Jim Bakker News

This is from the Jim Bakker Show   Facebook page:

The Jim Bakker Show

14 hrs · 

Message from Lori Bakker:

As a family and staff, we continue to fight the good fight of faith and take a stand against the evil forces and hatred that has come against our ministry.

In Jim’s words, this has been the most vicious attack that he has ever experienced.

For many years now, Jim has been working non-stop, working hard to bring incredible prophets and guests to our show, discovering and developing new products to share, building at Morningside, and bringing forth the message for the days that we are living in. All of these projects, and the vigorous warfare that we have experienced in the last several weeks, have taken a huge toll on Jim’s health.

I wanted to share with you, our loving and caring partners, that Jim recently experienced a stroke. We are thankful that Jim is okay, and that he is now at home with our family. Under the guidance of medical professionals and our Board of Directors, Jim will be taking a sabbatical from the show. Jim will be back! He is still dreaming and hearing from the Lord, and he already has a powerful word to deliver when he returns to the air.

In the meantime, the show will continue. Jim is a Watchman on the Wall, and we as a family are committed to carrying his mantle by bringing more prophets, news, updates, and more in the coming weeks on The Jim Bakker Show.

We ask that you continue to pray for Jim, and pray for our ministry, during these challenging times. As Jim always says, God loves you, He really does! And so do we!

Love,

Lori

More about Bakker:

Famed televangelist Jim Bakker is recovering from a recent stroke, his wife said. His eponymous TV show will continue to film without him while he takes a sabbatical. https://t.co/BlvKWivVvq

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 8, 2020

Jim's son, Jay, said the stroke was a minor one, and the family expects him to be back selling his freezed dried slop and books from the various guests on his show.

“We are thankful that Jim is okay, and that he is now at home with our family,” Lori Bakker posted on the show’s Facebook page.

“Under the guidance of medical professionals and our Board of Directors, Jim will be taking a sabbatical from the show,” Lori Bakker said. “Jim will be back! He is still dreaming and hearing from the Lord, and he already has a powerful word to deliver when he returns to the air.”

She did not say when Bakker suffered the stroke. She asked for prayers for her husband and for the couple’s ministry.

Bakker’s son posted: “Your thoughts are appreciated.”

“I know some of you struggle with humanizing my father, but he is also a good grandpa and my dad,” Jay Bakker, pastor of Revolution Church in Minneapolis, said in his post. “We have a complicated relationship like a lot of folks ... His life has influenced mine, as well as my work.”

I like the last paragraph.

Yes, It IS Enraging

Right Wing Watch notes Jim Bakker's 80th birthday broadcast's blatant disregard for the person who was  THE reason Jim Bakker became famous (not infamous--famous)  and my responses:

All week, they have been celebrating Jim Bakker's 80th birthday on his show. Today, they ran a 5 minute retrospective of his years at PTL that never mentioned Tammy Faye and showed her only once, in passing.

Part I pic.twitter.com/MzBImRDMl7

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 17, 2020

Tammy Sue's and Jay's mother. Those are Jim's biological children, not his adopted or foster children he and Lori helped raise. I know both of the children had falling outs with Jim over the years but I believe they reconciled. NO excuse at all to leave out Tammy Faye.

— Susan Nunes (@tonysam2) January 18, 2020

Once a Kardashian, Always a Kardashian

I will post this Kanye West interview here although it has been widely shared.  He sure is a gullible type to believe what he does now.

I don't normally follow this family anyway.  I just happened to look up West  because he was talked about on the Jim Bakker Show today.  Bakker was touting West's latest conversion, and he condemned West's critics.  It could all well be a publicity stunt.  His wife and her family are masters of the art of self-promotion.  West I mean, not Bakker.

However, he has had a lot of issues with mental illness in the past, so I am not going to be too hard on him.



Link to video

An Overlooked Obituary and a Forgotten Scandal

I missed this obituary from 2 1/2 years ago, but I will note it here belatedly:   Rev. Marvin Gorman, a televangelist who was responsible for the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart in his prostitute scandal in the 1980s but went down in scandal himself, died at the age of 83 in 2017.  I was thinking about him a few minutes ago, as I have been doing a lot of reading and watching programs about the old PTL scandal.   Swaggart, of course, never fully recovered from his scandal.  It couldn't have happened to a better person, as it was Swaggart who vowed revenge on Jim Bakker when Bakker yanked Swaggart's program off the PTL Satellite Network because of his anti-Catholic rants.  Since the network went into many Catholic-dominated countries, Bakker was having none of that bullshit on his network.  Swaggart was vengeful, and it was he who was going to find out all the dirt he could on Bakker.   He didn't have to try all that hard, as we know, because people like PTL bigwig Richard Dortch and Jerry Falwell were all too willing to bring Bakker down themselves.

Anyway, Gorman had his own sex scandal to contend with, and thereafter he lived mostly in semi-obscurity:

Rev. Gorman was brought down in an epic feud that sullied the Pentecostal movement three decades ago. In 1986, Swaggart, a fellow Assembly of God televangelist based in Baton Rouge, accused him of adultery. Swaggart also helped blow the whistle on Jim Bakker, an Assembly of God televangelist in Charlotte, N.C., for an extramarital affair with a church secretary.

In response, Rev. Gorman circulated photographs of Swaggart and a prostitute at an Airline Highway motel in Metairie, leading to Swaggart's downfall, and he sued Swaggart for defamation. He won a $10 million award, although the parties later settled out of court at $1.85 million.

By this time all three men's ministries were in ruins. Rev. Gorman declared bankruptcy, Bakker went to prison and Swaggart's empire collapsed.

That scandal was and remains endlessly fascinating.  I had followed Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's program for many years prior.

Currently, I am finishing up Tammy Faye's memoir, which focused much attention on the scandal and its aftermath, Tammy:  Telling It My Way.  It was published in 1996, several years after her divorce from Bakker and eleven years before she died of lung cancer.  It is a very good book especially reminding the reader of the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes in the toppling of Bakker.  He trusted the wrong people time and time again.

It was a pattern with Bakker.  He helped get Pat Robertson's 700 Club off the ground, but Robertson wanted to appear in front of the camera instead of the Bakkers, so Bakker left.  He started up the Trinity Broadcasting Network, becoming an instant hit, but Paul and Jan Crouch wanted to appear in front of the camera, so Bakker left.  He got two major religious networks their starts, and then he went on and formed his own satellite network, one of the first if not the first of its kind.  It was a huge success and helped spur the movement for a Christian Disneyland near Fort Mill, South Carolina, called Heritage USA.  In fact,  Bakker at this point was suffering from the Edifice Complex with one building project after another, until it ultimately got out of hand.  As we know, Bakker once again put trust in the wrong people, who pounced when Bakker had taken a leave from the PTL program to take care of Tammy Faye following her bout with pneumonia and then a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic for dependency on medication.  He never came back to the network as Jerry Falwell pretty much stole the business away from him because Falwell wanted the satellite facilities which in the end he never got.  Falwell ran the entire enterprise into bankruptcy solely because he wanted the satellite network.  That was the real scandal, but it got buried because of all the turmoil surrounding Bakker, the Jessica Hahn payoff, and the mismanagement primarily orchestrated by Richard Dortch, head of PTL.  Three times was not the charm for Bakker, and he spent five years in prison.  Falwell emerged from the scandal with nary a scratch, as he had major connections in D.C. politics, unlike Bakker.

But, as we know, Bakker got out and just couldn't give up the idea of a Christian talk show, so, starting very small with a brand new wife, Lori Graham Bakker, he set up a small-scale television show near Branson, Missouri.  He has been doing this show for fifteen or more years.  However, he has gotten more and more paranoid in his old age, so now he has a program with lots and lots of end times nonsense with guests like the crackpot Lance Wallnau claiming Trump is doing God's work, while at the same time Bakker his hocking his food buckets of freeze dried slop (slop when water is added).

Tammy Faye, rest her soul, would spin in her grave if she knew what a crackpot her ex turned out to be.  Maybe the second part of this post's title is wrong, for as long as Jim Bakker remains in the limelight, the PTL scandal won't be forgotten.

Speaking of Religious Right Paranoia,

take a look at the latest (as of today) clip from The Jim Bakker Show with a South African-born guest engaging in all kinds of conspiracy horseshit including the Masons and the Rothschilds, only with "the deep state" slant:




I fully expect the totally debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion to get a full hearing and support.  Bakker's program has jumped so many sharks, it is amazing Bakker and his wife Lori haven't been eaten from fatigue. 

As someone who watched the original PTL back in the late seventies until Bakker went down in scandal, I can attest Jim Bakker was never into all this conspiracy bullshit, at least not publicly.  He didn't really talk about politics all that much on his show.  A little bit here, a little bit there about the joys of Ronald Reagan, a bit of talk about being anti-abortion,  but nothing out of the ordinary.  He was mostly obsessed with building Heritage USA and the towers. He also had a more or less real talk show complete with guests from Hollywood and gospel singers.   Perhaps Tammy Faye wouldn't let him do it and kept him under control.  Now, though, there is nothing stopping him from peddling completely batshit ideas and selling his "Armageddon" merchandise. 

It is pathetic--and dangerous.  These people really want Armageddon to happen.

It never occurs to them that perhaps all of the Book of Revelation was an allegory and not something that was going to happen literally.  They are hellbent on not just bringing it about, but also they want to take the rest of us with them.

Saturday Reads: The Resurrection of Jim Bakker

Tammy Faye Bakker (Messner) may be dead and very much missed by her legion of fans, both in and out of religious circles, but her ex-husband, the disgraced Jim, is still out there being the low-key huckster he has always been.  It's arguable he is even worse now.

Bakker isn't peddling timeshares for buildings he couldn't afford to sustain, but instead he is peddling all kinds of survivalist nonsense in preparation for the "end times."  I have watched his current program, episodes of which can be found on YouTube, and he is a far cry from what he was thirty years ago, when his ministry went down in scandal.  He used to have a lot of hair then, but prison life and time have taken their toll.  He is almost completely bald, with a hedge of white hair around the edges.   He also sports a moustache and a beard, equally white.   He is 79 years old now.  Bakker's second wife, Lori, is as dull as he is.  She has no discernible talent, and worse, she has utterly no charisma whatsoever.  She is completely different from the incomparable Tammy Faye, who was the real draw of the original PTL and not Jim.

Anyway, more than a few observers have noticed Bakker's return from the televangelist dead, and more of those observers are totally appalled at what Bakker is doing:

The show, which is broadcast Monday through Friday, is often little more than an extended infomercial for alternative medicine, Christian paperbacks, and, most infamously, two-to-six-gallon buckets of end-times survival food. (All of it tax-exempt, filtered through the euphemisms of “free gifts” and “donations.”) Bakker’s buckets were the centerpiece of video editor Vic Berger’s Bakker compilations a few years back, which slowed down and emphasized the show’s creepiest moments. Berger didn’t have to do much — the buckets are about as disgusting as you would expect bulk food aimed at the generation that invented Jello salad to be. A 2015 NPR article about Bakker’s survival food contained phrases like “felt like eating wet cement” and “one of the worst things I've ever eaten in my life.” Buckets contain either one type of slurry in bulk, like the $290, six-gallon “Cheesy Broccoli Rice” offering, or an assortment of dried foods in a particular style, like the $79 “Thanksgiving Feast” bucket. (The latter’s description says it recalls “the sounds of family visiting,” somehow making Thanksgiving-in-a-bucket even more depressing.) Typically, Bakker will let the pictures on the buckets do the work, but on the rare occasion they are dumb enough to pop the tops, the results tug at, and occasionally resemble, vomit.

Little has changed for sure.

For masochists or just the curious, Jim Bakker's YouTube channel can be found here.

Obituaries.

Gospel singer Dottie Rambo, 74, died early today when her tour bus ran off a highway and struck an embankment.

She was a frequent guest in the 1980s on shows like the PTL Club. I remember seeing her often.

Six other people were injured in the accident.

Of the many videos of Rambo on YouTube, I like this one where she sings with Vestal Goodman (1929-2003) best, although Rambo sings only at the end of it. It's called "The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me." It seems appropriate:




Here is another video, which is good, of when she was part of the family group, The Rambos, with her ex-husband Buck, her daughter, and son-in-law. Judging from the hairstyles, this must be from the late 1970s:




Another update: Televangelist Jim Bakker has been having a tribute to Rambo on his show. She appeared on the old PTL Club many times and was almost a regular on the show. That's how I had heard of her.

Yet another update: Here is a recent episode of the Jim Bakker Show where Dottie Rambo appears. This was the April 22, 2008, broadcast.
_____

When I Return

to Reno, I will have to obtain a copy of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I found this clip while surfing the net telling about the "honorable" Jerry Falwell's "helpfulness" to the Bakkers when he took over PTL following the Hahn scandal.





Falwell was totally despicable.

As I Was

surfing over the net about the late Tammy Faye, I found this blog post, which is actually pretty good.

The Bakkers WERE different, and, as somebody who watched them religiously during the glory years of the late 1970s up until the 1987 scandal, the blogger's assessment is accurate.

I was rather hard on them when the scandal first broke, but it soon became clear to me the Bakkers were simply in over their heads running an empire that was growing too rapidly.

I would watch the show and hear Jim talking about the next project he had going for Heritage U.S.A., and I wondered how in the world he could possibly keep his head above the water. Well, it turned out he couldn't, and the empire came crashing down.

S.O.B.s like Falwell stabbed the Bakkers behind their backs, although at the time when they were talking about a "hostile takeover," I don't think the media took them very seriously. Looking back on it, their charges were accurate.

Jim Bakker has adopted a far more low-key profile in recent years than during the PTL days. He has a television show with his second wife, Lori Graham Bakker (with whom he adopted five children), based in Branson, Missouri. I haven't watched this program because I cannot get it on my satellite dish. I have seen interviews with him where he said in effect he didn't want to have the high profile program he did when he had PTL.

With regard to PTL, I think it was Tammy Faye who was the big draw on that show. She sang and she cried--oh, how she cried!--but she had real charisma, and it was no surprise after she left Bakker she would gain considerable celebrity on her own.

Tammy Faye was loved by millions, both in and out of the religious world, perhaps because underneath the makeup she was no fake at all.

Jim Bakker

has a statement on his website regarding the death of his ex-wife, Tammy Faye Messner:

Our family is deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Tammy Faye. She lived her life like the song she sang, “If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.”

My heart aches for my two children, Jamie Charles and Tammy Sue, who loved their Mother dearly. They both told me their Mom was so full of life that it is hard to believe she is gone.

Tammy Sue stayed by her Mother’s side, caring for her 24 hours a day for the last year, and Jamie Charles spent as many days with his Mother as possible, taking her out to eat or shop until her death.

Tammy Faye’s deep faith in God has kept her throughout her life as well as during these last days of her life. In her last 48 hours she shared her faith in Jesus Christ on worldwide television with millions of people.

She is now in Heaven with her Mother and Grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childhood. That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her.

God’s Word declares of heaven; “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, sadness, crying, or pain, because all the old ways are gone," Revelation 21:4.

This is the hope of our family.

Associated Press

also has an obituary.

And I can't leave out the Charlotte Observer's take on her death. The Observer was a thorn in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's side during the PTL scandal.

Apparently a funeral service was already held today.

This is what her ex-husband had to say:

In a statement issued Saturday night, her former husband, Jim Bakker, the evangelist with whom she founded a religious empire in Fort Mill, S.C., said Tammy Faye “lived her life like the song she sang, ‘If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.’ ”

“She is now in Heaven with her mother and grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childbirth,” Bakker said. “That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her.”