Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 10, 1990 TAG: 9003102332
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE W. CORNELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He says churches played a key role in overturning the autocratic East German government last fall.
"This has given new hope to people," he said in an interview before flying to Berlin this week. But the aftermath, he said, seems to have left a "spiritual vacuum."
"There's a spiritual vacuum and spiritual hunger both in East and West Germany," he said. "People want something to believe in."
Graham said that like many others, he had been astounded by the rapid swing away from monolithic communism last year by East European countries. "I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime," he said.
"It could bring about a long period of peace in the world," Graham said, ending the U.S. Soviet Soviet conflict and nuclear "balance of terror" that has endangered humanity for 45 years.
"We ought to go to SALT 10 and eliminate all these terrible weapons of mass destruction, the chemical weapons and other weapons now on the drawing board," he said. "They're frightening."
Church leaders both in West Germany and long-communist met with Graham in Berlin last month, urging the joint rally at a time when "German Christians live between fear and hope."
Peaceful demonstrations by the East Germans last fall toppled the prolonged rule of Communist boss Erick Honecker and installed a mixed, interim government, pending March 18 elections.
Prospects also are being dicussed for reunifying the nation, divided between East and West since World War II.
Church leaders on both sides said in a statement issued by Graham's office that "in the last decades Billy Graham has built bridges of understanding between East and West by encouraging many people to come to a living faith."
The rally, which many thousands from both sides of the border are expected to attend, is to be Saturday afternoon at the plaza in front of the Reichstag building next to the Brandenburg Gate.
Graham, 72, has previously preached both in East and West German cities, as well as in all the other Eastern bloc countries except Bulgaria and Albania.
He met with German pastors in Berlin last December, on his way back from a visit with Pope John Paul II, and said the Germans felt people there needed an interpretation of recent events "from a Christian point of view."
"They said they wanted a religious figure, someone well-known and accepted on both sides, to provide some Christain word on what has happened," Graham said. "I told them I just didn't have the strength to to do all that. I was determined to say no, but after listening to the East Berliners tell me why I had to come, I had to give in, after all they've been through."
Graham said the East German churches played a major part in the governmental turn-about there.
"People didn't feel free to meet, except in the churches," he said. "That's where they met and began their marches."
However, he said, after the Berlin Wall came down last Nov. 9, a sort of lethargy has come over the churches.
"They tell me people now are deserting the churches," he said. "This is particularly a spiritual problem."
In the political transition going on in Eastern Europe, he said, "Religion is basic to freedom. Man is first of all a worshipping creature. He has to have something to believe in, a basis for life."
Graham said that in his numerous meetings with Soviet leaders in the past, he had insisted that "propagandizing atheism wouldn't work. It goes against human nature. People want the freedom to believe in God, to worship God."
by CNB