Three decades after his PTL empire near Charlotte crumbled amid financial and sex scandals, Jim Bakker is back on TV with a different, darker message:
The Apocalypse is coming and you better get ready.
Ready to be judged by God, sure. But the main mission of “The Jim Bakker Show” – broadcast from a Christian compound deep in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri – appears to be to sell you fuel-less generators, doomsday guidebooks and freeze-dried food with a shelf-life of up to 30 years.
Bakker, whose co-host is second wife Lori, says stocking up on such survivalist merchandise could keep you alive amid the catastrophes – earthquakes, hurricanes, war, famine – that some Christians believe are signs that End Times are near.
“Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, ah, ah, ah, ah,” Bakker’s daughter, Tammy Sue, now 47, sang on one show as her dad promoted buckets of long-lasting emergency food. That day’s “Staying Alive” special: Ten buckets, with 2,410 servings, for a $600 donation plus shipping.
“We are in the final days” is Bakker’s refrain as he points a warning finger at Hurricanes Harvey and Maria and to recent talk of nuclear war with North Korea.
Now 78, with a white beard, Bakker is no longer the sunny, baby-faced preacher who co-hosted “The PTL Club” in the 1970s and ’80s with then-wife Tammy. She did the singing back then, often while shedding happy, mascara-tinged tears about Jesus.
Together, Jim and Tammy built Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian theme park and resort that drew nearly 6 million visitors at its peak in 1986. Their flock came to the Fort Mill, S.C., campus to splash in the water park, pray in a stone-faced Upper Room meant to suggest the site of Jesus’ Last Supper, and cheer on televangelism’s most famous couple as they taped their TV talk show.
Everything came tumbling down in 1987, amid revelations that Bakker had had a 15-minute tryst and paid hush money to a young church secretary named Jessica Hahn. He later served in federal prison for nearly five years for PTL-related fraud. (Read More)
