Granville Oral Roberts (January 24, 1918 - December 15, 2009) is an American Charismatic Christian evangelist, ordained at Pentecostal Holiness and United Methodist. He is considered the godfather of the charismatic movement and one of the most recognized preachers around the world. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelical Association and Oral Roberts University.
As one of the most famous and controversial American religious leaders of the 20th century, his sermon emphasized the seed-faith . His ministry reaches millions of followers around the globe covering a period of more than six decades. His healing ministry and bringing American Pentecostalism into the mainstream had the greatest impact, but he also spearheaded televangelism and laid the foundations of the prosperity gospel and abundant teachings of life. His breadth and style of service, including his widely publicized funding appeal, make him a consistent subject among critics and supporters.
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Kehidupan awal
Granville Oral Roberts was born on January 24, 1918, in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, the fifth and youngest son of Reverend Ellis Melvin Roberts (1881-1967) and Claudia Priscilla Roberts (nÃÆ' Â © e Irwin) (1885-1974). According to an interview on Larry King Live, Roberts is a descendant of Cherokee. Roberts is a member carrying cards from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Roberts started living in poverty and almost died of tuberculosis at age 17. After completing high school, Roberts studied for two years each at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University. In 1938, he married the daughter of a pastor, Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock.
Roberts became a travel faith healer after ending his college without a degree. According to the 1972 TIME Magazine profile, Roberts originally made a name for himself with a large mobile phone tent "that sat 3,000 on a metal folding chair".
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Ministries and universities
In 1945, Roberts resigned from pastor at Shawnee, Oklahoma to hold a revival in the area and attend the Oklahoma Baptist. But in the late summer of 1945, while preaching at a North Carolina encounter, Roberts was asked by Robert E. "Daddy" Lee of Toccoa, Georgia to consider becoming a pastor of his small, eighty-member church. Roberts advised them to pray about it, and unexpectedly, decided to accept it. At the end of the year, Roberts resigns and moves back to Shawnee. Apparently, the Georgia International Pentecostal Conference frowned because it had a minister from outside the conference as a priest. Though brief, the Toccoa detour had lasting effects on Roberts and his family. It was there that their daughter Rebecca, then five years old, first met her future husband, Marshall. There are also reported two examples of healing, which Roberts later saw as his first realization "that I approached 'my clock'."
1947 is a turning point. Until then, Roberts fought as a part-time preacher in Oklahoma. But at the age of 29 years, Roberts said, he picked up his Bible and the Bible was open to the Third Letter of John where the second verse reads: "I want above all things that you can prosper and be in health, even when your soul is prosperous." the day, he said, he bought Buick and God appeared, directing him to heal the sick.
Roberts withdrew from his pastoral ministry with the Pentecostal Holiness Church to establish the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA). He does evangelistic crusade and faith throughout the United States and around the world, claiming that he can raise the dead. In November 1947, he started Healing Waters, a monthly magazine as a means to promote his meetings. Thousands of sick people waited in line to stand before Oral Roberts so he could pray for them. He appeared as a guest speaker for hundreds of national and international meetings and conventions. Over the years, he performed over 300 crusades on six continents, and personally laid his hands in prayer to over 2 million people. He also runs a direct mail campaign of seed-faith, which appeals to poor Americans, often from ethnic minorities. At its peak in the early 1980s, Roberts was the leader of an organization worth 120 million dollars annually employing 2,300 people. These include not only universities but also medical and hospital schools as well as buildings in 50 acres (200,000 m 2 ) south of Tulsa worth $ 500 million. Another part of the Oral Roberts Evangelical Association, the Abundant Prayer Life Group (ALPG), was founded in 1958.
In 1963, he founded Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, declaring he obeyed the command of God. The university was hired in 1963 and received its first student in 1965. Students are required to sign a code of honor promising not to drink, smoke, or engage in premarital sex activities. The Prayer Tower, opened in 1967, is located in the center of the campus.
Roberts was a pioneer of televangelists, and attracted many audiences. He began broadcasting on radio in 1947, and began broadcasting a revival by television in 1954. His television ministry continued with The Abundant Life program that reached 80% of the United States in 1957, and Prime Time Specials quarterly from 1969 to 1980. In 1996, he founded Golden Eagle Broadcasting.
On March 17, 1968, Roberts and his wife were accepted as members of the Church Method Church of Boston Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Finish Crutchfield, then pastor. United Methodist Church offers a deeper leeway of doctrinal and moral matters than that of the Holy Pentecostal Church. This gives Roberts a leeway, as it is expected that the strictness of the Pentecostal tradition may have hampered his growing popularity. Before Roberts turned to Methodism, Crutchfield arranged a meeting between Roberts and Bishop William Angie Smith, where the bishop told Roberts, "We need you, but we need the Holy Spirit more than we need and we must have the Holy Spirit in the Methodist Church." Roberts became an elder at the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church. From 1968 to 1987, Roberts was a member of the United Methodist Church ministry.
Roberts influenced the American Protestant community. According to one authority in a conservative Protestant culture, the influence of his ministry is second only to Billy Graham. His divine healing ministry calls for prayer to heal all individuals - body, mind and spirit. Many gave him the faith healer label, but he rejected this with the comment: "God heals - I am not." He played a leading role in bringing American Pentecostal Christianity into the mainstream. Although Roberts is often associated with the prosperity gospel and the faith movement because of his close doctrinal and personal relationship with the teachers of the Word-Faith, the teachings of his abundant life do not fully identify him with that movement.
In 1977, Roberts claimed to have a 900-foot-tall vision of Jesus telling him to build the Faith City Medical and Research Center, and the hospital would be a success. In 1980, Roberts said that he had a vision that prompted him to continue the construction of the City of Faith Research Center and Medical Center in Oklahoma, which opened in 1981. At that time, it was one of the largest health facilities in the world. and is intended to combine prayer and medicine in the healing process. City of Faith operated just eight years before closing in late 1989, but the importance of treating everyone - spirit, mind, and body - was presented to many medical professionals. Oklahoma Orthopedic Hospital still operates in its place. In 1983, Roberts said that Jesus had appeared to him and assigned him to find a cure for cancer.
Roberts fundraiser is controversial. In January 1987, during the fundraiser, Roberts announced to television viewers that unless he collected $ 8 million in March, God would "call him home." However, the previous year at Easter he had told a meeting at the Dallas Convention Center that God had ordered him to raise money "by the end of the year" or he would die. Despite this recent March deadline and the fact that he is still $ 4.5 million less than his goal, some people fear that he is referring to suicide, recalling the plea and tears that accompanied his statement. He collected $ 9.1 million. Later that year, he announced that God had raised the dead through his ministry. Some of the Roberts fundraising letters were written by Gene Ewing, who led the business of writing letters of donations to other evangelicals like Don Stewart and Robert Tilton.
Roberts maintains his passion for jewelry and one obituary claims that even when time is becoming economically difficult, "he continues to wear Italian silk clothes, diamond rings and gold bracelets - which his staff sweeps with publicity pictures".
He caused controversy when Time was reported in 1987 that his son Richard Roberts claimed he had seen his father raise his son from death. That year, Bloomish comics featured Bill Cat's character as a satirized televangelist, "Fundamentally Oral Bill." In 1987, Time stated that he "reinforced the healing of faith and sought to achieve his past constituencies." However, his organizational revenues continued to decline (from $ 88 million in 1980 to $ 55 million in the year 1986, according to Tulsa Tribune ) and his empty City City Medical Center continues to lose money.
Harry McNevin said that in 1988 the ORU Board "stamped" "the use of millions of money to purchase Beverly Hills properties so that Oral Roberts can have offices and homes on the West Coast." In addition, he said the state club membership was purchased for Roberts' home. Luxury expenditure led to McNevin's resignation from the Board. In 1988, Oral Roberts and his son Richard were sued for $ 15 million in federal court by patients at City of Faith Medical Center, claiming both were scams that did not visit or cure patients in the hospital.
His organization was also influenced by scandals involving other televangelists and the City of Faith hospital was forced to close in 1989 after losing money. Roberts was forced to respond by selling his holiday homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills as well as three of his Mercedes cars.
Oral Roberts's son Richard Roberts resigned from the post of ORU president on 23 November 2007 after being declared the defendant in a lawsuit accusing the use of unsuitable university funds for political and personal purposes, and inappropriate use of university resources. The university was given a donation of $ 8 million by businessman Mart Green, and although the lawsuit was still in process, the school was submitted to an external audit, and with a good report an additional $ 62 million was awarded by Green. Oral Roberts continues his role as ORU Chancellor, assists in ORU leadership along with Billy Joe Daugherty, who is appointed as the executive bupati to assume administrative responsibility from the President's Office by the ORU Bupati Council. Oral Roberts continued as ORU Chancellor until his death, but in 2009, eleven months before his death, ceded ORU's leadership to the next president, Mark Rutland.
The Oklahoma Senate adopted a resolution that respects the life of Oral Roberts, and he received this honor in 2009 at the age of 91, seven months before his death. The Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters (OAB) voted Roberts to the OAB Hall of Fame one month before his death.
Personal life
Roberts married Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock (1917-2005) for 66 years from December 25, 1938, until his death by fall, on May 4, 2005, at the age of 88. Their daughter Rebecca Nash died in a plane crash on February 11, 1977 with her husband, businessman Marshall Nash. Their eldest son, Ronald Roberts, committed suicide by shooting himself at heart on June 10, 1982, five months after receiving a court order to undergo counseling at a drug treatment center and six months after coming out as gay. Two other Roberts children are Richard's son, evangelist and former president of Oral Roberts University, and daughter of Roberta Potts, a lawyer.
Roberts died of complications from pneumonia on December 15, 2009, at the age of 91. He has been "semi-retired" and lives in Newport Beach, California. She was buried beside his wife at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma (the same cemetery where T. L. Osborn was interred, almost 4 years later). Roberts survived by two of four children, twelve grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
According to a 1987 article in The New York Review of Books by Martin Gardner, "the most accurate and most documented biography is Oral Roberts: An American Life, an objective study by David Edwin Harrell Jr., a historian at Auburn University.
See also
- Healing Revival
- Charismatic Christianity
- List of television evangelists
References
Further reading
Tentang Roberts
- The Faith Healers , oleh James Randi, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987. ISBNÂ 0-87975-369-2
- Oral Roberts: Kehidupan Amerika , oleh David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN: 0-253-15844-3
By Roberts
- Calls: autobiography. by Oral Roberts, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1972.
- Expect miracles: my life and ministry. by Oral Roberts, Nashville: T. Nelson, 1995. ISBNÃ, 0-7852-7752-8
- The life story of Oral Roberts, as told by himself. by Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1952.
External links
- Roberts Oral at Discovering the Mausoleum
- Webcast from Chancellor Oral Roberts' Memorial Service
- Oral Roberts Ministries
- Oral Roberts University
- Oral Roberts: The Man. Mission. Ministry. , an online archive at Tulsa World
- Life With Oral Roberts slideshow by Life magazine
- Voices of Oklahoma interview with Oral Roberts. The first person interview was conducted on August 11, 2009, with Oral Roberts.
- UM Portal: Q & amp; A: Evangelist Roberts is comfortable with Methodism
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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