When I was growing up, I watched a lot of evangelists on TV.
Originally it was because one or both of my parents watched them and I was a
captive since we only had one TV in the house. Of course we only had five
channels to watch, so it wasn’t as if I had a lot of other choices. However, as
I got into my middle to late teen years, I found that there were actually some
TV evangelists that I enjoyed watching.
Some of the TV preachers I have watched, such as Joel
Osteen, Ernest Angley, and Garner Ted Armstrong, I have already mentioned in
earlier posts. Others I have watched at one point or another include Billy
Graham, Oral Roberts, Jack Van Impe, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth
Copeland, John Ankerberg, Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis, Jerry Falwell, John
Hagee, Benny Hinn, Gene Scott, Rex Humbard, T.D. Jakes, David Jeremiah, D.
James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, Ben Kinchlow, Hal Lindsey, James Robison, Adrian
Rogers, Robert Schuller, Charles Stanley, and Robert Tilton. Some of these evangelists
grated on my nerves while others were quite enjoyable to listen to. As you
might expect, I tended to like the more calm preachers that attempted to
approach the Bible in a logical way rather than exuding emotion. I didn’t mind them
being passionate, but the “Glory be to God!” happy feet ones turned me off. I
also liked listening to the ones that concentrated on Biblical prophecy.
While I was still living at home with my parents, I listened
mostly to people like Ernest Angley, Garner Ted Armstrong, Oral Roberts, Jim
Bakker, Kenneth Copeland, and Jack Van Impe. As I mentioned in an earlier post,
I actually went to see Ernest Angley in person.
My mother was a big fan of Oral Roberts and used to receive
lots of literature from his ministry. After Mom’s death I found a few photos of
the Roberts family that she had received and stored away. I always thought of
Roberts as a decent preacher, but was skeptical of the healings he performed.
He pretty much lost any confidence I had in him when in 1987 he famously announced
that God had told him He would call him home if he didn’t raise $8 million by a
certain date.
While on vacation with my parents one year, we visited my
dad’s brother in Oklahoma and actually got to go to Oral Roberts University
(ORU), home of the famous Prayer Tower, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember the day
we were heading over to ORU. It was sweltering hot and we didn’t have air
conditioning in our car. So we relied on the old method of cooling, which was
to roll the windows down. But hot humid air is not conducive to cooling. Thus,
all three of us were a bit irritable. Dad pulled into a gas station to refuel
and get us something to drink. While Mom and I were waiting in the car, she
opened her door slightly to let more air in while the car was stationary. Once
Dad finished, he got back in the car and pulled out to turn left on a four lane
road. Mom had forgotten she had her door ajar, so as Dad turned left the door
swung open to the right and Mom’s purse, which had been sitting in the floor
bed, tumbled onto the pavement in the middle of the road. Mom said, “There went my purse.” But still
being irritable from the heat she said, “Just leave it. Just go on and leave it.”
Dad, even though frustrated, soldiered onward with his belief in “No Purse Left
Behind”. He pulled off the side of the road, waited for traffic to clear, quickly
ran to the middle of the road, retrieved the purse, and ran back to the car.
Fortunately, the purse required no medical attention as no other cars had
crushed it. Anyway, after this incident we were tempted to just leave town
without visiting ORU, but we didn’t. Once we got to ORU and began walking
around the campus, we all calmed down.
Back in the late 1980’s, while on vacation, my wife and I
visited Heritage USA in Fort Mill, South Carolina. You may remember this as
being the theme park started by Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye. Our visit
there was after the infamous Jim Bakker sex scandal and cover-up. With the
Bakker ministry on the fritz, Heritage USA had greatly deteriorated; a sad
sight to see. Jim and Tammy Faye were some of my mother’s favorites. She
ordered literature from them as well as albums by Tammy Faye, who had become
quite successful as a Christian singer despite all that makeup. I inherited
those Tammy Faye albums, but have since either sold them in a yard sale or
donated them to charity. Needless to say, I wasn’t a big fan.
Kenneth Copeland was another TV preacher that I listened to
frequently. He occasionally put on his “Glory be to God!” happy feet, but not
enough to drive me away. Copeland was one of those speakers that could almost
convince you to give him your coat and then turn around and sell it back to
you. He always spoke with such confidence and certitude that it was hard to
question if he really knew what he was talking about. I’m the type of person
that will still have doubts even when I have studied an issue and am 100%
certain that I am right. I guess I just really took to heart the admonition of
Han Solo to Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movie. When Luke successfully
blew up an attacking ship, Han said, “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.” Throughout
history you can see people with great certitude being shamed by new knowledge
contrary to their beliefs. So, I always season my certitude with a pinch of
doubt. In other words, I try not to get cocky.
Of all the prophecy interpreting TV evangelists, Jack Van
Impe, along with his wife Rexella, was one of my favorites. He too had an air of
confidence about him. He usually attempted to connect Biblical prophecy to
current events. It was amazing to me how much Bible prophecy was coming true
during my lifetime. Well, it was until I learned that many of the same
prophecies had been fulfilled many times before. In other words, people are
always finding current events that seem to match Bible prophecy. Ultimately, I
came to believe that the preterist view
of prophecy made the most sense. I discuss this in more detail in my “God
Is” book.
One day I was watching Robert Tilton on TV, and he was
offering to send viewers some miracle water. I decided to take him up on his
offer just to see what it was all about. Upon receiving it, I discovered it was
a small quantity of water sealed in square plastic pouch about one inch on a
side. Just a few days afterwards I won $1000 in a local radio contest. I was
stunned! A few days after that I learned that a friend of mine was sick and running
a high fever. I went to his house and laid the water pouch on his forehead.
Instantly the fever disappeared and he was back at work the next day. After 35
years, that pouch of water still stays with me everywhere I go. Just kidding. I
threw the pouch away soon after receiving it. The plastic is probably still in
a landfill somewhere slowly deteriorating. I once heard a funny story about
Tilton. A former preacher from the church where my wife is a member was at our
house for dinner one evening. He told us that when he was in seminary one of the
students showed him and others a video of TV footage of Tilton. Tilton made intense
expressions when he talked, and the video had farting noises added right when
he was making those expressions. I did not realize that this video was a
national sensation until I read about it on Wikipedia. Then I found the video on YouTube. It’s
definitely worth watching; it’s hilarious.
Back in the early 1980’s, believe it or not, my wife and I
got into selling life insurance. A.L. Williams was a former high school
football coach that became disenchanted with life insurance after his mother
died. After looking into the market, he eventually began selling term life
insurance. You see, apparently whole life insurance, which was part insurance
and part investment, had been a pretty good deal until the inflationary period
of the 1970’s. Interest rates in most investments soared, but not for whole
life insurance. Williams recognized this and started promoting the idea of “buy
term, invest the difference”. This idea and a lot of hard work turned Williams
into a multi-millionaire. He started a multi-level company that Kathy and I
became a part of. I was shocked when one day I was listening to Jerry Falwell
on TV and he mentioned A.L. Williams. He told the story about how Williams was
visiting the campus of Liberty University. While touring the campus, they ran
into the sports director for the school. Falwell introduced them. Williams,
having been a football coach, asked the director what he needed for the school’s
athletic program. The answer was a football field. So there on the spot
Williams agreed to donate millions of dollars towards the building of a stadium.
It’s still there and is called Williams Stadium.
I have watched Pat Robertson on his 700 Club show a fair
amount. Robertson is quite a controversial person because of some of his
radical political stances. Sometimes it appears that he even embarrasses his
co-hosts. I always enjoyed listening to the stories the show presented of how a
person was listening to the 700 Club and was healed of an illness. The stories
seemed so legitimate, but I was always skeptical of their veracity. One
interesting connection I have with Robertson is that he mentioned a friend of
mine, Drew Jamieson, in his 1993 book “The Turning
Tide”. More recently one of my wife’s former students married Robertson’s
granddaughter. Small world, huh?
Although I have seen David Jeremiah on TV, I have mostly
heard him on the radio. In fact, at one time my wife and I had our radio alarm
set to play a local Christian station each weekday morning. David Jeremiah’s
show was just coming on when the alarm went off. So, I heard a lot of his
sermons, although a number of them were during an early morning sleep fog.
Jeremiah is another one of those preachers that seem very confident in their
message. However, it seemed to me that he often embellished the Biblical text
with made up information. I was surprised when I was talking to the preacher at
my wife’s church and discovered that he didn’t care for Jeremiah very much
because of those embellishments.
Another TV evangelist worth mentioning is Peter Popoff. I
never watched him on TV. In fact, I had never heard of him until I read James
Randi’s book “Flim
Flam”. James Randi is a magician (stage name of The Amazing Randi) who has
spent a large portion of his life exposing frauds who claim they have some sort
of supernatural or mystical powers. In fact, Randi has for many years offered a
large sum of money to anyone who can demonstrate special powers without him
being able to spot the trickery being used. So far no one has collected. Back
in 1986, Randi set out to expose Peter Popoff. It seemed that Popoff had the
ability to walk through an audience and tell people information about
themselves including what ailments they had. Randi suspected that Popoff’s wife
and the ushers were gathering information before a show and feeding it to
Popoff via a transmitter. Randi was able to find the frequency they used and
recorded what Popoff’s wife was saying to her husband. He later combined that
recording with the video of the show so that anyone could see how he was using
his wife’s information when speaking to audience members. Randi then appeared
on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and showed the merged video and
audio. Sixteen months later Popoff
declared bankruptcy. Don’t you just love stories like that? But it seems that no
matter how many of these shysters get exposed there are people willing to fall
for yet another one. In many cases the ones who have been exposed make a
comeback. Simply unbelievable.
One TV evangelist that I used to really enjoy was John
Ankerberg. He was usually quite controversial, exposing what he considered to
be fraudulent Christian teachers and groups. After I married Kathy I discovered
that my father-in-law didn’t like Ankerberg at all. Why? Because Ankerberg was
vehemently anti-Mason. I saw one of his shows where he exposed the supposed
pagan rituals the Masons engaged in. But you see, my father-in-law was a Mason.
And later one of his sons, my brother-in-law, became a Mason, and even became
the Master of his local lodge. I was at the ceremony where he was inducted. So,
here was yet once again an example of two people having a radically different
view of what is Christian and what is not. Disconcerting to say the least.
I guess the most famous and most revered of the TV
evangelists is Billy Graham. Who hasn’t seen one of his crusades on TV with
George Beverly Shea singing “How Great Thou Art”, Cliff Barrows belting out
tunes, Billy preaching the Gospel, and “Just As I Am” being sung as
thousands of people made their way to the stage from far away seats? Graham is
one of those rare people who were able to reach icon status in his field of
endeavor. And he’s one of those clean honest guys that break the stereotypical
mold of the greedy crooked evangelist that preys on the gullible.
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