Luis Palau, an Oregon-based evangelist who built a world ministry to help ‘people get right with God’, dies at 86

“Bring your doubts.”

Then he advised a promotional poster for one of Luis Palau’s sermons, and the seekers did it.

For decades, the Beaverton-based evangelist, known as “the hot evangelist,” responded to people’s doubts with wisdom, clarity and intelligence, and in the process won many thousands of followers.

“The evangelist is the bridge between the world and the church, between the lost person and bringing him to the position of salvation,” Palau told The Oregonian in 1985.

Palau, one of the world’s greatest Christian advocates, died Thursday of cancer. He was 86 years old.

“It is with a mixture of sadness and joy that we share with you that Dad passed away this morning,” said his family in a statement. “He died suddenly and very peacefully, as he expected. It is difficult news, but Luis is experiencing the beauty of the Lord face to face. “

Palau, a native of Argentina, revealed in January 2018 that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He had been suffering from what he thought was a cold that “didn’t go away”, said his son Kevin, who now leads the Luis Palau Association, a ministry that is based in the Portland area, but has a global reach.

At the time of the diagnosis, Luis Palau admitted that “it was a shock. I was not in a hospital one night, except when I broke a bone in 1984 after the London mission. ”But he declared that he was“ ready ”to go to heaven.

“My desire and my desire,” he said once, “is that people get right with God, solve the big question and die happy, knowing that they will be with Jesus”.

Palau was born in Buenos Aires on November 27, 1934, the son of a real estate developer who hoped that Luís would open business with him or become a lawyer.

When Luis was 10, however, his father died suddenly, leaving the family in dire financial straits. A year later, a summer camp counselor introduced Luis to evangelical Christianity one night, while they sat on a log in the forest, thunder echoing in the sky around them. Luis wrote to himself later that night: “Feb. 12, 1947. I received Jesus Christ. “

Palau had received Jesus, but it took him a few years to realize how God wanted him to spend his life. He was working at a bank in Cordoba when he heard Billy Graham’s sermon on the radio and felt called to evangelism.

“In a way, I often think that perhaps the Lord had to take my father home,” he said once, “so that I would leave the country and become international to preach to millions.”

In 1960, Palau came to Portland to study at Multnomah Bible College, where he met fellow student Patricia Scofield.

Palau was attracted by Pat’s intelligence and beauty. In addition, he said, “She was committed to missionary work, and this is what I was really looking for: someone who had the same vision that life is preaching the good news.”

Luis and Pat soon got married and started their missionary work and a family. (They would raise four children.)

At the height of his influence, in the 1970s and 1980s, Luis Palau reached millions of people through his radio sermons and travels around the world. Many Christians saw him as Graham’s natural heir, with whom Palau worked early in his career.

“In contrast to Graham, the energetic and respectful older statesman of mass evangelism,” wrote The Oregonian religious writer Sura Rubenstein in 1985, “Palau is casual, almost folk, delivering his message with all genuine concern, sincerity, good humor and familiarity a good friend’s passion persuading another to do the right thing. “

This winning style – and his inclusive view of Christianity – helped make Palau a popular figure in his adopted home in Portland, a city known to be one of the country’s least churches.

In 1999, attendance at his two-day festival of faith in Rose City reached 90,000, more than double the attendance he expected.

“There are thousands of people in Portland who are empty … smiling on the outside, but crying on the inside,” Palau said during the event. “Many of you have already consulted astrologers and healers, but I will introduce you to Jesus Christ, the only spiritual guide that is worth knowing.”

Sam Adams, Portland’s first openly gay mayor, spoke at one of the local religious festivals. “Regardless of our differences, we come together,” said Adams.

Throughout his life, missionary work in Palau remained his main passion. After being diagnosed with cancer, he immediately returned to preaching.

“In many ways, I feel that the Lord has much more in store for me,” he wrote on his ministry website shortly after the diagnosis. “Still, whatever we have tomorrow – I am completely at peace. Patricia and I are. As we look back, we praise the Lord. Fifty-seven years of marriage. How many places have we been. How many people we reach with the Gospel. “

– Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry