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The Rev. Billy Graham has been taken to a hospital in Asheville, N.C., with respiratory problems, a family spokesman said Wednesday.
“Mr. Graham is in the hospital with a respiratory congestion issue, similar to what he had a few weeks ago,” Mark DeMoss said. “As was the case then, we expect he will be able to return home in a day or two.”
Graham, who celebrated his 95th birthday earlier this month with a party in Asheville, was taken to Mission Hospital.
Graham’s birthday celebration featured hundreds of well-wishers and what is being characterized as his final sermon.
In a video that was recorded over the past year, Graham delivered his familiar message about the saving power of Jesus Christ and expressed concern about the nation’s direction. “Our country’s in great need of a spiritual awakening,” he declared. “There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.”
His son, Franklin Graham, who now runs the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said before his father’s birthday that the elder Graham has the typical maladies of old age but “has not had any major illnesses in several years.”
“The (stay) at Mission was kind of routine,” Franklin Graham said of the first stay in late October. “An older person will have trouble with their lungs, sometimes ingesting water in their lungs, and it gives them an infection. He had a little bit of that, and they could put him on antibiotics and that seemed to clear it up, so we’re thankful for that.”
Franklin Graham said his father has poor eyesight and hearing, and he uses hearing aids, but he remains alert and engaged, keeping up with the news and his work.
Graham has preached to almost 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories through various meetings, including Mission World and Global Mission, according to his Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website. Hundreds of millions more have been reached through television, video, film, and webcasts. Graham began building an international following in 1949, when his three-week Los Angeles Crusade drew overflow crowds.
