Evangelist Billy Graham leaves the White House
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"Now the Devil came to Adam and Eve and said, 'Now. look here, you're not going to die. Why, if you eat of that tree, you'll become as other gods.' Now the Devil was lying, and Adam and Eve had to choose between the Devil's lie and God's word, the Devil's word and God's word. And they looked at the tree. And when the woman saw that it was good for food—that's the lust of the flesh, and it was pleasant to the eyes—that's the lust of the eye. and the tree should be desired to make one wise—that's the fruit of life, she took of the fruit.
"Now, look here. God said: 'Eve, if you eat it, you'll die.' She deliberately, with her eyes open, ate the fruit. When she did, she was separated from God, and when Adam ate the fruit, he, too, was separated from God . . . And man did die. And every man since then has died . . . When Adam, the federal head of the human race sinned, we sinned with him, and every person that has ever been born in the history of the world, except one, is born in sin . . .
"You have a moral disease, and that moral disease is sin. When you get a group of sinners together in what we call a society and a nation, it breaks out—this sin—in a war. And the root of all the world's ills is sin, and sin has separated us from God. And man must pay the penalty for breaking the law of God."
Preacher Graham spurns the conventional evangelist's final, heart-rending orgy of emotion. A true conversion, he thinks, must involve not only the emotions but the mind. When the first converts start to come forward, an extraordinary part of the Graham machinery swings into motion. It would surprise most converts to know that the pleasant person of their own sex and approximate age who falls into step beside them on the way to the "Inquiry Tent" is there as the result of careful planning and smooth quarterbacking.
Into the Tent. Counselors are seeded through the audience under the watchful eyes of "advisers" (mostly pastors) stationed at the aisles down which the converts must come. As soon as a convert starts forward, an adviser looks him over and signals to a counselor of the right sex and age to join the convert. If, as the crowd grows, the chief adviser is short of counselors, he raises his right hand (for men) or his left hand (for women). Choir Leader Cliff Barrows catches the signal and passes it along to a reserve corps of counselors. (An unattended young man or woman calls for a raised right or left index finger; an older man or woman is indicated by the thumb and forefinger forming the letter O.)