Billy Graham's Sermon to Remember After the Oklahoma City Bombing

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Oklahoma City bombing shattered the Murrah Building, people were left searching for something that made sense. The investigation into Timothy McVeigh was only just beginning, and the shock of the tragedy had not yet lifted. Billy Graham arrived in a city that felt suspended between grief and disbelief. His sermon offered language for a moment no one knew how to describe, and many residents still remember it as a turning point in the days following April 19, 1995.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The bombing of
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on
April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, was the deadliest act of
homegrown terrorism in American history. In mere seconds, a rider
rental truck packed with nearly five thousand pounds of explosives

(00:34):
tore off the building's entire north wall, damaging three hundred
nearby buildings and incinerating hundreds of vehicles. When rescue efforts
were completed days later, the death count was one hundred
and sixty eight, among them nineteen children, most of whom
were in the building's daycare center. The youngest victim was

(00:57):
four months oldreds More of all ages were hospitalized or injured.
On April twenty three, a memorial service was held at
the Oklahoma State Fair Arena in honor of those who
lost their lives. Speakers included the Mayor of Oklahoma City,
the Governor of Oklahoma, and President Bill Clinton, who had

(01:20):
these words to say to the people gathered there and
to a national TV audience as well.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
If anybody thinks that Americans are mostly mean and selfish,
they ought to come to Oklahoma. If anybody thinks Americans
have lost the capacity for love and caring and courage.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
They ought to come to Oklahoma.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
After President Clinton, the Reverend Billy Graham came to the podium,
the most trusted pastor in America, came to address the
question human beings have been asking since the beginning of
time about unexplainable acts of evil. Here was Billy Graham's response.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
I have been asked the question several times, many times.
Why does God allow it? Why does a God of
love and mercy that we read about and hear about
allow such a terrible thing to happen. Over three thousand
years ago, there was a man named Job struggled with
the same question. He asked why, because he was a

(02:28):
good man, and yet disaster struck him suddenly and swiftly.
He lost seven sons, three daughters. He lost all his possessions,
He even lost his health. Even his wife and his
friends turned against him. His wife said, curse God and die.
And in the midst of his suffering, he asked this question. Why.

(02:53):
Job didn't know? Why did I not perish at birth?
He cried, this is the way you feel, and I
want to assure you that God understands those feelings. The
Bible says in Isaiah forty three to two, when you
pass through the waters, eye will be with you. And

(03:14):
when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.
The flames will not set you ablaze. And yet Job
found there were lessons to be learned from his suffering,
even if he didn't fully understand it. And that is
true for all of us as well. What are some
of the lessons that we can learn from what has happened? First,

(03:38):
there's a mystery to it. I've been asked why God
allows it.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
I can't give a direct answer. I have to confess
that I never fully understand. Even for my own satisfaction,
I have to accept by faith that God is a
God of love and mercy and compassion. And even in
the midst of suffering. I can remember, many years ago,
lying on a dirt floor in a field hospital in

(04:08):
Korea and looking up into the face of a soldier
suspended in a frame who was horribly wounded, and the
doctor said he'll never walk again.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
And I ask myself why.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
I can recall standing at the bedside of children who
were dying, and I've asked myself, Lord, why I recall
walking through the devastation left by hurricanes in Florida and
South Carolina, and typhoons in India and earthquakes in Guatemala
and California. And I've asked myself why the Bible says

(04:46):
God is not the author of evil, and it speaks
of evil, and first Thessalonians as a mystery. There's something
about evil we will never fully understand this side of eternity.
But the Bible says two other things that we sometimes
attempted to forget.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
It tells us that there is a.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
Devil, that Satan is very real, and he has great power.
It also tells us that evil is real, and that
the human heart is capable of almost limitless evil when
it is cut off from God. The prophet Jeremiah said,
the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

(05:29):
Who can know it? That's your heart in my heart
without God. That's one reason we each need God in
our lives, for only he can change our hearts and
give us the desire and the power to do what
is right and keep us from wrong.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Times like this will do one of two things. It
wilies will make us.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
Hard and bitter, and angry at God, or they will
make us tender and open and help us to reach
out in trust and faith. And I think that's what
the people of Oklahoma are doing that I have met
since I've been here these past two days. I pray

(06:15):
that you will not let bitterness and poison creep into
your soul, but that you will turn in faith and
trust in God, even if we cannot understand. It is
better to face something like this with God than without him.
But the lesson of this event has not only been
about mystery, but we've already heard. It's a lesson of

(06:39):
a community coming together. Some of you today are going
through heartache and grief so intense that you wonder if
it will ever go away. Privilege of meeting some of

(07:01):
you and talking to you, but.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
I want to tell you.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
That our God cares for you and for your family
and for your city. The Bible says that the God
of all comfort who comforts us in our troubles. Jesus said,
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
I pray that every one of you will experience God's

(07:29):
comfort during these days as you've turned to Him, For
God loves you.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
And He shares in your suffering.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Difficult as it may be for us to see right now, Yes,
there is hope. As a Christian, I have hope not
just for this life, but for the life to come.
Someday there will be a glorious reunion with those who
have died and gone to Heaven before us. And that
includes all those innocent children.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
That are lost. They're not lost from God.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Just days after that Memorial Day service, the wheels of
justice began to turn. Two suspects were arrested, Timothy McVeigh
and Terry Nichols, and not long after that, in nineteen
ninety seven, both were convicted. Terry Nichols was sentenced to
one hundred and sixty one consecutive life terms without the

(08:29):
possibility of parole. In December two thousand, Timothy McVeigh asked
a federal judge to stop all appeals of his conviction
and asked for a date to be set for his execution.
The request was granted, and on June eleventh, two thousand
and one, McVeigh, at age thirty three, died by lethal

(08:51):
injection with the US Benitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He
was the first federal prisoner to be put to death
nineteen sixty three. The Murror Building was demolished for safety
reasons in nineteen ninety five, and the Oklahoma City National
Memorial Museum later opened in its place. On this day

(09:13):
in history. In nineteen ninety five, the victims of the
Oklahoma City bombing were honored with the memorial service. This
is our American Stories.