The Reading Room: RECENT PENTECOSTAL SCANDALS By Paleo Pat, on April 8th, 2009 Reposted from http://www.politicalbyline.com/2009/04/08/the-reading- room-recent-pentecostal-scandals/ From its inception the Pentecostal movement has been marred deeply by scandals, as we have documented in our illustrated 317-page book The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: Its History and Its Error. If the movement had the fullness of the Holy Spirit unction and power that it claims, we would not see such an exhibition of the flesh, but in fact moral and other scandals have continued to plague it in recent history. The following are some prominent examples: In 1977 ORAL ROBERTS claimed that God had appeared to him and instructed him to build a medical center called the CITY OF FAITH. In 1980 he claimed that he had a ³face to face´ conversation with a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him that he was going to solve the City of Faith financial problems. Seven years later, Roberts said that God had appeared to him yet again and told him that he would die if he did not raise $8 million within 12 months. The wild-eyed visions and unrelenting appeals could not save the City of Faith. In 1989 Roberts closed it to pay off debts! Yet the Pentecostal world in general did not decry Roberts as a false prophet and a religious phony. Thousands continued to flock to ORU from Pentecostal churches across the country, and millions of dollars continued to flow into Roberts¶ ministry from gullible supporters. In 1989 JIM BAKKER, head of the very influential Pentecostal PTL television program went to prison for defrauding his followers out of $158 million. He was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of a 45-year sentence. His trial brought to light his lavish lifestyle, which included six luxurious homes and even an air-conditioned dog house. Prosecutors charged Bakker with diverting to his own use $3.7 million of the money that had been given to his ³ministry.´ Bakker also committed adultery with church secretary Jessica Hahn and paid more than $250,000 in an attempt to hush up the matter. Bakker¶s wife and the former co-host of the PTL Club, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in prison and married Roe Messner, an old family friend whose company helped build PTL¶s Heritage USA resort complex. Today Tammy Faye has a non-judgmental ministry to homosexuals. She appears at ³gay-pride´ events nationwide, including a Tammy Faye look-alike contest in Washington, D.C., where she was ³surrounded by men in falsies and pancake makeup«´ (Charisma News, November 2002). In January 2000 Bakker told Larry King, ³Every person who died in the [Jewish] Holocaust is in heaven.´ Bakker defended this heretical doctrine in a letter to the editor that appeared in Charisma magazine in June of that year. A year after the PTL scandal first hit the world¶s headlines, JIMMY SWAGGART, one of the leading Pentecostal preachers of modern times, created his own scandal when he was caught with a prostitute. At the time, Swaggart had a 6,000-member congregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a 270-acre headquarters, a Bible College, an influential television ministry that reached to many parts of the world (broadcast on 9,700 stations and cable outlets), and a ministry income of $142-million per year. Swaggart is the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis and both can pound the piano, but whereas Jerry Lee pursued a flamboyant rock & roll career Jimmy pursued a flamboyant gospel career. A report from a Swaggart crusade in Calgary, Alberta, described the ³gospel music at acid-rock volumes´ and said ³it is a good show´ with Swaggart ³hammering away at the grand piano, sweating and gesturing like Elvis Presley´ and ³working the audience like Frank Sinatra´ (The Courier News, Elgin, Ill., May 20, 1991, p. 5A). Swaggart refused to stay away from the pulpit for a year as the Assemblies of God in Louisiana stipulated for his discipline, so he was disbarred but he continued preaching anyway. He lost three-fourths of his television audience and his Bible college students and a large percentage of his church members; his finances crumbled. But the Jimmy Swaggart scandal wasn¶t over even though he claimed that when he asked God, ³Lord, do you still want me to take this work?´ God replied emphatically, ³Yesssss! You¶re in better shape today that you¶ve ever been before´ (´Swaggart Back in Pulpit with Tales of Nightmares and Revelation,´ Religious News Service, May 23, 1988; reprinted in Christian News, June 3, 1988, p. 5). In a television broadcast in May 1988 Swaggart had the audacity to boast, ³You are looking at a clean preacher!´ and ³I do not lie!´ (Don Matzat, ³The Same Ol¶ Jimmy,´ Christian News, May 16, 1988). Perhaps this is because Swaggart had sought counseling from Oral Roberts and Roberts had observed demons with long fingernails digging into Swaggart¶s flesh and had cast them out (Huntsville Times, Huntsville, Alabama, AP report, March 31, 1988; reported from Calvary Contender, April 15, 1988). Just like that. The exorcism didn¶t last though. In 1991 Swaggart was again in hot water when police in Indio, California, stopped him on a traffic charge and found that the woman riding with him was a prostitute. In spite of all of this Swaggart is still swaggering, though his crowd isn¶t very large. On his Sept. 12, 2004, program he said, ³I¶ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I¶m gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I¶m gonna kill him and tell God he died.´ By the 1980s Pentecostal evangelist PETER POPOFF had a ministry on 51 television channels and 40 radio stations and an annual income of seven million dollars. He also held healing crusades in many cities, during which he would exercise a ³word of knowledge´ by calling out the names, addresses, and illnesses of strangers who were in attendance. In 1986 the news broke that Popoff¶s amazing ³revelations´ were actually broadcast to him by his wife after she had conversed with members of the audience. She transmitted her information by radio signal and Peter could hear her voice through a tiny receiver in his ear. A team of skeptics discovered the ruse and recorded the private broadcasts using a scanning receiver and recording equipment (Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1986). When questioned about the matter by John Dart, religion writer for the Los Angeles Times, Popoff replied that his wife only supplied him with about 50% of the information and the rest he got from the Lord! Popoff was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1987 but by 1990 he was back in business with a new book entitled Dreams, which he announced in a full-page ad in Charisma magazine ROBERT TILTON, who was voted one of the most popular Pentecostals by Charisma magazine readers in 1983 and appeared on the cover of Charisma in July 1985, was the founder of the Word of Faith Satellite Network, host of Success-N-Life broadcasts, and founder and pastor of the Word of Faith World Outreach Center in Farmers Branch, Texas. He taught the Kenneth Hagin Word-Faith doctrines and promised prosperity and healing to those who supported his ministry and exercised faith. He wrote, ³You are « a God kind of creature´ (Tilton, God¶s Laws of Success, pp. 170±71). In 1990 he said: ³Being poor is a sin, when God promises prosperity. New house? New car? That¶s chicken feed. That¶s nothing compared to what God wants to do for you´ (John Macarthur, Charismatic Chaos, p. 285). In 1991, when his ministry was taking in $80 million, Tilton¶s empire was shaken when ABC- TV¶s PrimeTime Live exposed his extravagant lifestyle and his shady fund- raising practices. His estate included an 11,000-square-foot home near Dallas, a condominium in Florida, a yacht, and other assets worth $90 million. The show reported that Tilton¶s ministry threw thousands of unread prayer requests into the trash even though Tilton claimed to pray over them. He had even claimed: ³I laid on top of those prayer requests so much that the chemicals actually got into my bloodstream, and « I had two small strokes in my brain´ (Robert Tilton, Success-N-Life, November 22, 1991). Though Tilton protested that he was the victim of falsehood and sued ABC for libel, the case was thrown out of the courts. Because of the scandal Tilton lost much of his television audience and most of his church members, but he is still on the air and still preaching the prosperity gospel and still begging for donations and still promising God¶s blessing on those who give. In 1991 Kansas City prophet BOB JONES¶ tapes were removed from the Vineyard Ministries International product catalog after he admitted to ³a moral failure´ (Lee Grady, ³Wimber Plots New Course for Vineyard,´ Charisma, Feb. 1993, p. 64). Jones was using his alleged spiritual authority and ³prophetic anointing´ to induce women to disrobe. Pentecostal preacher JAMIE BUCKINGHAM (1933-92) was the author of 40 books that sold 20 million copies, editor-in-chief of Ministries Today magazine, a columnist for Charisma magazine, and pastor of the 2,000- member Tabernacle Church in Melbourne, Florida. Buckingham began his ministry as a Southern Baptist pastor but after being ³baptized by the spirit´ at a Full Gospel Businessmen¶s Fellowship meeting, he became a Pentecostal.