Graham Festival to Reach Inmates for the First Time
Coming out of a ''celebration'' that brought hope to more than 30,000 Katrina victims at the New Orleans Arena, evangelist Franklin Graham will be facing an entirely different crowd of individuals just a few hours away.
Coming out of a ''celebration'' that brought hope to more than 30,000 Katrina victims at the New Orleans Arena, evangelist Franklin Graham will be facing an entirely different crowd of individuals just a few hours away at the Angola Prison Rodeo Arena.
For the first time, Graham will be speaking in front of thousands of inmates along with the general public on Apr. 1. From the 5,108 prisoners housed at Angola, Louisiana, the one-day event is expected to draw some 3,000 of them, according to the Angola arena spokesperson.
The Angola Rodeo is the longest running prison rodeo in the nation. What began as a small arena built by inmates and personnel for plain entertainment is now hosting a world-renowned evangelistic festival.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The Angola Franklin Graham Festival comes just weeks after both Franklin Graham and his father, the Rev. Billy Graham, instilled a new hope in the hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. It was elder Graham's first public sermon since his final crusade last June in the Greater New York area and probably his very last, he said.
"This is probably the last evangelistic sermon I'll ever preach," Graham said, according to Baptist Press. "But it's been wonderful to be here. Thank you."
After having taken his first up-close look at the devastation he had constantly heard of, Graham told the festival crowd, "War does not increase death, Katrina does not increase death. The wages of sin is death, but eternal life is through Christ.
"God loves us with an everlasting love. Christ endured physical and spiritual death so that we could be saved through faith in repentance in Him.
Ensuring the tens of thousands of God's love, Franklin said, "We all face storms in life, whether it is a storm like Katrina, a storm in a marriage, or a storm in our finances. No matter what storm you face, you need to know that God loves you. He has not abandoned you."
Following up on the more than 1,400 decisions that were made for Christ at the two-day festival last weekend, the 215 local churches involved with last weekend’s evangelistic event will receive the decision cards this week to invite the new believers and guide them on their faith walk.
The Angola event will be followed closely by the Gulf Coast Franklin Graham Festival on Apr. 21-23, which was scheduled even before Katrina hit. The New Orleans Celebration of Hope was held at the request of local pastors to bring hope to the hurricane victims.
