TACOMA, Wash. -- Evangelist Billy Graham says science has made the world's problems worse and genetic engineering is a greater threat than nuclear bombs.
Speaking to 24,000 people in the first session of a week-long crusade at the newly opened Tacoma Dome Sunday night, Graham criticized modern science and technology.
'The problem with technology today is its misuse,' Graham said. 'The world has poverty as never before.'
'Genetic engineering frightens me more than the atomic bomb,' he said. 'I even hear they've built a super rat.'
He said he had heard on television that the newest computers are so complicated that 'people my age can't understand them. ... The maturity level of the people governing the world is going to drop a generation.'
Peppering his first sermon of the session with comments on current events, Graham, 64, moved from side to side with animated gestures and his voice boomed out to the crowd during his call for spiritual rebirth.
'I know out there in that crowd are hundreds of people that a hundred years from now will still be away from God -- lost, facing the judgement of God, unless on this day you make your committment to Jesus Christ,' the evangelist said in his familiar North Carolina drawl.
The crusade began after months of planning aided by computers, hundreds of churches and a $523,972 budget.
The elaborate preparations were expected to bring 24,000 Christians and non-believers to the new covered stadium each night for a 90-minute service of prayer, congregational singing and alter calls.
