"You know what I think the greatest idol in America is? There's no doubt about it at all. It's television...I believe you call it "progress"; I call it the Devil. I've said that years ago; haven't changed my tune. I'm not going to. 'Cause I know what you're doing. You sit there in front of that old one-eyed idiot for hours and hours and hours. It ruins your eyes. It ruins your soul. It ruins your children. It broke up your family altar...It's ruined our preachers....It's the idol of the hour!! I'll tell you one reason I know it's the idol of the hour - when it gets you, you can't get loose from it. It's Hell's boa-constrictor... Homosexuals, and all sorts of immorality, broken homes, everything that I stand against that dirty monster stands for....I'll fight it till I die...God's people have been wounded. We've never had one revival, not one revival since television came out...I do not believe there's one preacher on the face of this earth that owns a television set that's ever been in a real Heaven sent, I mean window rattlin'...sinner saving, Hell robbin' revival since he got his television set...You might have a had a few additions to the church, but you'll never see the power of God as long as you're sitting in the picture show...God's people are backslidden...Souls are going to Hell...And the churches are like morgues and funeral homes...If you read my mail you'd know what I'm talking about...I know the preacher. I'd say he's number one. I get letters all the time. About January they begin to come, maybe a little before. 'Brother Roloff, my heart's broken.' Some old saint in the church, you know, still got conviction, says, 'Our church just gave our pastor a big four or five hundred dollar color TV for Christmas.' Can you imagine that? It's a wonder the Lord wouldn't blow it off the face of the map...It's a wonder He don't just say, 'I'll just pinch all your heads off right now.' Wasting God's money! Of course I'll tell you why they gave it. The old boy will quit preaching against it!...Let's get to one thing that's killing the preachers, hear? Let's get at the thing that's killing the church members today...Let's talk about the thing that's eating people up...Let's talk about the biggest idol America's got right now, see? A preacher, pastor of a First Baptist Church in the city...he had driven 75 miles to get to the old fashioned revival service. Said he had a wonderful time...He wrote me a letter and said, 'Brother Roloff, that settled it for us. We've been thinking about getting a TV set; we'll never get it! We made up our minds tonight.' A few weeks after that I went up there to preach a meeting and walked in his living room. He said, 'There it is.' I said, 'Yep. I noticed it'. He said, 'I want you to know though, that I didn't buy it. He said, 'Eleven deacons bought it and brought it over here and gave it to me.' I said, 'You must have quit preaching against it. If you'd been preaching like you ought to, if you had the conviction like you use to have when you wrote me that letter, you'd busted a hole and hung it around the [deacon] chairman's neck and told him to haul it'! I'm just asking you, do you want God to keep you? If you do, get out of the world!! Quit living like the Devil and his crowd! If you can be entertained by that filth and immorality...you're backslidden and may not even know it...I've never received one letter. This is 100%. I've never received one letter that said, 'Brother Roloff, I believe you misled us. You got us all stirred up one night...My husband and I went home and we couldn't sleep. We got up and we decided [to get rid of our TV]...But you know, since our television set is gone, we just can't pray like we used to...I just don't feel like reading my Bible. When I had my television set it just reminded me to pray and read my Bible, and it made me a soul winner..' What are you laughing about? That sounds preposterous and silly and absurd doesn't it?...Just the opposite has been so. Ah, those sweet letters! I can see the tear drops...'Brother Roloff, we're back to God now. Our old family altar's got the heat back in it. We've got the fires burning again... My little children are more obedient...My husband has time to talk with me. And we read the Bible together...It's been all good'...Preachers! Don't leave it up to the people. Tell them what the Bible says about it. Mothers and Daddies!...[Quit] letting your home be run by your bunch of children. They haven't got any sense...They're too young....If you're forty years old and they're about fifteen, my soul! You ought to have at least three times as much sense as they've got!...Keep yourselves from idols." (Lester Rollof, The Family Altar Program: "Who Does the Keeping?")