White House staffers rise for ‘Amazing Grace’ hymn

WASHINGTON — White House staffers rose to their feet to sing “Amazing Grace” after evangelist Franklin Graham delivered the Gospel during an Easter ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Thursday.

Offering testimony of his own brokenness that led him to faith, Graham exhorted those in the elegant room next to the White House to remember that power and wealth cannot save them, but that God is inviting them to find their hope in Jesus Christ alone.

Powerful moment at the White House Easter service as staff rise to sing “Amazing Grace.” pic.twitter.com/uYCjMVjNz2

— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) April 17, 2025

He also emphasized the gravity of what Jesus endured to save the lost and warned of the alienation from God that awaits those who reject salvation.

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“When Jesus was nailed to the cross, God poured upon his Son all the sins past, all the sins present, all the sins future, and then Jesus shed His blood,” he said. “The Bible says there’s no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood: Jesus shed his blood on that cross.”

Graham said Jesus took the place of sinners during His agony by experiencing the terror of God’s rejection.

“As that blood ran down the cross, He cried out to His Father, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'”

“Jesus became so offensive to His Father,” he said. “A holy God cannot look upon sin, and for a brief moment, God had to turn his back on his Son.”

Graham said Christ’s resurrection offers hope that “the debt’s been paid,” but added, “You have to be willing to accept it.” He also warned that some he spoke to in the palatial office building “might be in danger of losing their soul.”

Graham soberly cited the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16, which recounts how an unnamed man who lived a sumptuous, powerful life was cast into eternal torment upon his death.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Or what should a man get in exchange for his soul?” he asked, paraphrasing Mark 8:36. “We all have a soul. It’s going to live as long as God, but it’s going to be in His presence in Heaven, or it’s going to be separated from him in Hell.”

“Hell is real,” he said.

Graham applied his message personally, sharing that despite growing up in a devout Presbyterian church as the son of renowned evangelist Billy Graham, he had to grapple with his own sinfulness before embracing his father’s message in his early 20s.

“All of us are guilty; I’m guilty,” he said.

Graham said when he was 22, he “finally got to the point in my life where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

“I wanted to run my own life, just do my own thing, but there was an emptiness,” he said.

He remembered he had asked God to “take the pieces of my broken life.”

“You can have it. You can take it, put it together, and make sense out of it. You can have it again,” was his prayer.

Graham claimed that when he earnestly prayed that night, “God took my life, and He filled it with His Holy Spirit, so I’m grateful.”

He closed by exhorting his audience to reach out to God, that they are “willing to follow Him as Lord of my life from this day forward, forever.”

Graham’s message came a day after President Donald Trump, Graham and other prominent Evangelicals gathered for a small Easter dinner in the Blue Room of the White House. The president offered remarks confessing that the work of Christ was God’s way of telling the world, “I love you.”