Oral ROBerts

Relatif Tuinn:
rt> I agree with you on most of this, but for Oral Roberts, i dont
rt> remember him ever once ripping people off, or selling God. He
rt> sold books etc. but that is part of his ministry, he writes books
rt> to help others, if they do help others it is not a rip off.
rt> --------------------------------
rt> Anyone got some info I can post to this guy. Netmail is fine.

Fredric Rice:
Oral is covered very well in James Randi's "The Faith Healers." Oral used to continually pretend that his gods needed 8 million bucks else they were going to "take him home." His frauds were so stupid that eventually the media actually started noticing his excessives and covered his nonsense.

The 600 foot "Jesus" was part of yet another insane fraud he tried to perp against his gullible sheep. He had built a "university" and a "medical center" with 777 beds in it in a state that already had far too many hospital beds as it was. (The 777 bed was an occult number the fraud thought would appeal to his victims.)

He was going to have the medical center pay for the university and yet it ended up being the university which continually had to bail out the medical center. Funds were constantly being silently shuttled to the medical center -- on the quiet since the whole ROBerts money scheme is hidden from the IRS and the rest of the world.

Eventually there were 216 beds allowed for medical use in his medical center but, since he though his sheep had _LOTS_ of money and would move to his medical center in droves, less than 10% of the beds are ever in use. The truth is that his followers are mostly legally mentally insane or mentally diminished oldsters who are on government medical programs.

The 600 fot "Jesus" part of the fraud was thought up in a freakish lie consisting of the monster picking up his medical center and "saving it," by stetting the center onto a cloud and "keeping it safe."

Such blatant fraud and insane sillyness worked -- the sheep sent in the money and Oral bought his way out of prision for yet another year.

Shortly after that he came up with another lie to feed the ignorant: He claimed that an angel -- this time a "normal sized one" -- "visited" him. He then started selling trashy plastic religious icons of said angel so that the "event," he claims, could be "forever commemerated." (sp)

Funny thing was, though he claimed to have had these plastic idols created after his "visit," his ex-cheaters fellows who used to work for the fraud proved that they were bought months in advance and that the frauds were trying to come up with a speil that would make them sell.

And sell they did; they sold every last one of them.

Tell your buddy that all cult followers like to admit that all the other frauds _are_ frauds and like to pretend that their own hero is somehow different than all the rest. But the truth is, every Christian minister is a fraud. It's only a question as to whether the fraud knows it or not.

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* Origin: Hatred is _not_ a "family value." (1:218/890)