‘The Devil Has Dumped a Whole Truckload of Trouble’ : Fletcher Regrets Role in Bakker Incident

John Wesley Fletcher, the traveling evangelist who has admitted introducing Jim Bakker to a church secretary in a Florida motel room seven years ago, told a crowd of 300 people Sunday in Anaheim that “the devil has dumped a whole truckload of trouble in my front yard.”

Fletcher said he had prayed that the tryst between Bakker and church secretary Jessica Hahn,c and his role in it, would never become public. Now that it has, he said that he is “glad it’s over” and that “Jesus has set me free from that thing.”

In a prepared statement from his home in Oklahoma City and in a subsequent upstate New York press conference last week, Fletcher detailed his role in bringing together Bakker, head of the PTL Club based in Fort Mill, S.C., and Hahn, who once worked as a baby sitter for Fletcher, on Dec. 6, 1980.

Bakker, who has since resigned as head of PTL--which stands for “Praise the Lord” or “People That Love”--has acknowledged that a sexual incident took place after Fletcher introduced them, then suggested that Hahn give Bakker a back rub to relax him and finally left the room.

“I deeply regret what role I might have played in what evidently transpired,” Fletcher said in the parking lot of Faith Temple in Brighton, N.Y., on March 29.

But on Sunday, Fletcher told the crowd, which was nearly lost in a sea of empty seats in one of the large rooms at the Anaheim Convention Center, that Bakker was down, but not out. “God’s not through with Jim Bakker,” he said. “God’s going to restore him. I’ve been praying for him.”

Fletcher said he also was “praying for Jessica Hahn. I’m praying for Jimmy Swaggart,” he added, referring to the Baton Rouge, La.-based television evangelist who took a leading role in denouncing Bakker in what has been referred to as the “Holy Wars.”

“Sure,” Fletcher said, “the church has been wounded. Sure the body of Christ carries scars today that are real visible on the front pages of our newspapers and on the television screens.”

But in retrospect, he said, “The devil lost and Jesus won the battle.”

Fletcher, who has been dismissed from his Assemblies of God, the same Pentacostal denomination to which Bakker and Swaggart belong, said, “I guess I should feel guilty. I should feel bad. I should feel something.”

In the seven years following the incident involving Bakker and Hahn, Fletcher said he prayed the matter would would never become public.

“For years it was like that dark hand was going to reach out and grab me some day,” he said. “In a way, if it had to come out, I’m glad it’s over and I want to announce to you this afternoon I’m free because Jesus has set me free from that thing.”

If he had wanted to, Fletcher said, “I could have wreaked havoc on the body of Christ by standing up and saying, ‘Look, this is what happened,’ but I didn’t. Now the enemy’s trying to play havoc with it,” he said. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is just keep your mouth closed and keep it between you and God.”

Security personnel expelled a Times photographer from the meeting room and, in the course of his remarks, Fletcher explained why he was no longer speaking with the press.

“I’ve said all I’m going to say about it,” he told the crowd. “We don’t need to be answering anything else to the media.”

Using the Book of Job as his text, Fletcher detailed his own personal tribulations, and asked those in the audience to consider their own past sins.

Doubted He Would Preach

“Seven years ago, when the enemy tried to destroy me,” Fletcher said, “I went through a period that I didn’t think I would ever preach the gospel again. I went through a period in my life that I thought, ‘My God, how could these things happen to me?’ ”

Without explaining the details of his difficulties or the circumstances of his dismissal from the Assemblies of God, Fletcher said only: “I will not try to sweep my situation under the rug. I will tell you that some of the stuff in the media is not exactly accurate, (but) I’m not going to refute it.”

Fletcher linked his involvement in the Bakker controversy to his recently announced plans to build a church center in Columbus, Ga.

Fletcher took note of the size of Sunday’s crowd, which he said was much less than when he spoke in the same room a month ago, saying “those of you who are here today, I know you love me, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“If the enemy had . . . his way, I would have canceled the meeting and not come,” Fletcher said. “When you stand in the fire, you’re purified. I’ve come to stand with you. I didn’t run. I did seven years ago, but this time I’m not going to run. I’m going to look the devil right between the horns and say: ‘Buster, I’ve got your number.’ ”