offered to be William's bodyguards, and they just happened to have brought their brass instruments with them. They offered to play, and William agreed. When he saw the crowd's favorable reception of the music, he decided to make such "bands" a regular part of the outdoor meetings. Hearing a catchy bar tune, William thought that the devil should not have all of the best music, so he told his musicians to learn to play the popular songs but to rewrite the lyrics to honor God. These tunes surely surprised many a drunkard—imagine someone singing a song in his evening revelries, only to hear it the next day inviting him to make his peace with God and forsake the drink that had been ruining him!

William had initially hoped that the mission would be primarily for evangelism—bringing people to Christ, then funneling them into churches for further growth and maturation. Finding a church home for every convert soon proved impractical, however. Many who were saved would refuse to attend

church; those who went to church were often unwelcome there; and, since William had no help from the outside, he needed to put the new converts to work for the mission to keep up with the ever increasing number of conversions. The mission started Bible classes, and it also sent people to visit the new converts within one week of their conversions. These visitors would check on the new converts, pray with them, and try to get them involved in the work of the mission. They also taught the converts how to pray and intercede for the lost. William sent them out two by two to invite people to the meetings, distribute flyers advertising various events, and pray for those who needed help and deliverance. These visits infused new converts with a sense of purpose and the drive they had lacked before they were saved. Their enthusiasm greatly enhanced the work already being done.

The American Civil War caused a drop in demand for English products, and unemployment increased. A cholera epidemic in 1866 spread like wildfire through east London, killing more than eight thousand people. For every two steps the mission moved forward, it felt as if it was three steps back. "Quit" wasn't in the Booths' vocabulary, though, and the mission continued on. Throughout their trials, William kept exhorting his people to pray:

Bring more faith into your praying....Do not be content with merely telling God about your wants, or expressing your desires, or even in reminding yourself of His ability and willingness to supply your needs, but take hold of His word, and believe that He does, there and then, if it be His blessed will, give you the things for which you ask.508

He also once wrote,

You must pray with your might....That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel, with eyes wide open, while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. It means that grappling with Omnipotence, that clinging to Him, following Him about, so to speak, day and night, as the widow did to the unjust judge, with agonizing pleadings and arguments and entreaties, until the answer comes and the end is gained. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame. They will ply you with suggestions and difficulties. They will ask you how you can expect that the plans and purposes and feelings of God can be

altered by your prayers. They will talk about impossibilities and predict failures; but, if you mean to succeed, you must shut your ears and eyes to all but what God has said, and hold Him to His own word: and you cannot do this in any sleepy mood; you cannot be a prevailing Israel unless you wrestle as Jacob wrestled, regardless of time aught else, save obtaining the blessing sought— that is, you must pray with your might.509

Eight-hour prayer meetings—some taking place throughout the night—were not uncommon. Prayer was a cornerstone of everything that they did.

During this time, the Booths' seventh and eighth children were born. Evangeline Cory was born on Christmas Day of 1865, and Lucy Milward was born on April 28, 1867. The Booth household was never short of helping hands for the work to be done!

The Hungry Must Be Fed

It didn't take long for William and Catherine to realize that it was easy for growling stomachs to drown out the preaching of the Gospel, and with unemployment still on the rise, many people needed as much physical help as they needed spiritual help. Thus, the Salvation Army soup kitchen was born.

Feeding the hungry would stretch the mission's finances more than anything had before, and William was constantly coming up with new schemes to keep the mission afloat. Ever since the beginning of their work, however, William and Catherine had never excised their own salary from the mission's money. They had always raised their personal support separately; every cent that they received for the mission went to the work of the mission.

At one point, William appointed Bramwell, by this time a teenager, to head his Food-for-the-Million shops. Every morning, Bramwell would awake faithfully at three o'clock to trudge four miles down to the Covent Garden Markets, where he would ask for discarded vegetables and purchase bags of soup bones. The program was supposed to provide a meal of bread and soup for the cost of sixpence, but because of corrupt managers, huge numbers of hungry people to feed, and young Bramwell's inexperience with leadership, these shops soon went bankrupt. They were eventually closed, and the soup kitchen was sold.

William did not view these social outreaches as being any less important than reaching people's souls. To him, the soup kitchens and other such outreaches were part of living out the Gospel. As he would later try to sum it up,

Our social operations are the natural outcome of Salvationism, or, I might say, of Christianity as instituted, described, proclaimed, and exemplified in the life, teaching, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Social work, in the spirit and practice which it has assumed with us, has harmonized with my own personal ideas of true religion from the hour I promised obedience to the commands of God....All this time, nevertheless, I felt, and often keenly felt, that there surely must be some way by which, without any evil consequences, I could legitimately fulfil the cravings of my own heart, as well as comply with the commands of my Lord, who had expressly told me that I was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoners. For a long time, however, I failed to see how this work could be done in any organized or extensive manner.

Gradually, however, the way opened, and opened largely as a result of our determination to make the godless crowds hear the message of salvation. In the very earliest days of the Army, therefore, in order to reach the people whom we could not reach by any other means, we gave the hungry wretches a meal, and then talked to them about God and eternity. Then came the gradual unfolding of our social methods.510

William quickly learned that handouts could easily erode the recipients' self-respect. As the mission's social charity efforts grew, they found it best to allow each beneficiary to either pay a small fee for the services or work to earn enough to pay for food and lodging.

By 1870, the mission's influence had reached beyond the limits of east London. Other missions had already been started in Croydon, in South London, and Edinburgh, Scotland. The East London Christian Mission now had about eight thousand members, so they bought a large building on Whitechapel Road, where they opened a soup kitchen, several classrooms, a large meeting hall, and a bookstore.

William became gravely ill for the next two years, so Catherine stepped in to run the mission. It was a trying time, and many of the individual posts

suffered with Catherine being stretched, both at home and in running the mission. While she was extremely organized, she had not the force of will of her husband, nor his air of command. When William had regained his health and returned in 1872, however, he took the reigns back into his own hands, and the organization began to grow again.

In 1873, William and Catherine agreed to add a ninth child to their family when a dying woman requested that young Bramwell take care of her child. Not fully realizing the responsibility involved, Bramwell had agreed, and when the woman died, he asked his mother and father for guidance. They agreed to adopt the child, and they let their daughter Emma take care of him. Thus was Harry added to their family. He would grow up to be the Salvation Army's first medical worker in India, where he would serve for thirty years. He died in India in 1919 and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his service to the Crown.

The Mission Becomes an Army

The Christian Mission (as it was now called, having dropped the "East London" from its name as the work moved beyond those borders) continued to grow by leaps and bounds over the next several years. Then, in May 1878, as William was putting the final touches on an annual report, something seemed amiss. The header on the title page read, "The Christian Mission under the superintendence of the Rev. William Booth is a Volunteer Army recruited from amongst the multitudes who are without God and without hope in the world."511

Puzzling over this sentence, William called in Bramwell and his assistant, George Scott Railton, to look it over with him. Railton read it out loud, and when Bramwell commented on the term "Volunteer Army," his father grabbed Railton's pen from him, crossed out Volunteer and wrote in the word Salvation. Seeing this change, Railton and Bramwell declared together, "Thank God for that!" The name "Salvation Army" had struck a chord with all three men. Over the next few months, the Christian Mission changed its name to the Salvation Army, adopting military titles, hierarchy, uniforms, and a "war against the forces of darkness" mentality. The newsletter's name was even changed to the War Cry.

The following year, "General" Booth described the organization and its

plan of attack with these words:

We are a salvation people—this is our specialty—getting people saved and keeping them saved, and then getting somebody else saved....Look at this. Clear your vision. Halt, stand still and afresh and more fully apprehend and comprehend your calling. You are to be a worker together with God for the salvation of your fellow men. What is the business of your life? Not merely to save your soul and make yourself meet for Paradise?...No, you are to be a redeemer, a savior, a copy of Jesus Christ Himself. So consecrate every awakened power to the great end of saving them.

Rescue the perishing. There they are all around you everywhere, crowds upon crowds, multitudes. Be skilful. Improve yourself. Study your business.

Be self-sacrificing. Remember the Master. What you lose for His sake, and for the sake of the poor souls for whom He died, you shall find again. Stick to it. Having put your hand to the salvation plough, don't look behind you.512

The General's First Command

The instructions for signing up for "The Army" were now clear. "Make your will, pack your box, kiss your girl, be ready in a week"513 became the General's first command to every new recruit. In the last six months of 1878, the number of mission stations grew from fifty to eighty-one, and the number of evangelists from eighty-eight to one hundred twenty-seven. By 1884, the Army had more than 900 members, and roughly 260 of those were overseas—some as far away as America, Canada, and Australia. By the organization's twentieth anniversary in 1885, there were 802 corps members in England alone, and 520 overseas in ten different nations.

As the Army grew larger and more popular, opposition grew as well. Bar and brothel owners who were losing business because of the Army hired thugs to attack their outdoor meetings and beat the musicians and speakers with clubs. The rowdies in Oldham grew so bold that they called themselves "The Skeleton Army" in mockery. Their flags bore the image of a skull and crossbones. Another group that called itself "The Sheffield Blades" attracted more than a thousand members.

Once, they tried to stop an Army parade in which the General himself was

traveling. They attacked with clubs, rocks, and rotten food, but the Salvationists refused to fight back. The General called for them to stay near the carriage, and they complied. One lieutenant was struck between the eyes and hit so forcefully in the back of the head that he had to be held on his horse all the way to the meeting. When the group arrived, he slid off his horse and said, "I hope they'll get saved,"514 before falling into a coma.

The Army members who were already gathered at the meetinghouse were shocked by the newcomers' broken instruments and bloodied, battered appearances. General Booth's remark was, "Now's the time to get your photo taken."515 This was war, after all, and the Salvationists wore their cuts and bruises like medals. When local officials turned against the Army and prosecuted them for such things as "public prayer," the Salvationists replied by protesting the fines as unjust, refusing to pay them, and gladly going to jail when arrested. They saw opposition as a sign that they were doing true apostolic work, and the harder they were pressed, the more determined they grew to spread the Gospel!

Stories of bravery abounded. One example, entitled simply, "The Lass from the Army," follows:

She was a Salvation Army lass, and her lot was a hard one. Working from seven in the morning till six o'clock at night, weaving hair-cloth, was dull and poorly paid work, but in addition she had to bear the constant and thoughtless gibes of her fellow-workers. One Autumn morning a spark from a bonfire on some adjoining allotment gardens entered an open window, alighted on a heap of loose hair, and the next minute the place was ablaze. A rush for safety of the work-girls followed.

"Is everybody down?" asked the foreman. His question was answered by one of the weavers, who holding up a key, shrieked, "My God! I locked Lizzie Summers in the 'piece shed' for a joke not a minute ago!" The "piece shed" was a room to be reached only through the burning building, through which it seemed impossible to make way. Girls and men were standing aghast and helpless, when two figures stumbled through the smoke, which poured from the weaving-room. One was seen to be Lizzie Summers; the other was, for the time, unrecognizable. It was The Salvation Army lass. She had stayed behind, burnt, blistered, and half-suffocated, to batter down the door in order to

liberate and save the life of her coarsest-tongued tormentor.516

Unconventional Conventions

The meetings of the Salvation Army often flowed with manifestations of the Holy Spirit, similar to what was witnessed with earlier revivalists, and they were anything but conventional. On Wednesday, May 21, 1879, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle printed the following article about one such meeting:

The people present, taken as a whole, were the roughest lot I have seen at any of these meetings....Taking a policeman into my confidence, I asked him if he knew any of these young men. "Know any of them?" he said. "Why, I know them all. This one is from Newcastle; the other sitting near him is one of the worst roughs we have"; and so he went on, with a description almost as long as the catalogue of ships in Homer. There was a fair sprinkling of women amongst the audience, too; and most of these were young ones, who did not appear to have been much troubled, previously, with thoughts about religion. I went to the meeting at about two o'clock [a.m.]. It had then been going on for some two or three hours; but so far it was very orderly and cool. There was a long, low platform in the middle of the room, round which the "Hallelujah Lasses," the "Converted Sweep," the "Hallelujah Giant," and other notabilities concerned with the movement were seated....

Singing was followed by what is called "Witnessing," various officers of the Salvation Army narrating their experience of "what the Lord had done for them." About half an hour was occupied in this wise; and, but for the ordinary interjections of enthusiasm, the time passed quietly enough. It would have been impossible to guess at what followed....

The General requested his audience to sit still and sing when the "witnessing" was concluded. He gave out these lines:—

I need Thee every hour, Most gracious Lord! No tender voice like Thine can peace afford. I need Thee, oh I need Thee: Every hour I need Thee,

Oh, bless me now, my Savior! I come to Thee.

The words were taken up by the whole audience; the chorus was rolled out to a rattling tune, and was no sooner finished than it was commenced again

with additional vigor. This chorus might have been sung perhaps a dozen times when there was a shrill scream, a bustle round the platform, and a general rise of the audience. Seats were mounted; hands were raised in the air; the singing was mingled with loud "Hallelujahs," bursts of vociferous prayer, shouting, and hysterical laughter.

To add to the confusion four of the forms fell backwards, and threw their occupants into a common heap on the floor....Sinners were creeping to the penitent form; the Salvation Army was rejoicing; fully one third of those present acted as if they were more or less insane....

Several figures are bent double near the platform, groaning and wringing their hands. The "Hallelujah Lasses" have surrounded them; the tall figure of the proprietor of the "Hallelujah Fiddle" gyrates around them; the sweep is dancing and shouting "Glory be to God"; and the "General" is smiling placidly and twiddling his thumbs....

As may be seen from what I have written, until penitents "throw themselves at the feet of Jesus," as it is called, a meeting of the Salvation Army is a tolerably sane affair. The fat is at once in the fire, however, when penitents come forward....Half-a-dozen crop-headed youths—boys they are, indeed— are praying vociferously, with their faces towards me. Did I say praying? I only suppose they were. It was vociferous shouting, with closed eyes. Their bodies sway to and fro; their hands are lifted, and brought down again with a thump on the form; they contort themselves as if they were in acute agony. The hymn resounds high above their prayers;...everybody is carrying on a separate service on his own account.

Meanwhile the "lasses" are busy with the work of conversion. It proceeds by stages, with a separate hymn for each. The final stage is reached with the singing of "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me." The process being thus rendered complete, the converts retire to their seats with red faces. Let us follow one of them. He is a broad-faced, shock-headed youth, of about twenty. A few minutes since, he was foaming out of a well-developed mouth. Now he is dancing about the floor, shouting "hallelujah" and wringing the hands of all those who will yield their arm to him....He has in fact been converted....

Here...was an extraordinary effect produced without anything that can be

called preaching. It was the singing that appeared to be most powerful....After more singing, there was another rush to the penitent form, another repetition of the same hymns, of the same gesticulations, of the same frantic prayers. But a quite new interest was added. I watched the proceedings for some time from my point of vantage on a back form; and then struggled through the crowd to get a look at the penitents. They had fainted away. Here lay a woman in a dead swoon, with six "Hallelujah lasses" singing round her, and not one of them trying to bring her round even by so much as sprinkling water on her face. On the other side of the platform was a man lying at full length, his limbs twitching, his lips foaming, totally unregarded....

I appealed to the "Hallelujah Giant." The General had stated on Monday that he was not a quack doctor, but a real doctor. It struck me as peculiar that he should sit there singing under such circumstances, and I said, "Really, cannot you do something to bring these people round?" "My good man," he replied, "won't you sit down? They will come round all right." They may have done so—both their recovery and their conversion may have been complete— but it was hard to stay there and witness so much of what looked like gross inhumanity. When I came away people were swooning all over the place. I had to step over a man in a fit in order to get to the door.

When I reached the street and the pure air it was a fresh, gray morning...."Is this a common sort of thing here?" I asked of the policeman outside. "Very," he said, "but it has reduced our charge sheet, and I haven't had a case for two months." I didn't ask him if it was as good for the persons who took part in such "services" as it was for the charge sheet. Neither he nor I could properly answer that question.517

Need Found—Need Met!

Whenever the Salvation Army saw a need, they found a way to answer it. Women rescued from prostitution needed somewhere to go, so homes were started for them. The same happened for those recently released from prison. The Army would open "labour bureaus" in 1888 to help the unemployed find work—some twenty-three years before the British government thought to start such social services! These offices would place 69,000 people into jobs during the first seven years of operation.

The Salvation Army also opened the first missing person's bureau to help

families find their loved ones; England was a country where more than 9,000 people went missing each year. William and Catherine also wanted to find a way to provide legal services for the poor and to start a Poor Man's Bank that could give loans to help unemployed entrepreneurs start businesses. Whenever they discovered a need, they did their best to fill it; when they faced a wrong, they would spare no expense in righting it. It was an attitude that would bring them continually into Satan's crosshairs.

The Armstrong Case: The Army Fights Sex Trafficking

In 1885, the legal age of consent in Britain was thirteen. Although slavery had been abolished throughout the Empire in 1833 through the efforts of William Wilberforce and others, young girls needing work often got duped into coming to London as housemaids or factory workers, only to find their place of employment to be a brothel. They were then trapped within stone-walled compounds with little means of escape until their spirits were broken enough to do their new employers' bidding. To enforce their compliance, they were often raped repeatedly, and the guilt of having been violated was used against them to keep them in check.

When a victim of this system showed up on the doorsteps of the Salvation Army headquarters one day and told her story to Bramwell, everyone found it hard to believe, at first. But further investigation showed her story to be true, and the Salvation Army took on a new enemy: the white slavers and sex-trade profiteers of London.

As was too often the case, the brothels seemed to have more friends in high places than the Army had, and closing down prostitution was a low priority for the local police departments. If any brothel owner was tried on such accounts, plea bargains were often struck, and the owners got away with only minor fines. The system was corrupt, and the only way to turn it around was for there to be a huge public outcry against the kidnapping and abuse of these young women. The age of consent needed to be raised to protect the younger, more naïve girls from the sex traders' tricks and wiles. When Bramwell went to the Home Secretary about this issue, he reintroduced a bill to raise the age of consent to sixteen, but it was immediately blocked in the House of Commons. One speaker on the floor even argued that the age of consent should be dropped

to ten!

Still determined to break the silence, Bramwell convinced William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, to investigate the case and publish the facts. What they uncovered was a complicated network of duping, drugging, and shanghaiing thousands of girls, most of whom were under the age of sixteen. Clients would often give a description of the girl they wanted, and then pay to have a "fresh girl"—a young virgin—delivered to them. Some girls were shipped out of the country in coffins—nailed shut, with air holes drilled into them—to serve in the state-controlled brothels of mainland Europe. Many who regained consciousness mid-trip actually died of terror as they tried to claw their way out. Kidnappers would even dress as nuns to fool the young girls—a ploy they found particularly effective in Ireland. The magnitude of the conspiracy was unimaginable. It was an industry worth more than eight million pounds a year—roughly $929 million today!

To learn more about sex trafficking, Stead posed as a client, and a young Salvation Army lass allowed herself to be captured as his mistress. Stead would visit her regularly to hear what she had learned on the inside and endured in her kidnapping. She made a serious mistake, however—the brothel mistress discovered her Salvation Army badge sewn into the folds of her dress.

Plans were made immediately to ship her off to Europe, and she was locked in the attic to await deportation. More afraid of being shipped overseas than dying, she jumped out of the attic window to escape. When she landed, she sprained her ankle, fainted, and fell to the ground, unconscious. As providence would have it, her fiancé, another young Army officer, decided that he had had enough of this ruse, and he had organized a group of young officers to storm the brothel and rescue his beloved. As the group made its way through the compound gates, they found the girl, lying on the ground, just moments after she had landed. Her fiancé scooped her up and took her home, never having to cross the threshold of the brothel. The girl healed quickly and came through the ordeal largely unharmed.

Stead's evidence was exhaustive and compelling, but he still needed more. It was necessary to be able to track at least one girl who had responded to an employment advertisement in the newspaper and ended up in a brothel. Stead

would need to document every step to allow no room for denying the evidence. Plus, writing the story from the perspective of a victim and filling in the details was the surest route to the hearts and minds of the population.

The hope was that this exposé would provoke a public outcry that would blow the cover off this unseemly trade and change the law. After all, Stead had discovered that some of the most respected men in the community—doctors, politicians, royalty, and even clergymen—were among the brothel clients! If such influential men were complicit in the cover-up, the only way to change things would be to incite a massive public backlash.

When Stead shared his plan with William and Catherine, they gave him their full support. They also decided that while Stead and Bramwell were putting their plan into effect, the Army would introduce the issue in a "Purity Crusade" to prime the pumps of public opinion. They would also write to the queen and prime minister, asking them again to reintroduce the bill to raise the age of consent and urging them to demand that it receive an honest hearing. At one meeting, Catherine spoke about the issue:

I question whether any face has burned with fiercer shame than mine....Three years ago a committee of the House of Lords sat to consider these very things and they recommended improved legislation for the protection of young girls... and yet nothing has been done. I would like to ask those responsible for this state of things how many thousands of innocent victims have been sacrificed during those three years?...They have found time to legislate on the preservation of game, and the diseases of cattle!...Time to legislate for British interests in far-off corners of the earth, surely they might have found time to legislate for the protection of the children of their own country!...The wretches who cater for the child-destroying monsters perfectly well know the present state of the law....Hence their anxiety to get children who are turned thirteen even if only by a day!518

Stead spoke with a lawyer to ensure that he would not be breaking any laws in the pursuit of his plan, and the lawyer assured him that without criminal intent, there would be no crime. Stead thus outlined his intentions, which he also presented to the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Roman Catholic Church of England, and the bishop of London—three witnesses whose integrity could not be questioned.

One of the Salvation Army officers, Rebecca Jarrett, had participated in the trade of kidnapping girls before she turned her life around and joined the Army. Stead approached her to enlist her aid in the plan. At first, she wanted nothing to do with any part of her old life, but Stead soon convinced her that it was her duty to try to save those whom she had previously condemned to a life of prostitution. She contacted some of her old acquaintances and got the ball rolling.

On June 2, 1885, posing as a rich merchant's wife in search of a housemaid, Rebecca was introduced to a thirteen-year-old girl named Eliza Armstrong. Rebecca warned Eliza's mother that the housemaid angle was a ruse, and that her daughter was destined to be some man's toy. An alcoholic, she didn't care; she just wanted to take the money and return to her drinking. Eliza, fully taken in, was excited at the prospect of living in a new home and earning her own money. Her mother relinquished her for a mere pound.

Again acting the part of the client, Stead waited in a room he had rented at a brothel. Eliza was brought in, and after they had chatted together for awhile, Stead left her to sleep. Later, as would have been the custom, he returned as a real client would. He was hoping that she would still be asleep, so that he could enter the room and leave again without disturbing her, but she awoke when he came in, crying and pleading to be taken home. Rebecca returned and calmed her, then told her the truth of the entire affair and apologized for the trickery. Within twenty-four hours, Eliza was escorted away, sent to stay with Salvationists in France for safekeeping. Stead had his story.

A Newspaper Reports the Truth

On Monday, July 6, 1885, the Pall Mall Gazette published the first of four articles in a series entitled "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon." Eliza was referred to as "Lilly" in the article for her protection, but the story was no less compelling. It was frank and factual, leaving no sordid stone unturned. The paper sold out almost immediately, and London seemed in a panic. Politicians were soon calling for Stead's head, labeling the material pornographic and, therefore, illegal. Several newsboys were arrested for selling the paper the next day. Brothel owners hired hooligans to storm the Gazette building and destroy the presses. Stead appealed to William for help, and he instantly replied, "Tell Mr. Stead that we'll throw open this building for the sake of his

paper. We'll do everything in our power to help him."519

The next day, the Salvation Army headquarters looked like a giant newsstand, and Army cadets walked the streets of London, selling the papers. Catherine spoke at Exeter Hall and produced testimony after testimony from the Army's own archives of stories confirming Stead's article. One of the stories was of a rich merchant who had made arrangements for a girl, and just such a girl was enticed away from her Sunday school lessons and kept at a brothel to await him. Imagine the man's shock when he entered the room with the worst of intentions to find his own daughter was the one kidnapped to be his victim!

The Booths presented a petition that called for the following:

Protection for children, boys and girls, to the end of their seventeenth year

The procuring of young persons for immoral purposes to be made a criminal act

Magistrates to be given the power to order entry into a house where it is believed underage girls may be detained against their will

Equality for men and women in the law—that it be made an offence for men to solicit women520.

In the next seventeen days, the Booths collected 393,000 signatures for the petition, which they represented to the House of Commons on Thursday, July 30, 1885. The scrolls of names stretched for more than two and a half miles. On August 14, the House of Commons amended the criminal code to raise the age of consent to sixteen years, and other commonwealth countries, such as Australia and Canada—as well as parts of the United States—followed suit.

Despite this victory, the fight was not yet over, unfortunately. The Armstrongs soon realized that "Lilly" was indeed their own Eliza, and likely seeing a chance for some profit, filed charges against Stead and the Booths for kidnapping. Eliza's father had not consented to the "sale" of his child, and his entire case would build on this important fact. An extradition warrant was issued, and Mr. Armstrong went to France to recover his daughter. She was home again with her family by August 24, even though she had begged to stay

with the Salvationists. Everyone involved with Eliza's removal from her mother was asked to stand trial. The brothel owners and sex traffickers collected mobs to stand outside the courthouse and call for "justice" on the Booths. For the next few weeks, the trial would occupy the public's attention as much as the O. J. Simpson trial did in the 1990s. The hope was to ruin the Salvation Army, once and for all.

Blatantly favored by the judge, the prosecution pulled every trick in the book to condemn the Booths. In the end, the Booths were acquitted; only Stead and Rebecca were found guilty. Stead and Rebecca were sentenced to three and six months of hard labor, respectively, which they both endured with the support of the Army by their side. After his release, Stead discovered that the Armstrongs had never actually married, and, therefore, Mr. Armstrong was not a legal guardian of Eliza. This fact would have caused the case to be thrown out, had it been presented in court.

While Stead had been on trial, a young girl who was dying had asked that her only remaining shilling be donated to the editor's defense. He was handed the shilling on his release from prison, and he kept it with him until the day he died. He wrote that it was "the shilling which I most prize of all the pieces of money in my possession."521 Stead donated his prison uniform to the Army on the anniversary of his conviction, and he remained a friend of the Army for many years to come. He died on April 14, 1912, a passenger who didn't survive the sinking of the Titanic.

Instead of destroying the Salvation Army, as it was intended to, the trial had made it a household name as an institution dedicated to doing the right thing, no matter what. The work of the Army would now grow faster than ever.

Catherine's Final Years

In February 1888, Catherine was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer, and despite her family's pleas, she refused surgery. The risks seemed too great, and she was concerned that her heart would not be able to withstand the strain of the operating table. Her health deteriorated quickly, and her bed became a makeshift office where she could attend meetings without having to get up and go anywhere.

With Catherine confined to her sitting room, William decided to spend more

time with her, and he finally began working on a book that he had been considering writing for some time. It would be titled In the Darkest England and the Way Out, and it presented a systematic plan for helping England's impoverished. He held up what he called the "cab horse"522 standard: every human being should be entitled to the same things a cab horse had—namely, food, shelter, and a job. If a cab horse faltered along its way, people treated it, if necessary, and got it back on its feet. Shouldn't the same be done for our fellow human beings who fall on hard times? William's plan had three parts:

1)The City Colony: an institution in the cities to supply short-term help to the needy with the goal of catching those who slip and getting them right back on their feet again. Those who could be reinstated into society would be; those who needed retraining or more help could be passed on to the next phase.

2)The Farm Colony: Those who could not find work in the cities could be moved to a farm in the countryside where they could be reeducated, as needed, into new trades and instructed in spiritual matters to give them the strength to become self-supporting again. The farm would also be away from the call of such vices as alcohol and gambling. If this wasn't sufficient, after they were retrained, they could be given a new beginning in the next phase.

3)The Colony across the Sea: At this time, the British colonies in South Africa, East Africa, Australia, and Canada were still open for settlement. Once people were retrained at a farm colony, if they couldn't find work in England, then the colony across the sea could give them a new start in a new country.

Catherine was enthusiastic about the project, and again with the help of Stead, the two of them began piecing the book together.

The condition of Catherine's health continued to deteriorate rapidly. By October 1889, she was almost completely confined to bed. The doctors offered her narcotic drugs to ease her pain, but she refused them as long as she could; she wanted to experience life without the haze of painkillers. She wasn't expected to live to see the New Year, but she made a recovery, and in January 1890 seemed stronger. William and his family cherished every minute with her until her last.

In September 1890, Catherine, William, and Stead put the finishing touches on the Darkest England manuscript. It was a triumphant finish—but a

conclusion that also seemed to signify the finish line for Catherine's life. Her strength was nearly gone by October 2, and her family gathered around to see her depart this life for her eternal home. She breathed her last on October 4, 1890.

Catherine's funeral service was held on October 13, and more than 36,000 people came. The next day, a parade of four thousand Salvationists escorted her body to its final resting place in Abney Park Cemetery. In remembrance of her, William addressed those who had gathered at the cemetery:

My beloved Comrades and Friends:

You will readily understand that I find it a difficulty to talk to you this afternoon. To begin with, I could not be willing to talk without an attempt to make you hear, and sorrow doesn't feel like shouting.

Yet I have come riding through these, I suppose, hundreds of thousands of people this afternoon, who have bared their heads and who have blessed me in the name of the Lord at almost every resolution of the carriage wheels. My mind has been full of two feelings, which alternate—one is uppermost one moment, and the other the next—and yet which blend and amalgamate with each other; and these are the feeling of sorrow and the feeling of gratitude.

Those who know me—and I don't think I am very difficult to understand— and those who knew my darling, my beloved, will, I am sure, understand how it is that my heart should be rent with sorrow.

If you had had a tree that had grown up in your garden, under your window, which for forty years had been your shadow from the burning sun, whose flowers had been the adornment and beauty of your life, whose fruit had been almost the stay of your existence, and the gardener had come along and swung his glittering axe and cut it down before your eyes, I think you would feel as though you had a blank—it might not be a big one—but a little blank in your life!

If you had had a servant, who for all this long time had served you without fee or reward, who had ministered, for very love, to your health and comfort, and who had suddenly passed away, you would miss that servant!

If you had had a counselor who, in hours—continually occurring—of

perplexity and amazement, had ever advised you, and seldom advised wrong; whose advice you had followed and seldom had reason to regret it; and the counselor, while you are still in the same intricate mazes of your existence, had passed away, you would miss that counselor!

If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts and the purpose of your existence; a friend whose communion had ever been pleasant—the most pleasant of all other friends—to whom you had ever turned with satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some sorrow at the loss!

If you had had a mother for your children, who had cradled and nursed and trained them for the service of the living God, in which you most delighted—a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart's blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken from your side, you would feel it a sorrow!

If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you side by side in the battle's front, who had been a comrade to you, ever willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen before your eyes, I am sure there would have been some excuse for sorrow!

Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualities into one personality, and what would be lost in each I have lost in all. There has been taken away from me the delight of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul, and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City!

And yet, my comrades, my heart is full of gratitude too that swells and makes me forget my sorrow, that the long valley of the shadow of death has been trodden, and that out of the dark tunnel she has emerged into the light of day. Death came to her with all its terrors, brandishing his heart before her for two long years and nine months. Again and again she went down to the river's

edge to receive her last thrust, as she thought, but ever coming back to life again. Thank God, she will see him no more—she is more than conqueror over the last enemy!

Death came to take her away from her loved employment. She loved the fight! Her great sorrow to the last moment was: "I cannot be with you when the clouds lower, when friends turn and leave you, and sorrows come sweeping over you; I shall no longer be there to put my arms round you and cheer you on!"

But she went away to help us! She promised me many a time that what she could do for us in the Eternal City should be done! The valley to her was a dark one in having to tear her heart away from so many whom she loved so well. Again and again she said, "The roots of my affections are very deep." But they had to be torn up. One after another she gave us up; she made the surrender with many loving words of counsel, and left us to her Lord.

This afternoon my heart has been full of gratitude because her soul is now with Jesus. She had a great capacity for suffering and a great capacity for you, and her heart is full of joy this afternoon.

My heart has also been full of gratitude because God lent me for so long a season such a treasure. I have been thinking, if I had to point out her three qualities to you here, they would be: First, she was good. She was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. To the last moment her cry was, "A sinner saved by grace." She was a thorough hater of shams, hypocrisies, and make-believes.

Second, she was love. Her whole soul was full of tender, deep compassion. I was thinking this morning that she suffered more in her lifetime through her compassion for poor dumb animals than some suffer for the wide, wide world of sinning, sorrowing mortals! Oh, how she loved, how she compassioned, how she pitied the suffering poor! How she longed to put her arms round the sorrowful and help them!

Lastly, she was a warrior. She liked the fight. She was not one who said to others, "Go!" but "Here, let me go!" And when there was the necessity she cried, "I will go." I never knew her flinch until her poor body compelled her to lie aside....

I am going to meet her again. I have never turned from her these forty years for any journeyings on my mission of mercy but I have longed to get back, and have counted the weeks, days, and hours, which should take me again to her side. When she has gone away from me it has been just the same. And now she has gone away for the last time. What then is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work plainly is to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours and cheer my poor heart as I go along with the thought that when I have served Christ and my generation according to the will of God—which I vow this afternoon I will, to the last drop of my blood—then I trust that she will bid me welcome to the skies, as He bade her. God bless you all.523

The War of the Matches

With all of the business of the Salvation Army before him, William had little time to mourn. Shortly after Catherine's passing, Darkest England was released and became an instant best-seller. William Booth was the man talked about most in all of England. Supporters began sending donations to help fund William's plan. Other people criticized him anew for what they cited as the folly and inadequacies of his schemes. He was never one to heed critics' remarks, though, and he maintained focus on what had been his aim since the beginning: the salvation of souls.

During their research for Darkest England, one of the ills the Booths had come across had to do with the manufacture of "strike anywhere" matches. The workers in the match factories were mostly women and children—some as young as eight—who worked sixteen-hour days with no breaks for meals. They were paid a shilling a day. Even worse, however, was that the chemicals used to make these matches were extremely toxic, and with poor ventilation in the factories, the workers had no protection from these gases. After extended exposure, workers began to get toothaches and what was called "flossy jaw"—the rotting away of the jawbone due to exposure to the yellow phosphorous. Though the manufacturers recognized these risks, they refused to do anything to help or protect

In response, the Salvation Army decided to go into the match-making business itself in order to produce matches under safer working conditions.

Their factory was well lit and properly ventilated, the workers' wages were nearly double those in the "strike anywhere" match factories, and they made sure to give the workers regular breaks every day. Also, instead of the harmful yellow phosphorous, they used red phosphorous. They produced matches with "safety tips," which would strike only on the box, but the quality of the working conditions enabled them to produce as many as six million matches a year.

Because these matches were nearly two times as expensive as the "strike anywhere" matches, the Army launched an advertising campaign to make people aware of the dangers of their competitors' products. They invited the press to tour their factory and took them to the homes of people who had worked in competitors' factories. These people stank of rotting flesh—the effects of the yellow phosphorous—and when they snuffed out their gaslights, the glow of the phosphorous was visible on their hands and teeth. Salvationists across the nation went into local shops to tell the proprietors of the dangers of "strike anywhere" matches, urging them to carry only the Army's "Lights in Darkest England" matches. Public opinion slowly turned the Salvationists' way, and the government eventually enforced higher work standards in all of the factories. By the turn of the century, the largest match manufacturer in England had stopped using yellow phosphorous altogether. The Army's match factory closed down soon after—it was no longer needed, and it had never been a financial success—but it had accomplished what the Army had set out to do.

As for the rest of the Darkest England plan, the Army received enough money to purchase eight hundred acres near Hadleigh, where they established a farm colony. That was about as far as the Darkest England plan grew, however, for want of adequate capital. Many parts of the plan were eventually implemented by various other nations and governments that could more easily collect the finances necessary (through taxation) to carry out the strategies. William was ahead of his time by at least a decade.

Finishing Strong

William grew restless at home with Catherine gone. He had little to keep him in the home office, having passed most of his responsibilities on to Bramwell and other officers, so he began traveling and speaking again. The

Army now extended around the world, and checking up on his troops required William to travel extensively—by train, car, and ship. The last two and a half decades of his life were spent on the road—visiting stations, encouraging the troops, and preaching the Gospel wherever he could.

William died on August 20, 1912, having outlasted his wife, many of his friends, and even one of his children. More that 150,000 people filed past his casket to pay their respects before his funeral on August 27. Forty thousand people attended the service. Among those in attendance was Queen Mary, who had decided at the last minute to attend, and, fittingly enough, had to sit with the commoners. She ended up sitting next to a woman whom the Army had saved from prostitution. This woman told the queen, "He cared for the likes of us."524 The next day, ten thousand Salvationists and forty Salvation Army bands marched in the procession to Abney Park Cemetery, where William's body was laid to rest beside Catherine's.

William had left the Generalship of the Army—an organization with 15,945 officers in fifty-eight nations at the time of his death—to Bramwell. In his life, William had traveled more than five million miles and preached some sixty thousand sermons. Charles Spurgeon said of the Army, "If the Salvation Army were wiped out of London, five thousand extra policemen could not fill its place in the repression of crime and disorder."525 Booker T. Washington said, "I have always had the greatest respect for the work of the Salvation Army, especially because I have noted that it draws no color line in religion."526 Josiah Strong, who became the founder of the Social Gospel movement in the United States, said, "Probably during no one hundred years in the history of the world have there been saved so many thieves, gamblers, drunkards, and prostitutes as during the past quarter century through the heroic faith and labors of the Salvation Army."527

The legacy of William and Catherine Booth, the Salvation Army is the largest charitable organization in the world, with twenty-five thousand officers in ninety-one countries. Today, it sadly lacks the fire for evangelism that it had in the General's day. Yet the Booths' passion to love people with the love of God is still touching lives, nearly one hundred and fifty years after the first sermon was preached for the East London Christian Mission. The Salvation Army reaches more that 2.5 million people each year through its ten thousand centers worldwide, continuing to fulfill Jesus' admonition in Matthew 25:35–

40:

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

484 William Booth, The Salvationist, January 1879, quoted in Cyril Barnes, ed., The Founder Speaks Again (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1960), 47.

485 W. T. Stead, Mrs. Booth (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1900), 27–28.

486 Fredrick de Lautour Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth: The Mother of the Salvation Army, vol. 1 (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, Ltd., 1924 [3rd printing]), 36–37.

487 Trevor Yaxley, William and Catherine: The Life and Legacy of the Booths, Founders of the Salvation Army: A New Biography (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2003), 40.

488 The Methodist Hymn Book (London: Novello and Co., 1933), Hymn 406.

489 Stead, Mrs. Booth, 38.

490 Richard Collier, The General Next to God (London: Collins, 1965), 189.

491 Collier, General Next to God, 23–24.

492 Ibid.

493 Stead, Mrs. Booth, 61.

494 Catherine Booth, "Reminiscences," quoted in Catherine Bramwell-Booth,

Catherine Booth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), 58–60.

495 Catherine Mumford, letter to William Booth, May 1852, quoted in Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth, 66–67.

496 Catherine Mumford, letter to William Booth, 9 April 1855, British Library Microfilm 64802.

497 William Booth, letter to Catherine Mumford, 12 April 1855, quoted in Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth, 121–122.

498 Collier, General Next to God, 33.

499 Stead, Mrs. Booth, 152–155.

500 Ibid., 152–155.

501 Stead, Mrs. Booth, 152–155.

502 Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth, 158.

503 Ibid., 159.

504 Collier, General Next to God, 36.

505 Norman H. Murdoch, "The General," Christian History 9, no. 2 [Issue 26] (1990): 6.

506 Robert Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army, vol. 1, 1865–1878 (London: Thomas Nelson, 1947), 42.

507 Bramwell Booth, Our First Captain (London: Salvationist Publishing, n.d.), 10.

508 William Booth, Faith-Healing (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1902), 7.

509 William Booth, The Christian Mission Magazine, January 1870, quoted in Barnes, ed., Founder Speaks Again, 76.

510 Sandall, History of the Salvation Army, vol. 3, 1883–1953, xiii.

511 Collier, General Next to God, 56.

512 William Booth, The Salvationist, January 1879, quoted in Barnes, ed., Founder Speaks Again, 45, 48.

513 Collier, General Next to God, 47.

514 Ibid., 92.

515 Ibid., 93.

516 William Booth, The Seven Spirits (London: The Salvation Army, 1985), 91–92.

517 A Special Correspondent, "The Salvation Army III: An All Night Meeting," Newcastle Daily Chronicle, Wednesday, 21 May 1879, http://www.vision.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/revival/hlndciii.html.

518 Catherine Booth, The War Cry, 1 August 1885, quoted in Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth, 330.

519 Collier, General Next to God, 122.

520 Yaxley, William and Catherine: The Life and Legacy of the Booths, 206.

521 Estelle W. Stead, My Father: Personal and Spiritual Reminiscences (London, 1913), quoted in Owen Mulpetre, "The 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon': W. T. Stead and the Making of a Scandal," The W. T. Stead Resource Site, http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/worksabout/babylon.php.

522 The horses that drew the cabs and carriages of the day.

523 Roger J. Green, Catherine Booth (Crowborough, UK: Monarch, 1997), 294–297.

524 Collier, General Next to God, 223.

525 Kevin A. Miller, "Fashionable or Forceful?" Christian History 9, no. 2 [Issue 26] (1990): 2.

526 Ibid.

527 Ibid.

Chapter Ten

Billy Graham

"Evangelist to the World"

My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God,

which, I believe, comes through knowing Christ.

—Billy Graham

If God blessed the twentieth century with technological advancements in order that more people might hear the Gospel preached, then no one picked up that challenge better than Billy Graham. Billy's calling as an evangelist would transcend ministry in the church to a place on the world stage equal in influence to that of presidents and prime ministers. He would find a simple formula for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that thousands and millions could hear it and respond in one sitting: the crusade. People could accept Jesus as their personal Savior whether they attended a crusade, watched one on television, heard it on the radio, read about it in a book, caught its message in a film or video, or even downloaded it as a Webcast via the Internet. No single person has touched so many for the name of Christ in the history of the world; and when it comes to Christianity, there are few names known more widely today than that of Billy Graham.

When Life Was Simpler

William Franklin Graham Jr. was born on November 7, 1918, on a dairy farm outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where his grandfather had first built a log cabin after the Civil War. It was four days before the armistice of World War I, and a year after the Communist Revolution in Russia—two events that would ultimately spark the Cold War. Billy was born to William Franklin Graham and Morrow Coffey Graham. His maternal grandmother had been a Presbyterian, and she had raised her children devotedly. When she died, "Billy Frank," as the evangelist was then called, was still in elementary school, as was his sister Catherine. They were pulled out of school the day their grandmother passed away and were told that she went home happily. Just before she died, she had sat up in bed almost laughing, and said, "I see Jesus. He has His arms outstretched toward me. And there's Ben! [Her husband.] He

had both of his eyes and both of his legs."528 Ben had fought in the Civil War, and during the Battle of Gettysburg, he had lost a leg and an eye from some shrapnel fire. The story took on the weight of a family legend.

Billy grew to adolescence in the midst of the Great Depression. His father had lost $4,000 of lifetime savings in the bank runs on the day the stock market crashed, but because the Grahams lived on a farm, they could make do. They barely survived as the price of milk fell to five cents a quart, but Billy's father's dry sense of humor kept everyone in good spirits, and the family endured together. Despite hardships, the Grahams were still the first in their neighborhood to have a radio in their car.

As a boy, Billy grew to love baseball, though he was really only good enough to make the team and sit on the bench. His fielding was solid, but he was a left-handed batter whose hitting record was not extremely lustrous. Because of his height and a good glove, he generally played first base. When he was five, his father had taken him to hear the professional baseball playerturned-evangelist, Billy Sunday, but Billy Frank was too young for the evangelist to make much of an impression on him. All he really remembered of the service was that his father had dryly told him he needed to sit quietly or the preacher might call out his name and have him arrested. It took him a few years to figure out that his father had been joking.

His parents were devout in many ways. On the first day of their marriage, they had established an altar in their home and dedicated themselves to daily Bible reading. Billy's father, raised as a Methodist, had been a strong supporter of Prohibition. The day that the movement was repealed in 1933, he brought home some beer and took Billy and his sister into the kitchen, where he forced them to drink it—all of it—until they were ready to vomit. "From now on," he said, "whenever any of your friends try to get you to drink alcohol, just tell them you've already tasted it and you don't like it. That's all the reason you need to give."529 It wasn't exactly an argument from Scripture, but it was effective. Billy would be a teetotaler his entire life.

About the time that Billy's sister Jean was born, his father had an accident that nearly killed him. He had approached a friend working with a table saw, and when his friend turned slightly to hear him, a piece of wood got caught by the blade and was flung out of control at Billy's father, smashing his jaw and

cutting him severely along the side of the head. He was rushed to the hospital but lost a good deal of blood along the way. Friends and family turned to prayer, and for a few days, things looked grim. He soon stabilized, however, and underwent plastic surgery to reconstruct his face.

Deeply grateful for this answer to prayer, William Graham Sr. couldn't refuse when a group of local businessmen asked to use part of his land for an all-day prayer meeting. When a farmhand asked Billy who these men were, he answered, "I guess they're just some fanatics that have talked Daddy into using the place."530 Years later, he would learn that someone at that prayer meeting had prayed "that out of Charlotte [North Carolina] the Lord would raise up someone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth."531

"I Like a Fighter"

Dr. Mordecai Ham began a revival in Charlotte when Billy was fifteen, but he had no desire whatsoever to go; he turned down every invitation for the first month of Ham's meetings. His attitude would change, however, after Ham voiced some accusations about a house of immorality near Central High School in Charlotte. He claimed that some students were frequenting the house every day during their lunch hour, stating that he had affidavits to prove it. The story made the Charlotte News. Offended by the accusations, a group of students from the school pledged to march on Ham's next meeting and protest in front of the podium. Some had even threatened to pull him from the podium to teach him a lesson.

The day of the scheduled protest, a friend of Billy's asked, "Why don't you come out and hear our fighting preacher?"532

"Is he a fighter?" Billy responded. "I like a fighter." So he agreed to go. That night, Billy found himself awestruck—not as much by what Ham said as by the power behind it. As he put it in his autobiography, "I was hearing another voice, as was often said of Dwight L. Moody when he preached: the voice of the Holy Spirit."533

From that night on, Billy was at every one of Ham's meetings that he could attend. Ham preached the first sermon that Billy had ever heard about hell, and it was the first time Billy had considered it as anything other than a swear word. Over the course of these meetings, Billy became convicted that he was

rebellious and sinful, but he was confused about how to respond. He had been baptized as an infant in the Presbyterian Church, learned the Shorter Catechism by heart, and been confirmed in the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church before the elders and the pastor, but these no longer seemed adequate qualifications. He had previously believed himself to be anything but a wicked person—morally upstanding, an excellent citizen, and even the vice president of his youth group. Yet when Ham fixed his gaze on him, he knew in his heart that none of this was enough. He gradually realized that what Ham was getting at was the fact that a person could come to know Jesus personally, and the more he talked of it, the more Billy realized he did not really know Jesus at all.

Then, one night shortly after Billy's sixteenth birthday, Ham extended an invitation at the end of his sermon, quoting Romans 5:8: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." On the last verse of the second song that played while people were coming forward, Billy responded to the invitation and walked to the front of the stage with some three hundred or so other people. In Just As I Am, Billy described how he felt standing among the crowd:

My heart sank when I looked over at the lady standing next to me with tears running down her cheeks. I was not crying. I did not feel any special emotion of any kind just then. Maybe, I thought, I was not supposed to be there. Maybe my good intentions to be a real Christian wouldn't last. Wondering if I was just making a fool of myself, I almost turned around and went back to my seat.

As I stood in front of the platform, a tailor named J. D. Prevatt, who was a friend of our family with a deep love for souls, stepped up beside me weeping....In his heavy European accent, he explained God's plan for my salvation in a simple way. That explanation was addressed to my own mental understanding. It did not necessarily answer every question I had at the moment —and it certainly did not anticipate every question that would come to me in the months and years ahead—but it set forth simply the facts I needed to know in order to become God's child.

…Now came the moment to commit myself to Christ. Intellectually, I accepted Christ to the extent that I acknowledged what I knew about Him to be true. That was mental assent. Emotionally, I felt that I wanted to love Him in return for His loving me. But the final issue was whether I would turn myself

over to His rule in my life.534

As Billy described this night to biographer William Martin in A Prophet with Honor,

I didn't have any tears, I didn't have any emotion, I didn't hear any thunder, there was no lightning....But right there, I made my decision for Christ. It was simple as that, and as conclusive.535

College and Ordination

Billy hadn't given much thought to college until the time to enroll was nearly upon him. He had always assumed in the back of his mind that he would attend the University of South Carolina. But when Dr. Bob Jones came to speak at his high school, and Billy discovered that a few of his friends were planning to go to the school Jones had named after himself, he decided to attend Bob Jones College (Bob Jones University, since 1947), as well.

The summer before he started college, Billy joined another friend selling Fuller brushes door-to-door to make some money. Despite the difficulty of this work, Billy found he could earn as much as $50 to $75 a week—a respectable sum for a young man in 1936. He learned to pray as he walked up to each home, preparing to present his wares. He also looked for opportunities to share his faith in Christ, but he found this to be a hit-and-miss process, as he was still learning to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit.

That fall, he enrolled at Bob Jones College but found the institution socially stringent and the classes difficult. Dating was strictly monitored and required a chaperone. Outside of registered times, boys could not talk with their girlfriends, and during dates, they were not allowed to hold hands or even sit on the same couch with one another. "Free time" conversations with members of the opposite sex had to be limited to fifteen minutes. The classroom was also a stringent environment. Questions were rarely tolerated, and when they were, it was only for the purpose of clarifying a point, not to discuss different interpretations or opinions of the material being taught. Jones's interpretations of doctrines and Scripture determined the subject matter—everything else was off topic.

When Billy came down with the flu, he was persuaded to leave the stifling

structure of Bob Jones College for sunny skies and less rigid training at the Florida Bible Institute in Tampa. Billy transferred, but not before Jones warned him that taking such a step would be disastrous. Jones told him that if he left, "at best, all you could amount to would be a poor country Baptist preacher somewhere out in the sticks."536 Billy went anyway—the draw of sunshine, golf, and dating more freely was more than this prophecy of doom could overcome.

In Florida, Billy met Emily Cavanaugh, a pretty classmate whom he began dating and soon decided he would marry. When she confided in him that she was in love with another student who was a better preacher than Billy, however, he was perplexed. According to Billy's brother Melvin, "She wanted to marry a man who was going to amount to something."537 This led to a good deal of soul-searching for Billy about God's will for his life and how he could achieve it. He felt called to be a minister, but also felt he was inadequate, and he spent hours walking around campus at night, praying to convince God that he was better qualified to do something else.

As he searched his heart, however, he found that his preaching was improving, and that his invitations for people to receive Christ were seeing more and more responses. So, on another night spent walking around a golf course in Tampa in 1938, Billy decided to give in to what he felt was inevitably established in his heart—that he must be a minister of the Gospel. He knelt on one of the greens, where he spread himself face down in prayer. "O God," he prayed, sobbing. "If you want me to serve You, I will."538

Later that year, Billy was convinced that his infant baptism with the Presbyterians was not enough, so he allowed a Baptist minister to baptize him by immersion. Early in 1939, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister.

When one of the ordaining ministers started probing him about his theology, Billy grew impatient, and, hoping to put an end to the questioning, said, "Brother, you've heard me preach around these parts, and you've seen how the Lord has seen fit to bless. I'm not an expert on theology, but you know what I believe and how I preach, and that should be enough to satisfy you."539 The man chuckled, as did some of the others, and they decided that it was. He had no further questions for Billy.

An Evangelist in Training

With his baptism settled, Billy started practicing his sermons and polishing his voice, of which Bob Jones had said, "You have a voice that pulls....God can use that voice of yours. He can use it mightily." 540 He practiced his sermons standing in old sheds or sitting in a canoe on the middle of a lake, where he would preach to the fish. The summer after he was ordained, he preached a two-week evangelistic series at Welaka Baptist Church, a fishing village on the St. John River. During the day, he would walk the streets of the town, praying and preaching to the cracks in the sidewalk. Following that, he was asked to preach for six weeks at the Tampa Gospel Tabernacle while the pastor took some time off. When the sanctuary was empty on Saturdays, he would go in and preach to the seats. It was like having his own church.

There was a certain genuineness about Billy to which his audiences were drawn. He had a simple, honest, Southern-gentlemanly way about him that made him appeal to both rich and poor, and like many young evangelists, he filled his sermons with sincere emotional tugs on the heart, even if all the facts of what he was preaching didn't line up exactly. To his credit, Billy never really saw himself as a theologian, and throughout his life, he wished he had done more reading and studying. He also found, though, that if he stuck to the basics and preached sincerely, people gave their hearts to the Lord.

In May 1940, Billy graduated from Florida Bible Institute. It was a tradition that just before the commencement ceremony, one of the class members was asked to read a "prophecy" that he or she prayed over and composed at the Class Night. That year, the reading came close to being prophetic indeed, for the woman who was chosen read,

Each time God had a chosen human instrument to shine forth His light in the darkness. Men like Luther, John and Charles Wesley, Moody, and others were ordinary men, but men who heard the voice of God. Their surrounding conditions were as black as night, but they had God. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31). It has been said that Luther revolutionized the world. It was not he, but Christ working through him. The time is ripe for another Luther, Wesley, Moody, _______. There is room for another name in this list. There is a challenge facing us.541

Wheaton and Ruth

During Billy's last year at Florida Bible Institute, a lawyer from Chicago named Paul Fischer heard him preach and offered to pay for his first year at Wheaton College in the Chicago area if he would enroll there. After a little hemming and hawing, mostly over concern that Wheaton would not admit him once they saw his high school grades, Billy applied and was accepted. Neither Bob Jones College nor Florida Bible Institute had been accredited, so Billy was now on his first step to receiving a college diploma from an accredited institution. Fortunately for him, Wheaton accepted many of his courses at Florida Bible Institute as credits, and he was able to enter as a second semester freshman.

Then, in December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and America entered World War II. Billy's first instinct was to volunteer for service, but as a minister, his next was to sign on as a chaplain. In pursuing this course, he needed to finish his degree, which kept him at Wheaton.

Remaining at Wheaton, Billy met Ruth Bell. She was born in China, where her parents had been missionaries, and she had spent most of her first seventeen years in Asia. She had attended high school in Pyongyang, now part of North Korea. Billy was immediately taken with her hazel eyes and attractive figure. Despite the fact that she wanted to be a missionary to Tibet, Billy started dating her, and within a few months, he proposed. Ruth decided to take time to consider his proposal before responding, and when her sister came down with tuberculosis, she dropped out of Wheaton for a while to care for her.

On his way to preach one night, Billy received a letter from Ruth announcing that she would marry him. In the following pages, she proceeded to explain why. Billy read her letter again and again after arriving at the church, then got into the pulpit and preached up a storm. When he finished, the pastor turned to him and asked, "Do you know what you just said?" A little caught off guard, Billy answered honestly, "No." "I'm not sure the people did either!" the pastor responded. 542

Billy and Ruth agreed to wait until after graduation to get married. They graduated in the same year and were married later that summer, on Friday, August 13, 1943.

Soon after their wedding, Billy took over the pastorate of the Village

Church in Western Springs, Illinois. The church had fewer than a hundred members, only fifty of whom typically attended each service. All that had been constructed of this church was the basement, so that is where they met. Since it was still wartime, Ruth thought of the basement as an air raid shelter. By the turn of 1944, however, church attendance had doubled to more than one hundred people each week. Billy was still hoping to become a chaplain, but with the war winding down, opportunities would take him in a different direction.

Radio Ministry Starts

A local minister featured regularly on the radio called Billy one day and offered him a radio show he had planned but had no time to record. Billy approached his congregation with the idea, and at first, they thought that it would cost too much. But when a way was provided to pay for it, they agreed. It would prove another turning point for Billy's ministry—that booming voice of his sounded great on the radio. As the program grew in popularity, Billy got more calls to do evangelistic outreaches in other areas. Soon, however, this put a strain on his congregation—they felt as if they were paying a full-time salary for a part-time pastor.

Near the end of the war, a bout of mumps silenced Billy's hopes of being a chaplain, once and for all. He was asked to be the first employee and organizer of a budding ministry—Youth for Christ, International. After much prayer, he took the position, resigned from his church, and was granted a discharge from the chaplaincy corps. Billy became a full-time evangelist, preaching wherever Youth for Christ could secure a venue. Billy felt like a traveling salesman again; only, this time, he carried his Bible instead of a suitcase of brushes. The organization grew rapidly in post-war America, and Billy's enthusiasm for the Gospel caught on wherever he went. Then, on September 21, 1945, the Grahams' first child, Virginia Leftwich, nicknamed "Gigi," was born.

Billy earned the nickname "God's machine gun" because of his rapid-fire delivery and seemingly boundless energy on the stage. Some people called the Youth for Christ rallies "Christian vaudeville," as their events would feature everything from bands to quiz shows to performing animals and emcees with light-up bow ties. Nevertheless, these meetings grew in popularity—as many as a million kids across the nation might attend a Youth for Christ meeting on a

given week.543

"You've Spoken of Something

I Don't Have"

In the spring of 1946, Billy and the Youth for Christ team traveled to Europe to launch the ministry there. It was Billy's first trip overseas, and after a rough start on a military base that wanted showgirls rather than a revival meeting, things started to improve. Billy enjoyed the life of an evangelist, and his sincerity and energy continued to serve him well, despite the cultural differences that made it difficult for him to adjust to Europe.

In October 1946, Billy heard a minister by the name of Stephen Olford when he ministered at Hildenborough Hall in Kent. Olford's text was Ephesians 5:18: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." Hearing this message, Billy began a struggle to obtain the infilling of the Holy Spirit and His anointing on his ministry. At the end of the service, Billy approached Olford and asked, "Mr. Olford, I just wanted to ask you one question: Why didn't you give an invitation? I would have been the first one to come forward. You've spoken of something I don't have. I want the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life too."544

Of meeting Olford, Billy said, "I was seeking for more of God in my life, and I felt that here was a man who could help me. He had a dynamic, a thrill, an exhilaration about him I wanted to capture."545

Billy and Olford agreed to meet shortly thereafter in Wales, near where Billy was scheduled to preach. They spent a day studying the Scriptures together, after which Billy prayed, "Lord, I don't want to go on without knowing this anointing You've given my brother."546 Billy didn't receive this blessing, however, for his sermon that night was ordinary, and "not the Welsh kind of preaching,"547 a phrase that was perhaps left over from the days of Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival.

The two men met again the next day, and Olford began teaching about being filled with the Holy Spirit, and how one had to be broken as Paul was, when he proclaimed himself "crucified with Christ," before he could receive this infilling. He taught Billy that "where the Spirit is truly Lord over the life, there is liberty, there is release—the sublime freedom of complete submission of

oneself in a continuous state of surrender to the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit." Billy's response was, "Stephen, I see it. That's what I want."

About mid-afternoon, the two men knelt together to pray. Olford described what happened as they prayed: "All heaven broke loose in that dreary little room. It was like Jacob laying hold of God and crying, 'Lord, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.'" Billy described how he exclaimed after the prayer, "My heart is so flooded with the Holy Spirit!...I have it! I'm filled. I'm filled. This is the turning point of my life. This will revolutionize my ministry."548

The effects were immediate. According to Olford, "That night Billy was to speak at a large Baptist church nearby. When he rose to preach, he was a man absolutely anointed....The Welsh listeners jammed the aisles. There was chaos. Practically the entire audience rushed forward." Olford told his father that evening, "Dad, something has happened to Billy Graham. The world is going to hear from this man. He is going to make his mark in history."549

Billy Graham and the Holy Spirit

Thus began a tenuous link between Billy Graham and what is known as the "infilling," or "baptism," of the Holy Spirit. Billy has admitted that he's never spoken in tongues—though he also said he believed this to be a wonderful experience for those who have—but it is difficult, if not impossible, to link his success throughout his six decades as an evangelist merely to his "pulling" voice and tall, lanky Southern charm. Billy Graham is not a charismatic Christian, and it is interesting to note that he never mentioned this incident with Stephen Olford in his own autobiography, Just As I Am, instead leaving the story for other biographers to reveal.

At the same time, Billy did not shy away from charismatics any more than he did politicians, such as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who were unpopular with the evangelical world as a whole. Billy called Oral Roberts a "longtime friend" in his autobiography,550 and he was the chief speaker at the dedication for Oral Roberts University in 1967. Many believe it was Billy who legitimized Oral's ministry by inviting him to his podium in 1950 and allowing him to give the opening prayer. David Harrell described the incident in this way in his book Oral Roberts: An American Life:

As they left their Portland hotel to catch a taxi to the crusade, Billy was just leaving. The ever-gracious Graham grabbed Oral's hand and requested that he and Evelyn ride with him. Oral demurred, but Billy insisted: inside the taxi he told Oral that he expected him to sit on the platform and lead the evening prayer. Oral protested: "Billy you can't afford to have me pray." As they rode, Billy told Oral that he and Cliff Barrows had visited a Roberts campaign in Florida a few months before, slipping in and out unnoticed, and they had been blessed by it. He also revealed that his wife's sister had experienced a healing in a pentecostal setting; he was not ashamed to be identified with Oral Roberts. Oral offered the evening prayer, and that evening, after he and Evelyn returned to the hotel coffee shop, Billy and Ruth Graham insisted that they join them for a snack.

The meeting had been brief, casual, and mostly unplanned. But for Oral it was loaded with meaning. His appearance on Graham's platform was unprecedented recognition for a pentecostal to receive from an evangelical ministry—especially from Billy Graham. Graham's personal kindness, his glad and wholesome embrace of a fellow Christian, placed Oral momentarily in a larger, more respectable, world than he had ever imagined he could be a part of. He had glimpsed a vision which Graham would open to him more clearly sixteen years later.551

The prayer experience with Olford seems as close as Billy ever came to being filled with the Holy Spirit, as a charismatic would define it. If Billy was truly seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit, perhaps it was in the limited sense that evangelicals seem to use when they read Ephesians 5:18—"And be ye not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit"—for the fruit of the Spirit, but not for the gifts. On the other hand, they may define the gifts as something much less than they truly are—something more like spiritual instincts than manifestations of the power of God as were illustrated in the lives of Jesus and the apostles. Billy seems to have sought the power of God only to preach. He sought God to be an anointed evangelist, and, by all indications, God answered that prayer. But there Billy seems to have drawn the line. He wanted enough of God to fulfill his calling, but maybe not so much that things would get out of control. He wanted to see people moved to come forward to answer his altar calls, but seeing manifestations of the Spirit like those witnessed in the ministries of John Wesley and Charles Finney, and at the Kentucky Camp Meetings, may have been too much for him, as it seems to have

been for most twentieth-century American Christians.

Evangelicalism had departed significantly from the way it began under John Wesley, who released salvation from the deterministic clutches of Calvinism. The great revelation that sparked evangelicalism was that it was the individual's choice whether or not to be saved, even though that salvation still had to be worked out with fear and trembling (see Philippians 2:12) and could not occur without the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, under evangelists such as Moody and Graham, the individual's decision became an all-important factor.

Billy's Campaigns Begin

The following year, 1947, Billy returned to tour in the United States. He began focusing his "campaigns"—as he called them then, borrowing D. L. Moody's term—on specific cities. That year, these campaigns would be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1948, Billy's campaigns would be in Augusta, Georgia, and Modesto, California.

Sometime in 1947, Billy was also asked to speak at Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the president of the schools, Dr. W. B. Riley, took him aside to tell him he felt Billy was to be the next president of the college. Billy was shocked, of course, being only in his late twenties, though he thought this might be something for distant years ahead. But Riley was eighty-six years old and in poor health. On December 5, 1947, he breathed his last, and even though Billy had no higher degree than his undergraduate diploma and had graduated just four years earlier, the board of directors respected the late president's wishes and offered him the presidency of Northwestern Schools. Despite his misgivings, Billy accepted the interim position, hoping that it would be a short one.

It didn't take Billy long to realize that he had stepped into a hornets' nest. The institution, having just completed construction of a new administrative building, was out of money. Billy had no dearth of ideas about how to fix the school's financial straits, but he did lack the experience and patience to see them through. He wanted to make major changes overnight, much to the discomfort of many of the board members. He also still spent most of his time on the road, evangelizing. Billy obviously had the leadership potential to turn things around at Northwestern, but would he give the school the attention it required?

In the following years, Billy would make a great figurehead as an absentee president, but the college was left to limp along as best it could on its own. Billy did, however, add fund-raising for the university to his evangelistic objectives, and this seemed to help considerably. Money began to roll in, and soon the financial situation had improved enough to raise salaries at the school to a more adequate wage. Despite the rough spots, when Billy tried to resign in 1950, the board refused his resignation.

In the meantime, the Grahams had added two new members to their family. Anne Morrow Graham was born in May 1948, and Ruth Bell Graham, whom they nicknamed "Bunny," was born in December 1950.

Does the Bible Have Errors in It?

Around this time, Billy had a new struggle that he needed to settle before he could hone the message that would be so powerful in the years to come. Charles Templeton, a fellow evangelist he had met while first working with Youth for Christ, had encouraged Billy to continue his education, in hopes that it would improve his preaching. Now, as the president of a Bible college, it seemed fitting for him to follow his friend's advice and work toward a Ph.D. For his part, Templeton had resigned as a pastor in Toronto and enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary. He and Billy had grown close in a rather short span of time, and as Templeton began to struggle with some theological issues related to what he was learning, particularly concerning the authority and accuracy of the Bible, Billy could identify with his feelings. Over the years, Billy had broadened his reading, as well, and had added the pioneers of neo-orthodoxy, Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr, to his list. It didn't take long for their writings to force him to start questioning many of the beliefs he had held since boyhood. He never doubted the central message of the Gospel itself, or the deity of Christ, but confusion about other major issues soon crept in. So Billy decided to devote more time to these subjects, particularly the inspiration and inerrancy of the Word of God.

Reading the works of theologians and scholars on both sides of the issue, Billy grew only more confused. He knew, however, that Paul had written, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16), Peter had written, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:

but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21), and even Jesus Himself had said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35). But were the Scriptures truly inspired—were they "God-breathed" writings?

The subject came to a head in a series of conversations with Charles Templeton. Templeton's studies of philosophy and anthropology had led him to a willingness to read the Bible as metaphor rather than as literal truth.552 Graham found he couldn't address all of the issues with which Charles presented him, but he still felt that he had to hold to the accuracy of the Bible, and to interpret it literally, if he was to be faithful to God and to his calling. Templeton told him that such a position was fifty years out of date, making the case that, "People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do. Your faith is too simple. Your language is out of date. You're going to have to learn the new jargon if you're going to be successful in your ministry."553

At a conference about this same time, Billy met Henrietta Mears, the director of religious education at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Although she was just as educated about modern thought on the Bible as Charles Templeton, her enthusiasm for Jesus was very different. She had every confidence in the integrity of the written Scriptures, and her compassion for her students was like nothing Billy had ever experienced. In comparison, Templeton's passion seemed only for intellectualism. Billy saw the choices on road ahead of him mapped out by these two people.

Billy responded to Charles, as honestly as he could, "Chuck, look, I haven't a good enough mind to settle these questions….The finest minds in the world have looked and come down on both sides….I don't have the time, the inclination, or the set of mind to pursue them. I found that if I say 'The Bible says' and 'God says,' I get results. I have decided I'm not going to wrestle with these questions any longer."554

Templeton told him that such an attitude was paramount to intellectual suicide, but Billy was resolute. Either he would believe the Bible and what had gotten him to where he was at the moment, or he would leave the ministry. After all, "it was not too late to be a dairy farmer."555 He had no room to be double-minded about it. Either the Bible was the Word of God, or it was not.556

Still wrestling with these thoughts, Billy took a late-night walk in the San Bernardino Mountains, determined to put an end to this debate. It was a beautiful night, and the moon was out. He dropped to his knees, opened his Bible before him on a tree stump, and prayed,

Oh God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can't answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and the others are raising....

Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I'm going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this is Your inspired Word.557

When he arose from his knees, he sensed the power of God's presence for the first time in months. The battle in his spirit was over.

In the years to come, Reinhold Niebuhr himself would accuse Billy of preaching too simplistically. He felt the state of the human condition was far more complex than the way Billy spoke of it, and that his answers were far too limited in scope.558 As for Templeton, he wrote in his Memoir,

I disagree with him [Billy] profoundly on his view of Christianity and think that much of what he says in the pulpit is puerile nonsense. But there is no feigning in him: he believes what he believes…with an invincible innocence. He is the only mass evangelist I would trust. And I miss him.559

Launching the Crusades

Following this decision, Billy faced the crusade that would prove to be the launching pad of a ministry that would continue for decades to come. In 1949, he had four campaigns scheduled in Miami, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland; Altoona, Pennsylvania; and Los Angeles, California. It would be at the final crusade in Los Angeles that Billy would first grab the attention of the entire nation, if not the world.

An organization called Christ for Greater Los Angeles had invited Billy to speak at its next revival, which was set to start the last week in September and run for three weeks. Billy agreed—with a few conditions. First, he wanted to

invite a broader base of churches to participate, so that as many different denominations as possible would be included. Second, he asked that $7,000 to $25,000 be raised in order to advertise and promote the event. Third, he wanted a larger tent—one that could seat more than 5,000 people. His campaign experience had taught him that crowds usually grew as the meetings continued. Billy had adopted many of the revival techniques of D. L. Moody, and he felt these things would be necessary if this revival was to be a success.

Up until that point, revivalists considered a campaign successful if they were speaking to 2,000 people and fifty of them came forward at the invitation.

Billy felt that success in Los Angeles, media magnet that it was, could send shock waves around the world. He didn't want the organizers to set their expectations too low. But many people thought that he was being egotistical, and that the money he requested was simply too much. Some people even alleged that he was asking for so much money in order to keep some for himself. Billy's leadership abilities prevailed, however, and he convinced enough of the committee members to embrace his bigger vision and to get the ball rolling.

On the eve of the campaign, the revival looked as if it would fizzle; the media seemed apathetic about covering the event, and organizers wondered whether they would get any coverage at all. The advance press conference was poorly attended, and it didn't produce one line of copy in the local papers. No information was printed, with the exception of the ads the committee had purchased to print in the church sections.

Billy pushed on, though. He had accepted an invitation to speak to a group of Hollywood celebrities in Beverly Hills, and when he went there, he met Stuart Hamlin, who had a popular local radio program sponsored by a tobacco company. He told Billy that he might invite him on his show, and that if he did, he could fill his tent. Billy thought he was joking, but he expressed his gratitude for the thought.

A team was set up to bathe the event in prayer. Every member of the team prayed whenever he could, and forty or fifty of them would get together to pray before attending the event each evening. They would sit in the front, and afterward, they would pray with those who came forward.

The meetings began as planned. While initial crowds averaged about three thousand people (and about four thousand on Sunday afternoons), the tent was never filled. Also, Billy found he was speaking to audiences that were already saved rather than non-Christians, so the numbers of those answering the altar calls were scant. As they approached the final week and found that they had met their budget, some thought it might be worth extending the meetings for a short time. Billy turned the matter over to prayer.

Once the meetings had started, Stuart Hamlin proved good to his word; he invited Billy onto his radio show. Billy knew that some committee members would be upset with his appearing on the show because of its connection with Hollywood, but he also felt that if he was going to get sinners to come to his tent, then he had to find a way to invite them directly. Stuart's enthusiasm bubbled over the radio as he told his audience to "go down to Billy Graham's tent and hear the preaching."560 Billy was even more surprised when Stuart announced that he himself was planning to attend. Stuart did attend, but what he experienced was different from the mere entertainment he had expected. His heart struggled with what Billy said at the campaign, and, angered, he walked out of the meetings repeatedly. He kept coming back, however, and in the end, it would be Stuart's wrestling with repentance that would turn the event around.

Billy and some of the others decided to follow the example of Gideon and set out a fleece, asking God for a sign to tell them whether they should extend the campaign. Stuart ended up providing that sign. At 4:30 a.m., the morning after they had put out the fleece, Stuart called Billy to say that he was in the lobby and needed to see him right away. Billy woke Ruth, who went to pray in the next room with Grady and Wilma Wilson. Once Billy was dressed, Stuart and his wife, Suzy, who had been praying for him for some time, came to the room. Stuart and Billy talked for awhile, then prayed together, and Stuart gave his heart to the Lord. At the service the next evening, he came forward in response to the altar call. From his response, Billy and the committee saw that the work of the campaign was not yet finished, so they decided to extend it. They had not yet decided for how long, though.

"Puff Graham"

The first week of the extended campaign, Stuart delivered his testimony

over the radio, and interest began to build. Billy and his team put out another fleece to determine whether to extend the campaign again, and the answer came at the meeting the next night. When they showed up, the place was crawling with reporters and photographers—the first of any press they had seen. When Billy asked one reporter about the media's newfound curiosity, he responded, "You've just been kissed by William Randolph Hearst." Somehow, Hearst, the cantankerous newspaper mogul known for using his press's power to make things happen, had heard that Graham was a red, white, and blue patriot calling for spiritual renewal. Hearst decided that Graham had a message that the nation needed to hear, so he sent a simple, two-word telegram to his editors: "Puff Graham."561 It would change Billy's outreach forever.

The next morning's headline story in the Los Angeles Examiner was about the campaign, as was the headline story in the evening's Los Angeles Herald Express, both Hearst papers. The story spread to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Detroit, and then competitors' papers. The committee again had their sign that the campaign should continue, and the larger tent Billy had requested was soon filled to overflowing.

On November 14, Time even covered the Los Angeles campaign. The article touted Billy as America's next great revivalist:

"We are standing on the verge of a great national revival," says Evangelist Billy Graham, "an oldfashioned, heaven-sent, Holy Ghost revival that will sweep the nation...In the words of Joel: 'Put in the sickle while the harvest is ripe.'"

This week, in a big circus tent ("the largest revival tent in history") in downtown Los Angeles, Evangelist Graham seemed to be wielding the revival sickle as no one since Billy Sunday had wielded it. Sponsored and financed by businessmen, ministers and such groups as Christian Endeavor, Youth for Christ, and the Gideons, 31-year-old Billy Graham arrived in September to conduct a four-week revival.

S.R.O. Graham's sponsors, combined under the name "Christ for Greater Los Angeles," expected him to hold meetings for only four weeks. But this week he had already overstayed his original engagement by two weeks, and was drawing bigger crowds every night. Some 250,000 had crowded to hear him (the tent holds 6,280 but the standees fan out into the street), and nearly

every prominent minister in Los Angeles had put in an appearance on Billy Graham's crowded platform....

Blond, trumpet-lunged North Carolinian William Franklin Graham Jr., a Southern Baptist minister who is also president of the Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, dominates his huge audience from the moment he strides onstage to the strains of Send the Great Revival in My Soul. His lapel microphone which gives added volume to his deep, cavernous voice, allows him to pace the platform as he talks, rising to his toes to drive home a point, clenching his fists, stabbing his finger at the sky and straining to get his words to the furthermost corners of the tent.562

In Just As I Am, Billy explained that despite the increased press coverage, what happened next could not be explained by the headlines. After all, it is God who changes hearts. Testimonies began to roll in very similar to Stuart Hamlin's. One night, a technician who was on trial for wiretapping for the mob came forward and was saved, giving Billy the rare opportunity to meet with an actual mob boss, Mickey Cohen, and preach the Gospel to him. The next morning's newspaper headline, which was a surprise to those who had done everything they could to keep the meeting secret, again put Billy in the spotlight: "Wiretapper in Confession as Evangelist Tries to Save Cohen."

The tent had to be doubled in size to try to accommodate the crowds, and three thousand seats were added. Every day, the newspapers covered the campaign—whether or not they were owned by Hearst. As had happened with earlier revivals, the event had now become a curiosity as well as a religious meeting, and people started coming for all kinds of reasons. One time, in the middle of the night, a watchman was awakened by someone rattling the chains at the gate. He investigated and found a man who said that he had come to find Jesus, so the watchman, a pastor helping with the campaign during a leave of absence from his church, prayed with him on the spot for salvation.

This one-on-one praying became a trend throughout the rest of the campaign —people would often walk solo or in pairs, hours after the service had ended, looking for someone to pray with them. The sermons seemed secondary to the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit working on hearts. One night, a man came directly from a bar to the meetings. He walked straight down the aisle in the middle of the sermon, asking for someone to pray with him. When Billy asked

Grady Wilson to take him to the auxiliary prayer tent, scores of others followed, even though the invitation had yet to be extended.

Soon, the revival started to appear in the newsreels, which were still big in the cinemas at that time. Billy's face was beginning to receive national recognition.

By the end of the fifth week, the intense nightly meetings were starting to take their toll. Billy was out of sermons to preach, and he had to work between six and eight hours each day to prepare new ones. Because of his increased notoriety, he was continually asked to speak three or four times each day at civic gatherings, churches, school assemblies, interviews, and evangelistic parties at the mansions of the rich and famous before he even got to the tent for the evening service. After the service, prayer workers and staff would stay until every individual who had come forward had talked and prayed with someone. Billy had to ask others to step in and preach so that he had time to rest and prepare new sermons. Even so, the committee didn't feel the release to end the meetings for another eight weeks.

The meetings did not end because the numbers were dwindling, either. For the final Sunday afternoon service, more than eleven thousand people lined up two hours early to get in, and the tent was again filled to overflowing. Thousands were left outside, unable to fit under the tent, but they packed in as close as they could in attempts to overhear Billy's preaching. In the course of the eight weeks, hundreds of thousands had come to hear him, and thousands had answered the altar calls—82 percent of whom had never been church members before. Thousands of others had come forward to recommit their lives to Christ.

Something else unexpected had happened. Billy Graham was now a celebrity recognized the nation over.

Campaign Overflow

Had the Los Angeles campaign been a flash in the pan? Obviously not. When Billy traveled on to Boston, the campaign drew the largest crowd of any event in that city on New Year's Eve. The campaign was moved to the thirteenthousand-seat Boston Garden because the extra room was necessary, but thousands of people were still turned away. Billy's organizational skills were

being honed and expanded, as each meeting raised new challenges and fresh obstacles to overcome through training and prayer before the next event. Billy and his staff streamlined the process of handling such large crowds and managing the logistics of evangelistic outreach, turning their recruits into an organizational machine disciplined enough to handle the numbers of attendees and converts alike.

In the spring of 1950, Billy had the rare opportunity to repeat something that George Whitefield once did: preach in Boston Common. Though Billy's crowd was more than two times the size of Whitefield's—fifty thousand—he paid tribute to his forebear by using the same sermon title, "Shall God Reign in New England?"

A major campaign in Portland, Oregon, later that year presented a new problem. The money that came in for the event was far more than was needed for the crusade. Billy told his audience that he would put the money toward radio broadcasts, but where would he keep it? He didn't want to put it in a personal account in his name, and thereby make it subject to income taxes. The solution came when he, Grady Wilson, and Cliff Barrows established the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) as a non-profit umbrella to handle their outreaches.

At thirty-two, Billy was the most famous Christian in America. He had the chance to be involved in a number of different projects all at once. In the next several years, he began working in the film industry to produce movies aimed at drawing young people to Christ. His radio show, The Hour of Decision, was taking off. He outlined the structure for the magazine that would become Christianity Today, and he would eventually become involved in television.

As Billy's popularity grew and his revivals expanded, press coverage turned more critical. Billy and his team had established safeguards by agreeing that none of them would ever be alone in a room with a woman who was not his wife, and they would have members of their staff sweep hotel rooms and meeting rooms to make sure that no one was hiding there, hoping to trap them with "compromising" photos. This nearly happened at least once—a woman and a cameraman were planted in a room—and had reportedly happened to other notable ministers.

Then, in Atlanta, it was revealed to the press that Billy and Cliff Barrows's

love offering at the end of the meetings exceeded the annual salary of most of the local ministers. Billy and Ruth decided to give about a third of the money away, and Billy had the BGEA put him on salary so that similar issues would never arise again. His leadership team also decided always to keep the association's books open to keep people from asking questions about how they spent the money that they received during crusades. These books would be audited regularly. When other ministries crashed or were called into question in the mid-1980s for succumbing to one of the three major temptations of ministry—falling for "girls, gold, or glory"—Billy Graham and his organization came through unscathed because they always stuck to their high standards of integrity and financial transparency.

In 1952, Northwestern would finally accept Billy's resignation as president; by this time, it was obvious that he was too busy running his crusades to continue even as a figurehead for the school. Billy's family would continue to grow, as well. The Grahams' two daughters were joined by two sons: William Franklin Graham III—called "Franklin" by the family—on July 14, 1952, and Nelson Edman—"Ned"—in May 1958. Today, both sons work in the ministry, and Franklin assumed leadership after his father's final crusade in 2005. Yet the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association did more than just survive. Billy broke ground that no one else could. In 1977, he was the first to speak beyond the Iron Curtain and hold a crusade in Hungary. In 1992, he gave a Bible and one of his books, Peace with God, to President Kim Il Sung of North Korea, one of the most anti-Christian nations on the face of the earth. Billy's instinct to keep things simple and take the Gospel wherever he was invited, without regard to politics or public opinion, allowed him to go places few others ever have.

A Pastor to Presidents

On July 14, 1950, Billy made his first visit to the White House—one that would prove far from his best. Through the influence of some supporters in Congress, Billy went to meet with President Harry Truman, though Truman seemed reluctant to meet with him. War had broken out with North Korea on June 25, just a few days after the appointment had been set.

Grady Wilson, Cliff Barrows, and Jerry Beavan accompanied him. Truman was cordial, though he appeared unsure whether he should receive these men

as ministers or as the entertainers they looked like in their cream-colored suits. Billy told him about his recent successes with revivals in Los Angeles and Boston, and reminded him that he had called upon the president to proclaim a national day of repentance and prayer for peace in April, hoping to avoid war as the news was released that the Soviets were stockpiling nuclear weapons. Truman nodded in recognition. Graham then asked him about his religious background. "Well, I try to live by the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule," the President answered.

"It takes more than that, Mr. President. It's faith in Christ and His death on the Cross that you need," Billy replied.

Truman stood as if to dismiss them in response, so Billy asked if they could pray with him before they left. "It can't do any harm," Truman responded. So Billy put his arm around the president's shoulder and they all prayed.563

Once outside, Billy and his team were immediately swarmed by the press. Unprepared for the onslaught, Billy made the mistake of telling the reporters everything that had happened in the Oval Office, an indiscretion that would ban him from the White House for the rest of Truman's presidency. Later on, Billy learned that Truman saw him as nothing more than a publicity hound. Truman would issue a statement about the campaign planned for Washington in 1951: "At Key West the President said very decisively that he did not wish to endorse Billy Graham's Washington revival meeting and particularly he said he did not want to receive him at the White House. You remember what a show of himself Billy Graham made last time he was here. The President does not want it repeated."564

Billy learned his lesson and proved he would never again abuse the confidence of a president. He became a confidant of every president for the next five and a half decades. He met with each of them, Eisenhower through George W. Bush—eleven presidents in all—and because of this, George H. W. Bush called him "America's pastor."

Things had changed so rapidly for Billy in the early 1950s that within a year of being dismissed by Truman, he found himself writing Dwight Eisenhower and encouraging him to run for president. It was an odd place for him—as a Southerner and a Baptist, Billy was basically a Democrat by birth—but at this time, Eisenhower had yet to declare a party affiliation. When he finally put

himself forward as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, however, Billy didn't waver in his secret support. When Eisenhower asked for Billy to help him work a more religious slant into his speeches, Billy gladly volunteered some Scripture verses he thought might help. He cautioned him, however, that he could not issue a statement supporting him, as he didn't want his platform for the Gospel to be misused for politics. Eisenhower applauded him for his integrity in the matter.

Billy remained friends with "Ike" throughout his presidency, even if he could never bring himself to call the president that nickname. It was always "Mr. President" in the White House, and it had been "General" before. Yet Billy soon learned his value to men whose friends and associates usually wanted something from them.

By 1955, Eisenhower was asking Billy how he could know that he was saved. It is interesting that Billy said of this, "I didn't feel that I could answer his question as well as others could have."565

It seems doubtful that John Wesley, Charles Finney, or even Peter Cartwright would have come up short on that one. Each of their conversion experiences greatly influenced their teachings on how people could know they were saved. Billy had more thorough answers for President John F. Kennedy when he asked how the world would end.566 Is this a telling fact for a generation of believers who today can spend years studying the book of Revelation, yet finish a course on the gifts of the Spirit in one lesson?

Billy soon learned that he needed to minister to U.S. presidents as he would minister to any other person. He was not there to convince them of anything other than to care for the destiny of their souls—and to prove that they needed to love those who opposed them as much as they loved their most ardent supporters. Because Billy was such a popular figure, highly respected and well regarded by evangelicals across the nation, many people equated his willingness to befriend presidents and pray with them with an endorsement of them. In 1981, after years of experience with this, and even some appalling failures, he advised, "Evangelicals can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future."567

This was rarely an issue for evangelicals when they favored the president, but when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 and Billy still visited him in the White House, many people said that he had turned traitor to his faith. Billy had known the Clintons for years, however, and would not refuse a chance to influence them toward Christ or pray with them, no matter what anyone said. In 1989, while Billy was in Little Rock, Arkansas, Hillary Rodham Clinton invited him to lunch. His only stipulation was, "'I don't eat with beautiful women alone,'…so they met in a hotel dining room and talked for a couple of hours."568

Years later, he said of Bill Clinton, "When he left the presidency, he should have become an evangelist, because he has all of the gifts," and then added, "and he could leave his wife to run the country."569 This angered many members of the Religious Right, who saw it as an endorsement of Hillary for the presidency. Franklin Graham later came forward to clarify that the comment was meant as a joke, but this did little to ease criticism. Democrats hadn't liked it much better when Billy still visited with President Richard Nixon after his resignation. Nixon had such respect for Billy that he had actually "offered him the ambassadorship to Israel at a meeting with Golda Meir. 'I said the Mideast would blow up if I went over there,' Graham recalls. 'Golda then reached under the table and squeezed my hand. She was greatly relieved.'"570

President Gerald Ford once said, "Billy came to the White House to give me the kind of reassurance that was important in decisions and challenges at home and abroad....Whenever you were with Billy, you had a special feeling that he was there to give you help and guidance in meeting your problems."571 At an event honoring Billy in May 2007, President Bill Clinton said of him, "When he prays with you in the Oval Office or upstairs at the White House, you feel he is praying for you. Not for the President." At the same event, President Jimmy Carter said, "I'm just one of tens of millions of people whose spiritual life has been shaped by Billy Graham."572 As a young man, Carter had actually worked at one of Billy's crusades in Georgia.

President Lyndon Johnson voiced his concern to Billy that he might die in office. He had watched a president's death throw the country into turmoil when Kennedy was assassinated, and this was a legacy he himself did not want to leave. It seems Johnson may have confided in Graham about this more than

anyone else. "I've already had one heart attack," he told Billy in 1967. "I don't think [running again] is fair to the people or to my party." He even asked Billy to do his funeral, telling him that he didn't want anything fancy for it. "I want you to look in those cameras and just tell 'em what Christianity is all about. Tell 'em how they can be sure they can go to heaven. I want you to preach the Gospel." Then, he added, "Somewhere in there, you tell 'em a few things I did for this country."573 It was Johnson who called on Billy the most—during LBJ's presidency, Billy visited the White House more than twenty times.

It seems that the nation's First Families considered Billy as close to them when they faced death as he was to them in life. Billy was the first one Nancy Reagan called outside of the family to tell that Ronald had passed away. He has presided over many of their funerals, the latest being Gerald R. Ford's in January 2007; he did Lady Bird Johnson's a few months later, in July.

Billy was also invited to eleven different inaugurations, and he delivered the opening prayer at most of them.574

When U.S. presidents wanted to pray, they usually called Billy. Just before the Gulf War started in 1991, Billy spent the night in the White House by the side of President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Again, critics thought that his presence with them signified his endorsement of the war, but Billy said he was merely there to support the Bushes in a time of difficulty. This made sense, as Billy was a faithful friend of the Bushes. In 1985, he had taken a long walk on the beach with the President's son, George W., that set the then forty-year-old oilman on the path to salvation. On the eve of his eighty-ninth birthday in October 2007, Billy was a guest for lunch at the White House with George W., just a short time after Ruth Graham's death. The President just wanted to offer his prayers and encouragement to the man whose personal church, more than any other building, might well have been the White House.

The Final Crusade

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association planned Billy's final crusade for June 24–26, 2005. It was held at Flushing MeadowsCorona Park in Queens, New York. By this time, they had organizing mass revivals down to a science, but it was no less difficult. The first step was to find a list of the churches within a fifty-mile radius of New York City, but no such list existed. Never ones to be frustrated, they created a list that included

some twelve thousand churches. Every one of these churches was contacted and its members were invited to attend. Of these churches, 1,424 agreed to participate, representing eighty different denominations—from Adventist churches to the Vineyard churches, and even one calling itself Hebrew Pentecostal. It was the greatest number of participating churches in the history of the Billy Graham crusades. Leaders and congregation members from these churches were then invited to attend forty-three different seminars on every aspect of the crusade, from soliciting donations to reaching the neighborhoods of their city with invitations. Applications were reviewed as the crusade planners selected six thousand volunteer counselors to meet with those people who would come forward during the crusade. These volunteers didn't even include the ushering staff, which alone had five tiers to its organizational chart.

As with every one of Billy's crusades, prayer was the foundation of the event. More than 35,000 people were on a monthly mailing list so that they could be notified about individual requests, as well as be encouraged to pray for the event overall. More than seventy thousand chairs were set up, and facilities were erected to translate the message into thirteen different languages —including Tamil, Hungarian, and Arabic—simultaneously. The cost of the revival was estimated at $6.8 million, even with all of the volunteer work.575

When Billy was asked some years earlier about being the last of the bigtime evangelists, he could only comment, "After D. L. Moody was finished, they said that same thing,…and after Billy Sunday they said the same thing, and after I'm finished they'll say the same thing. But God will raise up different ones who will do it far better than me." 576 Oh, that some of us could be those ones!

Six Decades Spreading the Name of Jesus

Billy Graham has preached in person to nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories—an unprecedented number. Millions more people have been reached through television, video, film, literature, and Webcasts. In his 417 crusades, more than 3.2 million people have come forward in response to his altar calls. This is not counting the millions of others who have responded to his books, television broadcasts, or other media he has used to spread the Gospel. In April 1996, the Billy Graham Evangelical Association sponsored a rebroadcast of one of Billy's sermons to an audience

of around 2.5 billion in forty-eight languages and 160 countries—a remarkable feat, as it represented a truly global simulcast.577

As I write these words, eighty-nine-year-old Billy is all but retired from ministry, and he battles Parkinson's disease, the same disease that removed his "good friend," Ronald Reagan, from public appearances. Billy still gave a remarkably lucid interview for the book The Preacher and the Presidents, which was released in August 2007. Though not involved in the day-to-day affairs of his ministry, he is still consulted from time to time by his son, Franklin, who has taken over the reigns of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Billy's wife of sixty-three years, Ruth, died on June 14, 2007, at the age of eighty-seven. Ruth's body is buried next to the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Billy will one day be laid to rest beside her. He now lives in Montreat, North Carolina, in the house his wife had built as a retreat from the public, not far from where he was born. Billy's legacy will live on through his organization and his sons, with his place secured as one of the greatest evangelists of all time.

528 Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 4. Insert added.

529 Graham, Just As I Am, 17.

530 Ibid., 24.

531 Ibid. Insert added.

532 Ibid.

533 Ibid.

534 Graham, Just As I Am, 29–30.

535 William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), 64.

536 Nancy Gibbs and Richard N. Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit," Time, November 15, 1993,

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979573,00.html.

537 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

538 Graham, Just As I Am, 53.

539 Ibid., 57.

540 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

541 Graham, Just As I Am, 59–60.

542 Ibid., 75.

543 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

544 Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Billy: A Personal Look at Billy Graham, the World's Best-loved Evangelist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 28.

545 John Pollack, Billy Graham (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), 62, quoted in Wirt, Billy: A Personal Look at Billy Graham, 28.

546 Wirt, Billy: A Personal Look at Billy Graham, 29.

547 Ibid.

548 Ibid.

549 Letter from Stephen Olford, 9 May 1996, quoted in Wirt, Billy: A Personal Look at Billy Graham, 29–30.

550 Graham, Just As I Am, 563.

551 David Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 179.

552 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

553 Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, "Why Christopher Hitchens Is Wrong about Billy Graham," Time, September 18, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1662757,00.html.

554 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

555 Gibbs and Duffy, "Why Christopher Hitchens Is Wrong about Billy Graham."

556 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

557 Graham, Just As I Am, 139.

558 Gibbs and Duffy, "Why Christopher Hitchens Is Wrong about Billy Graham."

559 Charles Templeton, An Anecdotal Memoir, http://www.templetons.com/charles/memoir/evang-graham.html.

560 Graham, Just As I Am, 147.

561 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

562 "Sickle for the Harvest," Time, November 14, 1949, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,934304,00.html.

563 Graham, Just As I Am, xx–xxi.

564 Ibid.

565 Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, "Billy Graham, Pastor in Chief," Time, August 9, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1651625,00.html.

566 Gibbs and Duffy, "Billy Graham, Pastor in Chief."

567 Ibid.

568 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

569 Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Preacher and the Presidents (New York: Center Street, 2007), 340.

570 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

571 Ibid.

572 Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, "Billy Graham: 'A Spiritual Gift to

All,'" Time, May 31, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1627139,00.html.

573 Gibbs and Duffy, "Billy Graham, Pastor in Chief."

574 "Presidential Inaugural Prayers and Sermons of Billy and Franklin Graham," Wheaton College Billy Graham Archives, http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/inaugural01.htm.

575 Andy Newman, "Mounting a Billy Graham Crusade Takes Prayers, Mailings, and Many, Many Chairs," New York Times, June 23, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/nyregion/23crusade.html.

576 Gibbs and Ostling, "God's Billy Pulpit."

577 See "William (Billy) F. Graham," Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Web site, http://www.billygraham.org/MediaRelations_Bios.asp?id=0; Newman, "Mounting a Billy Graham Crusade Takes Prayers, Mailings, and Many, Many Chairs," and David Aikman, Great Souls: Six Who Changed a Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 4.

Conclusion

John Wesley to Billy Graham: Evangelicalism from Its Beginnings until Today

Evangelicalism was effectively birthed when John Wesley was able to pry salvation from the hands of Calvinist predestination and return it to the individuals who would seek and accept what Jesus did on the cross as all that was necessary to be right with God. When the likes of John Wesley, George Whitefield, Charles Finney, William and Catherine Booth, or Billy Graham took this message and combined it with the presence of God, revival erupted to transform communities and nations. Thus, evangelicalism was not just the birthplace of the Methodist, Baptist, and Congregationalist movements, or of others who rejected the doctrine of predestination, but it was also the birthplace of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, both of which have embraced God's presence and power, as they were exemplified in the lives of these Generals of God.

In the final analysis, it seems that evangelicalism today has shifted from a spiritual to a political emphasis. While we still largely focus on the work of evangelism, we have laid aside the power of God for the more easily controlled power of a conservative voting block. We seem to have forgotten that it was revivalism that changed nations and righted social injustices during the past three centuries—not the power of democracy or the right to vote alone. It seems that evangelical Christianity has lost much of its relevance to societies because it tends to focus more on changing laws than changing hearts.

Revivalists such as John Wesley, George Whitefield, Charles Finney, and William and Catherine Booth transformed communities and nations by preaching the Gospel. These revivalists righted social ills through grassroots efforts and door-to-door ministry. Where they saw needs, they reached out to meet them, offering a hand to help people get back on their feet and the power of the Gospel to change their lives and establish their livelihoods. They changed the spiritual climate of the communities they touched by seeking God's power in prayer, and by preaching Jesus and the power of what He accomplished on the cross. When Jesus became the topic of conversation in these communities, it mattered little what the law of the land said—morality was determined by people who were seeking to please God, not follow

legislative measures.

In contrast to this, twentieth-century conversion became more a matter of one answering an altar call than one laboring in prayer until sensing confirmation in one's heart of having been saved by Christ. "Coming forward" replaced Finney's "anxious benches." Knowledge of one's salvation came from a pat on the back from a prayer worker instead of a personal conviction or revelation that had been pursued hotly. If Christianity today seems impotent, perhaps it is because we have lost what the early revivalists knew—that salvation must be worked out "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12).

We need a return to the great revelation that God's Generals knew so well —that Jesus is the only way to remedy social ills and permanently change people's lives. When Jesus is presented in all of His mercy and love, people change, and their lifestyles are transformed. Wrongs are righted, and permanently so, only when Jesus and His power are truly revealed.

If the church is again to have the power that was unleashed by the Moravians and was evidenced at Cane Ridge and Azusa Street, then perhaps we need to relearn from the methods of prayer, dedication to the Word, and seeking the Lord that were used by the revivalists. The twenty-first century is groaning in anticipation, waiting for the manifestation of the children of God (see Romans 8:19)—those who walk in the power of Christ once again. I believe God is ready to anoint new revivalists. He only needs those who are willing to pick up the torch of these Generals and pay the same price for the power of God that they did. His ways and blessings have not changed—Jesus Christ is still "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8).

May God use you and me to change hearts in the ways they did, so that Jesus' will—His desire for healing, blessing, righting social wrongs, and touching humanity—can come again to our nations.

Further Readings

Batt, J. H. Dwight L. Moody: The Life-work of a Modern Evangelist. London: S. W. Partridge and Company, 1900.

Cox, F. Hayter. He Was There! The Story of Brigadier Cox—Armour-bearer to William Booth. London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1949.

Cross, Whitney R. The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950.

Dallimore, Arnold A. Susanna Wesley: The Mother of John and Charles Wesley. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993.

Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Irvine, St. John. God's Soldier: General William Booth. 2 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1934.

Jennings, Daniel R. The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley. Sean Multimedia, 2005.

Kew, Clifford W., ed. Catherine Booth—Her Continuing Relevance. St. Albans, Great Britain: The Salvation Army International Headquarters, 1990.

Moody, William R. and A. P. Fitt. The Life of D. L. Moody. Kilmarnock, Scotland: John Ritchie, n.d., ca. 1910.

Northrop, Henry Davenport. Life and Labors of Dwight L. Moody: The Great Evangelist. Philadelphia: American Book and Bible House, 1899.

Regester, E. V., E. L. Watson, and H. K. Carroll, eds. The Francis Asbury Monument in the National Capital. Washington, DC: The Francis Asbury Memorial Association, Press of the Methodist Book Concern, 1925.

Watson, Bernard. A Hundred Years War: The Salvation Army 1865–1965. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964.

About the Author

Roberts Liarwdon

Roberts Liardon, author, public speaker, spiritual leader, church historian, and humanitarian, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first male child born at Oral Roberts University. For this distinction, he was named in honor of the university founder. Thus, from the start of his life, Roberts was destined to be one of the most well-known Christian authors and speakers of the turn of the millennium. To date, he has sold over six million books worldwide in over fifty languages and is internationally renowned.

An author of over four dozen Christian and self-help books, Roberts's career in ministry began when he gave his first public address at the age of thirteen. At seventeen, he published his first book, I Saw Heaven, which catapulted him into the public eye. By the time he was eighteen years old, he was one of the leading public speakers in the world. Later, he would write and produce a book and video series entitled God's Generals. This became one of the best-selling Christian series in history and established Roberts as a leading Protestant church historian.

Roberts's notoriety increased outside Christendom as well. Twice he was voted as Outstanding Young Man in America, and his career has taken him to over one hundred nations around the world, having been hosted by presidents, kings, leading political and religious leaders, and other world dignitaries. Roberts had an introduction with former President Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, and with Former Prime Minister Lady Margaret Thatcher. Roberts received a letter from President George Bush honoring him for his commitment and contribution to improve the quality of life in his community.

In 1990, at the age of twenty-five, Roberts moved to Southern California and established his worldwide headquarters in Orange County. There, he founded Embassy Christian Center, which would become a base for his humanitarian work that would include assistance to the poor and needy, not only in Southern California, but throughout the world. He also built one of the largest Christian churches and Bible colleges in Orange County. He has established, financed, and sent forth more than 250 men and women to various nations. These humanitarian missionary teams have taken food, clothing, and medical supplies, along with the message of Jesus, to needy friends and

neighbors worldwide.

As a church historian, Roberts also fervently pursues research of our Christian heritage. At age twelve, he received instruction from God to study past heroes of faith and gain insight into their successes and failures. The pursuit of Christian history became his passion, and, even as a young man, Roberts spent much of his free time with older Christians who knew the likes of William Branham, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Aimee Semple McPherson—great men and women of faith whose stories are told in the first God's Generals book and videos. Roberts possesses a wealth of knowledge regarding the great leaders of three Christian movements—Pentecostal, divine healing, and charismatic—and he has established ongoing research through the Reformers and Revivalists Historical Museum in California.

Overall, historian, humanitarian, pastor, teacher, and philanthropist Roberts Liardon has dedicated his entire life and finances to the work of God's kingdom and the welfare of his fellow man, keeping a watchful eye on those less fortunate and doing all he can to ease their pain and help their dreams come to pass.

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