The force behind Samaritan’s Purse’s growth into a billion-dollar nonprofit that brings comfort to a hurting world says ‘it’s all because of God.’
BOONE, N.C.—A bird is thumping into the window of Rev. Franklin Graham’s office at Samaritan’s Purse international headquarters in Boone, North Carolina.
He says it happens every spring, and he doesn’t know why, but this bird flies into the window, falls, and then tries again. Mr. Graham has gone outside to shoo it away—it doesn’t seem hurt—but it persistently bonks the window, sometimes in the middle of weighty, life-altering conversations.
It’s not the first time the views inside his windows have been breached.
Busloads of people used to stop in front of his boyhood home and sometimes they got off the bus, crept through the yard, and peered into the windows, hoping to get a glimpse of his world-famous father, the Rev. Billy Graham.
Seeking privacy, the family moved near his grandparents to a home on a wooded mountain acreage in Montreat, North Carolina. Mr. Franklin Graham and his four siblings attended a rural public school.
It dawned on the young Graham that his father was different from other dads when a family friend landed his helicopter in their yard and took Mr. Billy Graham to preach somewhere. It only happened a few times, but it left an impression.
His parents took him to church. His grandparents had been missionaries in China. Many of their friends were retired missionaries, so the Graham home was often filled with people of faith.
But young Franklin Graham rebelled against it.
“As I got into my teenage years, it wasn’t that I did not believe in God. I just didn’t want God running my life,” Mr. Graham told The Epoch Times. “I wanted to have fun. I wanted to do those things that pleased me and satisfied myself. I was probably very self-centered.”
He picked up bad habits, like smoking cigarettes, as he traveled the world.
One night, at age 22, and alone in a Jerusalem hotel room, everything changed.
By Beth Brelje
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