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The chance to broaden his education came in 1940, when he won a scholarship to Wheaton College in Illinois, then as now the leading undergraduate institution of Evangelicalism. There he met Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China who herself wanted to go and evangelize in Tibet. Graham talked her out of it, arguing that she knew God wanted them to marry, so "I'll lead and you do the following."
For his part, Billy says Ruth "was the one who had the greatest influence in urging me to be an evangelist."
Ruth: "I thought God called you."
Billy: "Well, he told me through you too."
After Wheaton and a brief stint in a small church, Graham joined Youth for Christ International, a "para-church" group of vigorous young evangelists who would travel the country, and soon the world, working with churches to stage revival meetings to ever larger crowds. In the immediate postwar years, there seemed to be a hunger for the virile, vibrant call to faith that Graham and his friends represented. On and on they came, until as many as a million kids a week were attending such revival meetings around the country. The YFC rallies included blaring bands, quiz shows, horse acts, emcees with bow ties that lit up. As for Graham, so loud and fast was his delivery that journalists called him "God's Machine Gun." "Christian vaudeville," sniffed skeptics.
As his fame spread, first in evangelical circles and later nationally and internationally, Graham and his friends understood the importance of avoiding the hazards that, then and later, would disgrace other freelance preachers. One day in 1948, Graham gathered his tiny retinue in a Modesto, California, hotel room to inoculate them against temptation. To prevent sexual rumors, each agreed never again to be alone with a woman other than his wife. The "Modesto Manifesto" also pledged honest statistical reports and open finances. The money setup was further cleansed in 1950 after the Atlanta Constitution ran a photo of Graham next to a picture of ushers with sackfuls of cash.
"I said never again," recalls Graham, who put everyone on straight salary and later set up a board dominated by outsiders. (Graham has, however, ministered to his wayward fellow preachers; after Jim Bakker's fall from grace, he quietly visited the imprisoned televangelist in Minnesota for a prayer session.) For years Graham's annual salary was $69,150 plus a $23,050 housing allowance, but last April his board raised that to $101,250 plus $33,750. He was given homes in Florida and California but donated them to Christian causes.
Graham always appreciated the importance both of appearances and of self- promotion. Along the way he won some unlikely backers, among the most useful William Randolph Hearst. The old reprobate publisher was so taken with the evangelist's patriotism and call for spiritual renewal that he telegraphed his editors around the country: "Puff Graham." TIME for its part declared in 1949 that no one since Billy Sunday had wielded "the revival sickle" as successfully as this "blond, trumpet-lunged North Carolinian."