Word: tulsa
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...been a checkered and chastening year for the Rev. Oral Roberts, 69. Last January the Tulsa-based TV evangelist announced that if he did not receive $8 million from donors by March 31, God would "call me home." The money was raised, but Roberts' dramatic ultimatum provoked widespread derision. He drew additional gibes by declaring that his wife Evelyn had come to his rescue when the devil visited his bedroom and tried to strangle him. Then, in May, Roberts mailed 1 million packets of "healing" water to followers, advising them to use it to "anoint your billfold" to solve money...
...accountability is the same thing as Jesus'," Roberts said. When John the Baptist asked Jesus through intermediaries for his credentials, Roberts was indicating, Jesus replied that he had healed the sick and raised the dead. Roberts also said that in the "world to come," he expected to return to Tulsa. He added, "I wouldn't be surprised if God did not bring me back to these 400 acres of Oral Roberts University he has built and would let me reign over these 400 acres...
...pure chance, the Bakker scandal -- involving sex, greed and ministerial rivalries -- has coincided with a controversy swirling about another televangelist. The Rev. Oral Roberts, operator of a TV ministry, university and medical center in Tulsa, had broadcast that God would "call Oral Roberts home" unless by March 31 believers came up with $4.5 million for missionary work. Many Christians, including some Roberts followers, were scandalized by what they perceived to be implicit spiritual blackmail. The Bakker-Roberts furor raised questions about the future of TV evangelism, a fast-growing, klieg-lighted mode of Christian proselytizing -- and fund raising. Counting radio...
...Oral Roberts was fasting in his Tulsa Prayer Tower, a 200-ft.-tall glass- and-steel spire on the Oral Roberts University campus, and still awaiting this week's life-threatening deadline, despite a surprise stay of execution -- a gift of $1.3 million from Jerry Collins, a short, gruff dog-track owner from Sarasota, Fla. ("It's very seldom I ever go to church," said the philanthropic Collins. "I help them all.") Roberts, feeling perkier after the donation, proclaimed Bakker a "prophet of God," who had been victimized by an "unholy trio of forces," presumably referring to Swaggart, the Assemblies...
Roberts' flamboyant fund raising has aroused criticism from secular commentators. A Tulsa radio personality joshed last week that a "900-foot Lassie" had told him to complete a 60-story dog-and-cat hospital and that noncontributors would die. More soberly, the Tribune editorial informed Roberts that his portrayal of a "petty, vengeful or idiotic God" is "close to sacrilege." General Manager David Lane of WFAA-TV, the offended Dallas station, stated that Oral's pitch "violates everything I believe in from a moral standpoint." But a Roberts aide, Jan Dargatz, explained that God has "always given Oral impossible goals...