Between 1974 and 1987, Jim Bakker hosted the television program The PTL Club and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with his then wife, Tammy Faye.
36 Facts About Jim Bakker
1.
2.
Jim Bakker developed Heritage USA, a now-defunct Christian theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
3.
Jim Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri, and reestablishing the PTL ministry.
4.
Jim Bakker has written several books, including I Was Wrong and Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead.
5.
James Orsen Jim Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the son of Raleigh Jim Bakker and Furnia Lynette "Furn" Irwin.
6.
Jim Bakker attended North Central University, a Minneapolis bible college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, where he met fellow student Tammy Faye LaValley in 1960.
7.
Jim Bakker worked at a restaurant in the Young-Quinlan department store in Minneapolis; Tammy Faye worked at the Three Sisters, a nearby boutique.
8.
On September 4,1998, Jim Bakker married Lori Beth Graham, a former televangelist, fifty days after they met.
9.
Jim Bakker founded the PTL Satellite Network in 1974, which aired The PTL Club and other religious television programs through local affiliates across the US.
10.
Jim Bakker responded to inquiries about his use of mass media by saying: "I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV".
11.
Jim Bakker was dismissed as an Assemblies of God minister on May 6,1987.
12.
In 1990, the biographic television movie Fall from Grace, starring Kevin Spacey as Jim Bakker, depicted his rise and fall.
13.
The FCC report was finalized in 1982 and found that Jim Bakker had raised $350,000 that he told viewers would go towards funding overseas missions but that was actually used to pay for part of Heritage USA.
14.
FCC commissioners voted four to three to drop the investigation, after which they allowed Jim Bakker to sell the only TV station that he owned, therefore bypassing future FCC oversight.
15.
Jim Bakker used the controversy to raise more funds from his audience, branding the investigation a "witch-hunt" and asking viewers to "give the Devil a black eye".
16.
Jim Bakker, who made PTL's financial decisions, allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities.
17.
On March 19,1987, after the disclosure of a payoff to Hahn, Jim Bakker resigned from PTL.
18.
Jim Bakker was the subject of homosexual and bisexual allegations made by Fletcher and PTL director Jay Babcock, which Jim Bakker denied under oath.
19.
Jim Bakker was succeeded as PTL head by the Rev Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.
20.
Jim Bakker believed that Falwell would temporarily lead the ministry until the scandal died down, but on April 28,1987, Falwell barred Jim Bakker from returning to PTL upon hearing of allegations of illicit behavior which went beyond the Hahn allegations.
21.
On CNN, Swaggart stated that Jim Bakker was a "cancer in the body of Christ".
22.
Jim Bakker sold "exclusive partnerships" which exceeded capacity, raising more than twice the money needed to build the hotel.
23.
Much of the money paid Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Jim Bakker kept $3.4 million.
24.
Jim Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence.
25.
In 2003, Bakker began broadcasting The Jim Bakker Show daily at Studio City Cafe in Branson, Missouri, with his second wife Lori; it has been carried on CTN, Daystar, Folk TV, Grace Network, Daystar Television Canada, GEB America, Hope TV, Impact Network, WGN, WHT, TCT Network, The Word Network, UpliftTV, and ZLiving networks.
26.
Jim Bakker condemned the prosperity theology in which he took part earlier in his career, and has embraced apocalypticism.
27.
Jim Bakker's show has a millennial, survivalist focus and sells buckets of freeze-dried food to his audience in preparation for the end of days.
28.
Production for The Jim Bakker Show moved to Morningside in 2008.
29.
In 2013, Jim Bakker wrote Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead about end-time events.
30.
Jim Bakker wrote that he realized that he had taken passages out of context and used them as prooftexts to support his prosperity theology.
31.
Jim Bakker's revived show features a number of ministers who bill themselves as "prophets".
32.
Jim Bakker now says that "PTL" stands for "Prophets Talking Loud".
33.
Jim Bakker predicted that if then-President Donald Trump was impeached, Christians would begin a Second American Civil War.
34.
Jim Bakker compared the 2017 Washington train derailment to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and stated the Amtrak train derailment was a warning from God.
35.
Jim Bakker sold colloidal silver supplements that he advertised as a panacea.
36.
Jim Bakker returned to his program for the first time following his stroke on July 8,2020.