The Ultimate Presumption

Finally, I abandoned my demand for proof of a healing brought about by Oral Roberts in June of 1987 when he startled most people (but not seasoned Oral-watchers) by declaring that he had frequently resurrected the dead at his services. He simultaneously announced that God had just informed him that if Oral died before the Second Coming, Oral would return with Jesus to sit with him and rule the Earth. Presumably the site of that split rule would be Tulsa, Oklahoma. Where else? Son Richard, as usual, had to face the press and try to explain his father’s atrocious claims. He said that there were “dozens and dozens and dozens” of documented cases of such resurrection, and I decided to switch the direction of my inquiries. Knowing full well that a mere healing is nothing compared to a resurrection, I sent this telegram to Oral Roberts on June 30, 1987:Please provide me with one identifiable case of a resurrection from the dead brought about by Oral Roberts, regardless of the source of the power used to accomplish this wonder. Since resurrections are not considered commonplace, I will accept documentation of such an event in place of any of the other evidences of healing by Reverend Roberts that I have been seeking.

Need I tell you that no response was ever received?

11

A Word of Knowledge from Pat Robertson

Incredibly, it is possible that the next president of the United States of America might be a charismatic, Yale-educated TV evangelist faith-healer named Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson. He has the money, the media exposure, and the following that could enable him to sweep into the 1988 race and take the top prize. He is seen daily by hundreds of thousands of people on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club,” a religious “Tonight Show” imitation that he hosted until he decided to be merely a commentator. This show can be seen by 82 percent of the American TV public and is thus a powerful aid to his presidential ambitions. It is interesting to note that Robertson, a law school graduate, has of late abandoned his Grant-style healing pretensions in favor of a tamer and less testable performance. He now says he considers himself as more a TV commentator than an evangelist, and compares himself to Walter Lippmann and William F. Buckley. From his television pulpit, he claims to dispense miracles of healing to the faithful across the country, and the fact that millions of Americans actually believe those claims may very well upset the predictions of political experts.

The Political Power of the Evangelists

Those White House aspirations may not be as fanciful as we could wish. Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart are all fond of mentioning the contents of phone chats they’ve had with the president. Falwell, who began his ministry in 1956 with 35 members of his Thomas Road Baptist Church, is now a rich and powerful figure in religion and politics whose organization’s gross income ($74 million in 1985) could easily support any political campaign he might choose to launch. He has declared that the idea of separation of church and state is an invention of Satan. Bakker, a Bible-school dropout, created through his “PTL Club” a 2,000-acre religious Disneyland-style park called Heritage USA and has so far escaped attempts by the Federal Communications Commission to prosecute him. As a result of the recent scandal both Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were swept out of the PTL pulpit and the organization was put in the hands of Jerry Falwell, though I doubt the world has seen the last of that pair. Swaggart, named by the Bakkers as the head of a conspiracy to topple their clan, is certainly no stranger to accusations. He is still smarting from a move by the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to extract enormous back taxes from him for sales of religious hardware. Swaggart ranks high among the top ten televangelists, with a total audience of 732,000 households weekly. At a prayer breakfast during the 1984 Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan declared that “religion and politics are necessarily related,” thus giving the cue to Jerry Falwell. Taking advantage of this reassurance that they had access to the presidential ear, five TV evangelists promptly presented themselves before the convention’s Platform Committee and claimed that they represented 30 million television viewers a week. This was a bold ploy to make themselves important to the media and thus available for “inside” clues to Reagan’s intentions. But, again, reality tends to catch up with us all. The A. C. Nielsen rating service puts the viewer audience of all top ten TV ministries at 9.3 million, still a formidable figure but far less than what these five—who have serious theological differences with one another—have claimed for themselves. Facts and figures are invented and hyperbolized at the whim of these operators, with little fear that anyone will know the truth and care to correct them. Because of his high profile and his presidential aspirations, Pat Robertson was my first choice for investigation when I began researching this book. But examination of his healing claims was far more difficult than I had anticipated. In his case, the task can be compared to trying to nail a handful of grape jelly to a wall. You simply cannot get hold of his claim because it is nonfalsifiable and well ventilated with loopholes provided by those who claim the marvels are genuine. I concluded that Pat Robertson’s current scaled-down performance, which is similar to the “safe” act done by Richard Roberts, offered no opportunity for me to look into his preposterous claims. He is now immune to proper research. I had to turn to others in the field whose claims could be examined, and their claims are quickly shown to be spurious. The new Robertson act is just plain tedious. He uses a simple “shotgun” technique. He and his sidekick, Ben Kinchlow, bow their heads and tune in to receive a “Word of Knowledge” from on high. In turn, they each describe what they ask us to believe they are being told directly by God. One announces that someone in the television audience has “a tightening in the chest” that is now being healed. The other says that a viewer somewhere “has a headache.” Or:I have a Word of Knowledge that someone has trouble with a tracheotomy. God is miraculously healing it! ... I see stomach pains at this moment. The Lord has healed you.

On another occasion, God zipped Pat around the map:There is a woman in Kansas City who has sinus. The Lord is drying that up right now. Thank you, Jesus. There is a man with a financial need—I think a hundred thousand dollars. That need is being met right now, and within three days, the money will be supplied through the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Jesus! There is a woman in Cincinnati with cancer of the lymph nodes. I don’t know whether it’s been diagnosed yet, but you haven’ t been feeling well, and the Lord is dissolving that cancer right now! There is a lady in Saskatchewan in a wheelchair—curvature of the spine. The Lord is straightening that out right now, and you can stand up and walk!

In 1986, soon after the full importance of the AIDS epidemic began to become evident, Robertson was attempting to cure it. Viewers of his program saw him pray over a man who had the dreaded disease. He invoked God’s power: We rebuke this virus and we command your immune system to function in the name of Jesus.

Viewers were never told what the man’s fate was. They were allowed to assume that he became the only person ever to be cured of that affliction. It goes on and on, through a complete spectrum of illnesses. Pains, tumors, broken bones, scarred lungs, warts, headaches, and emotional problems, revealed to these holy men directly from God as they listen devoutly to His voice, are banished at a word from the two shamans. And it appears that the audience believes every bit of it. Why? Because it absolutely cannot be disproved, and Robertson makes no move to prove it.