Paying The Tithe

I hope the Lord will forgive me for overlooking the passing of Oral Roberts. Though his ministry stretched over six decades and across the globe, when he died on December 15, I was busy with other more pressing matters. But make no mistake, this was a pioneer: the inventor of TV evanglism, who first started reularly airing God's word in 1954, three years before Sputnik. Oral spread the word as he spread the wealth. With those who shared his surname.
He made millions of dollars and spent it on important things like hospitals and a university, and homes in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs. Not bad for a kid from Oklahoma who nearly died of tuberculosis when he was seventeen. The irony of a faith-healer who once claimed to have raised a child from the dead running his own medical school may have been lost on those who attended the City of Faith Medical and Research Center.
Fifty-five years after his first broadcast, you can still see "A Place For Miracles" airing daily on a blessed affiliate near you. He said that God would "call him home" if he didn't raise eight million dollalrs back in 1987. His supporters beat that by more than a million, and so he stuck around for another couple decades. Oral's gone, but not forgotten. Evangelical pastor Rick Warren's plea for donations to fill a nine hundred thousand dollar deficit at his Southern California megachurch brought in almost two and a half million dollars. Pastor Warren said that none of the donations were bigger than one hundred dollars. You remember Reverend Rick: he was the one who gave the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. He's part of the new wave of "purpose-driven preachers" who are paving the way to Heaven with book sales and talk show appearances. He makes Bill O'Reilly nervous. He's Rupert Murdoch's pastor. God said, "Let there be light," but he's not paying to keep the lights on. Give me some of that old time religion!