International evangelical pastor Luis Palau dies at 86 years old

PORTLAND, Ore. – Luis Palau, an evangelical pastor who was born in Argentina and continued to work with Billy Graham before setting up his international plant ministry, died on Thursday. He was 86 years old.

The Luis Palau Association said he died at his home in Portland, Oregon.

He had announced in January 2018 that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

It is with a mixture of sadness and joy that we share with you that my father passed away early this morning. He died suddenly and very calmly, as he had hoped, his family said in a statement Thursday. This is hard news, but Luis is experiencing the beauty of God face to face.

Born into a wealthy family in Buenos Aires, Palau rose from the darkness to become one of the most renowned international Christian evangelists of all time. During a ministry career that spanned more than half a century, the son of a businessman eventually wrote 50 books and addressed 30 million people in 75 countries at evangelical festivals that were his take on the present day of the most traditional crusades that raised the mentor of his and idol, evangelist Billy Graham, for fame.

In many ways, I feel that God has even more to me. However, whatever tomorrow keeps Im completely at peace. Both 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 have reached with the Gospel, he wrote to his followers after diagnosis.

His radio programs, including internationally in Spanish Luis Palau Responde, are broadcast on 3,500 stations in 48 countries, and his Portland, Oregon-based organization, the Luis Palau Association, hosts dozens of events each year on five continents.

The breadth of his evangelical empire, especially among Spanish-speaking believers, long ago gave him the nickname Billy Graham of Latin America. A decade ago, Palau began transferring the day-to-day operations of that empire to three of his four sons, including one who is now an international evangelist in his own right.

Everything is ready, so if God wants to take me home … I’m ready, he told his followers in a January 2018 video. I have preached about paradise … and I have often preached about the second coming and resurrection and now, its reality for me.

Palau was converted early in life by his father, who had been converted to Christianity by a missionary. But when Palaus’s father died suddenly, the family fell into difficult times. In an autobiographical video interview on his website, Palau remembers his mother splitting a loaf of bread among her children or cutting a steak into eight pieces for dinner.

Palau, who was hoping to become a lawyer, got a start-up job at a bank and was working there when he heard evangelist Billy Graham on the radio in 1952. The experience was transformative, I mean later, and Palau decided he wanted to becomes an evangelist himself one day.

I would gladly have a business or be a lawyer or one, but the real commitment of my life was to gain people in Jesus Christ. There is nothing bigger in the whole world, he said in an interview on his website.

Palau moved to Oregon in 1960 to attend the Multnomah Bible School in Portland and met his future wife, another Bible school student named Pat. The couple married in 1961 and had four sons as they built their early family life around missionary work.

Palau interned with Graham in 1962 during a crusade in Fresno, California, and in the 1960s he served as Grahams’s Spanish translator during the Crusades in South and Central America.

Palau started an international Spanish-language radio program called Luis Palau Responde in Colombia, and throughout the 1970s, he delivered sermons in Latin America.

Now an American citizen, Palau began attracting tens of thousands in his appearances in Colombia, Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico and Spain. In 1978, Palau included his ministry as the Luis Palau Association in Portland, Oregon, and later set a record for participating in the huge city water park during an evangelistic event.

However, reaching an American audience posed more of a challenge. In 1999, Palau shifted its emphasis home from traditional crusades to the main part of evangelicals to more wonderful, more modern, Christian festivals to attract non-believers.

The events had corporate sponsors and featured Christian rock bands, skate parks and family activities. It revolutionized everything we did, Palau told the Associated Press in 2003. I will never go back to the old model unless God holds a gun to my head.

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