Early in his ministry he was leading a service when, in the
middle of it, he was told a pastor had called to warn him a man
was coming to murder him. Billy told the audience about it but
continued with the service.
This was one of many realities that demanded courage on
Billy’s part. Stepping into the lion’s den to dialogue with hostile
intellectuals or cynical reporters; facing angry conservative crit-
ics; making decisions he knew would cause consternation among
friends.
At times on major initiatives, he diligently and with great thor-
oughness sought wisdom and counsel, then devoted full energies
to implementing a plan of action—only to see his efforts assaulted.
Perhaps no greater example of that was his experience on his
return from his historic trip to Russia in 1982.
His vision for ministry in the Soviet Union had begun long
before. In 1959, though unable to get permission to hold meetings
there, he visited the Soviet Union as a tourist. Sitting with friend
and ministry partner Grady Wilson, Billy gazed across the vast
expanse of an empty Lenin Stadium in Moscow. The great coli-
seum, site of Soviet athletic triumphs and numerous Communist
Party celebrations, felt strangely impotent without the throngs of
Russian spectators. He envisioned standing before those masses,
preaching the good news of Christ in a country where God had
been outlawed. Communist officials had barred him from speak-
ing publicly, so instead Billy simply bowed his head and prayed
that God would one day bring him back to the Soviet capital and
allow him to share the gospel.
“And yet for decades, it seemed as if that was one prayer God
would never answer, an unrealistic pipe-dream that could never
come true,” Billy wrote in his autobiography. “The barriers were
too great, the wall erected by Communism against religion too
impregnable.”
Yet Billy kept probing. In 1978, PepsiCo CEO Don Kendall
arranged for him to meet Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.
When they met in a Washington hotel, Dobrynin queried Billy with
characteristic Russian directness. “Why do you want to come?”
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham