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Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 69 Location: Largo Florida
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 6:19 am Post subject: People who sued Bakker to get $6.54
ASHEVILLE, N.C. - A 16-year-old lawsuit against disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker has netted $6.54 payments for the 165,000 people who joined the class action.
Meanwhile, their lawyers will get $2.5 million of a $3.7 million settlement fund, the Citizen-Times of Asheville reported Thursday.
The plaintiffs gave $1,000 each for four-day vacation stays at a PTL (Praise the Lord) resort that was never built near Charlotte.
An order issued July 24 by Asheville-based U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg gives a California claims administrator a month to issue the checks. Money for the settlement fund was placed there by former PTL accountants.
California-based law firm Thomas T. Anderson and Associates had asked Thornburg for the entire settlement, saying it would be fruitless to search for everyone involved in the suit.
Thornburg denied that request last year.
Bakker resigned from Praise The Lord ministries in 1987 after admitting he had an affair with a ministry secretary. In 1989, he was convicted in Charlotte of a wire and mail-fraud scheme over the sale of more than 150,000 lifetime partnerships to the planned Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C.
Bakker's 45-year sentence was reduced to 18 years and he served five before his parole in 1995. While in prison, his former wife, Tammy Faye - now remarried as Tammy Faye Messner - divorced him.
Bakker is now back on the air with "The Jim Bakker Show," taped in Branson, Mo.
Fire can be a very constructive and destructive thing depends on how it’s used. It does purge impurities out of certain things but it also destroys other things leaving nothing behind. Assembly of God preacher and Evangelist Jim Bakker presided as the king over one of the most corrupt television ministries of the past two decades.
A successful televangelism group run by Jim and Tammy Bakker is a testimony that Evangelical pastors sold their own souls just to make their wallets thicker, when they were supposed to bring God to the people. As a result Jim Bakker and his sidekick Richard Dortch ended up in prison accused of sexual immorality, tax evasion, and racketeering. The wave of corruption not only affected other televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, but also showed a dark, dirty fight for the control of PTL among several other prominent televangelists.
Felon Richard Dortch, senior vice-president of PTL and associate pastor of Heritage Village Church, said pride, arrogance and secrets led to the PTL scandal. While most people never face temptations on the same scale, the ingredients for seemingly smaller failures are the same, he said. Dortch said the men in PTL's leadership felt they were above accountability. They felt specially called by God and accountable only to Him. He said they didn't plan the scandal; instead, it was the natural result of living for oneself, rather than for God.
Most people are aware of Jim Bakker's $265,000 payoff to Jessica Hahn to keep her sexual services to him a secret, his longtime homosexual relationship with his right hand man David Taggart, his prison sentence, his close relationship to Billy Graham, and his lust for public spotlight.
Bakker was convicted of mail and wire fraud 13 years ago. In recent years, he has operated from Vernon, Fla., where he founded another independent ministry, New Covenant Fellowship. Bakker said he has been stunned by the outpouring of moral and financial support and volunteer labor he has found in Branson. "I've never been welcomed so wonderfully anywhere in my life," Bakker said. "I'm beyond excited. I'm overwhelmed. People are just doing things. Last week, a man that sells carpeting chased me with his truck, and he told me he had heard me on the radio talking about this. He said, `God told me to do whatever you asked. What can I do for you?'"
As his fellow evangelists seemed to take their turns facing justified criticism, Billy Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message. Far from publicly condemning his peers, Billy spoke of them with concern, and even visited Jim Bakker in prison for birds of feather stick together.
It is not known whether the Graham's, including Billy and Franklin Graham, will be assisting Bakker in with his ventures. Franklin came to prison over and over again to visit Jim Bakker. Franklin Graham said, "Jim Bakker's my friend". When Bakker got out of prison the Grahams sponsored him and paid for a house for him to live in and gave him a car to drive.
None of the Graham's supported or comforted any of the Jim Bakker's victims! It didn't matter to the Grahams that -Bakker had 47 bank accounts, 6 luxury homes, $1.9 million dollar salary and Rolls Royce and Mercedez cars.
- Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler and sexual deviate. He fired Bakker's entire staff when he took over Praise the Lord show. Falwell bankrupted the PTL Club calling Bakker "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in two thousand years of church history"
But Jim Bakker won't have to pay $120 million to former followers who bought "partnerships" in his PTL tele-ministry. A jury in North Carolina on July 23, 1996 threw out a class action suit brought on behalf of more than 160,000 onetime believers who paid as much as $7,000 each in the '80s to join Jim and Tammy Faye in holy larceny.
However the Internal Revenue Service says Bakker and Messner owe personal income taxes from the 1980s when they were building their Praise The Lord empire reported the Charlotte Observer. The IRS assessed the taxes after revoking the PTL ministry's nonprofit status, said Roe Messner, Tammy Faye's husband since 1993.
Tammy Faye Messner new husband said Jim Bakker and his former wife didn't want to talk about the tax issues. "We don't want to stir the pot," Messner said. He said the original tax amount was about $500,000. Penalties and interest account for the rest of the bill. The notices reinstating the liens list "James O. and Tamara F. Bakker" as owing $3 million.
On his website, Jim Bakker is still being a parasite, living off money that he steals from others, stating:
Dear Internet Friend,
It's not an accident that you have come to this page on this website at this critical hour in the life of this ministry!
Lori and I thank you for your meaningful support. Even Moses had the help of faithful loved ones who held up his arms to steady him at a critical hour in his ministry (Exodus 17:12).
We need you today to hold up our arms, to steady us at this exciting hour in the life of this growing and vital outreach. My heart is bonded with you and the Apostle Paul who admonished the Saints of God:
He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.
- 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, NKJ
I need your help right now! Think it not strange that you are reading these words from my heart at this very moment, "online"! Your obedience to God's leading will be a needed breakthrough for us right now.
Would you make a pledge to this ministry for $100?
Bakker, who apparently made all of the financial decisions for the PTL and kept two sets of books to conceal the accounting irregularities, took conspicuous consumption to new extremes. PTL once spent over $100,000 for a private jet to fly the Bakker's clothing across the country. PTL also spent more than $100 on a purchase of cinnamon rolls because Jim and Tammy wanted the smell of them in their hotel room. "They [Bakkers] epitomized the excesses of the nineteen eighties--the greed, the love of glitz, and the shamelessness--which in their case was so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence. "
PTL sold "lifetime memberships" for a $1,000 or more, which entitled buyers to a 3-night stay annually at a luxury hotel in Heritage USA. According to the prosecution at Bakker's trial, tens of thousands of memberships had been sold, and only one 500-room hotel completed. Bakker had not only sold more "exclusive" partnerships than could be accomodated, but had also raised more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. The Bakker trial revealed that a good deal of the money had gone into operating expenses of Heritage USA, and Bakker kept $3,700,000 for himself. (Frances FitzGerald, "Jim and Tammy," The New Yorker, April 29, 1990.)
Between 1984 and mid-1987, the Bakkers received annual salaries of $200,000 each and Jim awarded himself over $4 million in bonuses. The Bakkers own, among other things, a $600,000 house in Palm Springs, 4 condos in California, and a Rolls Royce. ("Fresh Out of Miracles," Newsweek, May 11, 1987 & "TV's Unholy Row," Time, Apr 6, 1987.)
The former televangelist preached at Central Assembly of God in Muskegon, Mich., July 30, 2000, Religion News Service reported. It was the first time he had been there in 30 years. "If I've ever hurt you, I say please forgive me," Bakker told the congregation of several hundred people during a two-hour service. "My life was smashed, but Jesus Christ has put me back together again." Bakker's grandfather helped start the church in the Depression, and his cousins and their families still attend there.
Jim Bakker nor the Assembly of God with whom he was ordained have never publicly discussed or dealt with the fact that Jim Bakker was Bi-sexual or that his real lover was a man! Although a contrite Jim Bakker returned to his childhood church to ask forgiveness, he never talked about David Taggart his great male lover! Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He hardly talks about James and David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises and had forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during the "Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually involved with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today.
So it was not surprising that Tammy Faye Bakker ( now Messner), who divorced Bakker, would have a prominent role in the gay pride festivities in Washington in June 2002. The former televangelist was to judge a Tammy Faye look-alike contest, appear at a fund-raising dinner and speak from the main stage of the Capital Pride 2002 street festival.
There are those who believe that Tammy Faye is really a drag queen. Once adored by viewers of the electronic church, Messner now appears at gay-pride events nationwide, such as a Tammy Faye look-alike contest held in Washington, D.C., recently where, according to National Public Radio, she was "surrounded by men in falsies and pancake makeup and...impossible to upstage."
"I'm just trying to give back to them," she says. "I...tell them there's a God who loves them and cares for them. I told them there's a better way out...that nothing can give you peace except Jesus." Messner does not specifically address the issue of homosexuality being a sin when she talks to groups of gays. "I leave that up to the Holy Spirit because unless He speaks to them, they won't change anyway," she said.
But Tammy Faye's former husband, Assembly of God Evangelist Jim Bakker, the founder on the now non existent PTL Club and Village, has downplayed the role of the bisexual evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who arranged his tryst with Jessica Hahn. He hardly talks about James and David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years or that David Taggart was his lover and gave him blow jobs.
Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises and had forsaken him during tough times. Fletcher stated during the "Pearlygate" media storm that he, too, had been sexually involved with bisexual Bakker, reported Christianity Today
Bakker, former head of PTL Ministries and Heritage USA, served five years in federal prison on fraud charges. He has spoken about confession of sins, forgiveness, and reconciliation for the last two years in churches around the country, RNS reported. Bakker's wife, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in prison and married his best friend, Roe Messner. Bakker, who remarried about two years ago, is starting a ministry in Florida for children from inner cities.
At times in prison "I felt like God had left me," Bakker said. "That's the real problem with prosperity teaching," a cornerstone in his television days. "If God comes to you when you prosper, do you think he will walk away when you are poor?" he asked. "There's a lot of false doctrine going around, and I was preaching a lot of it."
Bakker helped dedicate the 10,000-seat Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida in 1985. The Straders went through a major split of Carpenter's Home Church in 1989 when the Straders refused to relinquish the financial control they had on the ministry, the church and its assets.
After getting out from prison Baker once spoke at Carpenter's Home church and said Strader's wife, Joyce, wrote him a letter once a week while he was in prison. I was one of those who helped him build PTL," said Karl Strader, "and I never did know what he did wrong, frankly. And if he did do something wrong, I forgive him, and I know everybody else here forgives him," said Strader.
Karl Strader was being generous with Jim Bakker for he too wanted absolution from these sins and crimes and those of his family. His oldest son Daniel, 37, was arrested, tried and sentenced to 45 years in prison in August 1995. He was convicted of 238 felony counts for bilking 57 mostly elderly investors, some members of the church, out of $2.3 million by selling investments in properties that didn't exist or already had liens against them. Dan's specialty was to pray with and prey on his victims with the help of his father.
It is to be noted that Richard Dortch, a former Assembly of God district superintendent and vice president of the PTL Club, who paid Jessica Hahn off to buy her silence, led a campaign to raise $52,000 for the defense of Dan Strader but not a penny for any of Dan's victims. In response to all of this Paul Humphries wrote to the author and stated:
"See, you do expect too much from our preachers and their family. You think a lil' ole raping and plundering and driving people to murder is wrong. You've got to lighten up, the lord allows for preachers to twist and change the commandments or even selectively choose which commandments are apt for that particular time and place.
Since people are people, you can't expect them to follow all the commandments do you? Since you can't follow all of them even part of the time, then to hell with all of them, don't follow any of them........of course tell the sheep to follow every one of them."
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