Beware of Jim Bakker
By Bro. David Cloud
Friday Church News Notes, June 6, 2003 - Fundamental Baptist Information Service - David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143. Send e-mail: fbns@wayoflife.org
Jim Bakker Back On Television
Jim Bakker, disgraced former head of the charismatic Praise the Lord (PTL) program, is back on television.
The “New Jim Bakker Show” debuted 16 years to the day after the last broadcast of the “PTL Club” (Charisma News Service, June 2). The new show is currently broadcast on more than 30 television stations, 200 cable outlets, and internationally through TCT Satellite Network. Bakker 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 doghouse. Prosecutors charged that Bakker diverted to his own use $3.7 million of 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 keep her quiet about the matter. Witnesses further testified that Bakker was involved in homosexuality. 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. Bakker also remarried, to Lori Beth Graham, who is the co-host of his new program. In January 2000 Bakker told Larry King, “Every 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.
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