What he wanted to hear
Date
10/07/2026
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What he wanted to hear
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WORLD Radio - What he wanted to hear
Jim Bakker 1940-2026: Years after Bakker’s spectacular fall, Cal Thomas asked him when things first went wrong. Bakker’s answer provides a lasting lesson.
Jim And Tammy Faye Bakker talk to their television audience at their PTL Ministry in Fort Mill, S.C., Aug. 20, 1986. Associated Press / Photo by Lou Krasky, File
Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.
NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.
LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.
TV evangelist Jim Bakker died on Monday at age 86.
His rise, fall, and eventual return to television made him one of the best-known—and most controversial—religious figures of the 1980s.
WORLD commentator Cal Thomas knew Bakker personally. And he says there are lessons in the story that reach well beyond one man.
CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In the 1980s, the media called Jim Bakker and others like him “televangelists.”
Some preached what became known as the “prosperity gospel”—the idea that God would reward people who gave money to their ministries.
Bakker was among the most successful, if your standard for success is money and fame.
Then it all collapsed.
In 1987, as his ministry was coming apart, Bakker appeared with his wife Tammy Faye on ABC’s Nightline.
JIM BAKKER: It makes us very sad to hear that. The Bible says, “Ye without sin cast the first stone,” or “Ye that are spiritual, restore your brother in the spirit of meekness.” And it’s just such unscriptural activity for all of us to be debating back and forth publicly and we’re supposed to do this quietly and privately and with love—
TED KOPPEL: All right, but you’re starting to do what I was suggesting to you early on I wasn’t going to let you do tonight, and that is, you’re wrapping yourself in the Bible again. And that’s fine, but I’m asking—there have been some very direct charges made here.
Two years later, Bakker was convicted of defrauding followers in a scheme involving his Heritage USA Christian theme park and resort. He served four and a half years in prison.
At the time, I opposed his imprisonment. I argued for the biblical standard of restitution. Prison, I said, didn’t repay the people who had been defrauded.
Bakker wrote me from prison to thank me.
After his release, I invited him to my home. I had met him several times and had once appeared on his PTL television program.
I asked him a question.
“I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. I said. When did you start to go wrong?”
His answer has stayed with me.
“When I surrounded myself with people who told me only what I wanted to hear.”
I told him television was like a drug, and he had been a heavy user. I advised him to stay off TV.
He did for a while.
But eventually he went back.
Religion can occasionally be as phony as politics. Both, at least the TV versions, require lots of money, and both have been guilty of sometimes not telling the truth.
And money was very much part of that Nightline conversation.
TED KOPPEL: How much money did you earn last year? How much money were you paid in salary, in bonuses, in dividends, in royalties?
JIM BAKKER: I would say roughly my salary was 1.1 million, and a take-home payout of that would be about five, six hundred thousand, probably.
TED KOPPEL: All right. And how about Mrs. Bakker?
TAMMY FAYE BAKKER: I honestly, honest, I do not know how much I make. I’ve never thought about it.
TED KOPPEL: If you were a prayer partner who had coughed up a difficult five dollars, twenty dollars, fifty dollars at some point, would you feel comforted seeing Tammy Faye Bakker sitting there saying, “I don’t know how much money I made”?
JIM BAKKER: Ted, that’s our problem. That’s our failure.
The Apostle Paul warned, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.”
He continued: “It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
That was true of Bakker.
So was another problem: biblical illiteracy.
In 2019, the Pew Research Center published a survey called “What Americans Know About Religion.”
Among evangelicals, only 66 percent knew Jesus was from Nazareth, while 86 percent knew Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
Surveys by the Barna Research Group have found that roughly 10 to 12 percent of Americans mistakenly believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.
After the laughter—and the holier-than-thou expressions—there is still the problem of TV evangelists ripping off otherwise decent people.
Jim Bakker is gone.
But others remain.
For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.
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