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“off” button on the small console that controlled the tape recorder. Still standing, arms braced wide on the table before him, he remained for a moment with head silently bowed, compelling their attention. Then, slowly raising his head, he looked at them each in turn before he began to speak:
    “I’m sixty-three years old. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever be able to spend. When I was a boy, I had to sleep with my brother until I was twelve years old. In the winter, we had to pile overcoats on our bed, to keep warm. And, winter or summer, we had to use an outhouse. We were almost the only family in town that didn’t have indoor plumbing.
    “Now I’ve got a house that has ten bedrooms and six bathrooms and a private projection room in the basement. I’m rich, and I’m famous. My name is in the papers, sometimes in the headlines. I’ve been to the White House. Every Sunday, coast-to coast, I preach for the people. I preach, and they listen. And we both profit.
    “But all of that isn’t really important. It’s nice. It feels good. I like to read about myself in the newspapers. I’d be a hypocrite if I denied it. But it’s not really important. What is important—what’s vitally important, to me—is the sure, certain knowledge that, ever since I was a young man, I’ve had the capacity—the God-given ability—to do whatever it is that I decide to do.
    “Now, to you, that might seem like a vain, shallow boast. And maybe it is a boast. But it’s also the truth. I wanted to build this Temple. I asked the people for money enough to do the job, and they gave it to me. I asked for money to go to Chile, and to the Philippines, and into Africa. And the money came—with some to spare, for all of us. Consequently, there isn’t anyone here who isn’t a whole lot richer than he was when he first came with me.
    “Yet, over the years, around this table here, there’ve been doubts. When we started the dial-a-prayer program, some of you thought we’d lose money on it. And we did lose money, for a while. We lost almost a million dollars before we got the bugs worked out, and got it showing a profit. The same was true of everything else we tried: the recorded sermons, and the book program, and the regional Bible school franchises. They all cost us money, to get them started. But within a year, they were all making money. Every one of them. But they were all a risk, going in. At first, each and every one of those programs started off in the red, like any business venture does, getting started. But eventually they worked. They showed us a profit. And, what’s more, they’re still showing us a profit. Every single one of them.
    “Now, let’s look at Chile, and the Philippines, and Africa. And China, too—” As he spoke, he pushed himself away from the table, and sank down in his chair. Suddenly his knees were trembling. And, across his chest and down each arm, the pain was beginning: a persistent, ominous presence, come back to claim him. He paused, blinked, waited for the pain to pass its first cruel crest. In a moment it would recede. The pain was his constant companion. He knew its habits; he could calculate the malevolence of its mood, and therefore its intention. They lived as one, inseparable. Constant enemies, sharing the same death struggle.
    Finally he could speak in the same slow, solemn voice he’d always used, talking business around this table:
    “When you think about Chile and the Philippines and Africa,” he said, “you’ll realize that they’re different from the other things we do. They’re different in one very important, very fundamental respect.” He paused, looked at them each in turn, then said, “If you’ll think about it, you’ll realize that the difference is—” Another short pause, the last one, for final emphasis. “The difference is that, with these crusades, we don’t lose money. They’re not like the book program, or the dial-a-prayer program, or even the