TAMMY FAYE BAKKER AND THE APOSTLE PAUL (I CORINTHIANS 15:17-19)

 I woke up the other day with what I thought was a novel contrast in attitudes between these two believers. Then I searched a little on the internet and was amazed to see that Philip Yancey writing back in the April 1987 issue of Christianity Today had made the same connection. And since I have been a subscriber to that fine magazine since before that time, I realized that his article must have been rattling around in my subconscious ever since. So it is time to update it a bit.

Most everyone is aware of Tammy Faye if only through the somewhat fictionalized account of her life in the 2021 movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” She married evangelist Jim Bakker and they started the popular PTL Club in 1974, which soon grew into its own network taking in about $120 million yearly from devoted viewers, $200 million of which was used to build Heritage USA theme park. The purpose of their show was to preach the Prosperity Gospel, and they were the poster children for that theology with their lavish salaries and a grand mansion to live in.

During the height of their popularity, Tammy Faye was quoted as saying on her TV show, “The Christian life is just so great that I think I would become a Christian even if it wasn't true.”

But that was before her dream life began to fall apart. It was revealed that her husband had paid out $287,000 of PTL funds to Jessica Hahn as hush money to stop her from claiming that he had raped her. Subsequently, PTL went bankrupt; her husband began to serve 5 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy; their mansion burned down; she divorced Jim and married the very man who had helped Bakker pay off Hahn. Her new husband, in turn, was convicted of bankruptcy fraud and spent over 2 years in prison, and off and on from 1996-2007 she battled colon and lung cancer until her death.

Yancey compares Tammy Faye's statement in the 1980's with that of Paul found in I Corinthians 15:19 – “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.” And in II Timothy 3:12, Paul says, “Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” In those statements, Paul is only echoing the words of his Master recorded in John 10:33 when He tells his followers, “In the world you face persecution.” And in Mark 10:29-30 Jesus promises his followers a number of blessings in the present age including “persecutions.”

Note also Paul's words in I Corinthians 15:17 where he says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” In other words, Paul stresses the vital importance of the truth. But Tammy Faye expressed the opinion that the actual truth is not nearly as important as what belief in something that may or may not be true can give you in this life.

You couldn't get a clearer contrast between the teachings of the Prosperity Gospel and the true Gospel than to look at what the Bible has to say vs. the words of Tammy Faye at that time. And yet, on the other hand, there are also some similarities between her life and that of Paul. Both of them began their public careers as persons of some fame and power who felt they were serving God in the best way possible. But both were subsequently humbled by circumstances to realize that the trappings of earthly blessings were false and fleeting and that they had in reality been serving a faulty image of God.

I don't know much about Tammy Faye's life during her declining years except that she died as a believer. The problem lies in those many people who continue to believe the words of preachers who proclaim that financial support of a ministry will inevitably lead to one's healthy and wealthy existence here on earth. But when it doesn't exactly turn out the way the way their followers had envisioned, then they no longer have any need of Christ. The horrible eternal consequences of disappointed hopes in what people have been mistakenly been told in the name of Christ regarding earthly blessings, or even regarding prophesied world events, cannot be overlooked. And Christians who mislead others in those ways will have to one day have to face their Maker.

That is my sermonizing for the day.