Jim Bakker is back!
When Bakker told CNN interviewer Larry King shortly after his release in 1994 — the original sentence having been reduced — that he would not do television again, "I meant what I said," Bakker said. "When you put your hand in a fire and get burned, the body reacts to that, and it remembers that. What I had been through had been so painful that I could not imagine doing it again."
He added: "For years I set about to do a number of other things, but I could not get away from what I feel God called me to do, anointed me to do, and that’s Christian television."
"The New Jim Bakker Show" has been made possible largely due to one benefactor whose marriage was healed at Heritage USA — Bakker’s former Christian resort — years ago. Dee and Jerry Crawford own the studio-café, the small hotel across the street and the home where the Bakkers live.
But there are still financial struggles. "I had hoped I could do this without raising money on the air, but airtime is so expensive," Bakker said. "Many stations gave us a few months for free or at a reduced rate to get us started, but now we have to generate the money needed to keep us on the air."
For former PTL producer Gene Bailey, a media consultant for the new show, "it’s like going through a time warp. Everything that was good about the old ‘PTL Club’ is back — without the hype and the glitz."
I’m just unsure what the good was besides the hyperbolic hype and glitz.