“Jim Bakker slipped out of most people`s collective consciousness after he fell from grace following a sex scandal and his 1989 fraud conviction. But the disgraced televangelist is back, focusing on the apocalypse and urging people to buy both real estate and eye-poppingly expensive extreme survival warfare water bottles from him to prepare.
Bakker, who served five years in prison for 24 counts of wire and mail fraud and conspiracy, is selling cabins in Missouri`s Ozark mountains, telling followers the area (which he calls Morningside) will be `the safest place to live` when the Apocalypse hits. Prices for the cabins weren`t disclosed, but you can rent one for as little as $85 per night right now.”
Fortune
Most televangelists make a killing selling “pie in the sky,” “Accept Jesus, and give your tithes and offerings to our ministry and God will reward you with a mansion in paradise.” Millions of marks living in trailer parks and subsidized housing respond, and the televangelists live in mansions and fly in Lear Jets thanks to their deluded followers.
Other more savvy religious con artists make an even bigger killing selling nonexistent real estate to their followers. In the 1980`s Jim Bakker sold tens of thousands of “lifetime memberships” entitling buyers to an annual three-night stay at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA. Only one 500-room hotel was ever finished, these morons had a better chance of spending their vacation in their heavenly mansion, than they did at Bakker`s hotel.
In 1988 Bakker was convicted on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. His religious empire came crumbling down, his wife divorced him, and he spent a year in a federal penitentiary.
Bakker resurfaced in 2003, with a new wife and a new show with a viewership only a fraction of what it was during his heyday in the 1980`s. His new shtick is selling freeze-dried food, bottled water and cabins in Missouri`s Ozark mountains where believers can weather the End Times. Bakker is hawking 28 ounce `warfare` water bottles, which he claims filter out contaminants, the idiots who watch his show can buy a half-dozen for $150.
Bakker`s community in the Ozarks in called “Morningside” and its brightly painted indoor town square is dominated by a 15-tall Jesus statue. I don`t have to visit Bakker`s compound to know that the only Jesus you will find there is the hokey giant-ass Jesus.
Who knows what kind of financial shenanigans the disgraced evangelist is committing considering he owes million to the IRS according to Wikipedia. I`m betting that it won`t be long before he`s back in the Big House.
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