Franklin Graham reflects on father, future

In a wide-ranging interview with WRAL News at the Boone headquarters of Samaritan's Purse, the Christian relief organization he heads, Franklin Graham also discussed his father's legacy, the future of the family home at Montreat and political issues from President Donald Trump to North Korea to the Middle East.

"I'm 66 this year, so the clock is ticking on my ability to do this," he said of preaching. "I'm going to do it while I can."

The effort begins with 10 crusades in California and eight more in the Pacific Northwest in August, an effort he terms "piercing the blue wall."

"I'm going to the most secular states this year and next year to tell people how they can have a relationship with God," he said.

Outside of such events, however, Franklin Graham said he plans to be "very selective" about his speaking engagements, giving him more time to study the Bible, as well as handle his duties at Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

"It's very easy for time to slip away and not be doing things God would want you to do," he said.

Still, he doesn't expect to be another Billy Graham.

"My father never sought it. He never wanted to be famous," he said. "There are those that would like to be a Billy Graham, but they will never be a Billy Graham because they want it. It's going to be somebody who comes down the road who doesn't want it, that's not seeking it, that God will just touch."

Billy Graham preached to an estimated 2 billion people worldwide before he died Feb. 21 at age 99. But his son said that, because Christians believe life begins at conception, the extra nine months would have put him at 100 when he died, fulfilling a prediction the evangelist made five years ago.

Franklin Graham said he misses his weekly conversations and prayers with his father during Sunday visits to Montreat.

"I just miss sitting there talking with him," he said. "Not hearing his voice, I miss that."

Some of those talks and the advice gleaned from them have been put together in a new book, "Through My Father's Eyes," that Franklin Graham has been working on for 12 years.

Although he and his brother and sisters have been at Montreat recently dividing up their parents' belongings, the home itself will likely be sold.

"None of us children can afford to keep it up," he said, noting a decade-worth of maintenance work needs to be done. "I think it's good to maybe sell it to someone who's looking for some peace and quiet up on the side of a mountain."

While Billy Graham was known as "America's pastor" and counseled U.S. presidents for six decades, his son is content to support Trump from afar.

"We need to support the president, whoever it is," he said. "I want him to succeed because, if he succeeds, it's good for all of us."

He said he doesn't understand how Trump won the presidency, unless it is part of a divine plan.

"He offended so many people. He's not a politician. He made so many mistakes in his campaign," he said. "I look at this, and I just have to say I think God put him in that position."

But Franklin Graham said Trump just might be the right person to broker peace on the Korean peninsula.

"He's the kind of guy who wants to make a deal," he said of Trump.

Billy Graham had some of his largest crusades in South Korea and visited North Korea four times. Franklin Graham said North Korea's first president, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of current president Kim Jong Un, even told the evangelist during a 1992 trip to Pyongyang, "You are the first American I have ever really liked."

The time for significant progress toward peace with North Korea is long overdue, Franklin Graham said.

"We need to be talking to the Koreans," he said. "We don't have to agree with them. But this is crazy – I'm 65 years old, and my entire life, we've had a state of war with Korea. We need to be talking with them."

Similarly, Franklin Graham himself is trying to talk more with Muslims, even though he won't take back controversial comments calling Islam a religion of hatred.

"I don't want to broad-brush and just say all people out of Islam are violent people. They are not. But you have to look at what the religion teaches," he said.

One of Samaritan's Purse's efforts has been to set up an 80-bed hospital in the war-ravaged city of Mosul last year at the request of the Iraqi government. The hospital treated – and staffers prayed for – anyone who was wounded in the area, including Islamic State fighters.

"It's difficult, but these are human beings, and so we treated them all the same."

Still, he said he cannot take credit for any of the work done by the relief organization.

"It's not something Franklin Graham has done. It is something God has done," he said. "If anything good has happened, it's because of God. If anything bad has happened, it's because of me."