This is the moment where everything changes.
Franklin Graham, standing at the podium, watched people flow down the aisles at the Air Canada Centre, many finding their way from seats near the rafters where Maple Leafs’ Stanley Cup banners proudly hang.
“It’s a long ways to come from up there,” he said, giving every soul a chance to make a life-altering decision for Christ.
He had just spent a long weekend in Toronto, fully submersed in the multicultural Festival of Hope, an international evangelistic opportunity that can only happen in a place like Toronto, where more than 160 languages are spoken.
But it was decision time, in every sense of the word. And after delivering a powerful Gospel message around the simple story of Zacchaeus, he looked out to see a highly diverse crowd of hundreds come down to the floor where six different segments of language counselors awaited.
Mandarin. Cantonese. Spanish. Arabic. Farsi. Russian.
“You can pray in any language you want,” Franklin Graham told the seekers on Sunday night, “but I only know English.”
The reality of the global impact from a singular event had never been so striking. For the third consecutive night, one of the most diverse cities in the world had unified under one roof—all for the sake of the Gospel.
“To see people streaming down the aisles,” said Jamie Stewart, Festival of Hope Advisory Committee Chair, “every minute of planning has been worth it.”
Nearly 40,000 people swarmed the Air Canada Centre over three nights, with more than 1,700 responding to the Good News, making a decision to follow Christ. But that’s just part of the story.
Another 1,300 people indicated decisions from a worldwide audience of 64,000-plus watching online in more than 110 countries.
“Pray in any language,” Franklin Graham continued, talking to both the Toronto and online audiences. “He’ll hear you.”
Stewart found the global reach “incredible,” but as the pastor of Kennedy Road Tabernacle in nearby Brampton, Ontario, the unity of the churches is what will be the lasting affect in the Toronto area.
Stewart has to think back 19 years to the 1995 Billy Graham Crusade—when he was the youth committee chair—to remember the last time the churches crossed denominational lines.
“There hasn’t been anything like it since 1995,” he said of the Festival unifying the church. “I think what it’s doing is killing competition and building cooperation.”
And Toronto is certainly a different city today. Home to more foreign-born residents than Canadian-born, the number of nations represented are countless. Stewart can attest to 94 different nations in his congregation alone.
“This is a rehearsal of what Heaven is going to be like,” he said of the multicultural Festival. “What I see out there is spectacular. There’s no isolation. No division. Just totally integrated. That’s what Heaven is going to be like.”
Tim Jacobson and Jonathan Tsang got that small taste as counselors.
Jacobson helped counsel two young men in their 20s—a Chinese man on Friday and a Filipino man on Sunday—to rededicate their lives to Christ.
Tsang, a Cantonese language counselor from Hong Kong, helped a 32-year-old Vietnamese man on Sunday rededicate his life. On Saturday, he was in the aisles helping with the overflow crowd and ended up praying with a Chinese woman who was visiting Toronto from China and heard about the Festival.
She didn’t speak Cantonese, but Tsang bumped into her and the two found a common ground—Mandarin. The woman made a first-time commitment to accept Christ.
“God can use me in any language,” Tsang said. “He didn’t use my mother tongue (Cantonese), but He uses your attitude.
“God can save anyone, even coming off the street.”
Thank you for praying for the Greater Toronto Festival of Hope. In two weeks, the Festival moves to Erie, Penn., for Rock the Lakes, featuring Red, Flame, Lacey Sturm, TobyMac, Kari Jobe and Michael W. Smith. You can watch the live web stream at BillyGraham.org/Live
