ORU’s 900 ft Jesus Has Clay Feet

One blogger had a bit of fun.  "I've had a vision of a 900-foot Jewish guy who wants me to build a center to find a cure for clergy corruption," he said.

One by one, self-appointed agents of God and George W. Bush (is there an echo here?) are showing signs of success fatigue.  The latest is the scandal swirling around Richard and Lindsay Roberts of Oral Roberts University.  Here are several of the dozens of allegations published by AP on October 6, 2007:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
• Mrs. Roberts – who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site – frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."
• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."
• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.
• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.
• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.
• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.
• The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

All of this has been triggered by a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by three former professors who claim they were fired for protesting the school's direct involvement in a local 2005 Republican mayoral race in Tulsa.

Richard Roberts comforted students last week by telling them that he had talked with God, and God told him to say, "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not."  God not being the Father of Lies, we must assume that Roberts is innocent, or, God-forbid, a liar.

At the risk of being trite, you have to wonder why the President of a 5,300 student university would not know that we live in a litigious society without having to be told so by God.  These are, apparently, slow learners, despite the fact that ORU has its own law school.  Among its graduates are the Rev. Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and David Barton, author, historian and Christian Right critic of the doctrine of the separation of church and state.  Anita Hill, currently in the news by inference in the wake of Mr. Justice Thomas's new book, was a former law professor at ORU.

There is a very interesting sidelight to this development.  Sharing a seat on the Board of Regents with Lindsay Roberts is none other than evangelist John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel and advocate of an imminent invasion of Iran.  The initial reports of this scandal indicated that a professor who later joined the lawsuit, Dr. John Swails, tried to warn Board of Regent members, John Hagee and Kenneth Copeland, on August 28^th.  He was fired that afternoon.

ORU, founded in 1963, has moved forward on a number of visitations from God.  In 1977, Oral Roberts claimed that he had seen a 900 ft. tall Jesus who told him that his proposed and now defunct 2.2 M square foot City of Faith Medical Center would be a success.  Jesus later instructed him to find a cure for cancer.

In 1987, God reportedly told Oral that if he failed to raise $8M within two months for medical missionary scholarships, He was going to take him home.  He raised $9.1M, and the scholarship fund went bankrupt less than one year later.

Bloggers are having a field day.  There are those who caution us not to violate the biblical command against judging, meanwhile ignoring the command to examine prophetic spirits "to see if they are from God" (1 John 4:1).  It seems that "…many false prophets have gone out into the world."  Hmm!  

Too late, perhaps?

One blogger had a bit of fun.  "I've had a vision of a 900-foot Jewish guy who wants me to build a center to find a cure for clergy corruption," he said.