CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ After a long life of travel to preach the gospel, Billy Graham will finally go home for good Friday.
The private service will be held under a tent that harkens to the 1949 crusade in the "canvas cathedral" that shot Graham to national attention. More than 2,000 invited guests, including President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and their wives, will bid farewell to the Charlotte-born evangelist who became known as "America's pastor."
Graham died at 99 on Feb. 21.
The noon service will take place outside the Billy Graham Library southwest of uptown. The day is expected to be sunny but windy, with a high near 60, after Thursday's steady rain. The 28,000-square-foot tent is designed to withstand hurricane-strength winds.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which calls the funeral "Billy Graham's Last Crusade" because it will spread the gospel, will live-stream the service beginning at 10 a.m. The guests will include delegates from 50 countries.
Son Franklin Graham, who leads the ministry and the relief organization Samaritan's Purse, will give the funeral message from a pulpit that Graham used for his crusades in the 1990s. Graham's four other children � Virginia "Gigi" Graham, Anne Graham Lotz, Ruth Graham and Nelson "Ned" Graham � and his sole surviving sibling, sister Jean Ford, will speak briefly.
Graham's own pastor, Rev. Don Wilton of Spartanburg, S.C., will read scripture and do the invocation. Christian singer Michael W. Smith, who sang Wednesday as Graham's body lay in honor at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, will sing "Above All" as he has at past crusades. Bishop George Battle Jr. of the AME Zion Church in Charlotte, a member of the ministry's board, will give the closing prayer, followed by a bagpipe escort of "Amazing Grace."
Trump is not scheduled to speak.
Eleven of Graham's grandsons, and a twelfth man married to a granddaughter, will serve as pallbearers to carry the pine casket to and from the tent.
A few hours after the 82-minute service, Graham will be buried at the foot of the library's cross-shaped Prayer Garden next to his wife Ruth, who died in 2007. About 200 members of his extended family are expected to attend the afternoon interment.
Graham's grave marker of native stone will call him "Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ," as he wished, and refer to a favorite Bible verse, John 14:6. "Jesus answered, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,' " the verse says.
Air Force One, carrying Trump and his wife Melania, is scheduled to touch down on a North Carolina Air National Guard runway adjacent to Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 11:10 a.m. Friday.
