Real Cool, Billy

Winding up a month-long crusade in Melbourne, Australia, Evangelist Billy Graham decided that God and Graham had done it again: "Both in total attendance and responses, this has surpassed any crusade of similar length." The staid city, which had all but run Evangelist Oral Roberts out of town in 1956, bucked cloudburst and heat wave to turn out some 714,000 strong for Graham's meetings in the Sydney Myer Music Bowl, the West Melbourne Stadium and the Melbourne Show Grounds, and more than 26,400 made "decisions for Christ."

Graham seemed to go over especially well with Down Under teenagers. At one meeting some 2,000 of them stepped forward after he had pitched them a line of rock 'n' rollery: "In America, teenagers have a language all their own and think that grownups are all squares because they can't dig the jive. I heard of one of these cats who went to church and said to the minister: 'Dad, you really blasted me this morning--you were real cool, Dad--cool, I mean cool, Dad. That jive of yours so beat me that I dropped $20 in the plate!' And the minister replied, 'Crazy, man, crazy.' "

This week Evangelist Graham will carry his crusade to Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania, then put in a fortnight's rest on Queensland's sunny Gold Coast before beginning a New Zealand crusade on March 29.

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