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. 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.
In January 2000 Bakker told Larry King, “Every person who died in the 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.Ī 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. She appears at “gay-pride” events nationwide, including a Tammy Faye look-alike contest in Washington, D.C., where she was “surrounded by men in falsies and pancake makeup…” (Charisma News, November 2002). Today Tammy Faye has a non-judgmental ministry to homosexuals. 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. Prosecutors charged Bakker with diverting to his own use $3.7 million of the money that had been given to his “ministry.” Bakker also committed adultery with church secretary Jessica Hahn and paid more than $250,000 in an attempt to hush up the matter.
His trial brought to light his lavish lifestyle, which included six luxurious homes and even an air-conditioned dog house. He was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of a 45-year sentence. In 1989 JIM BAKKER, head of the very influential Pentecostal PTL television program went to prison for defrauding his followers out of $158 million. 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 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. The wild-eyed visions and unrelenting appeals could not save the City of Faith. 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. In 1980 he claimed that he had a “face to face” conversation with a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him that he was going to solve the City of Faith financial problems. In 1977 ORAL ROBERTS claimed that God had appeared to him and instructed him to build a medical center called the CITY OF FAITH. The following are some prominent examples: 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. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 86, for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -įrom 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. More after the jump:Įnlarged Ap(first published July 18, 2006) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Read this might help you understand why I left that group of believers. This is an great series, and I encourage all believers to read it, it is long. The Reading Room: RECENT PENTECOSTAL SCANDALS