When you think of a stereotypical televangelist, you might picture a phony holy man wearing a tailored suit and living in a mansion asking his audience to send yet more money so he can continue doing God's work. Sadly, these preachers didn't do a lot to help improve the stereotype. In one case, a famous televangelist managed to have a complete fall from grace, only to get a second chance and embarrass himself even more.
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00:00What is there to say about televangelism that hasn't already been said in countless documentaries
00:05and depositions?
00:06If you're looking for a scandal-plagued celebrity, you'd do just fine perusing the ranks of televangelists,
00:12as evidenced by these unholy examples.
00:15In 1974, Jim Baker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye, started the Praise the Lord television
00:20network, an evangelical Christian cable channel dedicated to spreading the good word and securing
00:25donations.
00:26In 1978, the Bakers opened Heritage USA, a Christian-themed park with waterslides, a
00:32500-room hotel, and the staple of all amusement parks, tax exemption.
00:37Things were chugging along smoothly, so much so that the decision was made to build a luxury
00:41hotel tower.
00:43But skyscraper money doesn't just grow on trees, so 165,000 people each donated $1,000
00:49to the building's construction in exchange for a lifelong annual three-night stay.
00:54The Internal Revenue Service found this more than a little shady, leading to intense financial
00:58scrutiny of PTL Ministries.
01:01Furthermore, there was extra pressure on Baker because he and another preacher allegedly
01:05assaulted church secretary Jessica Hahn and then paid her $279,000 in hush money.
01:12In the end, PTL collapsed and Heritage USA closed down, with those $1,000 donors receiving
01:17a whopping $6.54 refund.
01:20Baker spent less than a decade in prison, and he can now be seen on his new program,
01:24The Jim Baker Show, where he sells end-of-days kits with his second wife, Lori Beth.
01:30Jimmy Swaggart is notable for a number of reasons, but perhaps none more so than his
01:34crying face.
01:36The story goes like this.
01:37Back in the 70s and 80s, Swaggart was one of the most influential evangelical preachers
01:42in America.
01:43He was producing shows nearly every day and being broadcast on hundreds of channels around
01:48the world.
01:49When he talked, the people in his community listened.
01:52When he exposed fellow TV preacher Marvin Gorman for having extramarital affairs, Gorman
01:57wound up out of a job.
01:59Unfortunately for Swaggart, hell hath no fury like a minor television celebrity scorned,
02:03and Gorman had Swaggart followed and photographed during a rendezvous with a local prostitute.
02:09What followed was a saga of blackmail that saw Gorman reinstated and Swaggart taken off
02:13the air.
02:14In 1988, Swaggart gave the infamous speech in which he cried a lot and asked for forgiveness.
02:19I have sinned against you, my lord.
02:24It was a touching moment of perfectly staged humility from atop a pillar normally reserved
02:29for moral superiority.
02:31But then, three years later, Swaggart was caught with another prostitute.
02:35Despite all that, today he's back on TV and has a new 24-hour-a-day network.
02:40In May 2018, Jesse Duplantis put out a call to action.
02:44His old jet was wearing a little thin at the seams, and he just knew his followers would
02:48help him a humble servant of Jesus.
02:51He only needed a small tithing of millions and millions of dollars to buy a sweet new
02:56Falcon 7X passenger jet.
02:58According to Duplantis, God personally told him that he wanted him flying in that particular
03:03plane, presumably because the good lord would never expect his followers to fly southwest.
03:09In case anyone was wondering why God wouldn't want televangelists flying business class,
03:14Duplantis had an answer for that.
03:15In a broadcast from 2015, he and fellow preacher Kenneth Copeland said it was because regular
03:21airliners are filled with people who constantly make prayer requests to them.
03:25It's a little weird that ministers would be so put off by prayer.
03:29You couldn't have done that on an airliner.
03:31No sir, no way.
03:33Fans of Robert Tilton know him as the host of the show Success in Life.
03:37Mostly frequenters of YouTube know him as the Farting Preacher, and pretty much everyone
03:41else knows him as a giant fraud.
03:44Tilton's message has been clear from the start.
03:46Poverty is the result of sin, and also please send money.
03:49His ministry became so popular that he attracted between 8,000 and 10,000 worshippers to his
03:54megachurch every week, and his broadcast brought in scores of letters with personal requests
03:59for prayer and donations.
04:01During an undercover investigation in 1991, ABC discovered that prayer letters sent to
04:06Tilton's TV ministry were sent straight to the bank, where their donations were marked
04:10and their prayers were thrown in the dumpster.
04:12Tilton responded that the prayers had been stolen by his church's enemies and then planted
04:17in the trash.
04:18He also said that he prayed so hard over the letters that the ink leaked into his bloodstream,
04:23which was why he needed plastic surgery, which was of course paid for by those donations.
04:28That is God penetrating your heart, it's burning on the inside of you, and you need to make
04:33a vow of faith of $1,000.