A frail and ailing Rev. Billy Graham is “close to going home to be with the Lord,” according to his grandson, Will Graham.
Will Graham, the son of Franklin Graham, CEO of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, says his 95-year-old grandfather is not suffering but that “old age has caught up to him and is sucking the life out of him.”
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I wish (God) would give him strength, but I don’t think he needs strength anymore,’ Will Graham told the Christian website Assist News Service. “It’s time to go home.”
Since celebrating his 95th birthday on Nov. 7 at a North Carolina gala attended by more than 1,000 people, Billy Graham’s tenuous health has been declining. He was recently hospitalized for pulmonary problems and has been dealing with Parkinson’s disease for more than 20 years. He has also battled pneumonia, broken hips, and prostate cancer.
On Wednesday, Franklin Graham asked the world to pray for his father, who has offered spiritual guidance to generations of presidents beginning with Harry Truman.
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Our family would appreciate your prayers for him that the Lord would strengthen him,” Franklin Graham wrote in an online message posted at Charismanews.com.
Will Graham said that God has protected his grandfather,providing “supernatural strength and now, the only thing left is for him to come home. God has removed his hand of protection and old age has set in.”
In 2011, Newsweek reported that the charismatic preacher who became famous in the 1940s for staging revivals he dubbed crusades now lives in near seclusion in the family home in western North Carolina. He is isolated by failing eyesight and hearing, passing most of his days watching Fox News and local programming “on a massive flat-screen TV.”
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