The Healing Legacy of Ruth & Billy Graham Ben Cox

After researching the history of the Graham family, and particularly after my interview with Will Graham, I wanted to learn more about Ruth Bell Graham, Billy’s wife.

The daughter of medical missionaries, Ruth aspired to be a missionary, too. She intended to train for and go to the mission field of Tibet after completing her education at Wheaton College until she met Billy Graham who had already received a clear call from the Lord to be an evangelist in the United States.

Even when Billy proposed marriage, Ruth considered not marrying him because of her own calling, however, after much prayer, she felt she could fulfill her call to be a missionary through helping with Billy’s ministry. What they didn’t realize at the time was the special role her parents would play in helping support she and Billy in both their ministry and in raising their five children. With Billy’s long absences from home, Ruth’s parents lent a stability to the family that Billy and Ruth appreciated.

In fact, in Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador, the only authorized biography of him ever made, Billy says, “One of the great influences on our children when they were young was their grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Bell, Ruth’s parents. They lived just across the street and, later, down the hill. Dr. Bell didn’t mind telling them exactly what was right, either. They kept them, they taught them, they loved them. They made it part of their ministry to help Ruth raise our children. They took them in many weeks at a time when we would be gone.”

Dr. Nelson Bell and his wife Virginia began their medical mission work in 1916 at the Love and Mercy Hospital in Qingjiangpu, Jiangsu Province. According to Gary Lundstrom, International Vice President for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), Dr. Bell “was the one that developed a cure for the Black Fever and literally saved the lives of thousands of Chinese people.” The Bells served in China for 25 years until they and other Christian missionaries had to leave the country when the Communist Army fought for control of the Chinese government and Japan waged full-scale war against China.

With the turmoil of world events boiling over into a world war, the Bells must have wondered, What now? They obviously felt strongly about spreading Christ’s love through their medical mission work, but little did they know how much greater their impact would become through supporting the ministry of the American evangelist that their daughter Ruth would soon marry.

Billy Graham preached his first public sermon in 1937 as a student from the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College of Florida) and was ordained as a minister in 1939. In 1940 he enrolled at Wheaton College outside Chicago where he met Ruth Bell whom he married following graduation from Wheaton in 1943.

The pair married at the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina where Ruth’s parents had settled after leaving China. After a honeymoon in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, they returned to Illinois, where Billy took the first and only pastorate of his long career in ministry.

Six years later, at 31 years old, Billy was thrust into the national spotlight as a result of his revival meetings in Los Angeles, California. The meetings had a huge impact on the city and resulted in great media exposure for Billy and his ministry. In order to put the Graham family’s remarkable impact on the world scene into perspective, I’m compelled to consider where it started when God sent His son to be the savior of the world.

Approximately 2000 years ago, a 30-year-old Jesus launched His public ministry and mission at His hometown synagogue in Nazareth. Here’s the way the Bible tells us what happened:

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised Him.

He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21, NIV)

From that point, until He was crucified three years later, Jesus traveled throughout the tiny nation of Israel proclaiming His good news and healing everyone who came to Him for healing. The lame walked, leprosy was healed, blind eyes were opened, and even the dead were raised.

But most of the religious establishment and the political powers of Jesus’ day weren’t responsive to His message. In fact, they were so engrossed in their own self-serving agendas that they were threatened by His message, His ministry, and the followers He attracted.

At Jesus’ birth, the Bible tells us that King Herod tried to kill baby Jesus by cruelly ordering “to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under”. I point this out to draw attention

to the fact that from Jesus’ birth until His crucifixion, His life was under a constant death threat.

Even though He taught us about and demonstrated love by healing the sick and responding with kindness, compassion, and generosity to everyone who requested His help, many people rejected Jesus. There’s more to this rejection than mere human stubbornness: it’s a spiritual thing, with spiritual forces of evil preying upon our selfish tendencies to keep us from receiving the healing we need for the brokenness we all have. The spirit that does this is the spirit of the antichrist who is alive and well today, stirring up racism, hatred, and conflicts as he’s done for thousands of years.

But there’s another spirit at work in the world today: the Holy Spirit. Though the antichrist spirit is strong, it’s no match for the power of the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus’ own words before His crucifixion and after His resurrection, He promised to His followers that they would receive the same Holy Spirit that enabled Him to do miracles and change lives.

Immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, He tried to comfort His distraught disciples with these words:

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another counselor to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16-17a, NIV)

After His resurrection, when He was having dinner with them, He gave them this command:

“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:4-5 & 8, NIV)

At another time, while explaining to the twelve about who the Holy Spirit is and what they would be able to accomplish with the Holy Spirit’s help, Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12, NIV) Wait a minute. Didn’t Jesus do miracles? Didn’t He open blind eyes, heal the sick, and even raise the dead? Was He serious about mere humans being able to do miracles like that? Yes, He was! Those are exactly the kind of miracles that you’d discover when you delve into the Graham family history.

Through Ruth Bell Graham’s spiritual heritage as the daughter of medical missionaries, we see how healing the sick, clothing the poor, welcoming strangers, and reaching out with compassion to the downtrodden are central to the ministries they pioneered. These virtues that Jesus taught and demonstrated have been woven into the very fabric of Billy and Ruth Graham’s mission and purpose. Now, through the ministries of Samaritan’s Purse, World Medical Missions, and the BGEA, that dimension of the Graham’s legacy continues and is amplified in powerfully significant ways.

The souls that have been saved, the lives that have been changed, and the nations that have been reached through Billy and Ruth Graham’s partnership in ministry has happened through the power of the Holy Spirit. This invisible, powerful presence has been at work in and through them, their parents, their children, their grandchildren, and hundreds of ministry associates and staff who have come alongside them since Billy’s ministry officially launched in the 1940s. Besides this, hundreds of thousands of others in the worldwide body of Christ have cooperated with them either directly or indirectly to spread the good news of Christ.

Jesus brought grace and truth to this planet when He came to Earth over 2000 years ago. Today, via stories like those we share in this magazine, we see how He continues to bring grace and truth through the Holy Spirit who works in and through imperfect humans. I contend that just one Christ-centered person or family can join together with other followers of Christ to do even greater works than Jesus did just as He promised.

For more information on Billy and Ruth Graham, please visit: www.BillyGraham.org