Billy Hits the Sawdust
Trail
Billy Graham
The girls oohed and aahed at the young basketball and baseball star at Sharon High School near Charlotte, North Carolina. Someday he hoped to be a first baseman in the major leagues. If not that, he thought he might be a farmer like his father.
Billy was seventeen when an exprizefighter turned evangelist came to Charlotte. Mordecai Ham was an old-fashioned finger-pointing, fire-and-brimstone evangelist, who made a frontal assault upon sin.
Church leaders in Charlotte thought Mr. Ham a bit too much of a disturber. They refused him permission to erect a tent. But with laymen helping, the ex-boxer put down stakes just outside the city limits.
He had already been holding meetings for several weeks when Billy came. Not that Billy — a tall, rangy boy with a mop of wavy blond hair — had been against going to church. He went every Sunday with his devout parents. And he neither smoked nor drank.
But there had been other things to do, and even though his father was a strong supporter of Mr. Ham, Billy just had not taken the trouble to attend before.
The crowd was big for Charlotte — five thousand people. People were saying that it was the biggest thing ever to hit the Carolinas. Billy and his high school
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friends walked down the sawdust aisles and took their seats on a hard bench.
The sermon from the big preacher was quite unimpressive to Billy. That is until the preacher jabbed a pointed finger in Billy's direction, and shouted, "You're a sinner."
Billy — who was not one to duck a fast ball — was not ready to play catch with the preacher. He ducked his blond head behind the hat of a woman in front of him.
Two nights later Billy went back, taking a friend, Albert McMakin, along with him. For several nights afterward the two attended together. The fiery evangelist kept hammering away, driving home to Billy that he had to make a choice between heaven or hell.
One night Billy took another friend, Grady Wilson. "Let's sit in the choir," Billy suggested, although he knew he could not carry a tune in a basket. So the two sat behind the pulpit, safely out of the gaze of the pulpit-thumping preacher.
Mordecai Ham did not point his finger at Billy that night, but Billy got the impact of his message when he said, "There's a great sinner here tonight."
He's talking about me, Billy thought. Someone must have told him I was here.
The preacher concluded his sermon and gave the call for penitents to hit the sawdust trail. Billy was gulping hard when the choir began singing. After a brief burst of song he could stand it no longer. "Come on, Grady," he told his companion.
The two picked their way down from the choir and stood at the front.
Recalling his decision, Billy said, "It was like being
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outdoors on a dark day and having the sun burst through the cloud cover. Everything looked different. I knew for the first time the joy of being born again."
Since that memorable night in 1936, Billy Graham has already preached to more people than the late Reverend Mordecai Ham, the man who led him to Christ. In fact Billy has preached to more, face to face — over two hundred million worldwide (by 2006) — than any preacher in history. But even more important, he has seen tens of thousands walk the sawdust trail and make a public and personal commitment to follow Christ as Saviour and Lord.
