Billy in Germany

Evangelist Billy Graham, fresh from a phenomenal tour of Great Britain and Scandinavia, invaded West Germany last week to spread the word. Flying into Frankfurt, he first kicked up a flurry of newspaper headlines with some strong words about material affairs. "Germany must be given the latest and most powerful weapons as a deterrent to war . . . " he said. France, Graham added, was comparable to "a watch without a mainspring . . . The French just sin and sin, and get weaker."

Later, Graham had to soften his words. "I am here on a spiritual mission, not a political one," he explained. But it detracted little from his success. In Duesseldorf, three-color posters proclaimed: 75O SINGERS, 200 TRUMPETS AND BILLY

GRAHAM, and the response was so great the meeting had to be switched from a 12,000-capacity ice stadium to a soccer stadium big enough for 28,000.

The evangelist strode out onto the platform in dignified, double-breasted blue serge to speak his message. With him stood an interpreter, 27-year-old Wilfred Sybell, a German student at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute, who not only rendered Graham's tense message into German, phrase by phrase, but matched every Graham step and gesture. He pounded the Bible when Billy pounded, pointed to heaven when Billy pointed.

"The spirit of God is speaking to you tonight," said Billy. "He is speaking in this arena tonight. It's difficult to talk through an interpreter, but I've been in enough of these meetings to know that He's here tonight." "Some 700 of the 28,000 Germans followed ushers into the tent for the converted. Outside, a guard advised the curious: "Entry only for those who have turned to Jesus Christ tonight." Soon after the meeting, Graham doubled up in pain; German physicians diagnosed the trouble as a "blocked kidney." But next day, Graham hopped off to Berlin for another big revival sermon to 70,000 in the vast Olympic Stadium. Then Graham fell ill again, not seriously. But it was enough to delay his next mission--a trip to Paris to treat with the sinners of France.

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