Bakker Move to Regain Job Told; Falwell Won’t Fight Him

As the PTL ministry’s new board prepared for a crucial meeting today, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said he had received a letter from Jim Bakker threatening a “holy war” to wrest back the PTL empire he gave up five weeks ago in a sex scandal.

Falwell, who took over the ministry at Bakker’s behest, said he has no intention of fighting over control of PTL and strongly implied he may withdraw at the board meeting in Fort Mill, S.C.

There was no firm indication whether Bakker, who has been secluded in his Palm Springs home, would attend.

Falwell, in a taped appearance on Monday’s “700 Club” show on evangelist Pat Robertson’s CBN religious network, officially revealed that Bakker is moving to regain control of PTL.

Falwell said Bakker told him he wants to regain his job as head of PTL.

“I am ready to come back in accordance with our agreement when you are ready to step aside,” Bakker’s message reportedly said. “I am ready to come back now as president of PTL until you can assemble a board of ministers.”

Falwell said, “He’s implying I made some kind of deal with him, which I did not, to give it back to him . . . and implying that if I don’t do it there’ll be a holy war. Those are his words--’a holy war.’

“I’m not going to be part of a holy war,” Falwell said. “They won’t have any fight from Jerry Falwell.”

“If he decides to come back,” Falwell said, “he’ll preside over a funeral--the funeral of his ministry.”

The PTL scandal was touched off March 19 when Bakker abruptly resigned after admitting a sexual meeting with a church secretary in 1980. The scandal heated up again during the weekend when--in an evident early response to Bakker’s move to return--the Rev. John Ankerberg began appearing on television talk shows to air new charges against Bakker.

They included allegations that Bakker consorted with prostitutes, engaged in homosexual acts and tolerated wife-swapping among his subordinates.

Ankerberg, a Tennessee Baptist minister, said in an interview with ABC News that his informants “would see (Bakker) go into these massage places, they would see him go out of the massage places.”

Bakker has denied Ankerberg’s allegations.