VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said he was not talking about any particular U.S. Supreme Court justices when he asked his national television audience to pray that three liberal justices retire.

“I don’t care which three, I mean as long as the three conservatives stay on,” Robertson said when asked which justices he had meant. “There’s six liberals, so it’s up to the Lord.”

“I’m not telling God what to do,” he added. “I’m just saying, ‘Lord, help us.’”

Robertson spoke to reporters briefly after a news conference at Regent University in which he introduced the new dean of the School of Communication and the Arts, television producer Peter Engel. Robertson is chancellor and president of the Christian graduate university.

Robertson, as host of “The 700 Club” on his Christian Broadcasting Network, earlier this month began the 21-day “Operation Supreme Court Freedom.” He is asking people to pray to God to change the court after its 6-3 decision in June that decriminalized sodomy.

Robertson said in a letter posted on CBN’s website that the ruling “has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest.”

The letter mentions three justices: “One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?”

Robertson did not identify the justices, but Justice John Paul Stevens was born in 1920 and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had colon cancer surgery in 1999.

Robertson on July 17 discounted the suggestion that mentioning the justices’ health might have appeared unseemly.

“Listen, I’m a cancer survivor,” said Robertson, who had surgery in February to remove a cancerous prostate gland. “I just finished prostate cancer. And so, you know, what’s with this health stuff?”

“I think, it’s just when somebody is 83 years old, it’s time to retire,” said Robertson, who is 73. “When somebody has a serious health problem, it may be time to step down. And I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“There are a couple of healthy ones I would like to see resign too, but that’s in God’s hands,” he added.