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That is the reason I wrote a book, about four years before all this happened, warning of this. I went into all these things we read in the press about the sex, money and pride. Those are the three areas I think Satan attacks God's servants on. I was told that many years ago by an old clergyman, and I never forgot it. And I learned from that moment on that I would be tempted in those areas. So I never rode in a car with a woman alone. I never have eaten a meal with my secretary alone or ridden in a car with her alone. If we sit in here and I dictate something to her, the door is open. And just little things like that, that people would think are so silly, but it was ingrained in me in those early years.
Q. Did you foresee the scandals in the television ministries or ever try to warn the people involved against them?
A. I did that at the National Religious Broadcasters ((convention in Washington)) about four or five years ago, in a major address I gave them. I do not know whether Jimmy Swaggart was there, but Jim Bakker was there.
Q. You have spent half a century preaching in America and around the world against sin. Do you think there is more sin around than when you started, or less?
A. More, but only because there are more people. As far as an outward act that we call sin is concerned, like murder or adultery, and all these things, it is certainly more apparent in the sense that it is in the media. I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us. And we have too much violence, too much open sex on television. What it is going to do to the next generation I do not know.
But there is also a new word coming back, the need for moral values, because we cannot build a strong society without them.
Q. Like all Evangelicals, you believe in the Second Coming of Christ, to be preceded by unprecedented worldwide warfare, famine and cruelty. But doesn't the waning of the cold war make such an apocalypse more remote today than, say, ten years ago?
A. I could not answer that because I think the Lord taught us not to speculate on the time of his return. Even in the Middle Ages they expected Christ to come at any time after the great plague in Europe, where 1 out of 3 people died. I personally think things are now converging for the first time in history, fulfilling the prophecies that he himself made about his coming. I had a German scientist say to me the other day that from a scientific point of view, man is almost at the end now. He was not talking about religion. I would say that people seem to sense that we cannot go on forever.
Q. A recent editorial in the Door, a Christian satirical magazine, suggested that you should "retire gracefully" and hand over the assets of your organization to the poor. What do you think of that idea?
A. We do not have any assets, but I would say that they have a strong point because I am faced with the thought that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association should shut down. I do not have the authority to shut it down. I have let that authority go into a board of directors for some years now. And I do not think they would hear of it.
But I will never retire from preaching. I do not see anybody in the Bible who retires from preaching.