The TV Preachers Who Fell After Jim Bakker Were Even WORSE

In March 1987, the same week Jim Bakker resigned from PTL, Oral Roberts climbed into the Prayer Tower in Tulsa and told his viewers God would "call me home" unless they sent him eight million dollars. The check that saved him came from a Florida dog-track owner. And that was only the beginning of what happened to television evangelism after the PTL scandal: Peter Popoff's hidden earpiece played on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Robert Tilton and the prayer requests ABC's PrimeTime Live found in bank dumpsters, W.V. Grant's tax case and the house by the country club, and the comebacks on late-night TV that followed. Jim Bakker died on October 5, 2026, at 86, exactly 37 years to the day after a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. This is the story of the televangelists who fell after him: Oral Roberts and the City of Faith, the congressional hearings of 1987, Robert Schuller's layoffs, Pat Robertson and CBN, Jerry Falwell, the National Religious Broadcasters, Richard Roberts and Oral Roberts University, Senator Chuck Grassley's investigation of six prosperity-gospel ministries, Miracle Spring Water, and the real reason the preachers who came after Jim Bakker were even worse. 🔔 Subscribe for the real stories behind the legends, every week. 💬 Which TV preacher from the 1980s and '90s do you remember watching, and do you think the ones who came after Jim Bakker were worse? Tell us in the comments. #JimBakker #Televangelist #OralRoberts