Oral Roberts

Purifying The Altar
July 20, 2010
Abram
July 22, 2010

Oral Roberts

Granville Oral Roberts (born January 24, 1918) is an American neo-Pentecostal televangelist. He is also a leader in the charismatic movement and a former faith healer.

Oral Roberts has conducted more than 300 evangelistic and healing crusades on six continents and has appeared as a guest speaker for hundreds of national and international meetings and conventions. His ministry began to be widely acclaim for healing crusades which he held in large tents. The service would often begin with music, followed by a sermon and then a healing line would form. In the healing line, thousands of sick people would wait to stand before Oral Roberts so he could pray for them and lay his right hand on their afflicted body. According to his autobiography, there are many people healed in this manner and able to offer proof from several doctors, and they are eager to give testimonials of the details of these healings and deliverances conducted in this manner.

In 1947, Roberts resigned his pastoral ministry with the Pentecostal Holiness Church to found Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. He later founded Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1963, stating he was obeying a command from God. The university was chartered in 1963 and received its first students in 1965. Students were required to sign an honor code pledging not to drink, smoke, dance, party, or engage in premarital sex.

Another part of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association is the Abundant Life Prayer Group, which operates day and night. The group receives thousands of calls for prayer daily from around the world.

In 1980, Roberts said he had a vision which encouraged him to continue the construction of his City of Faith Medical and Research Center, which opened in 1981. At the time, it was the among largest health facilities of its kind in the world and sought to merge prayer and medicine in the healing process. The City of Faith was in operation for only eight years before closing in late 1989. The Orthopedic Hospital of Oklahoma still operates on its premises.

Two of Oral Roberts’ children are currently living: son Richard and daughter Roberta Potts. Another daughter, Rebecca Nash, died in a plane crash on February 11, 1977, with her husband, businessman Marshall Nash.[3] Roberts’ eldest son, Ronald, committed suicide in June 1982 at the age of 37 after getting a court order to get counseling at a drug treatment center in February.[4]

In 1987, during a fund raising drive, Roberts announced to a television audience that unless he raised million by that March, God would “call him home” (a euphemism for death).[5][6] Some were fearful that he was referring to suicide given the passionate pleas and tear that accompanied his statement. He raised .1 million.[7] Later that year, he announced that God had raised the dead through Roberts’ ministry.[8]

He stirred controvery, when as TIME carried in 1987, that he and his son, Richard Roberts as witness, claimed that he had seen his father raise a child from the dead.[9] That year, the Bloom County comic strip recast its character, Bill the Cat as a satirized televangelist, “Fundamentally Oral Bill”.

By 1987 he started “re-emphasizing faith healing and is reaching for his old-time constituency.” [9] However, his income continued to slide (from million in 1980 to million in 1986, according to the Tulsa Tribune) and his largely vacant City of Faith Medical Center continued to lose money (.7 million in 1986 alone).[9]

In a 2004, television broadcast of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory in Jesus, the elder Roberts claimed to have experienced a vision in which “A dark cloud surrounded New York,” purportedly a “wake up call” to tell people that Christ’s return is soon.[citation needed]

On May 4, 2005, Roberts’ wife, Evelyn, of 66 years, died.[10]

“Oral Roberts.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Jun 2007, 19:16 UTC.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Jun 2007

<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oral_Roberts&oldid=138192840>.

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