I Was Wronger

Continuing on the Canadian theme (perhaps I should visit the non-divine Mrs. L), I'm going to quote from someone in Regina.

That's in Saskatchewan.

And yes, I had to look up the spelling.

Anyway, Lee Harding wrote something in passing about Jim Bakker. I've looked at the beginning of the Jim Bakker trial (in the context of Paris Hilton's psychological issues - whoops, I just remember that they're not news), but haven't looked at the aftermath:

My opinions of both Bakkers changed ten years ago when I read Jim Bakker's book, "I Was Wrong". Bakker said he was wrong about a lot of things--wrong to commit adultery, wrong to allow the growth of the ministry to choke out his relationship with God, wrong to promote a prosperity gospel he had no time to examine in-depth until he got to jail.

The one thing Bakker didn't say was that he was guilty. In fact, he says he did not actually understand what it was he was in jail for until someone explained it to him after he got there. This would normally seem unbelievable; yet after reading the book, the poor legal defense he had was even more unbelievable. Bakker was already in the process of building the hotels that would have allowed all the donors to stay for a three-day stay, just as he had promised. Regardless, Bakker looks back on the whole thing like a biblical Joseph experience--God arranged it and it served a purpose.

Interestingly, a legal expert and professor got his students to look into the Bakker case as an example of fraud. The more they looked at it, the more the professor thought Bakker was actually innocent. He ended up writing letters to help secure an early release for Bakker and published a book about it in 1997. At the end of Bakker's book, he provides a court document issued shortly before his book's release that virtually exonerates him.

jimbakker

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