The other day, I saw disgraced Televangelist Jim Bakker on TV as I was flipping through the channels one afternoon. Bakker, of course, is the preacher who, along with his wife Tammy Faye, built "PTL" - a "Praise the Lord" TV show that spawned a theme park - which went belly-up after several scandals. Bakker later spent time in prison.
But he's been out for years, and he's back on the air with a new TV show and a new "church."
On the show, Bakker was standing on a set which resembled the Home Shopping Network, telling viewers that if the USA was ever hit with several "EMP events" (an electro-magnetic pulse, created by the burst of a nuclear weapon over an area) it could leave 90% of Americans dead within 5 years.
This may be scientifically true, but the reason why he was bringing it up was clear. He was on a set filled with "prepper" materials urging people to prepare for such an event, like having 90-days of powered food and a solar-powered generator (not horribly powerful, I'm guessing.) Of course, he was hawking them all through his 'ministry' by scaring his flock in the audience and on TV.
Bakker even went so far to say that the solar generator "will be your best friend, besides Jesus." How pathetic.
For Bakker or any other 'minister' to scare people about the future - using scary video footage of nuclear weapons or even using the false teaching of a bloody and violent "Tribulation" period in the future after a "return" of Jesus Christ is unconscionable.
What a waste of time, effort and energy to spend time talking about this rather than the ACTUAL Gospel/good news that Jesus wants us to love and serve one another just as we would love ourselves, and to love God.
But I guess those "teachings of Jesus" aren't as sexy as a nuclear holocaust.
Just a note here. I met the late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner in the early 1990s, after she divorced Jim Bakker. She seemed like a lovely woman and I'm sure she meant well. Maybe Jim Bakker meant well, too. She was mercilessly teased for her over-use of makeup, which was cruel. The fact that she and her husband believed in a grotesque and false religion absent of moral teaching, based on fear, a hatred of good works, and grounded in greed, fueled by too much cash flowing in from their followers is what was truly shameful.
