Graham seems all but certain that it will be his last mass event in the United States and probably the last anywhere.

"In my mind, it is," he said during an Associated Press interview at a Long Island hotel where he's resting up for the event. "I wouldn't like to say 'never,' " the amiable evangelist added with a chuckle. "Never is a bad word."

The elder statesman of the evangelical movement has brought his simple but powerful message of salvation through Jesus Christ to more than 210 million people in 185 countries. Churches in London, where he made his first international splash a half-century ago, want him to hold at least one more meeting there around his 87th birthday in November.

The odds of that? "I'd say a slight possibility," Graham said.

Billy's son Franklin — his successor as leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association — will stand by in New York as substitute preacher in case of emergency. But the elder Graham fully expects to speak for about 35 minutes at all three rallies, and to do so without sitting down.

Even if there are no more mass meetings, Graham might still give occasional talks. But his pace has been slowed considerably by advancing age and infirmities. He spends most days at his mountainside home in Montreat, N.C., where wife, Ruth, is largely bedridden.

Cautious even in his more active years, Graham now seeks to shun all public controversies — preferring a simple message of love and unity through Jesus Christ. Asked about gay marriage, for instance, Graham replied that "I don't give advice. I'm going to stay off these hot-button issues."

Even when he occasionally speaks by phone with President Bush, the evangelist welcomed to the White House by every president since Truman doesn't chat to influence "but only to say I'm praying for him and to give him a verse of Scripture."

He also sidesteps the opportunity to dispute Franklin's 2001 remark that Islam is "a very evil and wicked religion."

Instead, Graham says that he's proud of his son's leadership, yet recalls that when he arrived for a Fresno, Calif., revival a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, his first step was to visit a mosque where some people had been throwing rocks — to express solidarity with local Muslims.

"I don't throw rocks at anybody," he said. "That's not my message. My message is the Gospel of Christ."

Are evangelicals getting too deeply enmeshed in political issues? "I don't give it much thought, to tell the truth," he said.

Asked about heaven, he reflected on a night four years ago while he was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., having a brain shunt implanted.

"I thought I was dying. The doctor wasn't sure whether I was or not, but late at night I knew that that was the end. At least I thought it was. And I prayed and all of a sudden all my sins throughout my life came into my mind. And I asked the Lord to forgive me and I had the greatest peace that I've ever had, and that peace has never left me, because I put it all in the name of Christ."

The world's best-known Protestant preacher was glued to the TV during Pope John Paul II's funeral: "He taught us how to live, I think, how to suffer and how to die." Graham said he was asked by the Vatican to lead the American delegation to the pope's funeral, but his health wouldn't permit it.

If New York or London are indeed his last crusades, they are fitting places for Graham's finale.

The evangelist takes special satisfaction in his 1957 New York City crusade and the 1954 campaign in London.

"We stayed 12 weeks in London. They had hoped to have four or five weeks," he recalled. In New York, "we were amazed. We didn't have any empty seats except one or two nights for the whole 16 weeks."

(Graham brought his crusade to the Islands in the 1960s, though the 1965 multi-island visit ended with a trip to St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu for a bronchial ailment.)

He said he's returning to New York this time because area Christian leaders told him that since the terrorist attacks "there was a new receptivity and quest for purpose and meaning in peoples' lives."