JIM BAKER

Bakker was not released early from prison because the

judge made some statements about his religious beliefs.
His trial was about business wrongdoing. He intentionally
over-sold time shares in a hotel owned by PTL amounting
to several millions of dollars. The trial had nothing to do
with religious issues. The law in the USA is that the
Internal Revenue Service cannot even look at the financial
records of a church or a legitimate registered religious
ministry. But, when a church/religious organization goes
into commercial business such as running a hotel/motel
that has nothing to do with their legitimate ministry, then
the IRS has a right and responsibility to investigate. And,
thats the reason why, after investigation charges were
laid against Bakker for fraud. He tried to say that he was
not responsible.
But, since he was the President of the PTL ministry and
since he made the decision to sell more time shares than
they had rooms, he was charged with fraud. Since he was

not taking responsibility for his decisions, he was found

guilty. He was originally sentence to 70 years in jail
because he would not take responsibility for his actions.
The judge at his trial explained this. He also said that
when Mr. Bakker is willing to take responsibility for his
actions, he would reconsider the judgment.
It took Bakker 7 years to finally take responsibility and it
was the same judge who had sentenced him to 70 years in
jail who reduced it to time served. The judge made no
statements about his religious beliefs with the exception
that he was not exempt from IRS jurisdiction because he
had headed up a religious organization which had gone
beyond their financial responsibility by moving into a
business that had nothing to do with religion. When
Jimmy Bakker wrote his book, I Was Wrong, he was
really saying, I was wrong but not really. When a socalled Christian pastor thinks that he can sin by cheating
people out of their money which is sin and think that God
will protect him, that is his greatest mistake.
Our God does not overlook sin, regardless of the selfrighteous advertising that people may continue to do.
Lets keep the record straight! Bakker has not learned a
lesson from his 7 years in jail. Hes busy selling things like
watches and food for end times. Regardless, for him, its
still all about money.

TV evangelist, accused rapist

Jim Bakker sells survivalist

kits including 'End of the

World Biscuits'

Bakker's website sells everything from bulk 'End of the

World Gravy,' 'Extreme Survival Bottles' and extreme coldweather apparel. The evangelist, who considers himself
one of today's experts on the Book of Revelation, appears
motivated by prophetic scriptures in the Bible, which warn
of the end of days.
BY Nina Golgowski NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Monday, September 15, 2014, 4:42 PM
Worried the pearly gates won't have clean water? TV
evangelist Jim Bakker has your back.

Twenty years after his release from prison following rape

and fraud allegations, the disgraced pastor is busy selling
unique survival kits apparently for the Apocalypse.
On his website for his latest TV program, "The Jim Bakker
Show," the 74-year-old sells everything from bulk "End of
the World Biscuits," "Extreme Survival Bottles" two for
$57 and extreme cold-weather apparel.
The evangelist, who considers himself one of today's
experts on the Book of Revelation, appears motivated by
the prophetic scriptures in the Bible, which warn of the
Rapture where Christians will be taken by God into
heaven and the second-coming of Christ.

JIM BAKKER WAS NEVER VINDICATED

THE UNCHANGING SCOUNDREL, THE
FELON AND CON ARTIST STILL OWES
THE IRS $ 3 MILLION:
Tammy Faye Messner new husband said Jim Bakker and his
former wife didnt want to talk about the tax issues. We dont
want to stir the pot, Messner said. He said the original tax
amount was about $500,000. Penalties and interest account for
the rest of the bill. The notices reinstating the liens list James O.
and Tamara F. Bakker as owing $3 million.
But Tammy Fayes former husband, Assembly of God
Evangelist Jim Bakker, the founder on the now non
existent PTL Club and Village, has downplayed the role of
the bisexual evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who

arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He hardly talks

about James and David Taggart, the brothers who many
claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years or that David
Taggart was his lover and gave him blow jobs.
Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep
promises and had forsaken him during tough times.
Fletcher stated during the Pearlygate media storm that
he, too, had been sexually involved with bisexual Bakker,
reported Christianity Today
Reverend G. Raymond Carlson, general superintendent of
the church, said the alleged misconduct involving
bisexual activity weighed heavily in the decision to
unfrock Bakker. Carlson noted further that the word
alleged was used because Bakker did not wish to defend
himself.
For many people, allegations of misappropriating PTL
resources for their own personal use and the payment of
huge salaries and bonuses were far more serious charges
than the allegations of sexual misconduct.
The Bakkers had appointed a rubber-stamp board of
directors to oversee their management practices. In return
for acquiescing to Jim and Tammys whims, several of
these board members received tens of thousands of dollars
in fees, bonuses, and contributions to their own projects.
He was one of the worst of the very worst preacher men begging
on TV, the kind of conman and scripture twisters that could make
anyone flip the channel as fast as humanly possible (Christian or
non-Christian), the leader of the so-called PTL Club (Praise the
Lord), a show full of hand clapping and bebopping and
unscrupulous moneychanging shenanigans and crocodile tears

galore -- and the odd thing was, even when he had fallen as far
as he could fall (lying, cheating, promiscuity, false prosperity
theology to separate trusting Christians from their money, rape,
homosexuality, tax fraud) he was always sincere, by his own
word he probably felt he really was serving God, and he probably
started out not all that far from the truth. (Douglas Christian
Larsen)
Bakker resigned from Praise The Lord ministries in 1987 after
admitting he had an affair with a ministry secretary. In 1989, he
was convicted in Charlotte of a wire and mail-fraud scheme over
the sale of more than 150,000 lifetime partnerships to the
planned Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C.
Bakker's 45-year sentence was reduced to 18 years and he
served five before his parole in 1995. While in prison, his former
wife, Tammy Faye - now remarried as Tammy Faye Messner divorced him.
According to the prosecution at Bakker's trial, tens of thousands
of memberships had been sold, and only one 500-room hotel
completed. Bakker had not only sold more "exclusive"
partnerships than could be accommodated, but had also raised
more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. The Bakker
trial revealed that a good deal of the money had gone into
operating expenses of Heritage USA, and Bakker kept $3,700,000
for himself.
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions
for the PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the
accounting irregularities, took conspicuous consumption to
new extremes. PTL once spent over $100,000 for a private
jet to fly the Bakker's clothing across the country. PTL also

spent more than $100 on a purchase of cinnamon rolls

because Jim and Tammy wanted the smell of them in their
hotel room.) "They [Bakkers] epitomized the excesses of
the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love of glitz, and the
shamelessness-- which in their case was so pure as to
almost amount to a kind of innocence."
In 1988 Bakker, his number 2 administrator Richard
Dortch, and aides David and James Taggart were indicted
on charges of fraud and conspiracy. Bakker and Dortsch
were charged, among other things, with illegally taking
some $4 million in bonuses from PTL funds, defrauding at
least 150,000 contributors to the PTL, mail fraud, tax
evasion, defrauding the thousands of "lifetime partners"
who bought memberships to Heritage USA, and conspiring
to "create and continue to lead lavish and extravagant lifestyles." Bakker was found guilty on 24 counts of fraud and
conspiracy and in October 1989 was sentenced to 45 years
in jail and fined $500,000. He was paroled because the
original judge made some statements about Jims religious
beliefs which were not proper.
And then there were consultants. James Taggart, interior
decorator and David Taggarts brother, was paid $10,000 a
month, but, according to the new PTL management, he had
performed no services for months. Peter B. Teeley, press
secretary to George Bush until 1984, was paid $120,000 for
eighteen months to serve as a Washington liaison; apparently
there were no written records of any services performed.
When the Bakkers departed, the financial records of the
organization were in shambles-as they probably had been for
years. No fewer than forty-seven separate checking accounts

were found in the first days of the Falwell takeover. The books
are a mess, proclaimed Harry Hargrave, the Dallas-based
consultant Falwell hired to become PTLs new chief executive
officer.
Have you seen one of his latest TV programs. Hes back doing
the same thing as he did before, only worse. He never learned
anything. His recent wife is a copy of his first wife. Hes in the
market of selling things like watches and food for end times
survival. Pretty pathetic. GORDON WILLIAMS

Bi- Sexual Felon Or Hero - Jim Bakker?

The mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit; He who is
abhorred by the LORD will fall there. Proverbs 22:14
The righteousness of the upright will deliver them, But the
unfaithful will be caught by their lust. Proverbs 11:6
The Man of The Hour?
Who said I cannot judge liars, rapists and thieves? Not God!
Rather Jesus told us in Matthew 7:15 "Beware of false prophets,
who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are
ravenous wolves. 7:16 "You will know them by their fruits. So we
can judge, write and read about them? For the record, what
biblical restoration did Jim Bakker do for his sins and crimes ?
None! Jim Bakker repented of what? Very little! So his repentance
wasn't worth much? The only thing that Jim Bakker ever repented
off was teaching prosperity. In his book he doesn't admit to
repenting to anything else. Now we know from fact that Jim was
an adulterer, a thief, a liar and bisexual and he did these things in
public as a religious leader. Could you please tell me when he

repented of his sins in public just like David did in Psalm 51 and
"Zacchaeus did in Luke?
Luke 19:5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and
saw him, and said to him, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come
down, for today I must stay at your house." 19:6 So he made
haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. 19:7 But when
they saw it, they all complained, saying, "He has gone to be a
guest with a man who is a sinner." 19:8 Then Zacchaeus stood
and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the
poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false
accusation, I restore fourfold." 19:9 And Jesus said to him,
"Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son
of Abraham; 19:10 "for the Son of Man has come to seek and to
save that which was lost."
EX 22:1 "If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or
sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a
sheep.
EX 22:4 "If the theft is certainly found alive in his hand, whether
it is an ox or donkey or sheep, he shall restore double.
He was one of the worst of the very worst preacher men begging
on TV, the kind of conman and scripture twisters that could make
anyone flip the channel as fast as humanly possible (Christian or
non-Christian), the leader of the so-called PTL Club (Praise the
Lord), a show full of hand clapping and bebopping and
unscrupulous moneychanging shenanigans and crocodile tears
galore -- and the odd thing was, even when he had fallen as far
as he could fall (lying, cheating, promiscuity, false prosperity
theology to separate trusting Christians from their money, rape,
homosexuality, tax fraud) he was always sincere, by his own
word he probably felt he really was serving God, and he probably

started out not all that far from the truth. (Douglas Christian
Larsen)
Jim Bakker was founder and former president of the PTL
Ministries. Sam Johnson was director of World Missions in 1986.
Richard Dortch was the PTL's 2nd minister in 1984. In 1987
former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, and retired
televangelist Rex Humbard were named to the PTL board by
then- chairman Reverend Jerry Falwell.
Bakker resigned from Praise The Lord ministries in 1987 after
admitting he had an affair with a ministry secretary. In 1989, he
was convicted in Charlotte of a wire and mail-fraud scheme over
the sale of more than 150,000 lifetime partnerships to the
planned Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C.
Bakker's 45-year sentence was reduced to 18 years and he
served five before his parole in 1995. While in prison, his former
wife, Tammy Faye - now remarried as Tammy Faye Messner divorced him.
Bakker has since contended that his years in prison were his
salvation. He re-read all the scriptures and crucially concluded
that the so-called "prosperity preaching" of his PTL days wherein he equated dollar-wealth with godliness - was misguided.
For a while, Bakker lived by his new creed that God also attended
to the poor. He moved to Los Angeles where he met his new wife,
with whom he is now raising seven Hispanic foster children.
Although many sheep are leery of Bakker, the clergy admired his
propensity to rob and use the sheep. In 1995, when he was
barely out of prison, he addressed a Christian leadership
conference where 10,000 clergymen cheered and gave him a 15-

minute standing ovation. "I thought people would spit on me," he

later recalled. "Instead they received me with open arms."
Bakker is now back on the air with "The Jim Bakker Show," taped
in Branson, Mo.
Jim Bakker is an evangelical fundamentalist who began his
television career co-hosting a children's puppet show with his wife
Tammy Faye on Pat Robertson's 700 Club television show.
Bakker rose to fame as a TV evangelist in the PTL (Praise the
Lord) Ministry, an enterprise he started in 1974 and built from
the ground up. The PTL claimed in 1987 to have 13 million
subscribers and assets of $175 million including Heritage USA, a
2,300-acre Christian theme park and home of the PTL Network in
Ft. Mill, North Carolina. Other assets included the PTL Network,
and a retirement center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The PTL Network reached an estimated 13 million households on
its own cable channel and was also aired on 180 other
commercial stations. Heritage USA was a lavish resort with a
500-room luxury hotel, an amphitheater for staging passion
plays, an amusement park, and Billy Graham's boyhood home-brought there piece by piece and reconstructed. (Hence Billy
Graham supported Jim Bakker in prison and out of prison!)
Guests who have made appearances on the Bakker's TV show
included: evangelists Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, James Robison,
and Robert Schuller; actors Mickey Rooney, Roy Rogers and Dale
Evans, Pearl Bailey, Anita Bryant, Little Richard, and Mr. T.
Speaking about the rise of an entrepreneurial movement in
Pentecostal Christianity author Susan Harding wrote of the PTL:
"It reached its apogee in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage

USA, a kind of postmodern pentecostal mecca. Their 'inspirational

theme park' conspicuously celebrates consumption, play, excess,
indulgence, immediate gratification, wild swings of growth and
crisis, anti- hierarchy, feminization, polymorphous perversity,
'name it/claim it,' visual images, spectacle and narrative
fragmentation, disposable identities, movement, artifice,
depthlessness and decenteredness.
However, all has not been rosy for the PTL which by 1978 was
$13 million in debt and in 1979 was investigated by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) about Bakker's on-the-air
solicitations for overseas work, which were used to pay the bills
for his domestic operations. The investigation of the PTL Network
disappeared in the restructuring of the FCC that occurred in the
early years of the Reagan administration. Bakker and his ministry
continued to expand and managed to stay financially afloat until
1987.
The fall of the PTL began at the February 1987 National Religious
Broadcasters convention when Jimmy Swaggart heard rumors of
sexual infidelities on the part of Jim Bakker. Bakker, fearing that
Swaggart would create a public scandal and take over Heritage
USA, resigned from the PTL Network in March 1987, turning
temporary control over to Jerry Falwell. Falwell examined the
books and found that the PTL was more than $60 million in debt.
Falwell refused to turn the network back to the Bakkers, claiming
them to be unfit for the ministry of the gospel. Falwell's financial
rescue plan for the PTL complex was turned down by Judge
Rufus Reynolds as being inadequate for contributors and
creditors. Falwell then resigned as head of the PTL in 1988,
turning the ministry over to board members James Watt and Rex
Humbard.

Meanwhile the IRS had been investigating the PTL since 1980,
claiming the Heritage USA theme park operations were
commercial, not ministerial. After Falwell's resignation, the IRS
revoked the PTL's tax-exempt status retroactive to 1980. The IRS
claimed that the PTL owed $65 million in back taxes. The PTL
went into bankruptcy proceedings in 1988 and was sold when
Judge Rufus Reynolds accepted a bid of $115 million from Rabbi
Stephen Mernick, an Orthodox rabbi from Toronto.
Jim Bakker had no formal training in theology--he failed to
complete even the introductory course in religious doctrine at
North Central Bible College. The Bakker ministry was one of love-the God that healed and forgave all human trangressions.
Bakker's ministry sanctioned extreme forms of "conversion
experiences," where sinners turned into saints via divine
intervention. This allowed Bakker to accept a wide variety of
religious beliefs and traditions into the fold of his ministry. The
Bakkers used the tradition of Pentecostal testimony on the PTL
Network to work through the many crises in their lives and to
justify their extravagant lifestyles and financial transgressions.
Between 1984 and mid-1987, the Bakkers received annual
salaries of $200,000 each and Jim awarded himself over $4
million in bonuses. The Bakkers owned, among other things, a
$600,000 house in Palm Springs, 4 condos in California, and a
Rolls Royce.
Bakker has been disordained as an Assembly of God minister. At
its peak 25 ordained ministers from the Assemblies of God
worked full-time for the PTL. PTL sold "lifetime memberships" for
a $1,000 or more which entitled buyers to a 3-night stay
annually at a luxury hotel in Heritage USA. According to the
prosecution at Bakker's trial, tens of thousands of memberships
had been sold, and only one 500-room hotel completed. Bakker

had not only sold more "exclusive" partnerships than could be

accommodated, but had also raised more than twice the money
needed to build the hotel. The Bakker trial revealed that a good
deal of the money had gone into operating expenses of Heritage
USA, and Bakker kept $3,700,000 for himself.
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions for the
PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting
irregularities, took conspicuous consumption to new extremes.
PTL once spent over $100,000 for a private jet to fly the Bakker's
clothing across the country. PTL also spent more than $100 on a
purchase of cinnamon rolls because Jim and Tammy wanted the
smell of them in their hotel room.) "They [Bakkers] epitomized
the excesses of the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love of glitz,
and the shamelessness-- which in their case was so pure as to
almost amount to a kind of innocence."
The PTL, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and the Trinity
Broadcasting Network in April 1980 pooled their resources to
provide live and taped coverage of the Full Gospel Business Men's
Fellowship International's day-long prayer rally, "Washington for
Jesus."
Jim Bakker claimed that the PTL sent "a large monthly
contribution to Mark Buntain whose overseas ministry feeds
12,000 children a day." However, the Charlotte Observer
reported in 1979 that the PTL raised thousands of dollars for
foreign missions that never went to the missions. In 1986 the PTL
claimed it was in the process of building a School of Evangelism
which would use missionaries, radio, and television to send its
message around the globe. This, as with many other Bakker
schemes, never happened. At that time PTL television shows

were being broadcast in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and

Thailand.
Jim Bakker's daily TV show reached an estimated 5.8 million
households each month during 1986. After losing Jim and Tammy
Faye Bakker in 1987, "The PTL Club" broadcasts went from 67 TV
stations down to 32 stations, and its viewing audience dropped by
half.
In 1988 Bakker, his number 2 administrator Richard Dortch, and
aides David and James Taggart were indicted on charges of fraud
and conspiracy. Bakker and Dortsch were charged, among other
things, with illegally taking some $4 million in bonuses from PTL
funds, defrauding at least 150,000 contributors to the PTL, mail
fraud, tax evasion, defrauding the thousands of "lifetime
partners" who bought memberships to Heritage USA, and
conspiring to "create and continue to lead lavish and extravagant
life-styles." Bakker was found guilty on 24 counts of fraud and
conspiracy and in October 1989 was sentenced to 45 years in jail
and fined $500,000. He was paroled because the original judge
made some statements about Jims religious beliefs which were
not proper.
Sources:
1. "Jim Bakker Indicted on Fraud Charges," Fund Raising
Management, Jan 1989.
2. Russell Shaw, "TV Ministries Gaining Ground After Scandals,"
Electronic Media, Jan 30, 1989.
3. Louise Bourgault, "The 'Jim Bakker Show': The Program, Its
Viewers and Their Churches," The Journal of Communication and
Religion, Mar 1988.
4. Letter from Sam Johnson, PTL Ministry, Dec 8, 1986.

5. Letter from Jim Bakker, PTL Television Network, Aug 8, 1983.

6. Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare (Boston, MA: South End
Press, 1989).
7. "God and Money: Sex Scandal, Greed and Lust for Power Split
the TV Preaching World," Newsweek, April 6, 1987.
8. "Divided Pentecostals: Bakker and Swaggart," The Christian
Century, May 6, 1987.
9. Susan Harding, "The World of the Born-Again Telescandals,"
Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 1988.
10. David Earle Anderson, "The 'Holy War' for Ratings,"
Christianity and Crisis, May 4, 1987.
11. "Power, Glory--And Politics," Time, Feb 17, 1986.
12. "Jerry Falwell Is Not Just Another Baptist Minister,"
Christianity Today, Mar 18, 1988.
13. "Can Jim and Tammy Make a Comeback?," U.S. News &
World Report, Oct 19, 1987.
14. "Fresh Out of Miracles," Newsweek, May 11, 1987.
15. "TV's Unholy Row," Time, Apr 6, 1987.
16. Richard N. Ostling, "Jim Bakker's Crumbling World," Time,
Dec 19, 1988.
17. Facts on File (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1989).
18. Terry C. Muck, "Healing the Church--After Bakker: Thanks to
a North Carolina Jury, a Time of Recovery Can Come to
American Christians," Christianity Today, 1989.
19. "An Unholy War in the TV Pulpits," U.S. News and World
Report, April 6, 1987.
20. Richard N. Ostling, "Falwell Throws In the Towel," Time, Oct
19, 1987.
21. Richard N. Ostling, "Tuesday, the Rabbi Bought PTL," Time,
Oct 17, 1988.
22. "Praise the Lord, Pay IRS," Time, May 2, 1988.
23. Frances FitzGerald, "Jim and Tammy," The New Yorker,
April 29, 1990.

24. GroupWatch - The Interhemispheric Resource Center, Box

4506, Albuquerque, NM 87196.
25. Hadden, Jeffrey K. and Anson Shupe. Televangelism: Power
and Politics on Gods Frontier. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1988.
26.Jean Seligmann, "The Inimitable Tammy Faye, Newsweek,
June 8, 1987, p. 69.
27. Cited in Gordon Witkin and Jeannye Thornton, "Stones Fly in
the TV Temple," U.S. News ~ World Report, June 8, 1987.
28. Transcript, Jim Bakker's statement of March 19, 1987.
Charlotte Observer, March 20, 1987.
29. Megan Rosenfeld, "Bakker Says His Ministry is at an End,"
Washington Post, May 2, 1987.
30. Art Harris and Michael Isikoff, "The Bakkers' Tumultuous
Return, Washington Post June 12, 1987.
31. Transcript of ABC's "Nightline," May 28, 1987.
32. "Statements from Bakkers," USA Today, April 27, 1987.
33. Ted Mellnik, "Bakker, Dortch Dismissed," Charlotte Observer,
May 5, 1987.
34. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker

Jim Bakker's back

Independent (England), June 15, 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/
The life of Jim Bakker, the world's most famous fallen teleevangelist, has always been about numbers, and we are not just
talking hymns and psalms. There was the $1.9m salary he paid
himself in 1986, the last full year that he led the Praise The Lord
(PTL) Ministry that he founded in 1972 with his thickly mascara'd
wife, Tammy Faye. At the time, he owned six luxury mansions,

47 bank accounts and a single Rolls-Royce. He was accustomed

to raising $1m from his TV-goggling disciples across America
every two days. Then came 1989, when he was charged, and
convicted, on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy for stealing
$3.7m from his flock to fund his fabulous lifestyle.
We could go on in this vein forever. It was never exactly clear
how many sexual partners (allegedly both women and men) he
enjoyed in those crazy days before his reckoning with the law and
crushing humiliation. We do know he paid $265,000 in cash to
buy the silence of a church secretary he had been involved with
in 1980.
The opulence of the Bakkers' lifestyle at the height of their reign
could not be measured in simple figures, however. They enjoyed
the American Dream, but a garishly inflated version of it. They
had an air-conditioned dog kennel and gold-plated bathrooms.
Theirs was the kind of money that bought everything except good
taste. Tammy Faye, who used glove puppets to help explain the
Word of the Lord on air, is still seen today as the gold standard
for eye shadow run amok. There is even a documentary film
about her simply called The Eyes of Tammy Faye Bakker. Jim had
a monkey face. His apple-shiny cheeks contrived to look at once
bloated and stretched.
The Bakkers flaunted their wealth and used it to raise more and
more of it. They offered a model of extravagant living that
viewers drank in, presumably not in a spirit of post-modern irony.
At its peak, the PTL broadcasts touched 13.5 million American
households every day. The Bakkers are still being pursued for
$3m (1.9m) in unpaid income tax.

But there is one number, above all, that Jim Bakker, will never
forget. It is 07407-058. Put "Inmate" in front of it, and you will
see why. Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for
his crimes, even though some of the counts against him were
later reversed and in 1994 he was released after only five years
behind bars. By then, Tammy Faye had divorced him and Bakker,
we all assumed, would fade into shamed obscurity. One thing was
for sure, he told one interviewer shortly afterwards - he would
never preach on television again.
He did write a book, however, simply called I Was Wrong. And
then, lo and behold, Bakker was wrong again. Not only is he
preaching once more, but he is doing it before the cameras.
Second chances are encouraged in Christian teaching and, for
sure, they are allowed in America. For proof, you need look no
further than a joint called the Studio City Caf in Branson,
Missouri, a folksy tourist town that peddles God and country
music to Middle America in roughly equal measures.
Since January, Bakker, 63, and his new wife, Lori Graham
Bakker, have been turning up here each weekday morning to
record an hour-long show of music, pious chat and, of course,
old-fashioned preaching. The show is being carried by a growing
roster of television stations across America and, via satellite,
around the world. Assisting them are 20 Christian singers
doubling as waitresses and cooks and, on most days, a celebrity
guest of questionable calibre. Tony Orlando was on recently, and
if you can't quite pin him down, he is the man who sang "Tie a
Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" with Dawn. On hand
every day to ensure an atmosphere of wholesome devotion to
Bakker, are the paying customers of the 260-seat caf, nearly all
tourists visiting Branson, cheering him on while shovelling down
barbecued ribs and eight-inch-high chocolate gateaux.

Bakker, in other words, has made a swift journey from shamed to

shameless. When the new Jim Bakker Show hit the airwaves in
January, it was 16 years to the day since his last PTL appearance.
Yet the sins that were subsequently unearthed were surely
enough to make any resurrection in the TV evangelising business
an utter impossibility. Chief among them was his success in
persuading countless viewers to donate sums of $1,000 or more
to purchase "lifetime partnerships" in a hotel complex at his glitzy
Christian theme park in North Carolina called Heritage USA.
The theme park, with a Main Street to rival Disney World's,
certainly existed - but the hotel never did. It was the biggest
time-share scam ever conceived, cloaked in the false
respectability of the name of God. Thousands of American souls,
mostly retirees, found they would be unable ever to get their
money back. Bakker was defrocked by his denomination, the
Assemblies of God, for "conduct unbecoming of a minister", and
all of America, and his fellow television evangelists, turned
against him. Jerry Falwell publicly declared Bakker a sexual
deviant, an embezzler and a liar. After taking over the PTL Club,
as it was known, and taking it into bankruptcy, Falwell called its
founder "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity
in two thousand years of church history". Few at the time
disagreed.
Bakker has since contended that his years in prison were his
salvation. He re-read all the scriptures and crucially concluded
that the so-called "prosperity preaching" of his PTL days wherein he equated dollar-wealth with godliness - was misguided.
For a while, Bakker lived by his new creed that God also attended
to the poor. He moved to Los Angeles where he worked for a
ministry working in a city ghetto. It was there that he met his

new wife, with whom he is now raising seven Hispanic foster

children. Later the couple moved to Florida where they founded a
Christian camp for inner-city teens, called the New Covenant
Fellowship. And, as he did so, Bakker discovered that he was not
quite the pariah he imagined. When he addressed a Christian
leadership conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1995, when he was
barely out of prison, 10,000 clergymen cheered and gave him a
15-minute standing ovation. "I thought people would spit on me,"
he later recalled. "Instead they received me with open arms."

Bakker recently commented that it was a "supernatural act of

God" that got him back in front of the cameras. He may also have
been inspired by his ex-wife, Tammy Faye. In 1994, she married
Roe Messner, a construction contractor who used to be one of
Jim's best friends and who helped build Heritage USA, and now
she too is exploiting her notoriety on the tube. With a little-known
actor, Jim J Bullock, she has a cable chat-show featuring D-list
Hollywood guests, entitled The Jim J and Tammy Faye Show. She
talks Tinseltown and glamour but leaves God well out of it.
But, in fact, most of the credit for Jim's resurrection goes to a
Branson businessman called Jerry Crawford. Crawford's unbroken
admiration of Bakker stemmed from his memory of visiting
Heritage USA many years earlier, an experience, he has since
claimed, that saved his then crumbling marriage. Crawford owns
the Studio City Caf in Branson and persuaded Bakker that it was
the perfect venue for a television comeback. Relying on the sweat
partly of volunteers and the broadcast talents of other devotees
of Bakker, the restaurant was hastily converted in time for
January's launch. It remains a shoe-string affair. Fabulous has
made way for folksy and Bakker cuts a self-consciously humble
figure.

"Oh my, I never really planned to come back on television,"

commented Bakker himself. "I had been sick for two months
before the show started, and I think it was related to my losses
before, to the press, and what I've been through. I think it was
just my body saying, 'No! No! Don't put your head above the
crowd. You'll get tomatoes thrown at you again.'"
And the reception has been remarkable. "I've never been
welcomed so wonderfully anywhere in my life," Bakker said of
Branson and his new audiences. "I'm beyond excited, I'm
overwhelmed." His show airs daily on 30 Christian broadcast
television stations around the US, even though in some markets
the time-slot is in the small hours. It is taken by 200 cable
channels and, most recently, reaches homes worldwide via the
Christian Television Network's "Angel" satellite. "We didn't really
get any flak at all [for putting Bakker back on the air],"
commented CTN's president Bob D'Andrea. "We've had a lot of
favourable comments that people are glad to see Jim back."

And among the folks packing the Studio City Caf, you will even
find a few who donated to PTL and to the hotel scheme and lost
everything they gave. But, apparently, there is just something
about Bakker they cannot resist. And they forgive him. "We lost
money," Bill Armstrong, recently retired from a metal casting
company, told a reporter from the Springfield News-Leader after
visiting the caf and watching Bakker do his thing again. "He's
forgiven." And people respond to his new low-key tone. "We don't
come as someone who has all the answers," Bakker insisted. "We
don't come as examples. We come as a demonstration of God's
restoration."

He may not want to be an example - prison is seldom something

the average viewer aspires to - but Bakker has not been able to
resist digging out some of the trappings of his old incarnation. A
few of the more valuable paintings that used to adorn the walls of
Heritage USA are once again on view in the caf, including four
huge paintings of Jesus by Joseph Wallace King. And on a small
wall just next to the kitchen, fans can find a collection of framed
photographs, harking back to the days when Bakker hob-nobbed
with presidents and tycoons. Bakker can be seen posing with
Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and George Bush Sr. There is even a
frame exhibiting an engraved napkin ring and other mementoes
from Air Force One from the day in 1980 when President Carter
invited him on board to help him pray for the American hostages
in Iran.
So, what about Bakker's old fetish with numbers? At what stage
in his show, you may be wondering, does he stare deep into the
lens of the television camera and implore his new-found flock to
send their dollars to Branson? Wouldn't it be nice to build a
Bakker motel adjacent to the caf, at least? No, that is not part of
the script this time around and if it was, you can be sure that
Bakker would be scooped up by federal agents faster than he can
say "Praise be to Je-sus!"
But we cannot let him off the hook completely. Someone has to
pay for the cost of the show.
Programming is expensive nowadays. So there it is, for those who
make it all the way to the end of the Jim Bakker hour - a gentle
request to viewers to write a cheque, large or small, to keep the
show on the air. And donations, believe it or not, are rolling in.
Don't Call Me Brother:
A Ringmaster's Escape from the Pentecostal Church

Austin Miles has been a well-known circus ringmaster for most of

his adult life. It was, he found, good preparation for his
experiences with PTL and the Assemblies of God churches. Miles
is the first ordained Assembly of God minister to leave the
movement and write an in-depth book revealing the inner
workings of this sect. This is not rumor, not innuendo. It is fact,
seen first-hand, and fully described for the first time. Don't Call
Me Brother is not a book written by an outside observer - Austin
Miles was an active participant in the evolution of the PTL Club.
- Austin Miles was on intimate terms with the entire cast of PTL's
characters and the high-tech world of Christian movers and
shakers: Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye Bakker, Pat Robertson,
Charles and Frances Hunter, Richard Dortch, John Wesley
Fletcher, Christian celebreties such as Pat Boone and Ephram
Zimbalist, Jr., and many others.
- Austin Miles opened the door on the steam room where Jim
Bakker was cavorting - in the nude - with three other men.
- Austin Miles was there when televangelism hatched its supersuccessful fund-raising schemes, and he participated in the
staged "financial crisis" telethon, during which millions of dollars
poured into the coffers of the PTL Club.
- Austin Miles watched the development of Jim Bakker's violent
mood swings and saw the chilling possibility that Jim Bakker
could have become another Jim Jones.
- Austin Miles was there when Jim Bakker started a fist fight with
his producer over the favors of the current Miss America.

Austin Miles had fame, wealth, and a wonderful family. But by the
time he finally broke free of the fanatic world of the religious
right, he had lost everything. Don't Call Me Brother is his story. A
poignant, outrageous, sometimes hilarious drama peopled with
colorful real-life characters. Building to a climax with a surprise
double-twist ending, this story is tough but fair, a must-read for
those who want to know what really happens in the world of
America's media-glitzed charismatic religions.
Note As a friend of the author Austin Miles, and having read the
book, I have no doubt over the matters he witnessed firsthand.
Although I'm an Assemblies of God minister, I recognize that in
all human organizations (churches are human organizations)
there will be fallible people with poor judgment and liable to
temptation. Austin Miles has come back to Christianity, and has
repudiated the negative attitude he expresses in his book towards
Christianity, although he still maintains what he saw was true. He
and I have had many wonderful conversations, and will continue
to do so. He is a preacher again, and travels to churches. He has
returned to Christian ministry with lessons learned and a new
attitude. Rev. Richard F. Lee.
A PBS Television documentary title "Religion and Politics" that
first aired in December of 1987 spotlighted Ronald Reagan's
interference in the Justice Department's attempted initial
investigation of Jim Bakker, as well as the investigations of the
IRS and FCC. An interesting sidelight to this cover-up concerns
George Bush. He made a trip to Charlotte to meet privately with
Jim Bakker in a hotel room. He wanted Jim to endorse him for
President on the PTL network. Jim asked him if he was a bornagain Christian to which Bush replied 'no'. Jim said that he would
only endorse Bush if he openly declared himself a born-again.
"Carter did that", Bush shot back, "and I don't want to be

classified with him." "Then I can't endorse you", Jim answered.

That refusal in March of 1985 angered Bush and proved fatal to
Jim Bakker. It was George Bush, out of revenge, who instigated
the investigation that destroyed Jim Bakker and the PTL Club. It
was not as a duty to the American public that this investigation
and conviction took place. It was done only for vengeance. This is
in keeping with Bush's CIA background, where he routinely destabilized entire countries whose governments disagreed with
him. This has been documented to me by a confidential source
with a news-wire service and who was very close to that entire
affair. (Church & State: A Secret Marriage by Austin Miles).
See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not
escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall
we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from
heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has
promised, saying, "Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but
also heaven." Now this, "Yet once more," indicates the removal
of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made,
that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore,
since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us
have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12:25-29
Fire can be a very constructive and destructive thing depends on
how its used. It does purge impurities out of certain things but it
also destroys other things leaving nothing behind. Assembly of
God preacher and Evangelist Jim Bakker presided as the king
over one of the most corrupt television ministries of the past two
decades. A successful televangelism group run by Jim and
Tammy Bakker is a testimony that Evangelical pastors sold their
own souls just to make their wallets thicker, when they were

supposed to bring God to the people. As a result Jim Bakker and

his sidekick Richard Dortch ended up in prison accused of sexual
immorality, tax evasion, and racketeering. The wave of corruption
not only affected other televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart,
but also showed a dark, dirty fight for the control of PTL among
several other prominent televangelists.
Felon Richard Dortch, senior vice-president of PTL and associate
pastor of Heritage Village Church, said pride, arrogance and
secrets led to the PTL scandal. While most people never face
temptations on the same scale, the ingredients for seemingly
smaller failures are the same, he said. Dortch said the men in
PTL's leadership felt they were above accountability. They felt
specially called by God and accountable only to Him. He said they
didn't plan the scandal; instead, it was the natural result of living
for oneself, rather than for God.
Most people are aware of Jim Bakker's $265,000 payoff to Jessica
Hahn to keep her sexual services to him a secret, his longtime
homosexual relationship with his right hand man David Taggart,
his prison sentence, his close relationship to Billy Graham, and
his lust for public spotlight.
On CNN/Larry King Live, Jan. 30, 2001 from Bonifay, Florida, Jim
Bakker, whose ministry crumbled in 1987 when it was discovered
that he used church donations to pay his secretary to hide their
sexual affair stated "I'm actually making plans to go back on
television. I haven't announced it. It's not too many weeks away.
We may be making our debut."
The Associated Press reported on December10, 2002 that the
cafe where Jim Bakker plans to carry daily broadcasts has
opened. Now, the fallen televangelist must persuade TV stations

to carry his talk show. Diners at Studio City Cafe will be the
studio audience, local and national entertainers will be featured
guests and Bakker and his wife, ordained minister Lori Graham
Bakker, will be hosts. The show will feature the 20 Christian
singers who double as wait staff, cashiers and cooks at the 260seat cafe operated by the Churchill Coffee Company. "We're not
looking at the big (networks) yet," said Chris Busch, director of
Tulsa, Okla.-based B/M/C Advertising, which is recruiting
television stations. "Jim wants steady, controlled, well-managed
growth. He'll be tweaking the show initially. One thing we know
for sure is Jim believes in excellence."
Bakker's backers, both newfound and those dating to Bakker's
scandal-riddled PTL Ministries in York County, S.C., are financing
and encouraging the project. "It's surreal to me right now. I know
there are some people who won't like me, and I don't blame
them. But since I've been in Missouri, not one person has been
mean or cruel or said a sarcastic remark to me," Bakker said.
The minister - he is unaffiliated with any denomination - returned
to Christian evangelism upon his release from federal prison in
1995 and began working with a ministry in Los Angeles. He was
convicted of mail and wire fraud 13 years ago. In recent years, he
has operated from Vernon, Fla., where he founded another
independent ministry, New Covenant Fellowship. Bakker said he
has been stunned by the outpouring of moral and financial
support and volunteer labor he has found in Branson. "I've never
been welcomed so wonderfully anywhere in my life," Bakker said.
"I'm beyond excited. I'm overwhelmed. People are just doing
things. Last week, a man that sells carpeting chased me with his
truck, and he told me he had heard me on the radio talking about
this. He said, `God told me to do whatever you asked. What can I
do for you?'"

As his fellow evangelists seemed to take their turns facing

justified criticism, Billy Graham maintained his own integrity and
the sincerity of his message. Far from publicly condemning his
peers, Billy spoke of them with concern, and even visited Jim
Bakker in prison for birds of feather stick together.
It is not known whether the Graham's, including Billy and Franklin
Graham, will be assisting Bakker in with his ventures. Franklin
came to prison over and over again to visit Jim Bakker. Franklin
Graham said, "Jim Bakker's my friend". When Bakker got out of
prison the Grahams sponsored him and paid for a house for him
to live in and gave him a car to drive.
None of the Graham's supported or comforted any of the Jim
Bakker's victims! It didn't matter to the Grahams that -Bakker
had 47 bank accounts, 6 luxury homes, $1.9 million dollar salary
and Rolls Royce and Mercedez cars.
- Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler and sexual deviate.
He fired Bakker's entire staff when he took over Praise the Lord
show. Falwell bankrupted the PTL Club calling Bakker "the
greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in two
thousand years of church history"
But Jim Bakker won't have to pay $120 million to former
followers who bought "partnerships" in his PTL tele-ministry. A
jury in North Carolina on July 23, 1996 threw out a class action
suit brought on behalf of more than 160,000 onetime believers
who paid as much as $7,000 each in the '80s to join Jim and
Tammy Faye in holy larceny.

However the Internal Revenue Service says Bakker and Messner

owe personal income taxes from the 1980s when they were
building their Praise The Lord empire reported the Charlotte
Observer. The IRS assessed the taxes after revoking the PTL
ministry's nonprofit status, said Roe Messner, Tammy Faye's
husband since 1993.
Tammy Faye Messner new husband said Jim Bakker and his
former wife didn't want to talk about the tax issues. "We don't
want to stir the pot," Messner said. He said the original tax
amount was about $500,000. Penalties and interest account for
the rest of the bill. The notices reinstating the liens list "James O.
and Tamara F. Bakker" as owing $3 million.
On his website, Jim Bakker is still being a parasite, living off
money that he steals from others, stating:
Dear Internet Friend,
It's not an accident that you have come to this page on this
website at this critical hour in the life of this ministry!
Lori and I thank you for your meaningful support. Even Moses
had the help of faithful loved ones who held up his arms to steady
him at a critical hour in his ministry (Exodus 17:12).
We need you today to hold up our arms, to steady us at this
exciting hour in the life of this growing and vital outreach. My
heart is bonded with you and the Apostle Paul who admonished
the Saints of God:
He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows
bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly

or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you,
always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an
abundance for every good work.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, NKJ
I need your help right now! Think it not strange that you are
reading these words from my heart at this very moment,
"online"! Your obedience to God's leading will be a needed
breakthrough for us right now.
Would you make a pledge to this ministry for $100?
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions for the
PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting
irregularities, took conspicuous consumption to new extremes.
PTL once spent over $100,000 for a private jet to fly the Bakker's
clothing across the country. PTL also spent more than $100 on a
purchase of cinnamon rolls because Jim and Tammy wanted the
smell of them in their hotel room. "They [Bakkers] epitomized the
excesses of the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love of glitz,
and the shamelessness--which in their case was so pure as to
almost amount to a kind of innocence. "
PTL sold "lifetime memberships" for a $1,000 or more, which
entitled buyers to a 3-night stay annually at a luxury hotel in
Heritage USA. According to the prosecution at Bakker's trial, tens
of thousands of memberships had been sold, and only one 500room hotel completed. Bakker had not only sold more "exclusive"

partnerships than could be accomodated, but had also raised

more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. The Bakker
trial revealed that a good deal of the money had gone into
operating expenses of Heritage USA, and Bakker kept $3,700,000
for himself. (Frances FitzGerald, "Jim and Tammy," The New
Yorker, April 29, 1990.)
Between 1984 and mid-1987, the Bakkers received annual
salaries of $200,000 each and Jim awarded himself over $4
million in bonuses. The Bakkers own, among other things, a
$600,000 house in Palm Springs, 4 condos in California, and a
Rolls Royce. ("Fresh Out of Miracles," Newsweek, May 11, 1987 &
"TV's Unholy Row," Time, Apr 6, 1987.)
The former televangelist preached at Central Assembly of God in
Muskegon, Mich., July 30, 2000, Religion News Service reported.
It was the first time he had been there in 30 years. "If I've ever
hurt you, I say please forgive me," Bakker told the congregation
of several hundred people during a two-hour service. "My life was
smashed, but Jesus Christ has put me back together again."
Bakker's grandfather helped start the church in the Depression,
and his cousins and their families still attend there.
Jim Bakker nor the Assembly of God with whom he was ordained
have never publicly discussed or dealt with the fact that Jim
Bakker was Bi-sexual or that his real lover was a man! Although a
contrite Jim Bakker returned to his childhood church to ask
forgiveness, he never talked about David Taggart his great male
lover! Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and
Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual evangelist John
Wesley Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He
hardly talks about James and David Taggart, the brothers who
many claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years Fletcher was

bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises and had
forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during the
"Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually
involved with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today.
So it was not surprising that Tammy Faye Bakker ( now
Messner), who divorced Bakker, would have a prominent role in
the gay pride festivities in Washington in June 2002. The former
televangelist was to judge a Tammy Faye look-alike contest,
appear at a fund-raising dinner and speak from the main stage of
the Capital Pride 2002 street festival.
There are those who believe that Tammy Faye is really a drag
queen. Once adored by viewers of the electronic church, Messner
now appears at gay-pride events nationwide, such as a Tammy
Faye look-alike contest held in Washington, D.C., recently where,
according to National Public Radio, she was "surrounded by men
in falsies and pancake makeup and...impossible to upstage."
"I'm just trying to give back to them," she says. "I...tell them
there's a God who loves them and cares for them. I told them
there's a better way out...that nothing can give you peace except
Jesus." Messner does not specifically address the issue of
homosexuality being a sin when she talks to groups of gays. "I
leave that up to the Holy Spirit because unless He speaks to
them, they won't change anyway," she said.
But Tammy Faye's former husband, Assembly of God Evangelist
Jim Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and
Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual evangelist John
Wesley Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He
hardly talks about James and David Taggart, the brothers who

many claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years or that David
Taggart was his lover and gave him blow jobs.
Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises
and had forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during
the "Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually
involved with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today
Bakker, former head of PTL Ministries and Heritage USA, served
five years in federal prison on fraud charges. He has spoken
about confession of sins, forgiveness, and reconciliation for the
last two years in churches around the country, RNS reported.
Bakker's wife, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in prison
and married his best friend, Roe Messner. Bakker, who remarried
about two years ago, is starting a ministry in Florida for children
from inner cities.
At times in prison "I felt like God had left me," Bakker said.
"That's the real problem with prosperity teaching," a cornerstone
in his television days. "If God comes to you when you prosper, do
you think he will walk away when you are poor?" he asked.
"There's a lot of false doctrine going around, and I was preaching
a lot of it."
Jim Bakker and clan were also on Larry King Live on May 30,
2000 spewing out their form of Christianity. It was a three ring
circus of fools. Bakker's son said he was " angry that people do
not allow preachers to be human." Bakker even presented a bible
as a gift to Larry King's wife.
Bakker and Messner said they had made up with each other after
the collapse of the ministry and their divorce. "I don't blame
Tammy Faye for going on with her life," and divorcing him after

he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud, Bakker said.

Messner said she had forgiven Bakker for having an affair, said he
had not deserved to go to prison, and called him "a very good
man."
Bakker was out of prison and sometimes preaches. He said his
faith grew during five years in prison, which he calls "the greatest
training and seminary and intimate relation with God that I ever
could have had." "I'm just grateful to God that we're still alive
and that Jim's happy and I'm happy," Messner said. The Bakkers'
two children, Tammy Sue Chapman and Jay Bakker, also were on
the program.
Jim Bakker, former president and founder of PTL, and Richard
Dortch, former executive vice president, both served prison
terms for fraud convictions that resulted from a failed "Lifetime
Partnerships" project for a hotel at Heritage USA. Both men have
since returned to active ministry endeavors-Dortch in Tampa,
Fla., and Bakker in Los Angeles and Charlotte, N.C.
Bakker, was convicted in 1989 of defrauding 116,000 followers
who sent him at least $1,000 each in return for promised lodging
at his religious/recreational complex, Heritage USA near
Charlotte, N.C. During his trial, prosecutors said the scheme
brought about $158 million into the Praise the Lord television
ministry that Bakker and his former wife, Tammy Faye, founded
in 1972.
Bakker helped dedicate the 10,000-seat Carpenter's Home
Church in Lakeland, Florida in 1985. The Straders went through
a major split of Carpenter's Home Church in 1989 when the
Straders refused to relinquish the financial control they had on
the ministry, the church and its assets.

After getting out from prison Baker once spoke at Carpenter's

Home church and said Strader's wife, Joyce, wrote him a letter
once a week while he was in prison. I was one of those who
helped him build PTL," said Karl Strader, "and I never did know
what he did wrong, frankly. And if he did do something wrong, I
forgive him, and I know everybody else here forgives him," said
Strader.
Karl Strader was being generous with Jim Bakker for he too
wanted absolution from these sins and crimes and those of his
family. His oldest son Daniel, 37, was arrested, tried and
sentenced to 45 years in prison in August 1995. He was convicted
of 238 felony counts for bilking 57 mostly elderly investors, some
members of the church, out of $2.3 million by selling investments
in properties that didn't exist or already had liens against them.
Dan's specialty was to pray with and prey on his victims with the
help of his father.
It is to be noted that Richard Dortch, a former Assembly of God
district superintendent and vice president of the PTL Club, who
paid Jessica Hahn off to buy her silence, led a campaign to raise
$52,000 for the defense of Dan Strader but not a penny for any
of Dan's victims. In response to all of this Paul Humphries wrote
to the author and stated:
"See, you do expect too much from our preachers and their
family. You think a lil' ole raping and plundering and driving
people to murder is wrong. You've got to lighten up, the lord
allows for preachers to twist and change the commandments or
even selectively choose which commandments are apt for that
particular time and place.

Since people are people, you can't expect them to follow all the
commandments do you? Since you can't follow all of them even
part of the time, then to hell with all of them, don't follow any of
them........of course tell the sheep to follow every one of them."
While Jeffrey K. Hadden, professor of sociology at the University
of Virginia at Charlottesville, and Anson Shupe in their book
Televangelism: Power & Politics On God's Frontier wrote:
There were many significant underlying themes to give the PTL
scandal a cheap theatrical appeal guaranteed to keep it in the
news for months. The 1987 unholy wars of televangelism brought
together most of the leading figures in syndicated religious
programming. Even Robert Schuller, whose theology is light years
and Crystal Cathedral a continent away from the Bakker action,
became involved early on when PTL counselor Norman Roy
Grutman commented that people who live in glass houses should
not cast stones-seemingly implicating Schuller as a culprit in the
alleged "hostile takeover."
The first and grandest theme tying all the other subplots together
was the fairy-tale life of the central characters themselves. The
main scene for most of the action was a fantasy world called
Heritage USA, which Jim and Tammy Faye created from the
dimes and dollars of those who sent their savings and Social
Security checks. The sad part of the Bakker fairy tale began on
March 19 when a tearful Jim told his television audience how a
very mean man was about to usurp Jim and Tammy's kingdom.
The ammunition possessed by this mean man (who was shortly
to be identified as televangelist Jimmy Swaggart) was information
about an itty-bitty affair Jim Bakker had had with a church
secretary years before.

A second significant subplot in this unholy religious soap involved

evidence of personal misconduct, mismanagement, and pillaging
of the PTL treasury. Thus, there were two dimensions to the
scandal: the Bakkers' personal "moral" lives, and their
mismanagement and misuse of Heritage USA resources. And just
when it seemed that all the sordid details had oozed out, new
disclosures and allegations of offenses emerged.
In the beginning, there was only the sexual indiscretion, when
Jim Bakker, in a moment of mental exhaustion and loneliness,
succumbed to the advances of a young seductress. The way
Bakker told the story to Jerry Falwell, he was so ashamed that he
became impotent and was unable to consummate the liaison. The
hush money he paid to the woman, a church secretary, was for
the sake of the PTL ministry, Bakker said.
Within hours, newspaper reporters were in hot pursuit of tips
about other alleged incidents of personal misconduct. Lots of
people were talking, but nobody wanted to speak on the record.
Then, on the eve of a meeting of the newly constituted PTL board
headed by Jerry Falwell at Heritage USA, rumors suggested that
Jim and Tammy Faye might return to retake possession of their
fiefdom, and this prospect led the Reverend John Ankerberg, host
of a debate format TV show broadcast from Chattanooga,
Tennessee, to tell what he knew.
Ankerberg used first "The Larry King Show," then "Nightline," to
talk generally about the sexual escapades, the mismanagement
of PTL resources, and the exorbitant salaries and bonuses paid to
the Bakkers and their closest cronies. Ankerberg was not explicit,
but he told enough to intrigue the media. After six weeks of
intensive investigative reporting, the alleged details out-Gantryed

Elmer Gantry: infidelity, homosexuality, prostitution, alcoholism,

even wife-swapping among top managers at PTL.
While confessing that all have sinned and come short of the glory
of the kingdom of God, the Bakkers were not about to answer the
litany of allegations. "Ninety-nine percent of what they [the
media] have printed or said about Jim and Tammy Bakker bears
no truth whatsoever," Tammy told a gathering of reporters in
April outside their Palm Springs retreat.
The Bakkers declined to meet their accusers. Jerry Falwell offered
them that opportunity; so did the elders of the Assemblies of
God, which conducted their own inquiry. When Bakker declined to
appear before his district presbytery to face charges, the
Assemblies of God dismissed him for "conduct unbecoming to a
minister."
Reverend G. Raymond Carlson, general superintendent of the
church, said the "alleged misconduct involving bisexual activity"
weighed heavily in the decision to unfrock Bakker. Carlson noted
further that the word alleged was used because Bakker did not
wish to defend himself.
For many people, allegations of misappropriating PTL resources
for their own personal use and the payment of huge salaries and
bonuses were far more serious charges than the allegations of
sexual misconduct.
The Bakkers had appointed a rubber-stamp board of directors to
oversee their management practices. In return for acquiescing to
Jim and Tammy's whims, several of these board members
received tens of thousands of dollars in fees, bonuses, and
contributions to their own projects.

In 1986 the Bakkers were paid $1.9 million; since 1984, a total of
$4.8 million had been paid to them. In addition, PTL monies were
used for expensive homes, a palatial suite at the Heritage Grand
Hotel, automobiles, lavish wardrobes, vacations, and parties.
The Bakkers' closest associates were privy to their high living at
the expense of PTL partners. They, too, were well paid. Reverend
Richard Dortch, the Assemblies of God minister who many
thought had brought some order and organization to the rapidly
growing Heritage USA operations, was paid $240,000 in 1985 and
$350,000 in 1986. He received approximately $270,000 during
the first three months of 1987 before Falwell sacked him. David
Taggart, a twenty-nine-year-old "personal aide" to Bakker,
received $360,000 in 1986; Jim Bakker's personal secretary
received $160,000.
And then there were "consultants." James Taggart, interior
decorator and David Taggart's brother, was paid $10,000 a
month, but, according to the new PTL management, he had
performed no services "for months."' Peter B. Teeley, press
secretary to George Bush until 1984, was paid $120,000 for
eighteen months to serve as a Washington "liaison"; apparently
there were no written records of any services performed.
Assembly of God Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, had been accused
of complicity in the "diabolical plot" to take over the Bakker
ministry by Jim Bakker. Swaggart said that he had initiated a
church inquiry into Bakker's personal conduct, but that it was
"absurd and ridiculous" to suggest that he wanted to take over
PTL.

He also stated " I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed. The gospel of

Jesus Christ has never sunk to such a level as it has today. We've
got a dear brother in Tulsa, Oklahoma, perched up in a tower
telling people that if they don't send money that God's going to
kill him, then we got this soap opera being carried out live down
in South Carolina all in the name of God. (. Jeffrey A. Frank and
Lloyd Grove, "The Raging Battles Of the Evangelicals,"
Washington Post, March 25, 1987.)
In an interview on "The Larry King Show," Swaggart claimed that
Bakker's downfall represented a "very glad day, because this
cancer has been excised that I feel has caused the body of Christ
untold reproach. ' ( Associated Press, "Swaggart Calls Bakker
'Cancer' of Christ," The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Virginia),
March 25, 1987.)
These comments aroused Oral Roberts's ire, and he blasted
Swaggart while defending Bakker. Foolish Oral Roberts forgave
and defended Jim Bakker for something that was not forgivable.
God does not forgive those who rob, rape and murder in the
house of God as Eli and his two sons were not forgiven.
Something that is in the very bible that they sometime use and is
true.
Oral Roberts forgave his friend, Jim Bakker, for robbing and
raping in the house of God. Roberts made large contributions to
the Praise the Lord (PTL) ministry of Jim and Tammy Bakker
when they fell into hard times during the 1987 scandal. (Sara
Diamond, Spiritual Warfare (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989).
Then he wondered why the City of Faith of faith was not finished,
the law school was not accredited and ORU incurred a 40 million
dollar debt. (Robert's aides confirmed annual donations of $58
million in 1986, but the Association's Internal Revenue Service

returns show that the organization has been losing money

steadily since 1986)
Jim Bakker always felt that people were conspiring against himespecially journalists, politicians and judges. It was reported in
Christianity Today in an article by Terry Mattingly's religion
column for 12/04/96.
" After the 1987 collapse of his empire, he said he had been
betrayed by other televangelists. "I sorrowfully acknowledge that
seven years ago ... I was wickedly manipulated by treacherous
former friends and colleagues who victimized me with the aid of a
female confederate," he said. "They conspired to betray me into a
sexual encounter at a time of great stress in my marital life. ... I
was set up as part of a scheme to co-opt me and obtain some
advantage for themselves over me in connection with their hope
for position in the ministry."
In other words, the first domino at PTL was a scheme that
preceded Bakker's 1980 sexual liaison with Jessica Hahn, a
conspiracy within his inner circle that preceded "Pearlygate." Yet
Bakker has nothing new to say about these "friends and
colleagues" and their scheme. In particular, he downplays the
role of the bisexual evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who
arranged the tryst with Hahn, and he hardly mentions James and
David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in
his final PTL years.
In his book, Bakker confesses many sins. He repents of his
"health and wealth" theology, saying he sinfully twisted scripture.
He offers 647 pages of near-stream-of-consciousness details
about lessons he learned during his trial, divorce and prison
years. But he continues to avoid some questions.

"For most Pentecostal and charismatic people, the most serious

questions about Jim Bakker were all those allegations of moral
misconduct. ... People haven't forgotten that," said historian
Vinson Synan of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. "There
does appear to have been a kind of subterranean, homosexual
world inside PTL that has never been fully described. That's where
so many questions remain."
Mind you Jerry Falwell did conspire against Jim Bakker. By 1987
Jerry Falwell Ministries had reached its peak but Jerry Falwell
wanted more. Jim Bakker then owned the largest Christian
television network in the world known as the PTL Network, being
based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yet what was called "A Hostile
Takeover of the PTL Network" was being formulated.
That year, Jerry Falwell and his then attorney entered the home
of PTL founders Jim and Tammy Bakker stating they had evidence
of a Hostile Takeover of the PTL Network. The person Falwell
accused of planning the Hostile Takeover of the PTL Network was
none other than the only man in the world with a larger ministry
than Jerry Falwell. Falwell convinced Jim and Tammy Bakker that
if they would turn over the PTL Network to him for a time he
would protect PTL from the Hostile Takeover.
In Jim Bakker's book entitled, "I WAS WRONG", in Chapter 7
the chapter labeled "THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER", Bakker stated
that "there was indeed a Hostile Takeover being planned for the
PTL Network, but it wasn't being orchestrated in the offices of
Jimmy Swaggart in Baton Rouge, Louisanna. Jim Bakker goes on
to point out that it was Jerry Falwell who had designs on PTL.
Richard Dortch, was Jim Bakker's right hand man on the PTL
Network. Richard Dortch stated on the Late Steve Brown Show

that "if Jerry Falwell would just admit that he tried to get the PTL
Network it was a bad choice on my part please forgive me
it would send out a breath of fresh air in the body of Christ". Jim
Bakker's wife Tammy, who has now remarried, has stated
repeatedly how Falwell's actions in the PTL situation has caused
untold harm to her family. Jim Bakker even went to prison for
years. Jimmy Swaggart made an appeal to have Jim Bakker
relieved from his prison sentence after receiving a phone call
from Jim Bakker's son, Jamie. {That is in Bakker's book as well.}

Jim Bakker's Grahams' Connection

As his fellow evangelists seemed to take their turns facing
justified criticism, Billy Graham maintained his own integrity and
the sincerity of his message. Far from publicly condemning his
peers, Billy spoke of them with concern, and even visited Jim
Bakker in prison. When his Crusades would generate more
offerings than he had anticipated, both Billy and Ruth gave their
share to needy organizations. As for his own efforts to integrate
television into his ministry, Billy hosted a half-hour weekly
program in 1951 but discontinued it a few years later because of
the immense commitment of time it required. Afterwards he
telecast his Crusades but never again tried a weekly program.
(The Grahams are no different from Jim Bakker. They are liars;
deceivers and thieves who claim to have integrity but are false.
The Grahams are also scoundrels and money lovers who will not
reveal their total compensations as chairmen's of non-profit
organization. Of course as parasites they have not worked in the
private sector but have lived off the tax-free donations of others.)

On the Graham family Jim Bakker stated - Franklin came to

prison over and over again to see me. He wrote me every month.
The funny thing is, when he'd come I'd ask him to teach and
preach in the chapel. I didn't want to just have him to myself in
the visiting room. And the chaplain always would say to him,
"Now don't give an invitation to accept Christ and don't admit you
know Jim Bakker." He broke the rules every time, both of them.
You know when you're down in prison and Franklin comes and
says, "Jim Bakker's my friend," it would just elevate my life for
that moment. And then he'd give an invitation to accept Christ,
and guys would come to the Lord.
When I was transferred to my last prison, Franklin said he wanted
to help me out when I got out-with a job, a house to live in, and
a car. It was my fifth Christmas in prison. I thought it over and
said, "Franklin, you can't do this. It will hurt you. The Grahams
don't need my baggage." He looked at me and he said, "Jim, you
were my friend in the past and you are my friend now. If anyone
doesn't like it, I'm looking for a fight."
So when I got out of prison the Grahams sponsored me and paid
for a house for me to live in and gave me a car to drive. The first
Sunday out, Ruth Graham called the halfway house I was living in
at the Salvation Army and asked permission for me to go to the
Montreat Presbyterian Church with her that Sunday morning.
When I got there, the pastor welcomed me and sat me with the
Graham family. There were like two whole rows of them-I think
every Graham aunt and uncle and cousin was there. The organ
began playing and the place was full except for a seat next to me.
Then the doors opened and in walked Ruth Graham. She walked
down that aisle and sat next to inmate 07407-058. I had only
been out of prison 48 hours, but she told the world that morning
that Jim Bakker was her friend.

Afterwards, she had me up to their cabin for dinner. When she

asked me for some addresses, I pulled this envelope out of my
pocket to look for them-in prison you're not allowed to have a
wallet, so you just carry an envelope. She asked, "Don't you have
a wallet?" And I said, "Well, yeah, this is my wallet." After five
years of brainwashing in prison you think an envelope is a wallet.
She walked into the other room and came back and said, "Here's
one of Billy's wallets. He doesn't need it. You can have it." It
reminded me of the time I was in prison when she took all of
Billy's Bibles in his library he wasn't using and gave them to me
to give to other inmates.
On Larry King live in the fall of 1998 Southern Baptist Evangelist
Billy Graham was insulted when he was compared with TV
Evangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker and their
sex scandals. Billy Graham said that he did not do those things
which Jim Bakker or Jim Swaggart did - a statement that turned
out to be a lie! For Ned Graham's own son turned out to be no
different than Jim Bakker.
Even though a President of an Evangelical Ministry must be
blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of
good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not
violent, and not greedy for money, Ned Graham the son of Billy
Graham, Southern Baptist minister, president East Gates
International, a group that distributes Bibles in China told
Christianity Today in an interview that he had abused alcohol and
spent an "inappropriate amount of time" with two women on his
staff.
Grace Community Church, Southern Baptist Convention, in
Auburn, Washington--which counted Ned Graham, his wife, and

their two sons as members established in 1999 the fact that Ned
Graham was an adulterer, alcoholic, wife abuser, and drug user
and revoked Graham's ministerial credentials. It directed Graham
to stop using the title reverend.
Yet in a style reminiscent of Jimmy Swaggart, who refused to be
defrocked by the Assembly of God denomination, Ned Graham
left that congregation for another church.
Most of the staff and board members of East Gates International
resigned amid controversies. East Gates, in Sumner, Wash.,
withdrew its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial
Accountability after Ned replaced the board members with his
sister Ruth Graham McIntyre, brother-in-law Stephan Tchividjian,
and business leader Peter Lowe.
Christianity Today founded by Billy Graham did not report on one
of its own pastors Ollin Collins of Harvest Baptist Church in Fort
Worth, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's board
chairman. A man who resigned amid sexual misconduct
allegations when he was accused of having sexual relationships
with two women who sought counseling.
But it did report about the adultery of a black man and a National
Baptist but not about the adultery of a white man and Southern
Baptist. An adultery which was more hideous and gross because
Collins raped unsuspecting trusting women, while Lyons
adulterous relationships were consensual. It has been said that
Lyons will go down in the history books as "Hugh Hefner of the
New Testament."
http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/US/Henry_Lyons

Now concerning the fallen hero, the church had suspended Pastor
Collins with pay pending an investigation. He resigned from his
board position one day after a story in the Fort Worth StarTelegram reported the women's allegations and their intent to
sue. Southwestern is the world's largest evangelical seminary,
with 3,000 students on eight campuses.
But of course neither the Seminary nor the Church did nothing for
the real female victims but they did help and console the
aggressor? Just like Billy Graham stated about Bill Clinton "I
forgive him . . . because I know the frailty of human nature, and
especially a strong, vigorous young man like he is. "He has such
a tremendous personality that I think the ladies just go wild over
him."
While Jeffrey K. Hadden, professor of sociology at the University
of Virgina at Charlottesville, and Anson Shupe in their book
Televangelism: Power & Politics On God& Ch 1: Getting Saved
from the Televangelists wrote:
The first and grandest theme tying all the other subplots together
was the fairy-tale life of the central characters themselves. The
main scene for most of the action was a fantasy world called
Heritage USA, which Jim and Tammy Faye created from the
dimes and dollars of those who sent their savings and Social
Security checks. The sad part of the Bakker fairy tale began on
March 19 when a tearful Jim told his television audience how a
very mean man was about to usurp Jim and Tammy's kingdom.
The ammunition possessed by this mean man (who was shortly
to be identified as televangelist Jimmy Swaggart) was information
about an itty-bitty affair Jim Bakker had had with a church
secretary years before. Details of the takeover plot unfolded

gradually; Swaggart was about to blow the whistle on Bakker to

the church elders of the Assemblies of God Church.
This would lead to an investigation that would result in Bakker's
being stripped of his ordination. The shame brought by all of this
was not deserved, of course (God and Tammy had both forgiven
Jim years before). A little-known clause in the Heritage USA
charter bequeaths the entire kingdom to the Assemblies of God in
the event that Jim and Tammy are not able to reign. Swaggart,
being the most powerful preacher in the Assemblies of God
alliance, thus would be the one to move in and take over.
A white knight named Jerry Falwell agreed to take the kingdom
into custody to protect it from Swaggart's evil intentions. Two
months later, when Bakker advised Falwell that he was ready to
return home, Jerry replied, "Not now nor ever." Jim and Tammy
brushed back the tears and told "Nightline's" Ted Koppel and 23
million Americans- who had stayed up late to see this dramatic
episode-how they had been tricked by Falwell.
Bakker now claimed that Falwell, the man from Liberty Mountain,
had become a thief in the night rather than a white knight. It was
Falwell all along, they said, not the honky-tonk preacher from the
Louisiana bayou, Jimmy Swaggart, who was the real villain.
Falwell, with his slick-talking New York lawyer, had tricked Jim
and Tammy Faye into believing that the only way they could save
their kingdom was to relinquish it to Jerry-temporarily.
Exhausted and bewildered, Jim and Tammy Bakker had tearfully
given up their magic kingdom with its Rolls-Royces and furs and
goldfixtured dressing rooms and presidential suite and credit
cards and daily starring roles in their own "Wheel of Fortune."

Ted Koppel had warned Jim and Tammy at the beginning of the
"Nightline" program "not to wrap themselves in the Bible." By the
end of the program, it was Koppel who had been wrapped in the
mesmerizing melodramatic tragicomic fantasy the couple had
spun.
Playing to Koppel and the huge television audience with words
that sounded ever so sweet and loving, Jim Bakker now declared
war against Falwell. They just wanted to come home to Heritage
USA, but if Jerry Falwell wouldn't let them, they might start a
new Shangri-La in the California desert near their Palm Springs
hideaway.
Koppel advised them that this might be difficult in light of reports
from Heritage USA that the mail was running overwhelmingly in
support of Falwell's measures to save the spiritual Disneyland. "If
the people don't want us back, if they want Jerry Falwell, then
they should support Jerry Falwell," said an emotional Bakker. ". .
. But if they don't, they should support Jim and Tammy
Bakker.''l3 The Bakkers seemed genuinely unable to grasp the
reality of the tragedy that had befallen them, to say nothing of its
impact on others.
A second significant subplot in this unholy religious soap involved
evidence of personal misconduct, mismanagement, and pillaging
of the PTL treasury. Thus, there were two dimensions to the
scandal: the Bakkers' personal "moral" lives, and their
mismanagement and misuse of Heritage USA resources. And just
when it seemed that all the sordid details had oozed out, new
disclosures and allegations of offenses emerged.
In the beginning, there was only the sexual indiscretion, when
Jim Bakker, in a moment of mental exhaustion and loneliness,

succumbed to the advances of a young seductress. The way

Bakker told the story to Jerry Falwell, he was so ashamed that he
became impotent and was unable to consummate the liaison. The
hush money he paid to the woman, a church secretary, was for
the sake of the PTL ministry, Bakker said.
Within hours, newspaper reporters were in hot pursuit of tips
about other alleged incidents of personal misconduct. Lots of
people were talking, but nobody wanted to speak on the record.
Then, on the eve of a meeting of the newly constituted PTL board
headed by Jerry Falwell at Heritage USA, rumors suggested that
Jim and Tammy Faye might return to retake possession of their
fiefdom, and this prospect led the Reverend John Ankerberg, host
of a debate format TV show broadcast from Chattanooga,
Tennessee, to tell what he knew.
Ankerberg used first "The Larry King Show," then "Nightline," to
talk generally about the sexual escapades, the mismanagement
of PTL resources, and the exorbitant salaries and bonuses paid to
the Bakkers and their closest cronies. Ankerberg was not explicit,
but he told enough to intrigue the media. After six weeks of
intensive investigative reporting, the alleged details out-Gantryed
Elmer Gantry: infidelity, homosexuality, prostitution, alcoholism,
even wife-swapping among top managers at PTL.
While confessing that all have sinned and come short of the glory
of the kingdom of God, the Bakkers were not about to answer the
litany of allegations. "Ninety-nine percent of what they [the
media] have printed or said about Jim and Tammy Bakker bears
no truth whatsoever," Tammy told a gathering of reporters in
April outside their Palm Springs retreat.

The Bakkers declined to meet their accusers. Jerry Falwell offered

them that opportunity; so did the elders of the Assemblies of
God, which conducted their own inquiry. When Bakker declined to
appear before his district presbytery to face charges, the
Assemblies of God dismissed him for "conduct unbecoming to a
minister." Reverend G. Raymond Carlson, general superintendent
of the church, said the "alleged misconduct involving bisexual
activity" weighed heavily in the decision to unfrock Bakker. 15
Carlson noted further that the word alleged was used because
Bakker did not wish to defend himself.
For many people, allegations of misappropriating PTL resources
for their own personal use and the payment of huge salaries and
bonuses were far more serious charges than the allegations of
sexual misconduct.
The Bakkers had appointed a rubber-stamp board of directors to
oversee their management practices. In return for acquiescing to
Jim and Tammy's whims, several of these board members
received tens of thousands of dollars in fees, bonuses, and
contributions to their own projects.
In 1986 the Bakkers were paid $1.9 million; since 1984, a total of
$4.8 million had been paid to them. In addition, PTL monies were
used for expensive homes, a palatial suite at the Heritage Grand
Hotel, automobiles, lavish wardrobes, vacations, and parties.
The Bakkers' closest associates were privy to their high living at
the expense of PTL partners. They, too, were well paid. Reverend
Richard Dortch, the Assemblies of God minister who many
thought had brought some order and organization to the rapidly
growing Heritage USA operations, was paid $240,000 in 1985 and
$350,000 in 1986. He received approximately $270,000 during

the first three months of 1987 before Falwell sacked him. David
Taggart, a twenty-nine-year-old "personal aide" to Bakker,
received $360,000 in 1986; Jim Bakker's personal secretary
received $160,000.
And then there were "consultants." James Taggart, interior
decorator and David Taggart's brother, was paid $10,000 a
month, but, according to the new PTL management, he had
performed no services "for months."' Peter B. Teeley, press
secretary to George Bush until 1984, was paid $120,000 for
eighteen months to serve as a Washington "liaison"; apparently
there were no written records of any services performed.
When the Bakkers departed, the financial records of the
organization were in shambles-as they probably had been for
years. No fewer than forty-seven separate checking accounts
were found in the first days of the Falwell takeover. "The books
are a mess," proclaimed Harry Hargrave, the Dallas-based
consultant Falwell hired to become PTL's new chief executive
officer.
Noted Jerry Nims (Falwell's CEO for the "Old Time Gospel Hour" in
Lynchburg), who came in to help dig out, "This was a business
organization that was totally out of control. 20 Added Nims, "For
these folks, there were no rules. You're not talking about people
nudging over the line. There was absolutely no line.... It was
fiscal sin."
Early on, it appeared that $92 million was missing. As the
financial records of Heritage USA were consolidated and audited,
much of this money was accounted for, but then evidence of
unpaid bills began to grow. By early June, outstanding debts were

estimated at $70 million owed to 1,400 creditors, and $23 million

of this debt was delinquent.
Independent of the struggle between Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell
was the unsightly scene of other members of the Protestant cloth
taking sides and launching verbal missiles at one another. In
addition to the principals of the electronic church, there emerged
a large cast of walkon characters seeking a moment of glory in
front of the camera.
1COR 10:6 Now these things became our examples, to the intent
that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.
COPIED FROM http://www.christiannews.0catch.com/bakker.htm

Tammy Faye Messner Dies at 65 Unhealed

AP - Sat, 21 Jul 2007
By STEVE HARTSOE

Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her

husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and
then watched it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
Messner had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently
spread to her lungs. She died peacefully Friday at her home near
Kansas City, Mo., said Joe Spotts, her manager and booking
agent.
A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where
her ashes were interred, he said.
She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying
she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your
life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But
she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the
doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.
In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an
emaciated Messner -- still using her trademark makeup -- said, "I

believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm
going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner
said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good
brain space."
For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband
Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara,
became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s
America.
She divorced her husband of 30 years, with whom she had two
children, in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions
from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood
for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."
Jim Bakker said in a statement that his ex-wife "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," he said. "That is the comfort I can give to all who
loved her."
Messner's second husband also served time in prison. She
married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the
Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C.,
in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he
spent about two years in prison.
Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She
did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an
inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of
a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy
Faye: Death Defying."
"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the
experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.
More recently, Tammy Faye kept in the public eye via her Web
site.
"I cry out to the Lord knowing that many of you are praying for
me," Messner wrote in a July 16 post in which she indicated she
weighed 65 pounds. "In spite of it all, I get dressed and go out to
eat. ... I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup!
When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!"

In 2004, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life,"

co-starring with rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and
others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy
was when they met and they became friends.
Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the
Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.
"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional
material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."
In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry
that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show,"
part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the
country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall,
convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several
real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.
Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst
with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.
Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through
five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.
Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000
"lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but
did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in
proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting
$3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry
was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000
to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.
Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy
counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later
reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's
decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my
heart. I couldn't eat for days."
While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the
public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance,
including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an airconditioned doghouse.
There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt
read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the
lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of
lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.

In a 1992 letter to her New Covenant Church in Orlando, Fla., she

explained why she finally was seeking a divorce.
"For years I have been pretending that everything is all right,
when in fact I hurt all the time," she wrote.
"I cannot pretend anymore."
In the end, there wasn't any property to divide, her
attorney said. The Bakkers lost their luxury homes in North
Carolina, California and Tennessee, their fleet of Cadillacs
and Mercedeses, and their vintage Rolls-Royce.
Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as
Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in
International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She
was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star
Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.
She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it
off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.
"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier,
why can't I do this?"
She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central
Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet
act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist
Protestant message to millions.
A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show"
with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996.
Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon
cancer.
She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because
she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her
makeup even in surgery.
"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful
doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and
came out fully made up."
Survivors include her husband and her two children, Jamie
Charles Bakker of New York City and Tammy Sue Chapman of
Charlotte.
Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial
service for the coming weeks, but that nothing had been finalized
Saturday.

Messner divorced televangelist Jim Bakker in 1992, while he was

serving a sentence for financial fraud. The couple had founded a
Christian retreat in Fort Mill, S.C., and built a multimillion-dollar
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