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> Billy Graham, who has preached in person to 80 million souls so far, will invade the very citadel of sin, Las Vegas, the first week in February. At age 59, the grand old man of Evangelicalism is as popular and active as ever. Last week he brought the Gospel to 75,000 people at Nehru Stadium in Madras, India. About 1,500 accepted his invitation to "come forward saying 'Yes' to Jesus Christ." Graham's Minneapolis office now receives $28.7 million a year from the 8 million apostles on its mailing list.
> Graham Contemporary Oral Roberts will begin construction of an enormous, $100 million medical center in Tulsa. Target date for completion: 1981. The site is across the street from Oral Roberts University, a $150 million palace of New Pentecostalism, complete with a 10,575-seat sports arena and a spiky, spectacular 200-ft. Prayer Tower. Opened in 1965, the campus cost $150 million and is all but paid for. "I had to have a university to show that it was not a fly-by-night thing," Roberts says. Though he folded "the world's biggest revival tent" in 1967, the former faith healer now preaches via TV; an estimated 60 million people watched his latest variety special.
> A newer TV face, Pat Robertson,46, founding father of the Virginia, based Christian Broadcasting Net; work, will open the first component of a proposed $50 million combined communications school and university next fall. The Yale Law graduate, son of Virginia's late U.S. Senator Willis A. Robertson, recently inaugurated a new satellite transmitter—the first one to be owned by an independent TV producer —to feed various Gospel programs simultaneously to the four CBN-owned channels and 130 other stations at an annual cost of $20 million. Pentecostalist Robertson also acts as host on the 700 Club, seen daily by millions.
> Two surefire confessional books are about to appear. In Soul on Fire (Word), out in February, ex-Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver testifies that after years spent as a prisoner of Marxism and hate, he finally found peace when he saw the face of Jesus in the full moon over Cannes. Cleaver was later converted by a prison "God squad." In Will You Die for Me? (Revell), due in April, Charles ("Tex") Watson, leader of the vicious Tate-LaBianca murders, tells how he supplanted Charles Manson with Jesus Christ. Watson, a mandatory lifer, now preaches three times a month and teaches a weekly class for newly converted convicts.
This year stores in the Christian Booksellers Association had revenues of $600 million, thanks to pop devotionals and testimony books from Christianized Governors (Julian Carroll of Kentucky), athletes (Heisman Trophy Winner Archie Griffin, Tennis Star Stan Smith), businessmen (Walter Hoving of Tiffany) and entertainers (Pat Boone).
> Born Again, a film adapted from Nixonian Hatchet Man Charles Colson's testimonial book of the same title, is to be released in June. Production began in Washington last week. Actor Dean Jones (The Love Bug), also a born-again Christian, plays the celebrated convert.
> On the global scale, an international committee of Evangelical leaders headed by Graham's colleague,