God Spoke To Oral Roberts, Jr.

November 29, 2007

The Facts

Richard Roberts (Oral, Jr.) announced today that he is stepping down as President of Oral Roberts University among the accusations that he and his family have misused University funds. It took him several weeks to come to this decision, but Roberts is doing this now because, he said, God told him to.

My View

Where do you start on this? I will never get over the fact of how these mega-preachers use God as an excuse to further their personal agenda. And I will never get over the fact that, according to them, when God calls a man to minister and that man becomes a mega-preacher, God seems to always select a child of that man to replace him when the elder steps down. I’m sure their answer would be the old adage of “God works in mysterious ways”.

Does anyone remember when, in 1986, Oral Roberts, Sr. came on the airways and told the world that God had told him that he, God, was going to “call Roberts home” if Roberts did not raise eight million dollars and build a medical center in one year? Then in 1987 he claimed that God told him to raise another eight million dollars in three months or God was going to “call him home”. And millions of people still refuse to acknowledge what these people really are. If I were a genuine, honest servant of God serving in the capacity of leadership, I would be coming out every day exposing these people. A very few do. Unfortunately, too many are using the crutch that it is not their place to judge. But if they don’t start adopting a different attitude, these crooks are going to destroy their reputation and take them down also. Actually, the destruction has already begun.

In the 1987 case of God talking to Oral Roberts, there was a syndicated columnist on the west coast that made the national news. He suggested that after thousands of years we finally had an opportunity to prove once & for all that God existed. He suggested that no one send Roberts any money, then in 90 days when Roberts was “called home”, that would settle it. Unfortunately, not enough people listened to him. Roberts raised the eight million dollars, and more, in less than three months and is still alive today. I guess some would say that proves God’s existence.

I am compelled to repeat here a phrase I feel certain I coined a long time ago about what God must be saying; “stop blaming me! I had nothing to do with it!”