Disc Jockey Finds It’s Costly to Poke Fun at Evangelist : Roberts Reaps Cash, Scolding for Predicting His Death

The money began to roll in as soon as Oral Roberts told his followers that he needed a quick $4.5 million from them or God would call him home.

By Thursday, less than two weeks after the evangelist-faith healer warned his radio audience that without their donations he would not live past March, the flock had responded with $1.6 million of that cash.

But Roberts’ appeal has drawn other responses as well. He has been scolded for confusing evangelism with hucksterism. One Tulsa newspaper has run an editorial headlined, “Come off it, Oral.” A Tulsa disc jockey has poked fun at the whole affair and the station he works for has paid for it by losing $8,000 in advertising revenue that would have come from Roberts’ coffers.

The evangelist’s offices have been swamped with calls from the news media all over the world. And Roberts is not around to field the questions.

Embroiled in Controversy

Roberts, 68, the builder of an evangelical empire, a university bearing his name and a huge medical center called the City of Faith, finds himself embroiled in controversy: Is he putting on a scare campaign to appeal to the emotions of his devotees, or does he really believe his own prediction?

The brouhaha began earlier this month, when the evangelist announced in two of his televised broadcasts that he needed the $4.5 million to complete an $8-million drive for medical school scholarship money. God, he said, had told him to start a medical missionary program with the scholarships as its foundation.

He told his Sunday audience, estimated at 1.6 million households, that he needed “some quick money.”

“I am asking you to help extend my life,” he said. “We’re at a point where God could call Oral Roberts home.”

‘An Account With God’

He also asked the viewers to send $100 immediately, saying “you’re building an account with God.”

Television stations in several major markets, including Dallas, Denver and Washington, quickly warned that future Roberts shows would be closely scrutinized, because the appeal appeared to them to smack more of fund raising than gospel spreading. One station that carried the program--and then regretted it--was KWTV in nearby Oklahoma City, where company president Duane Harm knows both Roberts and his son Richard, also an evangelist and heir to his father’s television ministry.

“We felt it was irresponsible as broadcasters to turn our heads to something that so emotionally appealed for money,” said Harm, adding that calls to the station were running 10 to 1 against the fund-raising tactic.

“There are some 95-year-olds out there who are willing to write a $500 check just to keep him from dying,” Harm said.

Can’t Reach Roberts

Harm, who has played golf with the elder Roberts in the past, has tried repeatedly, and to no avail, to reach the faith healer since the controversy began. A spokeswoman for Roberts would only say that he was out of the state. In addition to his residence in Tulsa, Roberts owns homes in both Palm Springs and Beverly Hills.

On Wednesday, John Erling, morning show host on Tulsa radio station KRMG, joked on the air that he had been ordered by a “900-foot Lassie” to build a 60-story dog and cat hospital. He told listeners, “If you don’t send me money, you will die.” Oral Roberts University quickly canceled an $8,000 ad contract with the station.

Richard Roberts, said on one of his evangelical programs that “the media has come down on us . . . like a tick on a dog.”

While the “quick money” plea gained national attention this week, it is really nothing new in Tulsa. Last year, the Tulsa World published a story saying that Roberts had told a chapel service audience he was prepared to die in a year if his medical missionary program was not off the ground by then.

Appeal Made by Letter

And the appeal has also been made by letter to the estimated 1 million people on Roberts’ mailing list. Last week, a mailing from Roberts to his “prayer partners” asked them to sign a “prayer agreement” and send money so that the evangelist’s life could be extended.

At about the same time, Richard Roberts sent past contributors a birthday card for his father, asking them to return it with a money gift.

“Let’s not let this be my dad’s last birthday,” he wrote.

The only person now authorized to talk about the appeal is Jan Dargatz, Roberts’ vice president for creative development. She said Roberts wants the money for his medical students so they will be debt-free at the end of their four years of schooling, enabling them to go immediately to Third World countries to treat those in desperate need. She said Roberts gave himself a year, beginning last March, to set the wheels in motion.

Sees Mandate From God

During the last nine months, he has raised $3.5 million for his project. Dargatz characterized the medical missionary program as “a mandate by God for something he must do, his next great project.”

“His life is on the line,” she said. “He wants to enter heaven’s gates with lots of things done.”

But she also said that Roberts is in fine health and added that she did not know how Roberts would die if his mission fails.

“I can guarantee it will not be self-inflicted,” she said.

She contended that Roberts’ approach was not a scare tactic.

She said that when Roberts talks to God, it is a sensation that is so commanding it is not possible to think of another thing.

“The way God speaks to him is in very direct terms,” she said. “His directions from God have been very much along that line--do this, do that, do this, do that. I don’t have any doubt that if Oral were in the military, he would be a general.”