The Electric Church Turns On. (Awake 1981, March 22, pp.5-8)
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The Watchtower Society knows very well how much money can be made by Television Preaching. Please note the figures the Watchtower published back in 1981 in this Awake magazine. It is now October 2014, which makes this article almost 34 years old. The amount of money that can be made by todays standards by televangelists could make the figures from 1981 look pale.
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The very same jokers who claimed the Watchtower never got in bed with the United Nations also said, that the Watchtower would never become televangelists! Yeah right!
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. Quotes from the article, and the entire article is below:
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The Electric Church Turns On
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The Electric Church consists of TV preachers who buy their own air time and use it to get contributions with which they buy more air time, and so on. Of course, most TV stations are leery of selling time to a preacher who is only going to dun their viewers, so the preachers have elaborate ways of avoiding the appearance of asking for funds over the air.
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What are some of these? They encourage their viewers to write in for a free pin or “prayer key,” at which point the viewers are put on a computerized mailing list, and then the hard sell begins. Or they offer a televised “counseling service,” and those who call for help are later contacted by mail. Computerized mailing has made the Electric Church a very profitable business. How profitable? Here are some typical figures:
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Oral Roberts, former Pentecostal faith-healer, now somewhat toned down as a Methodist, $60,000,000 a year.
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Jerry Falwell, Lynchburg, Virginia, Baptist with a strong political message, over $50,000,000 a year.
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Pat Robertson started the first popular religious guest interview show and now has his own network broadcasting from his new $20,000,000 headquarters. His Christian Broadcasting Network took in $70,000,000 last year.
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Jim Bakker, formerly associated with Robertson, has started his own guest show, and his network grosses $53,000,000 a year.
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Rex Humbard, with his “Cathedral of Tomorrow” and its spectacular stage, takes in $25,000,000 or so.
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The list goes on and on. All told, the top start of the Electric Church are able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy air time every year. Where do they get it? . Most of the people who watch the Electric Church are not rich. Benjamin L. Armstrong, who coined the term “Electric Church,” explains: “As part of the Electric Church concept, the listener is conditioned to give.” Most of those millions of dollars come to the Electric Preachers $25 or $50 at a time. Jerry Falwell, for example, may get 10,000 letters in a typical day’s mail, over half of which contain contributions.
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Could Jesus Christ really approve of a religion that promises people easy salvation—no torture stake, no self-denial—for just a monthly check to somebody’s “worldwide TV ministry”? . Rather, it looks as if the Electric Church is a 20th-century example of what the apostle Paul warned Timothy about when he said: “For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories.”—2 Tim. 4:3, 4. . Why are people willing to give millions of dollars to support the Electric Church? Because they are being told what they want to hear. They are assured that God will answer their prayers. They do not have to deny themselves or ‘bear a cross’ or do the work Christ did, but they are “saved” and God loves them—just as long as they keep those checks coming in.
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Atlantis!