Billy Graham's Final Sermon: 'I've Wept' For America [View all]

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Source: USA Today

At 95 and in frail health, Billy Graham often resists family entreaties to make excursions from his mountaintop home. But the nation's most famous evangelist attended a birthday celebration Thursday night that featured hundreds of well-wishers and what is being characterized as his final sermon. In a video that was recorded over the past year, Graham delivered his familiar message about the saving power of Jesus Christ and expressed concern about the nation's direction. "Our country's in great need of a spiritual awakening," he declared. "There have been times that I've wept as I've gone from city to city and I've seen how far people have wandered from God."

Graham, white-haired and heavier-set now than he once was, was brought into the ballroom in a wheelchair. Instead of speaking from the dais, he addressed the crowd through the half-hour film. It included photos and clips that underscore his ministry's intersection with decades of American life and politics, showing him alongside presidents (John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton) as well as with Martin Luther King Jr., Pope John Paul II — and Johnny Carson.

The video, titled My Hope America, will be aired on dozens of Christian and other TV stations across the country and at thousands of churches .Fox News Channel also aired it. "The greatest news channel in America," Graham's son, Franklin, declared during the dinner. "This will be my father's last message to the nation," Franklin Graham said in an interview with USA TODAY before the celebration began. "He won't be able to do this again."

Among the hundreds of guests were North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and New York real-estate magnate Donald Trump. Singers Ricky Skaggs, Michael W. Smith and others led the audience in two refrains of Happy Birthday. Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, one of the speakers, jumped off the stage to hold a microphone before Billy Graham as he singled out a few people in the audience for thanks.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/07/billy-graham-95th-birthday-party-final-sermon/3464537/