Billy Graham in New York for Final U.S. Crusade

June 23, 2005 -- -- At 86, Billy Graham looks frail: His once-resonant voice is softer, he uses a walker, cannot hear out of one ear, and suffers from Parkinson's disease, prostate cancer and a condition that causes fluid on the brain.

Even so, tens of thousands of people are expected to hear him preach this weekend in New York City's Queens borough in the 417th "crusade" of his six-decade ministry.

"This will be the last in America, I'm sure," the icon of evangelism said at a news conference this week at the Rainbow Room in New York. "But we do have an invitation to go to London, and we're praying about that and thinking about that."

Graham will hold sermons at New York's Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, his first public events in New York since an appearance in Central Park in 1991. The revival originally was planned for Madison Square Garden, site of a legendary, 16-week "Billy Graham Crusade" in 1957, but was moved to accommodate larger crowds.

Graham plans to preach for about 35 minutes each day from a specially designed pulpit that will allow him to sit if he feels tired, The Associated Press reported. His son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, chief executive officer of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association since 2000, will be available to help if needed.

Organizers began preparing for the three-day event Monday, and were expected to take three days to set up the stage, some 70,000 seats and several huge video screens.

Graham decided to address New Yorkers again because he's been told the city is more spiritually receptive after 9/11.

"I have one message," Graham told the media Tuesday. "And that is that Jesus came, he died on a cross, he rose again, and he asked us to repent of our sins and receive him by faith as lord and savior."

"The gospel has not changed," he said later in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson, aired Thursday on "Good Morning America." "And the gospel is that Jesus Christ was sent by God to this Earth."

Graham was born on Nov. 7, 1918, in Charlotte, N.C., and raised on a dairy farm in nearby Montreat as the eldest of four children in a strict Presbyterian family.