Faith & Spirit Quote by Billy Graham

Graham frames temptation as a rigged deal: the world offers "everything", but the fine print takes the only thing you cannot buy back. The line works because it refuses to argue on the world's terms. Instead of debating which pleasures or achievements are sinful, he jumps to the endgame and asks a brutally practical question: what did it cost you?

The intent is evangelistic and diagnostic. Graham isn't merely warning about greed; he's trying to trigger a moment of self-audit in a listener who might be coasting on respectable success. By phrasing it as "Suppose you could..". he invites imagination first, then delivers the moral verdict as a personal calculation. The kicker is the second-person address. It's not "people" or "society" - it's you, alone with the balance sheet.

Subtextually, the question assumes the soul is real, priceless, and vulnerable to trade. That assumption does the heavy lifting: if you grant it for even a second, worldly "everything" suddenly looks cheap. Graham's genius is making an abstract theological claim feel like a common-sense consumer warning: don't get hustled.

Context matters. As a 20th-century American revivalist preaching through the booms of postwar prosperity, the Cold War's ideological promises, and late-century celebrity culture, Graham aimed squarely at the American habit of confusing blessing with winning. Echoing Jesus' line in Mark 8:36, he translates Scripture into a modern stress test for ambition: if your success requires you to become someone you can't live with, you're not climbing - you're being sold.