TULSA, Okla. -- God told Oral Roberts, according to the television evangelist himself, that it was curtains for him if his supporters did not meet an $8 million fund-raising goal by April Fools' Day.
A Florida dog track owner thought he was putting the campaign over the top this week with a $1.3 million check, but Roberts indicated more was needed in a statement that failed to make clear whether he still expected to die.
Roberts' on-and-off reprieve from a premature heavenly reward came just days after a sex scandal forced Jim Bakker to hand over his financially troubled evangelical empire to Jerry Falwell, whose own television ministry reportedly has some money problems.
Add up all these shenanigans and the bottom line is that some of the biggest of the TV preachers, already fighting credibility as well as cash-flow problems, are in deep trouble and trying hard to duck a building nationwide backlash.
There are hints that money was the root of Bakker's sexual backsliding. Some charge he was set up by conspirators plotting to take over his PTL Network, an acronym for 'Praise the Lord!' or, as his critics would have it, 'Pass the Loot.'
Roberts, the granddaddy of video soul-saving, devised and perfected many of the television techniques and much of the mail-order magic that spawned his competitors. Some of them now reach more viewers and spin more money than he does.
But it was Granville Oral Roberts, born dirt poor 69 years ago in a shotgun house on the dusty Oklahoma plains, who showed them how.
A man once dismissed as an 'Okie holy roller,' a faith-healing tent preacher, Roberts became with his friend and booster Billy Graham one of America's most influential religious leaders of the 20th Century.
Roberts now controls a $500 million international conglomerate. He lives in posh houses in Tulsa and in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs in California. He travels in a corporate jet and drives a Mercedes.
The poor boy from Ada, Okla., whose hands picked cotton and pulled corn before he laid them on the halt and the lame, now sits on the board of directors of the Bank of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Natural Gas.
The jewel in his earthly crown is the futuristic complex that includes Oral Roberts University and the adjoining and towering City of Faith medical facilities.
Detractors have dubbed the complex 'Six Flags Over Jesus,' but to Roberts' devotees, whom he calls 'partners,' a visit to Tulsa is comparable to a Moslem's pilgrimage to Mecca.
The partners, many of them oldsters or working people of modest means, believe the media has been unfair to Roberts. They say press reports fail to emphasize that the contributions for which he has been praying daily in his 200-foot prayer tower are earmarked for a medical missionary program.
Suzanne Heck, a partner visiting the complex from Coconut Creek, Fla., said she never doubted that God told Roberts he would be called home to Heaven if he didn't raise the cash.
'The press is blinded,' she said. 'Things of the spirit seem like foolishness to people who haven't been born again. Can you imagine what kind of press Noah would have got?'
Noah's Ark is just one of the exhibits in 'Journey through the Bible,' which is something like an admission-free theme park adjacent to the hospital. Visitors sitting in a dark room constructed to resemble a boat are assaulted by jibes and guffaws from overhead speakers.
'Where's the rain, Noah?' jeer unseen Noah-baiters. 'How are you doing in there with all those animals, Noah? Haw, haw, Noah.'
Then, suddenly, there are rumbling noises and the boat-like room starts to shake. The voices stop mocking and start pleading for permission to come aboard, but it's too late. So much for doubters and scoffers who mock those to whom God speaks.
Heck, a public school teacher and mother of two, and her husband Larry, a pipefitter, as charismatics share Roberts' belief that the Holy Spirit can move the chosen to speak in tongues. They left a mainstream Baptist church for one that 'gives the Holy Spirit freedom to move.'
The Hecks embrace Roberts' gospel of health and wealth, which he calls 'seed-faith' and which promises material as well as spiritual wellbeing to contributors.
'You don't give to get,' said the teacher, 'but you expect to get when you give.'
Asked if God really would take Roberts' life if he had failed to raise the cash, she replied, 'He called Moses home, didn't He? Moses didn't get to complete his mission. He never got to the promised land.'
Roberts reveals God's instructions to him to his partners, not to the press, which would rather he talk about his finances. But there are signs everywhere that the man who instructs his supporters to 'Expect a miracle!' could use one himself -- a real one.
Reports persist that his $250 million medical complex -- a 60-story diagnostic clinic, 30-story hospital and 20-story research center - drains money from his other enterprises, including the successful university, at a time when both his television audience and their contributions are diminishing.
Roberts, through his spokesmen, denies such reports, but Tulsa Tribune publisher Jenkin Lloyd Jones describes him as 'a man in a box canyon who may not know how to turn around.'
Jenkins, a syndicated columnist whose newspaper has provided some of the best coverage of Roberts' operations over the years, contends the beleaguered evangelist has doggedly covered the City of Faith's deficits 'and what these have done to the university is anybody's guess.'
Jan Dargatz has the big title of 'vice president for creative services' for the university, but her most important job is speaking for the man who runs it all.
Dargatz scoffed at contentions the City of Faith medical facilities are little more than a state-of-the-art shell. Built for 777 hospital beds, only slightly more than 100 usually are filled, but Dargatz said all of the facilities were built to accommodate future needs and are free of debt.
She denied the medical facilties drain funds from the univeristy, whose endowment is '$20 million and growing.'
Dargatz, who holds a doctorate in education from the University of Southern California and describes herself as 'an Episcopal layman,' said Roberts was absolutely sincere in revealing his latest mandate from God.
'He felt like his life was on the line,' she said. 'God was saying, 'If you can't get it done, Buddy, I'll get a new captain of the ship.''
Ultimately, Dargatz said, the new skipper probably will be Roberts' son Richard, star of a daily television show produced on the campus and called 'Richard Roberts Live.'
'The son wants this and the father wants it for him,' said Dargatz, but she made it clear the elder Roberts will be in the public eye for a long time to come. 'I see it as a long, slow fadeaway.'
On a recent day about two dozen excited visitors braved a driving rain to attend the broadcast of Richard's show at the modern Mabee Center.
The star, 38, looking dapper in a dark blue suit and striped tie, warmed up the audience before taking his seat on a set resembling a living room.
'We'll be live,' he assured them.
Richard's wife Lindsay, looking very pregnant in a white lace dress, also appeared on the show, almost entirely produced by ORU students, who back up Richard when he sings upbeat Christian songs in an acceptable tenor.
Next day, the show's cameras focused on Richard holding his new daughter, Catherine Olivia, born hours earlier at the adjacent City of Faith.
Richard often prays live on camera to cure afflictions of those at home in front of their television sets, but it is a pale version of the old-time Holiness Pentecostal faith-healing revival meetings where his father once had the true believers rolling in the sawdust.
The elder Roberts exudes strength. When in full voice, he looks for all the world like a man who hoed cotton before he saved souls and learned to play golf. Richard also plays golf, but he looks as if he was born to the country club rather than the hard-scrabble early life of his father, son of an itinerant evangelist and sharecropper.
Dargatz acknowledges the differences in the two men, but insists those are of style rather than substance.
'Richard's only been in the ministry for seven years,' she said. 'His television show is increasingly popular. His audience is growing. Oral is a builder and a creator. Richard will never found a university. His role will be to build on what Oral has created.'
As a rebellious teenager, Richard once told his father: 'Get out of my life and never mention religion to me again.' But, at the age of 20, he has said, 'God got ahold of my life.' He attended ORU but never was much of a student.
After singing and preaching on his father's television show, he went through a wrenching divorce and remarriage in 1980. The divorce prompted considerable criticism from the faithful, which was weathered with the firm support of the elder Roberts.
In a stunning example of poor timing -- just before the last desperate pleas for money -- Richard moved into a new mansion inside the fenced and guarded Roberts compound on the ORU campus, and the ministry acquired a private jet valued at $850,000.
Dargatz scoffs at critics who contend Oral and Richard live high on the hog.
She said the plane is used exclusively for the ministry and is needed to assure Oral's security.
As she explained, 'A lot of people love him and a lot of people hate him.'
The son and the father own homes near Palms Springs, Dargatz acknowledged, but said the residences on the campus and the one in Beverly Hills are owned by the ministry.
'It's not personal property,' she said. 'They can't pass it on.'
Dargatz said Oral's wife Evelyn 'fixes the meals. It's meat and potatoes and two vegetables and you'd better clean your plate.'
At home, Roberts works on his books and sermons, said Dargatz, who described him as 'a voracious reader and writer.'
She said he enters the prayer tower at the center of the campus 'three or four times a year. When Oral does this it's almost like a marathon but he's trained for it,' she said. 'He prays every day.'
When in the tower, she said, 'He paces the floor, crying out to God.'
At 20, Laurie Matos is being shaped by what even some of Roberts' critics consider a major achievement -- the fully accredited university that bears his name.
'It's like a family here,' said Matos, a striking woman born a Roman Catholic in Newburgh, N.Y., of Puerto Rican parents. 'I received Jesus as my savior when I was 14.'
A sophomore majoring in business administration, she said her career will be 'whatever the Lord decides.'
'Maybe I'll work in a bank, be a vice president of something, but I want to have a family too,' she said.
The dress code at ORU requires that men wears ties and women wear dresses or skirts. The women use makeup and dress well, sometimes expensively. 'We have the right to prosper,' Matos said. 'I'm a daughter of the King. He gives us the very best because we're the children of God.'
Describing how she came here, Matos said, 'I told God that if He wanted me to go to ORU to get me accepted and get me the money. He came through. Praise God. I know He wants me here.'
Once a small-time plate-passing preacher, Roberts now is an 'ordained elder' in the United Methodist Church, a switch some say he sought in order to swim in the religious mainstream. But many in the denomination he joined in the 1960s take a dim view of their brother's ministry.
'The Methodist Church has never encouraged the style of money-raising that Oral has been doing lately,' said the Rev. William Todd, pastor of the small Southern Hills United Methodist Church, which is just across the highway from Roberts' 500-acre complex.
Todd suggested Roberts is largely responsible for his troubles with the press.
'He's a public figure and subject to fair comment,' said Todd, who noted that it was Roberts himself 'who put out the story that the devil tried to choke him.'
That struggle, as Roberts recently described it, reached its terrifying peak when Satan got a deadly grip on his throat that was loosened only after his wife Evelyn rushed into the bedroom to the rescue.
Roberts' followers evidently accepted that story as readily as they responded with contributions in 1983 when he announced that Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer.
Todd, although wryly amused by such tales, genuinely admires Roberts, if not his methods.
'I've heard him speak,' he said. 'He communicates something that I appreciate.'
Asked if Richard can succeed Oral, Todd said, 'He can and will.'
When Oral Roberts decribes his wrestling matches with Satan even skeptics often are fascinated, or at least amused. But Richard, it must be said, has trouble getting away with it. His highly personalized efforts to evangelize on camera strike some critics as patently insincere and downright smarmy.
Holding his new daughter in his arms and looking straight into the camera, Richard described the Roberts family at the hospital at the moment of birth: 'All of us were holding hands and praying in tongues as the contractions started.'
Richard reported to his television fans that when he phoned his father to report 'It's a girl,' Oral responded by saying that God already had disclosed that information to him personally.
Russell Stahl, 19, an ORU sophomore from Denver, harbors no doubts that God speaks directly to the university's founder.
'Obviously, God speaks to him,' said Stahl, resting between classes in a lounge deep inside the Learning Resources Center, a sprawling classroom building. 'Otherwise, he couldn't have built all this.
As for himself, Stahl said, 'I've never heard God speak. He directs me through the Bible.' ---
Kaaren Witte, author of such determinedly inspirational books as 'Great Leaps in a Single Bound,' believes that Roberts' latest pitch for cash has damaged the evangelical movement.
'I'm afraid it's hurt,' she said in an interview in the City of Faith's huge cafeteria. 'There's a lesson for all of us in this. Let's face it, we're under a microscope. People have the right to pick us apart.'
But then she shifted to Roberts' defense, saying, 'Look what's he's accomplished. 'Okay, the guy made a mistake. But c'mon, a slip of the lip and he's got the whole world mocking him.'
Roberts' Abundant Life magazine found it useful to publish that 'slip' in a full-page advertisement headlined: 'We're at the make or break point for my life to be extended beyond March.'
Witte believes that God gives Roberts 'impressions.' But, according to Roberts, those impressions can be startlingly specific. For example, he reported that the Jesus who appeared before him stood precisely 900 feet tall.
Witte believes Richard can succeed Oral despite a lot of 'strikes against him,' such as the divorce.
She said the latest crisis over fund-raising methods, which resulted in some shows being pulled off the air by individual stations, has in some ways strengthened Roberts' flock.
'It's pulled us together and we're fighting back,' Witte said. 'We're not going to be mocked on the Johnny Carson Show.'
The Rev. Larry Becker, pastor of Tulsa's Will Rogers' United Methodist Church, is one who does not approve of the way Roberts raises money.
'I'm in no position to judge his motives but I don't agree with his methods,' he said. 'It has cast a negative reflection on him as a minister, on the university and, to some degree, on all religious fund-raising efforts.'
Becker recalled that as a youth he attended one of 'Oral's healing meetings. I felt he had a powerful ministry. Basically, what he was doing was helping people. Oral was a pioneer. He led the way in developing the television ministry. Many who have succeeded learned from him and now compete with him. Now he's just one among many. There's only so many dollars to be given to that kind of ministry.'
Becker has doubts that Richard can successfully succeed Oral.
'I question whether Richard can keep the support of the broad range of people who support his father.,' he said. 'I believe Oral's life is evidence that God has blessed his ministry. But he may have done some things he thought God told him to do that Oral really decided.'
Becker, whose brother is an ORU graduate, said, 'That hospital has been the undoing of the whole thing. It would leave a real blight if it all went down the tube.'
Spokeswoman Dargatz scoffed at any such notion, although she acknowledged that Roberts now pulls fewer television viewers than Jimmy Swaggart and Robert Schuller. ORU closed its dental school last year and its law school was transferred to CBN University, founded by Pat Robertson, a presidential aspirant.
Dargatz said annual contributions are about $55 million, down $30 million from 1980, but she said that was an unusually good year because it was then that Roberts mounted his massive campaign to bankroll the City of Faith.
'Television ratings are based on the total number of viewers and there's a direct correlation to the number of stations you buy,' Dargatz said. 'To a certain extent, viewership is bought. Oral decided a long time ago he was not going to spend all his money on air time. We still have the greatest efficiency factor for dollars spent.'
Ratings to the contrary notwithstanding, even Roberts' harshest critics agree it's too early to count out a man who claims to have emerged unscathed after wrestling Satan.
