Let’s chat about Jim Bakker.    Yes, THAT Jim Bakker.    I first met Jim 30 years ago, my first year as the speaker for the Assemblies of God world-wide radio broadcast REVIVALTIME.     Jim was already soaring with his PTL television show.    I mean, brother, he was “big-stuff” with his picture adorning the cover of virtually every Christian magazine known to man.    He flew Air Force I with U.S. presidents!     I was in my fourth floor office at Assemblies of God headquarters in  Springfield, Missouri, when the receptionist called me to say Jim Bakker wanted to see me and was in the lobby.     I said, “Please….send him up.”    In a few moments, into my office came Jim.    We talked for a half hour or so and he reached into his pocket and took out an envelope.  “Dan,” he said, “use this for Revivaltime.     You have some big shoes to fill with C. M. Ward’s departure (Ward had been the speaker for 25 years) and I just want to help.”    I walked Jim back to the lobby and he left.   That afternoon I opened his envelope and couldn’t believe it!    He had given our ministry a check for $50,000!    (Bet’cha never read that in your newspaper, did you?    Hey, I could tell you a lot of positive Jim Bakker stories I suspect you’ve never heard.    You’ve only heard the big negative one.)      A few years later, Jim stood before a judge and heard himself sentenced to 45 years in prison for   “conspiring to defraud the public with lifetime partnerships to PTL.”     What an injustice!    First of all, to anyone’s knowledge, no one with a lifetime partnership to PTL was ever turned away from the place.     So where was this alleged “defrauding?”     You know, over the decades I have flown over 3 million commercial miles.  Almost invariably, while in the boarding process, the airline agent will come on the speaker to say, “We have oversold the airplane.   If anyone would like to take a later flight, we will give you a free ticket and $200″ – or whatever the package is.   If I can get to the agent before boarding, I’ll ask him or her, “Uh – what did you just announce?”    After the agent repeats the announcement I ask, “I’m confused here.  You have x-number of seats on this airplane….are you telling us that you sold more seats that you have available?”   When the agent acknowledges that this, indeed, is true, I always ask, “Excuse me, but isn’t that what Jim Bakker was sent to prison for?”    The airlines do many times every day what Jim Bakker was accused of doing, and sent to prison for doing, BUT NEVER DID!    Every person at PTL always got his or her room booking.     Anyway…..Jim spent five or six years in prison and I wrote to him.    I would love to have visited him, but he was incarcerated in the north part of the country while I live in  S. Florida.     When he was released, he spent his first month or so at Billy Graham’s house (God bless the Graham’s!!!!!) and then he came to see me and Darlene in Fort Myers.       He came to a Sunday morning service (back in the days when we only  had one service on Sunday mornings) and I introduced him.    Our gracious and loving congregation gave him a standing ovation as he met me on the platform.      Some of my ministry “brethren” got a little uptight with me about that.  “Dan, how can you have Bakker on your platform?  Don’t you know….etc., etc., etc.,”     I would always respond, “Ever read Galatians 6:1 and 2:  “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.  Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”      Through those halcyon years of PTL, I appeared as a guest numerous times with Jim.     And criss-crossing this world more times than I can tell you I have met people who met Christ through PTL or whose marriages were healed or their bodies restored because of Jim’s television ministry.  

But….on with my story.    I spent yesterday with Jim at his Morningside ministry south of Branson, Missouri.     There on 600 gorgeous acres of Ozark hills, valleys, streams and waterfalls, right on the Missouri/Arkansas stateline,  Jim, along with his buddy Jerry Crawford, is building one of the truly great spiritual retreats on earth (Morningside).     Jim’s television program is now seen coast-to-coast and, by summer, will exceed the outreach of the old PTL ministry.      There at Morningside, in condos, apartments and mountain cabins, people are moving just for the joy of living in the Ozarks and having access to brothers and sisters in Christ and Jim and Lori Bakker’s ministry.     Yesterday, Jim, Darlene and I got in a 4-wheeler and drove through those woods where clearing and construction for future buildings are already in full swing.    And the main building, about 250,000 sq. ft., where Jim originates his show, is done.   It is beyond gorgeous and features not only his television auditorium, but 80 magnificent condos.    Apartment buildings are also under construction as is the new Master’s Commission Tabernacle down in the valley.    If you want to see Mother Nature at her finest, visit Morningside.    Both Jim and Lori have been in our church at First Assembly numerous times and their daughter Maricella is a member of our Master’s Commission.     

I am just so incredibly proud of Jim!    Here’s a guy, who emerged from the slammer just a decade or so ago, virtually friendless (yes, most of his “acquaintances” had flown the coop) and most certainly penniless who now is again on the frontline of ministry.      Yesterday, on his television show, he introduced me as one of his five closest friends in the world.    I am proud of that.    See, real friends don’t cut and run when the going gets tough.     Jesus, our best Friend, is the pattern for loyalty.   He said, “I’ll never leave you, never forsake you.”     How can Christians turn their backs on their fellow believers when they go through valleys?     I have never understood that.     Such people are not really friends, only fair-weather acquaintances.     Political correctness and Christian friendship are a contradiction in terms.    I have been proud to call Jim Bakker my friend through good times and bad.   So…..if you are ever in Branson, Missouri, be sure to visit Morningside (about ten miles south of there on hiway 86 – just 12 miles west of hiway 65) and visit Jim and Lori at Morningside.     Or find their Monday-through-Friday television show in your local area.     I hope you get to meet Jim someday.    And if you ever have him as a friend…..you’ve got a friend forever.

This is not a tirade against capital punishment.   Quite frankly, I remain ambivalent about it.    There are periods of time when I oppose it and other times, when I hear of some truly hideous crime, that I support it.    No, this blog concerns the application of the death penalty.    

This past week in our city, a man was convicted of murdering two people.     The jury ruled that the crime was premeditated.     Yet their recommendation to the judge was that the alleged killer be given a life sentence.    OK, I have no problem with that case.    However, as I have written in an earlier blog, I spend a weekend every other month on Florida’s death row where over 340 men are awaiting the lethal needle.    Some of these guys I know personally and know them rather well.     Were they guilty of murder?    Juries said, “Yes.”     One of them in particular, whose case has been shown in a two-hour NBC documentary (and shown three times now, by the way) was convicted of kllling one man.    Yet his jury recommended he die.     How is it that one man can purposely kill two people and get life in prison, yet another kills one man and gets the death penalty?    Pleases tell me how that makes any logic whatsoever?    

I am not arguing that these people are innocent.   Nor am I trying to abolish the death penalty.    But why is it applied so arbitrarily?     Why does one man get the needle and another, who kills twice as many people, get life?     Perhaps some this situation can be attributed to the skills of defense lawyers.   Perhaps it can be laid at the feet of tender-hearted juries and judges.     I frankly don’t know, nor understand this gross inequity.       If the death penalty is a legitimate punishment, then it should be administered on a consistent basis; otherwise, it should be cast aside.

There is one death penalty, however, that will be applied fairly.    Romans 6:23    ”For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”    Ezekiel 18:4   ”….the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”     There will be no appeals at the Great White Throne Judgment on that awful day when the books of our lives will be opened by divine hands.     Thank God, our sins can be covered now, during our lifetimes, by the precious blood of Christ.    But after we die – the judgment before God.   While we yet live in this life, we can be justified by faith in God’s provision for salvation, cried Habakkuk and Paul – just-as-if-I’d-never sinned at all.      But woe be to that one who has never availed himself or herself of the freely-given salvatin of our Lord.    Because, friend, that death penalty will be very fairly and consistently applied – not like the pathetic way it’s administered by us mortals.