Billy Graham details his 1972 trip to India and his meeting with Indira Gandhi during that trip in his autobiography. About his mandate to meet Indira Gandhi, Graham writes: President Nixon, at the request of the American consul in New Delhi, had personally asked me to seek an interview with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in part to find out from her what kind of ambassador she wanted from America. He asked me to notice every single thing about her—the movement of her hands, the expression on her face, how her eyes looked. “When you’ve finished the interview,” he said to me, “go to the American embassy and dictate your report to me.” And so, when I visited with Mrs. Gandhi in the Indian capital, I put the question to her. She told me she wanted someone who understood economics, who had the ear of the President, and who had influence in Congress. This I reported to the President. He later appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Whether my report influenced the President’s decision, I never learned.
Billy Graham Carolinian
Source
No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- work
- Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham
no citation recorded
Cite this record
“Billy Graham details his 1972 trip to India and his meeting …” Billy Graham. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-41FBBF9A0C. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/41fbbf9a0c
More from Billy Graham
“Billy,” John said, “you are on your way to India, a country that has no conception of God. You will need a special approach to break into people’s thinking, because they know nothing of the Bible or God. Do you have such an approach in mind?” Admitting that I didn’t, I suggested that we make that issue a matter of concentrated prayer.
In my travels, I have found that those who keep heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life. A friend told me about stopping on a street corner in London and listening to a man play the bagpipes. He was playing "Amazing Grace" and smiling from ear to ear. My friend asked him if he was from Scotland, and he answered, “No sir, my home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world.”
[S]ome people do hope God will reward them for their generosity (or for some other good deed they’ve done), either by blessing them right now or by granting them eternal life. Lurking in the back of their minds is the idea that at the last judgment, God will weigh their good deeds against their bad deeds, and if they have more good deeds than bad deeds then God will let them into heaven. This, however, is a serious misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches. The Bible says that God is absolutely holy and pure, and even one sin — just one — would be enough to keep us out of heaven.