According to The New York Times, His latest brand extensions include the Riverview Community Bank in Minnesota, a "Christian financial institution" whose deposits have grown from $5-million (U.S.) to more than $75-million in the past 18 months, and the chain of Curves fitness centres (based in Waco, Tex.), which Entrepreneur magazine calls the "fastest growing franchise in the world" (and whose born-again founder Gary Heavin donates 10 per cent of profits to Operation Save America, a radical-right anti-abortion group). Said Heavin in an interview with Today's Christian: "I couldn't dream this big . . . but I serve a God who is." .........***
Heavin said he and his wife have given away some $10 million of their money this year, much of it to health clinics and organizations that promote abstinence, prenatal care and pregnancy programs. He calls himself "pro-woman and pro-choice."
At the annual Curves convention in Las Vegas this month, one of the topics was "the fallout from my values," Heavin said.
"Out of 5,700 people who were there, about 20 were angry at me," he said. "That is a testament not so much that they agree with me, but that they are reasonable people."
At the same time, Heavin is credited with shaking up the fitness center industry.
The Curves phenomenon has "forever altered the landscape of the worldwide fitness industry," wrote John McCarthy, executive director of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association.
It has also spurred on a wave of copycat fitness chains that cater to women, said Don DeBolt, president of the International Franchise Association.
For Heavin, Curves has made him a wealthy man.
He has a 1,000-acre ranch near President Bush’s ranch, and his own jet, helicopter and three hot air balloons. In the past year, he and his wife have given nearly $170,000 to the Republican Party and congressional candidates, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Heavin intends to keep the company growing........*** - Foster's Daily Democrat, NH
Well according to atheist PETA members, Jesus was a vegetarian. They must have overlooked the story about the loaves and the fish that He used to feed the crowd.
Just damn. If Jim "Bakker" didn't have a sound alike name to James "Baker", we probably wouldn't have been so inundated with the news of the "scandal".
Robert Tilton's scandals never made nearly the ripples in the national news.
The PTL scandal let them slam Christians AND the Reagan administration. "It's just sex", isn't it?
Why didn't Jesse Jackson's scandal of paying for his bastard children with charity monies generate the same level of coverage?
Heck, Jesse's got about as much credibility as a religious figure.
Jordan S. Rubin, the author of The Maker's Diet, calls it a "40-day health 'experience' that will change your life forever." A self-described "biblical health coach," and a messianic Jew, Rubin created the diet during his efforts to overcome chronic Crohn's disease, which had wasted him at 19 into an emaciated 111-pound skeleton. According to Rubin, his "healing and restoration" began when he discovered "the diet and health secrets of the world's greatest Physician."And what did the Doctor order? Surprise, surprise: Drawing from specific passages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Maker's Diet turns out to be kosher, sprinkled with New Age-y preferences for "living" and unprocessed foods. That means no pork ("unclean," Lev. 11:7-8), no shellfish (same, Lev. 11:9-10) and no animals that "chew the cud" but do not have cloven or split hooves (yup -- horses and camels are dirty, Lev. 11:4). Sure, extremely observant Jews who subsist on boiled flunken and pray all day aren't the most vigorous looking specimens in the modern world but, hey, these are His commandments. It's all about what Jesus would eat.
They use a diet proscribed by an observant Jew to slam Jesus' followers as odd? The venomous bigotry of the author drips from every paragraph.
Why doesn't this same "journalist" take muslims to task for their dietary restriction on pork? muslims don't prohibit pork because of possible contaminated meat, they ban it because eating pig MAKES you behave like a slovenly pig:
Consumption of swine-flesh reduces the feeling of shame and as such the standard of modesty. Those nations, which consume pork habitually, have a low standard of morality with the result that virginity, chastity and bashfulness are becoming a thing of the past in Europe today.
Why single Christians out? Because it is politically correct to ridicule them in America.