Posted on 01/12/2010 5:40:21 AM PST by urroner
Oral Roberts: MANY OF America’s televangelists have had more than their fair share of scandals involving sex, fraud and extremist politics. But Oral Roberts, who has died aged 91 of complications from pneumonia, always devoted himself to money – and, occasionally, God. He even justified his love of wealth with a biblical source.
At the age of 29, he was a struggling part-time preacher with church pastorates in Oklahoma, and his college studies had not brought him a degree.
He told the story of how he picked up his Bible and it fell open at the Third Epistle of John. His eye caught verse two, which read: “I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”
He had not heard this verse before and neither had his schoolteacher wife Evelyn, although both were the offspring of preachers. Roberts decided immediately that it was all right to be rich.
The next day he bought a Buick and God appeared, he said, telling him to heal people. Roberts then added this aspect to his tent revival meetings. A month later in Enid, Oklahoma, he cured, he claimed, a woman the use of whose hand had been impaired for 38 years.
After leaving the Pentecostal Holiness church to become leader of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, he was on his way to becoming the richest US evangelist. With his pioneering exploitation of radio and – from 1954 – television, he headed a broadcasting empire that transformed religion in America.
He also ran mailshot campaigns promising prosperity in return for financial expressions of faith in God: his message of health and wealth held enormous appeal for poor Americans.
At its height in the early 1980s, Roberts was chief of a $120 million a year business employing 2,300 people and controlling Oral Roberts University (ORU) – which opened in 1965 – a medical school and hospital and buildings on 50 acres south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, valued at $500 million.
Students at ORU, whose members were forbidden to drink, smoke or have sex before marriage, went on to reach 5,400.
Roberts’s broadcasts went to hundreds of radio and television stations, his appeals for money continued non-stop, while sales of his 120 books and hundreds of audio and video cassettes boosted the cashflow. In 1987, he created headlines by saying that unless he got another $4.5 million for his hospital in a few weeks, “God will call me home”.
He retired to his 10-storey prayer tower on campus and emerged – on the deadline – to declare that he had raised the sum. As usual, there was only his word for it.
Over the years there were various exposés of fraudulent healing practices and in 1989, he had to close his uneconomical City of Faith hospital. He even sold his holiday homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills, California, and three of his Mercedes cars, but continued to wear his Italian silk suits, diamond rings and gold bracelets – airbrushed out by his staff on publicity pictures.
In his last years, he retrenched the Roberts ministry, but was never engulfed in the scandals that brought down some of his peers, even though on several occasions people died at his “healing” prayer sessions.
He was ranked second only to Billy Graham in the hierarchy of US evangelists and was still referred to as “Dr” Roberts, despite having only honorary degrees.
Born into rural poverty in a log cabin near Ada, southeast of Oklahoma City, he nearly died of tuberculosis when he was 17. His family had joined the Pentecostal Holiness church and he credited God with his recovery after attending a revival meeting.
That launched his religious career, although one local newspaper sceptic wrote that Roberts treated religion the way that Tulsans went into oil: to make money.
At 18, he began preaching for the Pentecostal Holiness church.
Two years later he married Evelyn, who died in May 2005, aged 88. They had two sons and two daughters. His elder son, Ronald, shot himself dead in 1982, and his daughter Rebecca and her husband Marshall Nash died in an air crash in 1977, leaving $10 million, their proceeds from the Roberts empire. In the 1990s he had two heart attacks, and in 2006 he broke a hip.
Roberts’s daughter Roberta and his son Richard, who followed him as president of ORU until 2007, when he was forced to take leave of absence following allegations that he had used university funds for personal purposes, survive him.
That is called priestcraft, not priesthood. Religion for money..
My lynn, thought you were off to make a firing room for nasa. While you are at it, why not comment on all those poor people who gave their gold cavity fillings for a mormon temple that they probably will never be “worthy” enough to enter? Or the lds demads of 10% in order to pay your way to obtain godhood?
You’re not a very good thinker are you, or your brain is a spinning tree.
My comment was specifically, and I might add explicitly targeted at the HEADLINE, not at Oral Roberts, or this authors story about Oral Roberts. I made a point of doing so, because I didn’t want to offend any supporters of Oral Roberts especially as I didn’t know him, but only of him.
The HEADLINE reminded me of the phony, but for awhile revered Reverend Ike whom amassed a fortune before falling from grace. For him it was the wealth he could accumulate quickly that drove him, and apparently a passion for Rolls Royces to drive.
That said I note yours was the only response to my comment at the HEADLINE, therefore I presume the other readers, commentors got it. It was the HEADLINE, NOT the content.
I’m very sick to Godzilla, so I’m home. I’m also going into the hospital tomorrow for a minor operation on my back and might even take a few days of for that. Sorry to disappoint you, but next week, it’s back to the salt mines.
The comical thing about this is that odds are that Oral Roberts has already been baptized and confirmed a member in the mormon church in the mormon temple since his death..
Romney and the very, very wealthy mormon church that is at present building a multibillion-dollar mall and demands 10% of members income before they are considered "worthy" to enter their temple, (worship money much?) must really be getting worried about Romney's chances in 2012 to have called out the troops to FR to battle against the storm that Harry Reid has stirred up with his "negro" remark!
Some FReepers refuse to acknowledge that Romney is persona non grata on FR. I predict they will be reminded of that fact.
***He retired to his 10-storey prayer tower on campus and emerged – on the deadline – to declare that he had raised the sum. As usual, there was only his word for it.***
It was said he had a hot tub and a wet bar in his prayer tower. Many here referred to it as “the sip and dip”!
I am reminded of a painting and poem by Charles M. Russell.
Two cowboys are robbing a preacher. One holds a gun and the other goes through the preacher’s pockets.
The poem reads..
If money’s the root of all evil,
Your Reverence is going to weed!
It’s the duty of a Saint not a sinner,
To shake out your clothes for the seed.
Prayers for your healing, but if it is back surgery, don’t count on work next week either.
... poor, poor mormonisms
it’s tricksy, in its underwears, isn’t it??
Dang!
Sounds like Joseph Smith and his bunch!
What are the MORMONs worth these days?
God speed you in your recovery.
The REASON is to draw attention away from MORMONism and all of it's foibles.
Thanks Godzilla. I have a ruptured disk and the doc has tried a couple of things already, but none of them are working. Tomorrow, I’m going in and he’s going to be poking about eight different needles in between my disks and seeing if that helps. I have had rocks, tiny smooth rocks glued to the bottom of my right foot for almost two years now. Well, that is what it feels like. I can’t remember the name of the procedure, it’s long, but it doesn’t take very long. The anesthesiologist comes in and deadens my lower back and then the pain doctor comes in and inserts drugs and other good stuff in between some disks, then then everybody goes home.
The doc said I should feel better anytime between a couple of hours to a couple of weeks. I really hope the former. If this procedure doesn’t work, they could stick a huge needle in my back and suck some stuff out and then it’s implant a device in my back that counteracts the pain. I really hope that the operation tomorrow works. I had major back surgery years ago and I couldn’t go back to work for almost six months. I don’t want that to happen again.
And Godzilla, honestly, thanks for the prayers.
In conclusion let us summarize this grand key, these “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet”, for our salvation depends on them.
1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.
3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
6. The prophet does not have to say “Thus Saith the Lord,” to give us scripture.
7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.
11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency—the highest quorum in the Church.
14. The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.
I testify that these fourteen fundamentals in following the living prophet are true. If we want to know how well we stand with the Lord then let us ask ourselves how well we stand with His mortal captain—how close do our lives harmonize with the Lord’s anointed—the living Prophet—President of the Church, and with the Quorum of the First Presidency.
Ezra Taft Benson
(Address given Tuesday, February 26, 1980 at Brigham Young University)
Thanks ejonesie.
That's going to be REAL tricky: in them AIRPORT SCANNERS!!
LDS, Inc. puts OR to shame in the $$ department.
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