James Orsen Bakker is an American televangelist, a former Assemblies of God minister, and a former host (with his then-wife Tammy Faye Bakker) of The PTL Club, a popular evangelical Christian television program. A sex scandal led to his resignation from the ministry. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about his imprisonment and divorce and effectively ended his time in the larger public eye.
Father of Jay Bakker and Tammy Sue Bakker Chapman.
When confronted about the missing $158,000,000, he claimed that Satan had gotten into his ministrys computers to make the money lost. When asked if he could prove Satan stole the money, he replied, "Can you prove he didnt?"
After his arrest, people cynically joked that Bakkers PTL network actually stood for "Pass The Loot".
Among the frivolous items that Bakker bought with his churchs money: a eight-foot-tall brass giraffe and an air-conditioned doghouse.
As a young boy he put a newly painted rowboat in his front yard and stuck a For Sale sign on it. After the sale, the buyer tried to bring it back when he discovered that Bakker had only painted one-half of the boat -- the side that faced the street.
(1995-2000) Lived in California and spent as much time as possible in North Carolina with his daughter and two grandsons
(1989 - 1994) Imprisoned for fraud (US$158 million)
(January 2007) He marked the fourth anniversary of "The New Jim Bakker Show" which premiered January 2, 2003. He and his second wife, Lori Graham Bakker , star in the talk show format program in front of a live audience in the former Cowboy Cafe which is now called the Studio City Cafe in Branson, Missouri.
(2000-present) Began to plan a possible move to the Branson, Missouri area, where he now resides much of the year.
[on why his "The P. T. L. Club" (1976) empire crashed] I think the,devil was mad. I think something so wonderful and beautiful was being,built, that the devil was mad.
Oh, I was never a businessman. I was a visionary, a dreamer.
Oh, I was never a businessman. I was a visionary, a dreamer.
