Ever heard of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker from Praise The Lord?

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker - Founders of Praise The Lord

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVZScTYhn24

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_PTL_Club

The PTL Club (PTL stands for "Praise The Lord" or "People That Love"), later called The Jim and Tammy Show, and in its last days PTL Today and Heritage Today, was a Christian television program first hosted by evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, which ran from 1974 to 1989. The PTL Club, which adopted a talk-show format, was the flagship television program of the Bakkers' PTL Satellite Network. It was one of the first Christian broadcasts in the U.S. to deal with subjects such as AIDS/HIV and homosexuality.

History

The program began as a local TV broadcast in a converted Charlotte, North Carolina furniture store, hosted by Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker. In February 1974, Bakker and his staff built what became known as the PTL Television Network (later named The Inspirational Network), a worldwide Christian satellite cable television network. In a Tonight Show-type format, the program featured many well-known ministers and Christian recording artists. The program was later broadcast from Bakker's Heritage Village ministry headquarters and complex on Park Road in Charlotte, and was later moved to studios constructed at the ministry's new 2500 mixed use family theme park and resort in Fort Mill, South Carolina known as Heritage USA.

Scandal and subsequent demise

Due to his involvement in highly publicized financial and sexual scandals, Bakker resigned on March 19, 1987 turning the cable network, the Heritage USA complex and all ministry assets over to fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell. Falwell became CEO of parent company, Heritage Village Church & Missionary Fellowship, Inc. and assumed control of the network and its flagship program. Falwell's involvement was deemed newsworthy as the PTL ministries were a part of the Assemblies of God denomination and Falwell was a Baptist. Ministry supporters questioned Falwell's intentions and speculated that he was solely interested in maintaining control of the lucrative cable television empire owned by PTL to use to broadcast his own ministry programming from his Lynchburg, Virginia headquarters.

One commentator noted that "Bakker arranged for Falwell to take over PTL in March in an effort to avoid what he called a 'hostile takeover' of the television ministry by people threatening to expose a sexual encounter he admitted to having seven years earlier with church secretary Jessica Hahn."[1] According to Hahn, on the afternoon of December 6, 1980, when she was a 21 year-old church secretary, Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher drugged her and raped for "about 15 minutes". Hahn stated she overheard Bakker say afterward to another PTL staffer, "Did you get her too?"[2]

Bakker was ultimately indicted by a federal grand jury for directing millions of dollars of church funds to personal use. Much of the nation[citation needed] watched the court case to see the outcome of the 165 million dollars in donations.[3][4]

The PTL Club continued as a television program for considerable time after this, first with Falwell as its host and PTL personality Doug Oldham as co-host. Falwell later brought in Christian singer Gary McSpadden as the show's co-host along with PTL musical talent Ron Aldridge. The show was renamed PTL Today, then in an effort to distance the show from the PTL name, Heritage Today. Aldridge continued as co-host along side another PTL singer, Brenda Davis after Falwell suddenly resigned from the now bankrupt PTL ministry and McSpadden and Oldham subsequently left the show out of support for Falwell's decision to resign his position with the ministry.

Under Falwell's leadership, the ministry filed for bankruptcy and after disagreements with the bankruptcy judge and PTL's donors, Falwell and his team abruptly resigned. With Falwell's resignation, Sam Johnson, a member of the PTL ministry team, assumed leadership and incorporated a new entity known as Heritage Ministries to run the television program and associated ministry functions. With Heritage USA and the PTL assets now tied up in bankruptcy reorganization, the new ministry and the television program were forced to move from their longtime Heritage USA broadcast studios to newly purchased property on Nations Ford Road in Charlotte that was named Heritage Place.

The program remained on the air as late as September 1988 when Johnson faced problems with the IRS.[5]

In 1989, the network was purchased out of bankruptcy by evangelist Morris Cerullo. It is now known as INSP from broadcast facilities in Charlotte with headquarters in nearby Indian Land, South Carolina.

On August 23, 1991, after the second and final day of his re-sentencing hearing, the court reduced Bakker's original 45-year sentence to 18 years—five of which he actually served before being released.

In February 2009, Atlanta, Georgia area investment banker Ben Dyer announced his intention to auction off over 15,000 videotaped episodes of The PTL Club on March 27, 2009.[6] The programs were purchased by a friend of Jim Bakker's.