IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

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"Religion can't save you," he intones. "Being a church member can't save you. Being an Anglican can't save you. Being a Catholic can't save you. It's about having a relationship with Jesus Christ." And he can deploy at least one gospel weapon unavailable to his father. "People might say: come on, you've got it made. Your father is Billy Graham! You have a perfect position before God. No, I don't. No one can choose God for you. You must choose."

Meanwhile Franklin himself waited to be chosen. Billy Graham had become frail, his body besieged by Parkinson's disease. He had not stopped preaching (or receiving great honors: as recently as last week, he and Ruth made it to Washington to commune with Bill Clinton and receive a congressional medal from Newt Gingrich). But his focus was narrowing drastically. Ruth became increasingly vocal in her belief that Franklin should eventually be his father's successor. Billy, however, remained publicly noncommittal, exacerbating the sense of distance that had always pained his son. "I had known for a number of years that Daddy hoped I might take over the B.G.E.A.," says Franklin, "but we really had not had any discussions. He didn't say it to me." (In fact, Billy still will not admit to having considered the possibility until 1995.) Early last year Franklin actually broached it himself, only to be evaded. "I said, 'Daddy, at some point you and I have to have a conversation about the future, because if you want me involved, you need to tell me. If you don't want me involved, then I need to know that too.' He just kind of nodded like, 'Well, yeah, maybe.'"

Billy, who has always been preternaturally sensitive to conflict, may have been reflecting resistance within the B.G.E.A. core team, at least two of whose members had grave reservations about his son's advancement. The B.G.E.A., founded in 1950, is the Rolls-Royce of revival ministries, perhaps the most efficient such machine ever assembled. It boasts 525 employees, 1995 revenues of $88 million and an unsurpassed mailing list of 2.7 million active donors. Its massive crusades, planned and realized with the precision of military campaigns, have long set the industry standard. It also produces Billy's Hour of Decision radio show, carried on 660 stations; frequent prime-time telecasts; two Christian feature films a year; and a monthly magazine. Several hundred people are employed just to dispense advice to the 300,000 beseechers who write each year. And all this without a spot of scandal.

Some B.G.E.A. officers, Billy included, had mused publicly about shutting it down completely when he was gone. Another option, more comfortable to many career employees, was to take it out of crusades and turn it into an evangelical foundation. For all its other strengths, the B.G.E.A. had failed to produce in-house heirs, having sloughed off the last truly qualified candidate, Presbyterian minister Leighton Ford, who left to found his own mission in 1986.