When Billy Graham passed away in 2018 I was working at another radio station and wasn't particularly happy there. As it happens, unknown to me, It was only be a month later that I would be unceremoniously laid off and the pieces began to fall into place for the launching of The Maverick. At that old radio station I had very little ability to address current events or to really be able to speak about Christ so I looked for any opportunity I could and tried to do it in whatever way possible. It makes sense that I found writing a blog post to be the best way to address Billy Graham's passing. Writing has always been the way that I process my thoughts. It wasn't until just now that I realized Billy Graham passed away just days before his friend Johnny Cash's birthday. Mr. Graham died February 21, 2018. Johnny Cash was born February 26, 1932. In honor of The Man In Black's birthday I thought I would dust off this old entry I wrote back in 2018, the story not only of Johnny Cash's salvation but of his friendship with Billy Graham.
With the passing of Billy Graham this past week I've found myself looking back on the life of a man that I've always known about and respected but never really took the time to learn about. I remembered reading some time ago of Rev. Dr. Billy Graham's daughter, Anne, saying that she believed God was keeping her father alive for a reason. She said “God is not whimsical and he does everything intentionally. The fact that my father is still here, God is holding him for a reason."
She went on to say something else very important. “One of the things that I thought possibly — only God would know — when my father goes to Heaven, one more time, the Gospel will be preached to the whole world.”
That holds in line with something I have always believed, a conclusion I came to years ago while trying to reconcile the loss of a close friend at a young age. I realized that people live for a reason and purpose, designed by God, and that we should learn from them throughout their lives. When a person dies, their death should have as big or bigger impact on the world as their life and we should learn something from their death as well. When I heard the news of Dr. Graham's passing, I stopped everything I was doing to think for a few minutes. I thought, “how can I use my position on a secular radio station to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ?”
Since my very first days at WPCM, 16 years ago, God has given me opportunities to talk about Jesus. It's one of the more satisfying things about my job, and is, I think, the reason that he put me here and has kept me here through numerous format changes and heartaches. Even in a format like country music it's not always easy but there are always chances I can take to talk about the Gospel. It's a prayer I pray daily, that God will give me a new opportunity. Usually it takes the form of a song or an artist. Artists like Aaron Watson who are also using their platforms as singers to talk about Christ give me opportunities as well. When Dr. Graham died I knew this was one of the most obvious chances God has ever given me. I immediately began researching for my Saturday night show.
Being an Outlaw Country Music show I knew, right away, that 48 years ago God began laying out the perfect framework for my show. The friendship between Billy Graham and another amazing man, Johnny Cash.
God works on a lot of different scales. He acts in the smallest parts of our lives guiding us, influencing us, and growing us. He also acts on scales so big they can be hard to fathom. Billy Graham and Johnny Cash were both larger than life. God created them both to do incredible things. When He decided to bring the two of them together something truly incredible happened.
The year was 1969. Two years prior Johnny Cash had hit the lowest point of his life. He had 33 top ten hits to his name and was famous throughout the world. He had money, a loving wife, and a cocaine and pill addiction that was destroying him. He had been in and out of hospitals and jails, he was canceling concerts because he was too stoned to play, he was six foot two and weighed 150 pounds. He decided he was done. He hated himself. He had hurt and disappointed everyone he knew. He was going to die and he had a plan to make sure of it. He drove his Jeep to a cave system he had explored years before called Nickajack Cave. He walked in to the cave and kept waking, taking turns at random, not paying attention to where he was going. When his flashlight battery died he kept going, deeper and deeper in to the underground maze. Finally, he wore out and lay down in the darkness to die. As he lay there, God spoke to him. “ I didn’t believe it at first,” Cash said. “I felt something very powerful, a sensation of utter peace, clarity and sobriety. I couldn’t understand it. How, after being awake for so long and driving my body so hard and taking so many pills—dozens of them, scores, even hundreds—could I possibly feel all right? The feeling persisted though, and then my mind started focusing on God. There in Nickajack Cave I became conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my destiny. I was not in charge of my own death. I was going to die at God’s time, not mine.” Though he had no concept of time, he had been in the cave for three days, and he raised his head and realized he had no idea how to get back out of the tomb he had made for himself. He began crawling, at random, trying to find his way back to the entrance. He crawled on his hands and knees in the blackness, feeling ahead so that he didn't stumble over one of the many deadly drops in the cave. Finally he made his way back to the mouth of the cave and waiting there was his wife June Carter, and his mother. They had water and food for him to eat. He had been unable to forgive himself, but in the blackness of the cave he had realized that God would forgive him. In that moment he had given his life to Christ. Over the next two years, Johnny got off of drugs and started going to church. At this point, the story is amazing enough, and in its self is legend, but God still wasn't done.
That same year the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham had already spread to word of God to millions, including the Queen of England. But at that time, in 1969, he was struggling with something all too real to every parent that ever lived. He was worried about his son. Franklin Graham was a bit of wild kid. He had been kicked out of several schools, he was smoking, drinking, doing things he thought he was hiding from his father. Billy knew. Franklin's favorite singer was Johnny Cash. His favorite song was Ring Of Fire. So Billy Graham did what any father would do. He called up the Governor of Tennessee and asked him to introduce him to Johnny Cash. He figured if he could connect with Johnny Cash then it would help him to connect with his son.
Johnny invited Billy to dinner at the Cash house. Throughout dinner they talked about all sorts of things, but Johnny kept wondering, what was it that Billy wanted to meet with him about? Finally, Billy said he was there to talk about music. I figure Johnny was plenty nervous about this development. With preachers coming down hard about the evils of rock and roll and all the songs Johnny had written and sung about murder and wild nights, I'm sure he was thinking he was about to be called on the carpet. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Billy said, “the kids aren't going to church, they are losing interest in religion.” He thought that the music had a lot to do with it, because “there was nothing in the church house that they heard that they liked.” He told Johnny “The latest thing the kids can hear in the church is ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ and ‘How Great Thou Art.”
The Gospel never changes, but our method of presenting the Gospel has to change, constantly, in order to continue to reach the lost.
Johnny said of it later, “He kind of challenged me to challenge others, to try to use what talent we have to write something inspiring.”
That night, right after Billy left the house, Johnny sat down and wrote “What Is Truth.” He would go on to write hundreds of the most amazing Gospel songs ever written and would witness to everyone he came in contact with; in person, from the stage, in interviews.
Again, if the story ended there it would be amazing. What started as a father worried about his son became a relationship that would touch millions. Billy invited Johnny to come with him on his crusade the following year. This drew criticism, the idea of a wild, long haired, rock and roller taking the stage with a respected preacher at a church service was unheard of at the time. Billy didn't listen to the naysayers for a moment. He told people that Johnny is exactly the type of person they were trying to reach. Franklin said ““Daddy saw the type of people Johnny would bring. And Johnny and June themselves came knowing they would hear the gospel.”
Graham's music director, Cliff Barrows, got the idea quickly. He said every where they went guys from the “rough and ready” crowd would drive their pickup trucks out to the crusade. Thousands of people who either had never heard the gospel or who had refused to listen before were now in the audience. Johnny would use the opportunity to talk about the saving power of God's grace, would warn of the dangers of drug addiction, and of God's power to break addictions. “I’ve lived all my life for the devil up until now,” he would say, “and from here on I’m going to live it for the Lord.”
Again, if the story ended here it would be enough, but when God is on to something he doesn't do it half way. The following year Johnny invited Billy to come on to the Johnny Cash Show. Johnny sang his song “The Preacher Said, Jesus Said” with the help of Billy Graham. Then he gave Billy a chance to deliver a five minute sermon, to a national television audience of teenagers, about the love and saving power of Jesus Christ.
The two were constant companions, often vacationing together at Johnny's house in Jamaica, fishing, eating barbeque, and generally hanging out as friends. Johnny would call Billy up at 2am to ask him a question about the Bible, sometimes stumping even the Reverend Doctor. One of the things that Johnny appreciated was that Billy never lied to him or pretended to have all of the answers. Billy would tell him “when you get to heaven, you can ask God.” Billy and Johnny would sit in Johnny's study, with Billy working on a book and Johnny working on a song, and Billy would read something he'd written to Johnny and Johnny would play a bit of a song that he was working on.
The story keeps getting bigger. A few years later Johnny fell off the wagon and slipped back in to amphetamines. He said Billy would sometimes embarrass him by mentioning the book Johnny had planned on writing about the life of the Apostle Paul. Johnny was too strung out to be able to write, and he felt he had let Billy down again. I have no doubt in my mind that Billy knew he was embarrassing Johnny- that it was a gentle reminder that Johnny still had things he needed to get straightened out. There were stories that in the 80's Johnny missed two crusades because he was too stoned to play. Thru it all, Billy stuck by his friend, loving and encouraging him. At his urging, Johnny checked himself in to rehab and got clean again.
Franklin Graham said that Johnny never had problems with his faith. He had problems with is life. He was human and he screwed up. Because he was such a big man, his screw ups were bigger than most. In 1986 Johnny completed his book about Paul entitled The Man In White. At Billy and June's urging Johnny would produce a film called “Gospel Road: A Story Of Jesus.”
At one of the following crusades, this one in Johnny's home state of Arkansas, he said from the stage “My personal life, my personal problems, has been widely publicized. There have been things said about me that made people ask, ‘Is Johnny Cash really a Christian?’ I take great comfort in the words of the Apostle Paul, who said: ‘What I will to do I do not practice, but what I hate I do. It is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells within me. But who will deliver me from this body of death? It is Jesus Christ, our Lord.’”
Johnny was often concerned that the songs he sang would give the wrong impression to people. Once he asked Billy if he should stop doing songs like Folsom Prison, and Billy responded “Don't apologize for who you are and what you've done in the past....Be who you are and do what you do." Johnny said in his autobiography that Billy helped him deal with his “faith as a public person in the secular world."
Through Billy Graham, and through a life fraught with mistakes and problems, God revealed to Johnny his ultimate purpose in life. “Only someone who has had such a problem can have complete love and compassion and understanding for such people. I love drug addicts. And I love alcoholics. When Jesus said He was sent to heal the brokenhearted and preach deliverance to the captives, I believe these were some of the people he was talking about. If some lost, lonely person somewhere out there in a dirty bed, in a dark room, can see the light of Jesus Christ in me, then that is my reward.”
Billy Graham preached the the Gospel to millions. God used him to reach people that were unreachable. He put people into Billy's life that he could directly influence and tell about Christ. He used Franklin's mistakes to put Johnny Cash into Billy Graham's life, and to put Billy Graham into Johnny Cash's life. God then used Johnny and his mistakes to reach millions more people who would have been unreachable.
God doesn’t make mistakes. We make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes they're so big we can never forgive ourselves. God doesn't like to see us screw up. It hurts him like it hurts any father watching his child hurt themselves and others. The good news is, He does forgive us, even when we don't have the power to forgive ourselves. He sent Christ to to die so that we can have that forgiveness, so that we don't have to die.
Just as Billy didn't give up on his son Franklin, and he didn't give up on his friend Johnny, God doesn't give up on us. We may hit rock bottom waiting in a cave to die, or we may do it in a jail cell, in a lonely room stoned out of our minds, or maybe we hit rock bottom in our homes with our families looking at bills we can't pay and commitments we can't keep. Lots of people never reach those sorts of lows. God doesn't wait for our worst moments to come to us. He's with us always, knocking at our hearts, asking us to let him him. Too often however we just don't hear him. When we don't listen He knocks harder. Sometimes, when you're really stubborn and stupid, like me, He slaps you in the back of the head with a two by four and says “Wake up!” He takes our mistakes, our hurts, and the mistakes and hurts of those around us and draws us closer to him. Then he uses our experiences to spread the love of Christ. I'm not Johnny Cash. I'm not Billy Graham. In world wide terms, I'm probably never going to be known outside a a very small number of people in Alamance County. God still has a plan for me and in my small portion of his world I have to do what I can to spread his love, which is what's lead me to write this. You don't have to be a rock star or even a DJ on a small radio station to do that. It can be done in your homes, in your schools, and in your offices.
Taking the giant story of Billy and Johnny's friendship, and all the people that it touched, and boiling it down to its most basic level, Billy's plan worked. Five years after he and Johnny met for the first time, Billy's son Franklin gave his life to Christ at the age of 22.
Today, February 26, 2024, is Johnny Cash's birthday. He passed away in 2003, Dr. Graham died in 2028. Their words and their friendship still echo in the world today and their influence is still felt. In celebration of his life, take some time today to listen to the music the Man in Black gave us.
Photo Credit: BillyGraham.org https://billygraham.org/gallery/the-cashes-and-the-grahams-through-the-years/