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A well-known evangelist's silliness...

rockytopva

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
The strangers to God,
His grace and His love,
Were gathered by blue Galilee.
To listen with joy
To words from the lips
Of the Stranger who sat by the sea.
 

agedman

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
More than one former resident of Roloff's girls' home told similar stories of their mistreatment & abuse there, which went far beyond simple "law & order", & discipline. Beatings & sexual abuse are not legal anywhere in this land.
None of it was proven.
 

agedman

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
With all the investigating reporters, all the time spent by the FBI, all the work by offices in the state and federal level of the human services departments, not a single improper behavior was ever confirmed and my friend crossed over with his integrity well intact.

You would have thought that with all that investigations to find something to liable him, if there were even a small indiscretion it would have been used.

He stated that if Mark White were elected governor he would like the Lord to call him home.

Mark White was elected, and my friend was called home.
 

robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
The human wheels of justice don't always follow the road. I'm sure the girls who came from that "home" didn't lie.
 

JD731

Well-Known Member
The human wheels of justice don't always follow the road. I'm sure the girls who came from that "home" didn't lie.


Were you on the investigating team? How are you sure enough to charge a brother without evidence and after the investigators could not find any?

I am asking this because I really want to know and as a person who has no knowledge of the case. I have listened to some of his sermons over the years but have never met him.
 

agedman

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Site Supporter
The human wheels of justice don't always follow the road. I'm sure the girls who came from that "home" didn't lie.

Undergoing the scrutiny he did, by the federal and state authorities as well as the huge media digging for some tidbit, and to find nothing that is worthy of note is commendable. Thousands passed through the ministry helps programs that started out as him desiring to give aid and comfort to the down and out.

I will acknowledge that, after he crossed over, there may have been excess by someone on the staff left to run the various homes. Some folks think there was just one complex, however the ministry had home for girls, different homes for boys, different home for men, different one for ladies, various ones for native Americans, homes for the addicted, ... He was not located just at Corpus Christi where his church was and he regularly preached, but outside Texas as well.

When he was incarcerated by the court for contempt as.desired by Mark White (he was the attorney general of Texas at that time) prisoners gathered together not only to hear him preach to them but to provide protection for him.

For the readers, the whole conflict started when he refused to have the state licence his work. He was blessed with a very high success rate, far exceeding the state run facilities, yet the state wanted to control his work. This refusal launched an extremely aggressive investigation into every aspect and innumerable interviews with not only staff but residents, too. Nothing was discovered in which he could be charged.


He was a firebrand that loved the Lord and the Scriptures.

I don't know if many students at Bob Jones University were aware that the some of the food they ate came.came from the farm crops the many homes had raised.
 

robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Were you on the investigating team? How are you sure enough to charge a brother without evidence and after the investigators could not find any?
No, but I was a cop & know how hard it is for "nobodies" to make a case against a celebrity. Investigators are cautious in such cases, as, if they're wrong, they could be sued for twice the national debt by a celebrity whom they've wrongfully implicated, or damaged his reputation.

I am asking this because I really want to know and as a person who has no knowledge of the case. I have listened to some of his sermons over the years but have never met him.

Unfortunately,you won't meet him in this world, as he died in a plane crash in 1982. His sermons are played daily on the "Family Altar" radio show, heard on most Christian stations. He had some goofy ideas, such as following the Levitical diet was the key to good health, and pure water was better for illnesses than almost all meds. But otherwise, most of his preaching was on the money.
 

agedman

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No, but I was a cop & know how hard it is for "nobodies" to make a case against a celebrity. Investigators are cautious in such cases, as, if they're wrong, they could be sued for twice the national debt by a celebrity whom they've wrongfully implicated, or damaged his reputation.



Unfortunately,you won't meet him in this world, as he died in a plane crash in 1982. His sermons are played daily on the "Family Altar" radio show, heard on most Christian stations. He had some goofy ideas, such as following the Levitical diet was the key to good health, and pure water was better for illnesses than almost all meds. But otherwise, most of his preaching was on the money.
He reminded me of what Elisha might have looked.

Outside of fundamental circles, except for the radio program he was not that well known. And what is also remarkable at least to me is that like John R Rice millions passed through the ministry, yet he wasn’t enamored with money and things but spent it all to the service of others.

Here is a well balanced (imo) article concerning how he was motivated by the Lord and a bit about the controversy. It is by the Navarro county genealogy group: Biography - Rev. Lester Leo Roloff
 

robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Thanx for posting that link! While he had some quirky stuff, such as his dietary thingie & the KJVO myth, overall he was a decent preacher. He was understandable, didn't get hysterical while preaching, nor screech & try to talk 150 words a minute. And at least he was not directly involved in the girls' home thingie.
 

agedman

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Frankly, I have never met anyone who loved the Lord more and put “feet” to the message of doing the work as the Holy Spirit gives guidance more than he did.

And to think both he and Mark White were both alumni of Baylor.

Baylor was actually more conservative than BJU back in the late forties and early fifties.

Teachers remarked how when walking into a classroom to find students on their knees in earnest prayer to God.

But, it is no more, and even teachers and students admit there is not much Christian witness or character on that campus.

Of the world and worldly the more the better so that folks learn to put on Christ and take him off at will.
 

Walter

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Undergoing the scrutiny he did, by the federal and state authorities as well as the huge media digging for some tidbit, and to find nothing that is worthy of note is commendable. Thousands passed through the ministry helps programs that started out as him desiring to give aid and comfort to the down and out.

I will acknowledge that, after he crossed over, there may have been excess by someone on the staff left to run the various homes. Some folks think there was just one complex, however the ministry had home for girls, different homes for boys, different home for men, different one for ladies, various ones for native Americans, homes for the addicted, ... He was not located just at Corpus Christi where his church was and he regularly preached, but outside Texas as well.

When he was incarcerated by the court for contempt as.desired by Mark White (he was the attorney general of Texas at that time) prisoners gathered together not only to hear him preach to them but to provide protection for him.

For the readers, the whole conflict started when he refused to have the state licence his work. He was blessed with a very high success rate, far exceeding the state run facilities, yet the state wanted to control his work. This refusal launched an extremely aggressive investigation into every aspect and innumerable interviews with not only staff but residents, too. Nothing was discovered in which he could be charged.


He was a firebrand that loved the Lord and the Scriptures.

I don't know if many students at Bob Jones University were aware that the some of the food they ate came.came from the farm crops the many homes had raised.


I don't know if many of the students at Bob Jones University are aware of that institutions history of rabid bigotry and hatred of African Americans. When Bob Jones Jr., the son of the founder, became the institution’s president, he continued the institution’s policies of rabid bigotry. When I attended Biola University (college) a transfer student from Bob Jones University approached me as I was walking with an Nigerian student and screamed at me that I should not be walking with that 'boy'.
 

agedman

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Site Supporter
I don't know if many of the students at Bob Jones University are aware of that institutions history of rabid bigotry and hatred of African Americans. When Bob Jones Jr., the son of the founder, became the institution’s president, he continued the institution’s policies of rabid bigotry. When I attended Biola University (college) a transfer student from Bob Jones University approached me as I was walking with an Nigerian student and screamed at me that I should not be walking with that 'boy'.
Walter, I have no idea we’re you got such information, but you couldn’t be more mistaken about the Jones family.

Granted, they were products of the time, but they were not “rabid” bigots. Both are known to have preached and mentored many black pastors.

from there founding every university had some type of segregation rules and at that time such rules were not uncommon. For example, would you call Furman, Baylor, and others of those days run by rabid bigots? Waco, Texas was still a rather small community when they had their last lunching, isn’t Baylor in Waco? Is there documentation that Baylor ever apologized for supporting folks involved in the lynching? Yet, did not the Jones make public apology?

As far as your own experience, why would you even think such an attitude by a transfer student who obviously for some reason could not stay at the university was a testimony of the thinking of the Jones?

It would be ridiculous to think if I or you were in charge things would be different, for, unless you didn’t grow up in the southern culture of the day, it wouldn’t.
 

JD731

Well-Known Member
No, but I was a cop & know how hard it is for "nobodies" to make a case against a celebrity. Investigators are cautious in such cases, as, if they're wrong, they could be sued for twice the national debt by a celebrity whom they've wrongfully implicated, or damaged his reputation.

Somehow it does not seem fair or right to level a charge against a brother without any evidence at all. The scriptures surely must deal with a scenario like this somewhere, no?
 

JD731

Well-Known Member
I don't know if many of the students at Bob Jones University are aware of that institutions history of rabid bigotry and hatred of African Americans. When Bob Jones Jr., the son of the founder, became the institution’s president, he continued the institution’s policies of rabid bigotry. When I attended Biola University (college) a transfer student from Bob Jones University approached me as I was walking with an Nigerian student and screamed at me that I should not be walking with that 'boy'.

I think you are all wet about BJU hating people who are descended from Africa. I have been on the campus a few times in my days and was around the Jone's some and I never detected bigotry. One of my dearest evangelist friends sent all his children there and one of his daughters met and married a Nigerian pastor who she met there. I cringed at that, but not because I am a bigot, but because I have read the scriptures and know that inter-family (there is only one race) marriage is not the best thing in the eyes of God. It works great between the Jewish Jesus and his gentile bride, the church, but everyone is perfect in that union.
 

Salty

20,000 Posts Club
Administrator
Evidently - it was the parents of some Asian students who did not want their kids dating outside their race - thus the school policy became noone dating outside their own race.

and to make a statement based on one student - well that's like saying every RCC priest is guilty of the current lawsuit situation because I know of one Priest who is guilty!
 

robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Actually, dating/marrying outside one's own race is NOT prohibited by Scripture. Moses was married to an Ethiopian, who, evidently was another wife besides Zipporah, who was a Midianite, apparently of the same race as Israelis. ('Way back then, the Israelis, Egyptians, & their neighbors called virtually all blacks "Ethiopian".)

So BJU was wrong in their prohibition of interracial dating. "Miscegnation" laws in the US vanished a good while back.
 

JD731

Well-Known Member
Actually, dating/marrying outside one's own race is NOT prohibited by Scripture. Moses was married to an Ethiopian, who, evidently was another wife besides Zipporah, who was a Midianite, apparently of the same race as Israelis. ('Way back then, the Israelis, Egyptians, & their neighbors called virtually all blacks "Ethiopian".)

So BJU was wrong in their prohibition of interracial dating. "Miscegnation" laws in the US vanished a good while back.


Well, it is not a subject that I want to discuss a lot, but on this side of the flood it was God's idea to overspread the whole earth and give continents and to divide families into nations on those continents according to the three sons of Noah. He tells us quite plainly that he did it on purpose and explained what the purpose is. While he has not directly forbidden inter - family unions, it is not his perfect will. It is a Satanic doctrine to rub out the distinctions that was God's prerogative to implement for our good. Surely that can be seen in today's societies more so than ever before.

Acts 17:16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?
20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.
21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)
22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

It is much more difficult for Satan to control the world when the governments are divided and the cultures are different. I do not know anything about God that I can tell you except what I read about him in the scriptures. He said here he divided the families and nations and set the boundaries himself so they can be saved. I do know what happened with Nimrod when his command to overspread the earth was ignored in the beginning after Noah disembarked to begin a new age with new rules.
 

Walter

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Walter, I have no idea we’re you got such information, but you couldn’t be more mistaken about the Jones family.

Granted, they were products of the time, but they were not “rabid” bigots. Both are known to have preached and mentored many black pastors.

from there founding every university had some type of segregation rules and at that time such rules were not uncommon. For example, would you call Furman, Baylor, and others of those days run by rabid bigots? Waco, Texas was still a rather small community when they had their last lunching, isn’t Baylor in Waco? Is there documentation that Baylor ever apologized for supporting folks involved in the lynching? Yet, did not the Jones make public apology?

As far as your own experience, why would you even think such an attitude by a transfer student who obviously for some reason could not stay at the university was a testimony of the thinking of the Jones?

It would be ridiculous to think if I or you were in charge things would be different, for, unless you didn’t grow up in the southern culture of the day, it wouldn’t.


Bob Jones didn’t lose non-profit status overnight. Nor was it an outlier at the time. Although its discriminatory policies preceded desegregation, historian Randall Balmer has noted that it lost its non-profit status due to President Nixon’s crackdown on so-called “segregation academies.”
Bob Jones University did, in fact, try to placate the IRS—in its own way. Following initial inquiries into the school’s racial policies, Bob Jones admitted one African-American, a worker in its radio station, as a part-time student; he dropped out a month later.

Btw, the student who transferred from Bob Jones did so for financial reasons. He was expelled after one semester for his constant preaching about 'mixing races' and God's prohibition of it which he claimed to have learned about while a student at Bob Jones. Maybe he just made it up?

The students at Biola, Westmont, Azusa Pacific, Pasadena Nazarene and other evangelical colleges were all aware of Bob Jones ban on African-Americans. As I said before 'When Bob Jones Jr., the son of the founder, became the institution’s president, he continued the institution’s policies of rabid bigotry'.
 
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