God Reportedly Forces Roberts To Resign From Oral Roberts University
And here we thought God was too busy trying to answer the prayers of Hurricane Katrina victims, California fire victims and of Dancing With The Stars Contestants who are praying for their competitors to fall flat on their faces.
Just trying to save the souls of the men and woman running for President is a tough enough job for one overworked deity.
But he is now busy with something else: administering Oral Roberts University:
Richard Roberts told students at Oral Roberts University that he did not want to resign as president of the scandal-plagued evangelical school, but that he did so because God insisted.
God told him on Thanksgiving that he should resign the next day, Roberts told students in the university’s chapel on Wednesday.
That must have been a tough day for God to tell him, since that’s the day when God has all those requests from people making Thanksgiving dinner for God to make their relatives go home already.
“Every ounce of my flesh said ‘no’” to the idea, Roberts said, but he prayed over the decision with his wife and his father, Oral Roberts, and decided to step down.
Roberts said he wanted to “strike out” against the people who were persecuting him, and considered countersuing, but “the Lord said, ‘don’t do that,’” he said.
Wait a minute: has the Lord passed his bar exam? He could be getting lousy legal advice.
After submitting his resignation, he said, for “first time in 60 days peace came into my heart.”
Roberts spoke for only a few minutes and was applauded and cheered by students. He wiped away tears with a white handkerchief and his hands.
“This has nearly destroyed my family, and it’s nearly destroyed ORU,” Roberts said.
A lawsuit accuses Roberts of lavish spending at a time when the university faced more than $50 million in debt, including taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel to the Bahamas aboard the university jet.
Note that this isn’t the first time that God has given him advice in this case.
Roberts has previously said that God told him to deny the allegations. The week the lawsuit was filed, Richard Roberts said that God told him: “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. This lawsuit … is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”
On Wednesday, Roberts said God told him he would “do something supernatural for the university” if he stepped down from the job he held at the 5,700-student school since 1993.
We can’t image what that’d be. Tell us in comments.
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18 Responses to “God Reportedly Forces Roberts To Resign From Oral Roberts University”
God: ” Roberts, the Thanksgiving turkey at your house was too dry. It was no fun giving you orders with a turkey-dry mouth. Henceforth, the university will devote all studies to the cooking of a proper holiday turkey. That is all you will do and all you will talk about, through eternity.”
Seems to be a family tradition of getting ordered around by God.
At least he wasn’t banished to the glass tower.
Well, you’re overreacting to it, but to answer the question at the bottom, I have a strong suspicion that donations to the university may increase now.
“Oral Roberts University”
Please tell me I’m not the only person that finds that name hilarious. It’s immature I know…but it still gives me the giggles.
Miracle?: Maybe ORU will come out with a decent biologist, that would certainly be a miracle, considering their approach.
ps: ORU is a tier 4 university….that’s the fourth tier out of a total of….4 tiers.
Wow, that these hucksters have millions of dollars to throw around in the first place just amazes me. Its not just a matter of faith, outright stupidity has to fit in there somewhere. I have zero sympathy the fools that support the Roberts clan in their ongoing efforts to fleece the gullible in the name of God.
Having lived in Tulsa for a few years long ago and driven past the facilities under discussion and being fully appreciative of the Roberts family and their respect for God as reflected in their actions…
God will undertake the conversion of the campus into a theme park to be called Six Flags over Jesus. The prayer tower will become the Fly with the Angels ride, where angels with spread wings will spin suspended from a wheel at the top of the tower. A roller coaster for children will have a gentle hill over the praying hands that were relocated from the hospital that God told Oral he had to build which couldn’t even be finished much less kept full of patients. Other rides will be announced in the future should the park be more successful than said hospital.
I’ll respect the televangelists when they return to sackcloth and ashes. Roberts should be thanking God he’s not sitting in a jail cell, where he belongs.
Jim Satt-
Your theme park idea is too realistic for comfort.
It’s definiely in the ‘probable’ zone.
JS – t’s been done before, also known as Heritage USA. Like father, like son, and laughing all the way to the bank. I hope no paternity suits spring up.
I guess the crocodile tears on Larry King didn’t work. Tammy Faye’s plastic surgeon could give Mrs. Roberts a permanent smile…
“President Clinton”
I know where things are leaning, particularly with no third entrant who is serious or a legitimate protest vote (as Perot remained in 1992).
Well at least a theme park is at least honest in its intentions. But making out like you’re doing God’s work, taking peoples money and then living like a king merits a thunderbolt from on high.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
The family has been cursed ever since the 900 foot Jesus who told Oral he’d be taken home if the money for his hospital wasn’t raised accidentally sat on the Prayer Tower.
Early one day many years ago it came to light that Oral Roberts’ other son, the “black sheep” of the family, had killed himself. Later that same day, not having heard the news yet I was leaving the offices of the small oil company I worked for at the time and going through the lobby of the Bank of Oklahoma building and saw Oral leaving the building and getting into his car. When I turned on the radio in the car and heard the news I was struck by the fact that you couldn’t have told that the man I just saw had just heard that his eldest son had died. And I wondered what kind of man would be just going on with business as usual under those circumstances.
DLS = Clenis Derangement Syndrome
Just another flim-flam man. Its pathetic how the faithful allow their savings to support the lavish lifestyle of these frauds. Roberts and those like him are the Elmer Gantry of the 21st century. ORU, Liberty Univerity and Regent University are producing intellectually inferior religious zealots who are bent on Christianizing the nation, to the detriment of the rest of us who still prize reason and logic.
CORRECTION, ELABORATION, and EXPLICATION:
“Like father, like son”: we’re going to get another Clinton after a Bush, in some measure due to negative views of the Bush, even though the Clinton is worse; the odds are substantially above fifty per cent. We have yet to get a recession first, and we won’t have Dubya running for re-election this time, and most would probably say Clinton is more competent than Bush, and Clinton this time is not unproven (which alters, if not reverses, the view of many as her being worse than Bush), and this time the GOP is actively working against its interests and in support of the Democrats by having the two leading candidates be liberal and problematic politicians from notoriously liberal states — but the similarity or “parallelism” is obviously there.
“Like father, like son” and “Clinton after Bush” give Hillary Clinton a multi-faceted psychological and thus electoral advantage over the GOP in 2009.
Kritt -
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment that Oral and Richard Roberts are flim-flam men. However, the rest of your comment leaves me scracthing my head. There are many, many Christians who care about “reason and logic” and no doubt some of those Christians attend ORU, Liberty University, and a hundred other faith-based institutions of higher education, one of which I’m a proud graduate. One of our former deans was fond of this maxim: “There is no conflict between the best in education and the best in our Christian faith.” So please, put your broad-brush away. There’s more to this issue than meets the eye.
Republicarat-
I agree with this part of what you said:
“There are many, many Christians who care about “reason and logic…”
I sincerely hope this part does not mean that instituions with a religious basis should get an automatic pass in critiquing.:
“….and no doubt some of those Christians attend ORU, …”
Not all Christian schools are of the same caliber, and Oral Roberts U is not rated well overall.
Condemnation of bad practices by some religious leaders should not extend to all religious peple and institutions.
Similarly, praise for some religious people and practices ahould not be automatically extended to all persons and institutions that sport a religious tag.
It works both ways.