My day with Oral Roberts

I'll never forget the day that I met Oral Roberts. It was at a revival at Melstorm on a cold rainy night. I was suffering from colonahloadhistermine. He placed his healing hands on my colon while sticking his other hand in my back pocket where my wallet was. After the healing my wallet was gone and so was the pain. What a memory.Yep!

Merle Angus

abhab1

You as a spokesman for the Pharisees of old express contempt for Christianity. In my opinion the only thing contemptible about Christians is their inclusion of the Torah, which they refer as Old Testament, with their scriptures. This book written by Jews for Jews is as bad as the Quran in its mythology and supremacist ideology to the point of open sedition to violence against the other races. No wonder that the majority of the Hebrew descendents do not subscribe to Judaism today
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You are, how shall I say it, an ignorant racist moron. It is true that the NT has some pretty nasty stuff in it, but many of your co-Christians have risen above it.

If you had one one-millionth of the intelligence of a single Pharisee--and I don't mean the nonexistent ones found in the fictional NT--you might be in a position to write something sensible.

A simple christian racist, you.

The rabbi is to be commended for his tolerance, although, quite frankly, at times he takes it much too far. Minorities have to fight for their rights, Rabbi. No one "gives" rights; one takes them.

Yes it is always exciting to meet one of the gliteratti, someone who is rich and famous ...

Rabbi:

You as a spokesman for the Pharisees of old express contempt for Christianity. In my opinion the only thing contemptible about Christians is their inclusion of the Torah, which they refer as Old Testament, with their scriptures. This book written by Jews for Jews is as bad as the Quran in its mythology and supremacist ideology to the point of open sedition to violence against the other races. No wonder that the majority of the Hebrew descendents do not subscribe to Judaism today

Well i wish i could say that i am sad but then i would be lying.

How does that song go?
"Happy days are here again"

Look out, Ted H., GOD is coming for you next!

"The devils's followers are busy on this thread..."

I AM THE DEVIL, THE GREAT CORRUPTOR, THE BRINGER OF DEATH AND CHAOS!

Take your meds and go to bed, but be sure to pray first and leave the lights ON!

Another snake-oil salesman bites it.

What an idiot quiensabe is.

Even Adolph Hitler could be very nice and polite with visitors. I don't mean to compare Adolph and Rectal Roberts, BUT Roberts, with his mystical foolishness did a lot more harm than good. I recall that a young boy "healed" by Jesus through Roberts had to return to a Tallahassee, FL hospital to begin operations all over again, because in following Robert's command to walk - steel pins in his joints were torn loose!
Religious fundamentalists are the prime barrier to common sense and wisdom all over the world!

Thank God. He was a fraud, liar and thief. He bamboozeled the weak, foolish and desperate. Now, if the other charlatins would follow suit.

kenk3 said: "these people are liberals and have no respect for Christians".

Things have changed. I remember the Great Depression and WWII, when most people were both liberal and Christian.

Either today's liberals are different or today's Christians are different.

Millions of people take Prosac to relieve anxiety when bad things happen to them and they don't think they can cope and survive.

Lots of people get rich making and selling "feel good" pills like Prosac, yet I don't hear anybody damning them.

Oral Roberts sold a "feel good" philosophy and got rich. He should be praised for marketing something that could "heal" someone of their worst fears and anxieties.

Jerry Falwall and now Oral Roberts are dead.

Can we bury them together and us the area as an open-pit toilet bowl?

It would be nice if the corpses of Jimmy Swaggart and Joel Osteen when they die too.

quiensabe, i'm actually not surprised that 90 percent of the comments are negative because i know 90 percent of these people are liberals and have no respect for Christians. I've never read this paper and I never will. I've heard comments of this paper by people that i've called to sell the paper. It sickens me to know exactly what kind of paper i've been selling. I always wondered why east coast people were so rude and now i know why. It has nothing to do with the east coast and everything to do with the fact that readers do not have Christian backgrounds. I would just quit my job now knowing what this paper stands for, but then i would give you the statisfaction of not being bothered with my calls, so i'm going to make sure to keep calling until you decide to cancel!

You shouldn't be surprised with almost 90 percente negative comments on Mr. Roberts life and ministry. But the vitriol of these comments is surprising. If Christians are not convinced by this that they are pilgrims in this world, then nothing will.

Posted by: quiensabe

God told Oral several years ago to raise
a million by Christmas or he would take
Oral's life. Oral raised the money and
lived on. Where did he go wrong this time ????
Posted by: flyersout

No such thing happened! It was 8 million dollars and Christmas was not the deadline. God wouldn't kill a man over such a pathetic amount of money as 1 mil.

Now who gets all the $$$? That was what Roberts was all about.

He was one of the great con men of the 20th century.

Oral was one of God's main fund raisers.
As George Carlin said, to the effect
"God's all powerful except in one
respect. He can't raise or handle money
by himself. He needs the preachers
and churches to do this for him."

God told Oral several years ago to raise
a million by Christmas or he would take
Oral's life. Oral raised the money and
lived on. Where did he go wrong this time ????

Hey! UTAHREB! Where does Roberts rank with you along-side of The Quorum of Twelve?

When Oral Roberts made that plea to his congregation for money lest he die, that did it for me. You don't use God and His ways in that manner. That is one of the reasons I don't, to this day, watch or listen to any televangelist.

The devils's followers are busy on this thread...

You shouldn't be surprised with almost 90 percent negative comments on Mr. Roberts life and ministry. But the vitriol of these comments is surprising. If Christians are not convinced by this that they are pilgrims in this world, then nothing will.

You shouldn't be surprised with almost 90 percent negative comments on Mr. Roberts life and ministry. But the vitriol of these comments is surprising. If Christians are not convinced by this that they are pilgrims in this world, then nothing will.

I remind myself daily that "All sin goes back to 'I want to be somebody.'" Oral Roberts came from nowhere and was vaulted into prominence with his convergence of simplistic theology with theatrics...

I have the sense that toward the end of his life, he became mystified as to why it all didn't work out the way he believed it would...

Was Christ being glorified in all this? There is only One Source for the answer to that question...Oral took American Evangelicalism from the Kingdom to the carnival, but he lifted up the name of Jesus...

Perhaps we will find our way back...

Stan Moody
www.stanmoody.com

Will the Post have an "Appreciation" piece on Oral Roberts in the Style section? If not, why not?

The evil done by this man in the name of "The Lord" is enormous.

Evangelical Christianity is un-American.

The evil done by this man in the name of "The Lord" is enormous.

Evangelical Christianity is un-American.

I remember when I was very young around 12 years of age and felt the spirit as I wish I could daily now. I wrote to Bro. Roberts and he sent me all these gifts that I cherished so much.

May God bless him and his family forever. Thank you so much for enriching my life. I hope to see you in heaven. Save a space for me in the band.

Your Brother in Christ,

Kevin

He was a racist and and a misogynist. Good Riddance.

Anyone who professes that 1) there is a god, and 2) that he/she knows that god, is a charlatan and will actually die without having enjoyed real life. And the post should be damned for giving them an iota of news space.

Of all the wierd names that parents bestow upon their children, the first name of the Rev ORAL Roberts is the wierdest.

Good riddance. One less scam artist.

He spent his life spreading the god virus and diminishing the scope of reason and enlightenment. How many minds did you enslave, Mr. Roberts? How much energy, time and money was wasted by dint of your efforts?

Good riddance!

The media are reported that Roberts died from complications with pneumonia.

How do you know it wasn't a case of someone finally telling him that America has a black president?

What's he going to say to those he ripped off during his lifetime (assuming, that is, that he winds up in heaven)?

And Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it will be for a rich man to enter into Heaven. Well lets all guess where this con man is spending his eternity.

I'm so glad that he's dead. Another evil one has left our world! Let's rejoice!

This rabbi's favorable remarks about Oral Roberts conceal the fact that Roberts was one of the earliest and most successful of the religious con men in America. Billy Graham was another. Roberts found out early on that there was lots of money to be made in bible thumping religion. He also found out that there were other perquisites like plenty of available women. When he had amassed enough money to build Oral Roberts university, he began to indulge his sexual tastes even more. There were repeated instances in which Roberts was caught in flagrante delicto with young female students, both in his office and in his home. He was an utterly craven individual preying on the ignorance and superstition of young women. The University went to great lengths to cover up these repeated scandals but they were well known to the students and and the residents of the community where it is located. He was not a decent man, rather he was a charlatan and lecher.

O.R. and his 'ministry' remind me of something a famous radio personality once said about Christian evangelicals: 'a good theology gone wrong'. As a kid, my sister and I used to watch Roberts on the tube in NY asking people to touch their TV sets to be healed. We howled with laughter. As an adult, Roberts stopped amusing me. He and his ilk are guilty of stealing money from gullible, weak and often desperate people who really should have used it for something else, like food. Roberts basically started the whole Christian materialism movement which centered itself on the idea of God as Santa Claus, bestowing gifts like a cure for cancer or a bad transmission. And of course, he and his buddies asked for money to be sent to them in return, not to heaven. In other words, pray for stuff, not for an understanding of God's nature, and if you send Roberts a check, he'll see what he can do to grease the skids.
It's religion at its worst. It cheapened the whole idea of God. God became a commodity. Sadly, these so-called preachers are still at it today, running telethons, pleading for bucks, selling holy snake oil. I won't miss Roberts, and I won't miss the others when they depart. The world will be better for their absence.

OH! Thank God!
This precious and perfect one, this
CHOSEN ONE,

managed to go among the WRONG ONES, even a outlier genre of the WRONG ONES, and come away without a hair of his pecious head disturbed.

But of course: His genes of non assimilation stood him in good stead, the centuries of history USING and living among others civilizations and nations, USING THEM but staying strictly separate.

Course thos other civilizations always end up unhappy about it. Still Elliott Abrams wrote a book (while at the WH) about how to live with Americans and not get dirty
from them...look it up. More of the same.

Thank you for this thoughtful post. I'm an ORU alum, and you are correct that the prosperity gospel preached at ORU is absolutely untenable -- and unbiblical. What I (and I suspect most other alumni) loved about ORU were the people I met and the way we challenged and questioned things together. We were not sheep unwittingly following a misguided shepherd -- my circle of friends was composed of dissenters searching for a valid theology and a God who didn't conform to anyone's notions of Him. Bad theology aside, ORU provided a wonderful place to search in earnest.

At the end of the article there was the line "Previous: Well-heeled, tax-exempt charlatan." Does that refer to Roberts, Wolpe, or both?