Uniondale, N.Y. ? Now 86 and in frail health, the Rev. Billy Graham is all but certain that his revival meeting in New York City next week will be the last he ever leads in the United States – and probably the last that the famed evangelist does anywhere.

“In my mind, it is,” he said during an interview with The Associated Press at a Long Island hotel where he’s resting up for the June 24-26 event.

“I wouldn’t like to say ‘never,”‘ Graham added with a chuckle. “Never is a bad word.”

The elder statesman of the evangelical movement is soft of voice these days, but alert, amiable as ever, and appears in conversation to be holding up well under a host of ailments. He’s brought his simple but powerful message of salvation through Christ to more than 210 million people in 185 countries – and is still in demand.

Churches in London, where he made his first international splash a half-century ago, have asked to him preach there around his 87th birthday in November. The odds of that? “I’d say a slight possibility,” Graham said.

His son Franklin – now the leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. – 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.

The Rev. Billy Graham speaks to reporters during an interview in a hotel in Uniondale, N.Y. Now 86 and in frail health, Graham is all but certain that his revival meeting in New York City next week will be the last he ever leads in the United States.

“When I stand up and touch that podium, the Holy Spirit comes, I believe, in power to help me. If it weren’t for that, I would not have attempted to do these three nights,” he said. “I’m just totally dependent on the Lord and the prayers of thousands of people.”

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. After six decades on the road, he now spends most days at his mountainside home in Montreat, N.C., where his wife, Ruth, is largely bedridden.

“When I reached about 80, my physical world turned upside down,” Graham said. The worst problem is hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, which is relieved by implanted shunts. But he also copes with Parkinson’s and prostate cancer, and uses a walker due to a pelvic fracture last year.

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 – in order 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.”

Looking back, the son of North Carolina farmers said one regret is that he didn’t join the battle for civil rights more forcefully. Graham ordered racial integration of seating at his meetings in the South a year before the Supreme Court’s school desegregation ruling.

But “I think I made a mistake when I didn’t go to Selma” with many clergy who joined the Alabama civil rights march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I would like to have done more.”