Obituaries--Oral Roberts

God finally called Oral Roberts home today, many, many years after his plea to build the now-defunct City of Faith medical complex in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Roberts was 91 years old and died in Newport Beach, California.

Roberts was married for many years to wife Evelyn. She died several years ago following a fall.

Story:

Born Granville Oral Roberts in Pontotoc County in January 1918, he was the fifth and youngest son of a poor Pentecostal minister, the Rev. Ellis Roberts.

At the age of 17, Roberts was told he had tuberculosis. He was bedridden for months, and doctors gave no hope for his life.

On the way to a healing revival in a nearby town, Roberts said God told him that he was going to be healed and that he would take God’s healing power to his generation.

Roberts said the TB left him at the revival that night. The healing was later confirmed by a clinic in Ada. In addition, a stuttering problem was gone, and two months later he gave his first sermon.

Commenting on his childhood, Roberts once said, “I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today from where I started without God’s power.”

On Dec. 25, 1938, Roberts married Evelyn Lutman.

Ordained by the Pentecostal Holiness Church, Roberts preached for several years in various churches in Oklahoma. He studied at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee and Phillips University in Enid. He went to seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Roberts resigned from a pastorate in Enid in 1947 to begin the Healing Waters ministry, “to pray for the healing of the whole person.”

In the 1950s, Roberts’ tent crusades gained in popularity. In the latter part of the decade, crowds of more than 15,000 would spill outside his huge circus tent, which it took eight tractor-trailer rigs to carry. The tent, which seated 12,500, was advertised as the “largest gospel tent in the world.”

The prominent feature of these emotion-packed crusades was the “healing line.”

Every night, Roberts would give an altar call and lay his hands on hundreds of people to pray for them to be healed. He claimed to have personally laid his hands on more than a million people.

I remember well these early revival shows. Oral would say "heal" to different people who were in line. I always thought it was charlatanism writ large, but many people liked him. He rivaled Billy Graham in popularity back in the 1950s.

Roberts later founded Oral Roberts University. Roberts had huge ambitions including a law school and of course the City of Faith hospital. Both ultimately failed.

The City of Faith fiasco:

At one time, ORU had a dental school, law school and medical school. All were closed due to financial problems.

In 1977, Roberts told his partners that God had told him to build a medical complex that would merge “the healing streams of prayer and medicine.” Construction of the $150 million City of Faith complex began in 1978.

Although Roberts had encountered controversy before, this project stirred intense debate and proved to be one of the biggest financial burdens on his ministry. During the construction, when donations were down, Roberts said he saw a vision of a 900-foot-tall Jesus lifting up the City of Faith complex and saying, “I told you that I would speak to your partners and through them, I would build it!”

A $25 million debt forced the closing of the City of Faith and its medical school in September 1989.

Roberts died of complications from pneumonia.

Here is a vintage clip of Oral in action:



A recent interview with The 700 Club is here.

ORU Scandal.

For the first time in three years, Oral Roberts came back to the university he founded to promise "the devil" would not steal ORU.

The IRS might, however.

ORU Scandal.

Incredibly, some people are withholding judgment regarding the latest scandals, possibly because of concern for the students.

I was right originally about the City of Faith hospital, by the way, and the 900-foot Jesus. There is also the death threat made by God against Oral:

In 1977, Oral Roberts said God told him to build the City of Faith medical complex. The plan faced immediate opposition; state officials were concerned that the city didn't need more hospital beds. The plan was eventually approved.

During the hospital's construction in 1980, Oral Roberts spoke of a vision he had of a 900-foot Jesus assuring him, "I told you I would speak through your partners and through them, I would build it!"

In 1989, with the City of Faith $25 million in debt, Oral Roberts announced it would close.

Oral Roberts told media in 1989 that he was "laughed at, mocked, scoffed" for saying on national television that God would "call me home" if he didn't raise $8 million in early 1987 for a medical missionary program. ORU reached the fundraising goal.

"I myself have been blamed, not immorally or not irresponsible in finances, but because I heard the voice of God," he said in 1989.

It's hard to remember details like this after 20-30 years, but I was right in the ballpark.

ORU Scandal.

The university's regents are calling for a new audit. They are retaining an additional independent auditing firm.

Richard Roberts, meanwhile, insists he paid for his expenses out of his own pocket and didn't do anything illegal.

Roberts' written statement outlines current accountability measures for ORU
and Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association finances.

The Roberts family's expenses related to ORU or the association are charged to those organizations, and the family's personal expenses are charged to Roberts, the statement says.

"Any expenses, including trips, errands, food, etc., deemed personal are charged back to me and are paid personally by me on a monthly basis," Roberts said in the statement.

The comments below the article are worth a look also.

It WAS 20 years ago, not thirty, when Oral Roberts was concerned he would be "called home" if $8 million wasn't raised for his university. It didn't seem to me to be 30 years ago, as some damned fool wrote someplace else. It was around the time of the PTL scandal when this occurred.

I am going to make corrections to a couple of posts from last night.

In Case

you've lived in a cave, here is a brief bio of scandal-plagued Richard and Lindsay Roberts.

Years ago a person connected with the Oral Roberts ministry wrote a book, Give Me That Prime Time Religion, detailing that organization's history and dealings. It was published some years before Oral talked about his vision of a "900-foot Jesus" and God's threat to "call him home" if he didn't receive the money for his university, thus subjecting himself to widespread ridicule. What was interesting about the book, published in 1979, is the author, one Jerry Scholes, was so accurate in saying the Roberts' City of Faith hospital would never make it, for there had already been too many empty hospital beds in the Tulsa area. Now it is an office space complex called City Towers.

One of things Scholes noted was that while Oral was grooming Richard to ultimately take over the ministry, the author believed he simply didn't have what it took to run it. At the time, Richard was divorced from his first wife, Patti, and this was considered a handicap. As I remember the book (which I have somewhere in this apartment but God knows exactly where), Scholes said to the effect it would be hard to find another Evelyn. As we know, it wasn't too long afterward Richard remarried, and I believe Lindsay was a student at the ORU law school at the time they met.

In the final analysis, Scholes was proven to be right about the ministry. He did, however, have some good things to say about Evelyn Roberts, Richard's ex-wife Patti, and Richard's late sister and brother-in-law, Rebecca Roberts Nash and Marshall Nash, who died in a 1977 plane crash.

For those who don't know about the rest of Oral and Evelyn's kids, Ronald Roberts, Richard's brother, committed suicide in 1982. Richard's other sister, Roberta Roberts Potts, is an attorney.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

Something Bad

is going to happen to you,
Happen to you,
This very day.

While Richard's dad, Oral Roberts, had a mini-scandal of his own some 20 years ago when he asserted God was going to "call him home" if he didn't get enough money for his (now-defunct) City of Faith hospital or ORU, the son ain't as lucky as the dad. He's embroiled in a major lawsuit and scandal:

Saying he'd spoken with God, school President Richard Roberts told students and faculty during a weekly chapel service, "Here's what he told me to say to you, ‘We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not.

"‘This lawsuit ... is not about wrongful termination. It is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion,'” he said.

The breach of contract lawsuit was filed Tuesday against the university, Roberts, provost Mark Lewandowski, associate provost Jeff Ogle and dean Wendy Shirk by three professors who said they were fired or resigned under pressure.

And:

Tim Brooker joined ORU in 2001. He was recruited by the Republican National Committee to develop a program to further the political group's efforts. Over several years, the program had success in political races, all outside of Oklahoma, and financed either by the RNC or individual campaign committees, the lawsuit said.

In December 2005, Tim Brooker was summoned to meet with Richard Roberts and Roberts' sister-in-law Stephanie Cantese, community and governmental liaison for the ministries, the lawsuit stated.

Brooker was instructed by Roberts to use his talent and his students in local political races, specifically that of Randi Miller, seeking the Republican nomination for Tulsa mayor, according to the lawsuit. Miller is now a county commissioner.

Of course this is in violation of the federal tax code.

It gets juicier:

On the same day a lawsuit against Oral Roberts University, President Richard Roberts and three school officials was amended to add libel, slander or defamation accusations, the school announced an investigation into allegations made in the suit.

And it gets even better:

The summary of the report in the lawsuit alleges:

* One of Richard and Lindsay Roberts' children vandalized and removed athletic department equipment from ORU property.


* University and ministries employees regularly do the homework of the Roberts' children.


* ORU paid $29,411 for one Roberts daughter to vacation with friends in Florida and the Bahamas and use the ORU jet for transportation.


* Lindsay Roberts routinely uses ministries security personnel during personal vacations.


* Lindsay Roberts awarded 13 non-need-based scholarships to friends of her children, two of whom had test scores below ORU's admission requirement; and more.

And it gets even better:

_ A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

_ Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."

You can read the lawsuit here.