Posted on 02/21/2005 11:31:30 PM PST by Borges
LOS ANGELES -- Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died. He was 75.
Scott died Monday after suffering a stroke, family spokesman Robert Emmers said.
For three decades, Scott was pastor of Los Angeles University Cathedral, a Protestant congregation of more than 15,000 members housed in a landmark downtown building.
In the mid-1970s, Scott began hosting a nightly live television broadcast of Bible teaching. His nightly talk show and Sunday morning church services were aired on radio and television stations to about 180 countries around the world by his University Network.
In some of his speeches, he would use chalkboards covered with Greek and Hebrew and deliver complex lectures on the Biblical languages to make points about the meaning of faith.
"It's a college-level classroom in the Bible," he once said.
Scott did take stands on other controversial subjects, including the war in Iraq, which he supported.
"Iraq is a threat to the world," he said in a 2003 Web address. "So kick the hell out of 'em, George."
Scott was most recognizable by his mane of white hair and scruffy beard. He also never stuck to a conventional format for his show - he once wore glasses with eyes pasted on them and sometimes smoked on the show. On his Web site, he simply said about himself, "What you see is what you get."
Scott also was a philanthropist. He was involved with Rebuild LA, the Richard Pryor Burn Foundation and the Southwest Museum. In 2002, Scott gave $20,000 that helped save Museum in Black, which has some 5,000 items from the slave and civil rights eras, from eviction.
Born in Idaho in 1929, Scott later moved to Northern California and earned a doctorate in philosophies of education from Stanford University in 1957, according to his Web site. He was the author of more than 20 books and also was a painter.
Scott is survived by his wife, Melissa.
Services were pending.
Rest in peace, Dr. Scott. You served Him well. Your insight and openness in revealing the truth of the translations of His Word will be missed. Thank you for helping me to know my God better.
I remember him before he had the scruffy beard and smoked his cigars on camera while "teaching." I remember when all that started happening. He got in some tax trouble and he began railing against the Calirfornia Tax Board and he'd fill his set with dozens of wind up monkeys banging their drums and call them the Attorney General.
He started railing against the Attorney General all the time on camera and that's when he grew his beard and all.
I remember he'd not really preach the word, but he'd teach nonsense like British Israelism -- that the lost tribes of Israel went to Britain and the Scots and English were the real Jews of the Bible.
Overall he seems to have been a character who didn't really do overtly negative things, unlike the charlatans on TV. But really, it's hard to know what he about about -- other than being about Gene Scott.
Saw him on the tube a few times. Always figured he do something like offer rides on Hale-Bopp or for handing out free Kool-Aide.
I'd been checking the alt.fan.gene-scott these past several months, reading the latest comments [re his illness] from ex-devotees. He had prostrate cancer and it was only a matter of time.
This guy probably would have pulled a Jim Jones if he was well enough to orchestrate it. I wonder how many of his brainwashed cultists will try to join him? Sad...
I happend to catch him around the time of the Heaven's Gate cult mass suicides, and he basically called them freaks, kooks, and weirdos. He was generally known for not mincing words. LOL
I have to admit, it's kinda freaky seeing Melissa wearing a big toboggan cap, dark shades, talking about the death of her husband, and ending the announcement with "Get on the phones!"
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I remember watching him on the old satellite dish years ago, preaching some of the more bizarre ideas I had ever heard. Seemed every cultish gimmick from Pyramidology to the Bermuda Triangle was somehow woven into the web of religion and fantasy that he talked about. I recall thinking, "This is what charisma is," and wondering what it was about the man that made you want to watch him and consider some of his ideas. I never figured it out, but it was there.
I saw him on my local cable TV community access channel back in the 1980s. His speaking style and presentation of his beliefs intrigued me initially, but when he started the "pyramid timetables" series I must admit that I was fascinated by the content of his interpretation. Numbers, as in inches and feet relating to days, months, and years in history, can be interpreted to mean almost anything you want.
Dr. Scott mesmerized me moreso than say for instance, the Bakker's of PTL fame, or the Crouch's of TBN or just about any televangelists on TV aside from Joel Osteen, or Charles Stanley. Osteen or Stanley are what I am accustomed to every Sunday. Dr. Scott was probably more comic relief for me, until he was "preaching" about something that piqued my interest.
HUH?
Too true.
My cable "lost" him soon after that.
The last year I've been watching him frenetically write Hebrew characters on a whiteboard and emphatically pound them as though that would make me understand whatever it was he was trying to teach me....:))
He was a hoot. Remember his "art auction"? He auctioned off a bunch of crap that looked like a dirty-minded 7-year old drew it. He announced that "My Momma told me I could sh*t in jars and sell it!" Remember his telathon with biker-looking guys answering the phones? I also remember the Pyramid theories (wasn't there some buried treasure under them?)and footage of him bouncing around on a horse. He was on a local channel for a few months until they threw him off for non-payment.
Im curious as he wrote hebrew did he do it left to right or right to left?
right to left
I'd put Robert Tilton right up there with Dr. Scott as far as the mesmerizing factor goes. Interesting contrast of styles, Scott was a real scholar, Tilton is a snake oil salesman.
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