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 $20,000 that helped save Museum in Black, which has some 5,000 items from the slave and civil rights eras, from eviction.
Born in Idaho in 1929, Scott later moved to Northern California and earned a doctorate in philosophies of education from Stanford University in 1957, according to his Web site. He was the author of more than 20 books and also was a painter.
Scott is survived by his wife, Melissa.
Services were pending.
OHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!!!
I used to delight in Gene Scott. He'd occupy the Death Zone for television, 1-3 in the morning, and he'd have this WAYYYY out there expositions on how the Pyramids related to Jesus and how they both connected to Spiderman.
Sitting there, DEMANDING that 5 people pledge 1000$ or he wouldn't speak any more that night. And sure enough, until he got those five phone calls, he'd just sit there, blowing cigar smoke at the camera.
A true American classic.
Sounds like a real character. I wonder if he was the guy I used to listen to on short wave circa 1994. Sounds a lot like him.
If he preached Christ crucified dead and risen again for our sins, then that is the Gospel...and if he also believed that, then, I think he was a Christian. I sure hope so. And I hope there are cigars in heaven.
In the back of my mind I was wondering (without knowing anything about this guy) if maybe he was blowing that smoke in order to underscore that one's walk with Christ cannot be judged by extra-Biblical standards. Conceptually, the selling of indulgences is NO different from the "no cigars" and "no profanity" crowd. Sounds to me like maybe Scott was trying to tweek the Protestant piety crowd such that they could understand that TRULY we are only saved by Grace and not by works, period (and that maybe they can understand that trying to merit salvation is not a Catholic thing, it is a human thing....).
Just a thought. Could be true.
Could also be that the guy just liked a cigar and didn't care what anyone thought. Wanted to be on TV and to teach and didn't give a rat's ass what anyone thought. And for that matter, as long as he is staying up late to teach, why not ask for donations?
I wish I had had the privilege of hearing this guy.
No, it was more those whacky theories about how the Sphinx's dimensions showed that Mary was the Virgin Mother, and how they both related to the Incredible Hulk.
That, and his constant demands for money. From a blogger's site:
I remember the first time I saw Doctor Gene Scott of Pasadena, CA. He was broadcasting from one of his TV stations. Back in the early 80's he had at least three: Pasadena, West Hartford, CN and somewhere outside of San Francisco where I was living.
I've always been a fan of televised Christianity. When I saw Dr. Scott he looked ordinary enough. Suit and tie in a plain room with a blackboard. He was full of wrath but that has always been part of the stock and trade of preachers, pests, imams, & etc.
But what had roused his righteous wrath was unique. Someone had just given Jimmy Swaggart a gold Rolex watch. This was back before Jerry Lee Lewis' cousin got caught. Dr. Scott wasn't outraged at the waste of money. He was pissed because no one had given him an expensive watch.
He was inviting a believing soul to understand God's will and give him a gold Rolex. I was delighted. He fulminated on and on about it. I can't remember if it was this telecast or another where he exploded that people could "go down the slimy chute to Hell" if they didn't give him money.
His physical congregation looked conventional enough but Southern California is famous as a mecca of the goofy. Think of all those off-kilter folks Jack Webb is always so polite to in Dragnet.
I left the Baghdad by the Bay but many years later I saw him again. I was drinking with Gordon. Neither of us would watch TV but a couple of times when we were drunk we'd turn it on late and laugh at it.
One night (early 90's I think) we saw Dr. Scott! He had a satellite uplink. He had changed.
Long hair, band around his head, beard, smoking a fat cigar. He'd bought a rundown old hotel and had plans to turn it onto a 'cathedral.'
He just sat there demanding money. No pretence of a sermon. Nothing about redemption, doing good works. Just give Gene Scott money. Reminded me of the urban legend about the classified that said only "Send $5.00."
But he'd made several quantum leaps since the early days. Mostly he smoked his cigar, made odd remarks and told people they'd better call in their pledge now. Kind of like a PBS pledge break run by a psychotic. When he got tired of talking he'd play his saxophone. Or show movies of his racehorses in Tennessee.
But the peak was when he sang Stomp a Piss ant for Jesus.
That was all the mention Jesus got. I decided he had to be an atheist who was playing the biggest practical joke on the gullible imaginable. I see he has a web site now. Looks like he may have cut his hair and taken to wearing a tux. I learned that he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford.
Since he mentions his transponder he's still being seen via satellite somewhere. Hope you get to see his powerful witness to gullibility. Few moments of television can be as cheering. Sort of the Chuck Barris of televangelism.
Oh, darn, now I won't get to hear any more about what a genius Hunter Thompson was.
Yup. Many's the night I would set my alarm to catch the Crazy Doctor. He was great.
Do you makes lifes serious decisions based on what you read at a "bloggers web site"? Or is this just a cheap shot?
The blogger has it right.
And if you call watching Dr. Gene Scott a "serious life decision", I advise that you get out more.
He's got Lazamataz Syndrome.
Dr. Scott loved the Word of God and taught it better than anyone of his time. God used him bring me to complete trust and faith action in the Word of God.
He will be greatly missed.
I do credit Scott for that. He used to go on and on about how people "park their brains at the door of a church", and how that shouldn't be so. Of course the reverse psychology seemed to work with most of his fans, and thus they parked their brains at the door to Scott's church.
Years ago, somebody with whom I corresponded for a long while (a regular cathedral attendee who had the scales fall off of his eyes) summed it up quite well. He said, "Scott appeals to the carnal Christian who has a taste for the intellectual". Exactly right.
Scott would "instruct" his flock by scribbling Greek and Hebrew and all sorts of connecting lines over a dry erase board, and it really did NOT make sense. It seemed to me that the followers just put their faith into Scott, without verifying the stuff for themselves.
When Scott said, "Don't park your brain at the door of a church", he had a valid point. I took it to heart. Unfortunately for Scott, that included Scott's church as well. The real purpose of his statement was that he wanted people to park their brains at his church, by appealing to their intellectual vanity in order to build a cult following.
The one "teaching" that I could not make sense out of was his lost tribes theories. And that seemed to be his most covered and most important topic. It was all based upon theories of men that I simply could not pin down, and his Scriptural references came up way short. I simply could not connect the dots to a satisfactory degree (not blindly parking my brain at the foot of Gene Scott), and gave up. If there was something to it (I suspected there was), the revelation was for another day. That day is now, but that's for another discussion.
Scott often felt it necessary to add a disclaimer about the Christian Identity movement, rejecting it with a statement to the effect that "Satan camps out on God's greatest truths", as if Scott was going to sort it all out without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Turns out that Scott himself became the agent of Satan "camping out on God's Word" to confuse the issue. I now know why those lost tribe's teaching's didn't "take"... they were full of doctrines of men and required a level of trust toward scholars, that should be reserve only for God.
I also realize that his understanding of the great pyramid was clouded in the same confusion as his lost tribes teachings. The man - thinking himself wise - really had no clue about the pyramid's structure or purpose, but only a vague idea of its secrets. Because of his Spiritual nakedness, these were things way out of his reach.
Scott could have been great in God's kingdom, but he chose the things of this world. He worshipped mammon, sex, and his own intellect. His fruits of the Spirit were of the spirit of Satan. For all his efforts, about all he earned was an eternal home with other cultic "greats" like Yassin and Ararat.
http://www.talkaboutpeople.com/group/alt.fan.gene-scott/messages/34262.html
That's from the LA Times all right. They don't have a perfect archive or maybe the url is slightly off.
"The blonde was his then wife Tara..."
I don't know her. He caught Christine (his consort for 15+ years, then wife), humping and then divorced her.
Now, there is Melissa. In between there was a Tara?
That one had to be quick. What happened?
I know...Scott couldn't do it...Diagnosed with Prostrate Cancer 2 yr ago, but suffering longer than that....
Your memory, and impression, is basically exactly my own. Living in Glendale at the time, I remember when he "took over" (and that is the correct phrase) KHOF. Up until that time, though it was pentecostal, it had broadcast some Biblical and Gospel content. But eventually, after his takeover, it seemingly went to 24/7 "Festivals of Faith," if memory serves -- i.e. fundraisers.
And don't forget the book of Enoch.
Dan
Yep, he also had all the video footage of her riding horse destroyed, and in a roundabout way, punished the viewers by showing endless loops of him riding around the neighborhood on a bicycle. He didn't actually marry Tara, they were more or less into a dating type relationship. I understand he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, he told his doctor he was going to have God heal him, it went into remission, flared up last November (according to posts in the Usenet Gene Scott forums). He was hoping for another "miracle". But as one Usenet poster said, "God took his breath away one last time".
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