A GOOD MAN . . .

The Reverend Billy Graham speaks this weekend at Flushing Meadows Park. It will be one of the greatest regrets of my life that I won't be able to see him speak, probably for the last time in this area. Let it not be one of yours. Go!

THIS TIME, BILLY GRAHAM IS STAYING FOCUSED ON GOSPEL
By ANDY NEWMAN

The Rev. Billy Graham, 86 years old and ailing, made his first New York appearance in years at a news conference today to promote his three-night crusade in Queens that begins on Friday. He expressed pleasure that what might be the final crusade of his 68-year ministry had returned him to the city that had helped make him famous, a city he said still sorely needed help to heal the wounds of Sept. 11, 2001.

While clearly a shadow of his fiery, fast-talking self, Mr. Graham spoke for 20 minutes, parried a bit with the reporters and even cracked a few jokes. He brought easy laughter to the 64th-floor conference room in Rockefeller Center when he evoked the day that , Christians say, Jesus Christ will return to reign over earth.

"I hope I meet all of you there," Mr. Graham said with a glint in his eye, "and bring your camera, because I may have one, too."

Mr. Graham, hobbled by the combined effects of prostate cancer, water on the brain, failing hearing and a broken hip and pelvis, seemed a little unfocused at times, offering rambling, tangential responses to some questions in a thick burr of a voice that could be hard to make out.

But when it came to the primacy of Jesus Christ, the subject on which he is expected to preach to crowds expected to number 70,000 a night at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Mr. Graham did not waver.

He promised that his sermons this weekend would sound familiar to anyone who heard him at the 1957 crusade at Madison Square Garden that ran for 16 weeks and launched him to world prominence.

"The message that I preach here is going to be the same," he said. "It hasn't changed. Circumstances have changed. Problems have changed. But deep inside, man has not changed and the gospel hasn't changed. Because the Bible says that we've all sinned and we're all sinners."

Mr. Graham plans to preach for about 35 minutes each evening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He speaks now from a podium designed to allow him to sit while speaking, and he sat throughout today's news conference.

He said he was particularly pleased to be speaking at the park, which though it was not his organization's first choice (the city rejected a request for a crusade in Central Park), lies in the center of the most ethnically diverse part of the city.

"Here in New York, not only is there a mixture of ethnic background but there's a mixture of the problems of the world," he said. "There's 100-and-something languages spoken within walking distance of Corona Park, and I know that the problems of the world are there. And I believe that the gospel of Christ is the answer, not part of the answer, but the whole answer."

Mr. Graham promised not to talk about politics, and though several reporters tried to draw him into the subject with questions about evangelism's growing role in American political life and the pros and cons of international debt relief, he stayed on message till the end.

"If I get up and talk about some political issues," he said, "it divides the audience. What I want is a united audience to hear only the gospel. There are many times I went too far in talking about such issues. And I think that this time I want to stick only to the gospel."

Mr. Graham was helped to his feet and, leaning heavily on his walker, made his way slowly from the room.