Thompsonville, Ill. ? Danny Shelton leaned into a speaker phone toward the end of talks with a satellite company promising to sell his Three Angels Broadcasting Network to thousands of cable operators across the country.

“Let’s call it a deal,” he said. “It seems the Lord is opening up these doors.”

There was no time to celebrate. Shelton was out of his seat and already headed across the parking lot to the recording studio at the Christian broadcasting network he founded. It was time to run through hymns for a new CD.

The former carpenter and devout Seventh-day Adventist has served as everything from road-builder to talk show host to singer for the media operation he has been building for 18 years in the farmland of southern Illinois.

Today, brick buildings and satellite dishes are the nerve center for Three Angels, which sends a mix of religious and lifestyle programs to 10.2 million U.S. households by cable or satellite — along with the 100 free-to-air TV stations it owns.

A production house in Russia sends programs to 170 stations there, and stations in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea also carry the network.

Three Angels — named for biblical characters who warn of the end of the world — is still a relatively small player in the nation’s religious broadcasting industry. For example, Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based conglomerate that features such well-known evangelists as Benny Hinn, reaches 70 million homes.

The 52-year-old Shelton hopes his latest satellite deal will win millions more viewers. Until then, it remains most notable for its ties to the Seventh-day Adventist church, a Protestant denomination whose members go to church on Saturday, shun alcohol and tobacco (many also are vegetarians) and anticipate what they believe will be Jesus’ imminent return.

Shelton’s career path can be traced back to his family’s conversion to the Adventist church — and a love for singing hymns.

Growing up poor in the coal-mining Illinois town of West Frankfort, Shelton helped feed his four brothers and sister by pumping septic tanks with his dad, a former honky-tonk singer.

The family also traveled to work in Indiana’s tomato fields in the summertime, singing old spirituals as they fanned out across the rows.