republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

The following testimony from JD Hall regarding a recent visit to
Jim Bakker’s studio and Morningside Ministries was sent to Pulpit &
Pen for publishing.
While on a working vacation in Branson, Missouri on August 2 – just
prior to my debate on Cessationism and Charismaticism in Cleveland the
following weekend – I spent time with my extended family on the campus
of College of the Ozarks. While there, I planned to visit the television
studios and survivalist retreat (for lack of a better word) of Jim
Bakker, the disgraced televangelist who had a multi-millionaire fund his
ministry come back and who is now hustling survival supplies in the
name of Jesus. Prior to leaving on vacation, I planned this visit to
Morningside and received permission for what I had expected would happen
from my local church leadership, lest anyone think I am a completely
crazy man who had gone rogue or something like that. My leadership gave
me the okay to do what I, indeed, ended up doing.
First, a few things about Jim Bakker. Bakker is a charismatic
preacher who has had his ministry ordination revoked by his former
denomination, the Assemblies of God. A sex scandal, which included
allegations that he and another evangelist had raped a woman, eventually
led to his imprisonment and divorce from his equally infamous wife,
Tammy Fae Bakker (the one with the ridiculous makeup – no, not Jan
Crouch, the other one with ridiculous makeup). Bakker received
his start by working at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network
and helped to start the 700 Club. From there, Bakker went on to host his
own program, the “Praise the Lord” show for Paul and Jan Crouch on the
Trinity Broadcasting Network. The Bakkers then launched out on their own
and started the Praise the Lord (PTL) Club. The PTL Club grew into a
television network. In the 1980s, the Bakkers built what amounted to a
Christian-themed amusement park called “Heritage USA,” and raised
upwards of a million dollars a week to expand the park. It’s during this
time that Bakker raised the attention of the secular press regarding
the excess with which he and his wife lived in opulent luxury while
using the charitable tax status of his organization to obtain great
wealth. Eventually, Bakker was caught giving upwards of 300k to the
woman he had raped from the tax-exempt money given to the ministry, and
the eventual investigation led to law enforcement determining that
Bakker had defrauded his real estate investors and owed a lot of money
to the federal government. Bakker was indicted on eight counts of mail
fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy, and he was
sentenced to 45 years in the federal penitentiary. Later, the sentence
was reduced to eight years. To this day, he still owes the IRS about six
million dollars.
While in prison, Bakker says that he was saved and for the first
time, led to Christ. Financial backers have given Bakker access to more
than 600 acres of prime real estate twenty miles from Branson, Missouri
and built a strange mix of television sets, condos for aging citizens,
and a survivalist retreat replete with security. Today, he broadcasts
television shows that highlight some scary prophetic scenario that
portends world-ending omens and then (conveniently) offers survival
supplies to his audience.
The question is not why I did what I did, but how could I not do
what I did, considering I was only 20 miles away from this cesspool of
wickedness. It seemed a shame not to preach some truth in that darkness.
I approached the gates of the Morningside compound at roughly 11 AM
CS4T on August 2, with plenty of time to spare for the show that was to
begin an hour later. After making it through the security checkpoint and
receiving directions through the compound, I wound my rental vehicle
through the hills and made my way to the main facility – a television
studio, apartment complex, “book store” and restaurant all in one
building. Parking in the parking lot, workers were busy under tents
doing either construction or landscaping, so it seemed.
Walking into the facility reminded me marginally of the Venetian
Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, with a fake sky and blue, ambient
lighting reflected from the corners that imitated the appearance of the
sky. Immediately to the right was the “book store,” and to the left was a
friendly greeter, a woman who appeared to be in her late seventies or
eighties, bound to a wheel chair (she was written about in an article I
ran across in the secular press, and she was still at her station, still
serving Jim Bakker). I asked for a tour of the grounds, and the
volunteer pointed me to the window across from her where I could plan a
tour. The “tour guide” was already on a tour, and the window was vacant,
but I obtained photos of the paperwork left behind; it was essentially a
checklist for salesmen that I regularly saw when I worked with
timeshare companies when I owned my direct sales business. The “ministry
tours” are essentially sales pitches to potential “investors.”

The “book store” had (by my guess) less than a dozen books, all of
which were written by heretics and guests of his program. The “book
store” was instead filled wall to wall with survival supplies. There
were food buckets, pocket knives, sanitary toilets made out of 5-gallon
buckets, flashlights, water purifiers, and so forth. Being that I am an
outdoorsman and Boy Scout at heart (always prepared), I was familiar
with virtually all the products for sale in the book store (and own many
of them), and so I could see that there was a 300-400% markup on
virtually all the products compared to their fair market value that one
could expect to pay at ordinary retailers (for example, water filtration
straws that I previously bought for my hiking and kayaking excursions,
which I paid $35 for 3, were sold for $49.95 each). The book store did
have Shemitah and Four Blood Moons DVDs and CDs on special discount, and
considering those prophecies failed in 2015, it shouldn’t have
surprised me that they were the cheapest products in the book store.
The studio for the program was busy with camera people and producers,
and I made my way to a cameraman and asked if I could have a photo in
Jim Bakker’s chair. He asked if I was a fan and I responded, “I listen
to a lot of what he does.” I made my way to Bakker’s seat and the
cameraman happily took the photos for me. This made my day, but I really
wanted a photo with Jim Bakker.
I found my way to Jim Bakker’s office, in which sat a man and a woman
at different desks. The man had long, dark hair, forearm tattoos,
dressed in all black with an assortment of gold jewelry and looked like
he should have been a leg-breaker for the mob. In his hand was a large
stack of cash, and he was counting it. Before he saw me in the doorway,
he said to his co-worker – and I quote – “It’s all about the money,
baby, it’s all about the money.”
When he looked up and saw me, he and his female counterpart both
blushed and asked how they could help me, as though perhaps I was lost.
“I was hoping to get a photo with Jim. Is that possible?” I asked.
The woman responded, “Oh, no sir. We are all volunteers, and not even
the volunteers get to see Jim. He doesn’t come out unless it’s time for
the show. I haven’t been able to talk to him in years.”
That’s interesting, I thought. I was persistent, asking, “What about
when he comes out? Is there any milling around that happens, do you
think I could approach him to ask for a photo?”
“No,” the woman responded. “He only comes out when it’s time for the
show. He’s in the green room, talking with God. Then he goes back
immediately after the show to talk to God more.”
“Well,” I asked, “when should the show begin, so I know when to be back?”
“There’s no telling,” the woman responded, “because it could be noon
or one or three o’clock because he doesn’t come out of the green room
until he’s heard from God.”
“Just like Moses on the mountain,” I asked. She responded, “Yes, exactly like Moses on the mountain.”
So, with Jim Bakker talking with God in the green room and the tour
guide went on a sales pitch, I decided to risk it and drive around
Morningside. Let me tell you – it is creepy. There’s a false town that
looks like a town but is only a false front (like a movie set or the
town in Blazing Saddles). I have no idea the purpose of that. A vehicle
was very clearly following me around, and though it was unmarked, I know
security when I see it, and so I did not want to risk taking pictures
and getting escorted out as uninvited press (if the officer had Googled
my name, not only would it come up as a polemicist, but as a reporter
and columnist for several newspapers). This fake town, should you doubt
its existence, has been written about by numerous national outlets. It’s
real. It exists. I don’t know why.
Sprinkled around Morningside (even in the studio complex) are condos
paid for by the residents of the compound, who are mostly all in
retirement, and many well beyond retirement. Virtually all of them
grease the wheels that make Morningside work, volunteering for virtually
every aspect of service needed to be done on the sprawling estate.
Making my way back to the main complex, I began to speak to the
twenty or so senior citizens finding their way to the studio audience. I
asked them questions.
“Have you bought any of Jim’s survival food?” I asked a woman clearly in her eighties, barely mobile.
“Oh, yes,” she responded, “I spend my whole social security check on
his food every month.” Two other women gave me the exact same answer.
An elderly volunteer asked which table I would like to sit at in the
audience, and I asked to be seated at the very back. The “crowd” began
to gather (again, less than 25 senior citizens) and I was the youngest
person in the audience by at least 30 years, except for one man about my
age who was there with his father or grandfather, helping him get
around. I made small talk with those around me, asking if they had ever
spoken to Bakker. None of them had. All of them, however, revered him
even though he had never once spoken to them. After all, he was in the
green room, talking with God. He was busy.
I kept my eye out for security, and a few minutes before Jim took the
stage with his new wife, daughter, grandson, false prophet John Shorey,
and the owner of the survival food company that Jim peddles, the lone
security man came out. I “made him” instantly, as having that “security
guy look,” even short of a Secret Service earpiece. Unfortunately, I
think he also “made me.” I’m sure I stood out like a sore thumb, and he
found his way right behind me in the back. This was bad news because I
knew that I would only get out a few words before he would grab me by
the neck or tase me or something.
Right about then, a volunteer came up and asked if I would like to
move forward to the front row to “make it look more crowded for the
cameras.” I happily obliged, knowing that given the layout of the room,
the security guy would have to wade through twenty or so octogenarians
to get to me, which would afford me an extra 30 seconds or so to say
what I wanted to say.
As the program began, Bakker and his “wife” talked about her sick
mother for about 30 minutes or so, and Tammy Fae #2 wondered out loud
why God would allow a good person like her mother to be sick (no one
answered the question). Clearly, a theology of suffering was absent from
any of the experts at the table. Then, John Shorey launched into a
mini-sermon in the next segment about how it was never God’s will for
anyone to be sick, and everyone both on stage and in the audience seemed
oblivious to the fact that they just spent 30 minutes hearing about how
Jim Bakker’s godly mother-in-law was sick. I was looking around the
room to see if anybody caught the contradiction, but everyone was
smiling and nodding at the health-and-wealth gospel being preached.
It was important to me not to interrupt Bakker until he gave a false
prophecy, considering it is his false prophecy that is most detestable
to God (it carried a capital punishment in the Old Testament). There
were dozens of times I could have interrupted Bakker concerning some
abject stupid thing he said, but I was waiting for the perfect
opportunity. After talking about sick grandma, the opportunity presented
itself.
A chef off to the side of the audience was cooking pancakes on the
griddle, and the volunteers were busy serving the pancakes to the panel
on stage (the chef was NOT using the pancakes from the survival bucket,
but a store-bought mixture, which I know because I checked under the
table to see what they would be using when the program began, as the
chef-station was set up before hand). The audience was then being
brought free pancakes, to many “oohs” and “ahs.”
It’s here that Bakker recalled having a prophetic dream a few nights
earlier when God gave him a vision to offer a discount on pancake
survival buckets.
I turned on my iPhone camera laced around my neck and turned on my
GoPro (I received permission to use my camera from the Morningside
office, so long as it wasn’t on flash) for back up, and interrupted Jim.
You can watch the video below.

When I asked about Bakker’s failed prophecies, you can hear a sweet
old woman behind me say, “these things happened.” Of course, the
prophecies did not come to pass, and she is deluded. Bakker said (if you
listen closely you can hear him), “You must listen to the men of God,
so you can understand [the prophecies].”
Bakker then said to “kill the cameras.”
What you can’t see is when I said, “I’ll go, I’ll go,” is that I was
not responding to the female producer whispering in my ear, but the
security guy who was making a rush for me. Then, you hear me saying,
“Don’t touch my camera, and don’t touch my person.” This is in response
to Bakker’s grandson telling the security guy to confiscate my camera.
To his credit, the security guy did not attempt to take my camera or lay
hands on me (which is good for him, because he didn’t look like that
tough a guy).
As I was walking out, the leg-breaking mobster guy from before was
lurking behind while I was being escorted out by security. It was a
fairly quiet conversation, because it was important to be able to say
that I stopped speaking as soon as I asked to and left as soon as I was
asked to – both for the sake of potential litigation and because I
really do believe in private property rights. It was their right to ask
me to be quiet and leave, and that is what I did, and I did it
immediately out of respect for the law.
The security guy told me that if I returned I would be arrested for
trespassing and then threatened me not to release the video I had
because it was “copyrighted.” Of course, you cannot copyright my video,
especially when you gave permission for cameras to be used. It was an
idle threat.
He followed me to my car and took photos of my license plate (I feel
sorry for the guy renting it next from Enterprise, who might happen to
wander onto Morningside). Security guys at the compound’s gate gave me
strong glares on my way out and radioed that I was leaving.
That’s my account, and that’s the story of the now infamous video.
Please pray for the senior citizens being led astray and preyed upon by
this wicked false prophet.
________________________________________________________

Take a tour of Morningside Retreat’s Cozy Cottages. These homes are
sweetly nestled in Morningside’s Peaceful Valley and are perfect to rent
for a vacation or own for a whole new way of life! We are located in Blue Eye, MO. just south of Branson.