PTL Club founder Jim Bakker dies at 86 after a life of ministry, fraud, and comeback

Televangelist Jim Bakker, the PTL Club pioneer whose empire collapsed in sex and fraud scandals before a later return to the air, has died at 86.

Fox News reported that Bakker’s second wife, Lori Bakker, said he passed away on Monday after decades in Christian television, prison, and a rebuilt ministry. The cause of death was unclear. He had suffered a stroke in 2020.

Lori announced the news herself and cast his life first as a long walk of preaching, then as a marriage she said she was honored to share.

She wrote that he “went home to be with the Lord this evening,” and she tied that farewell to a ministry she said spanned 66 years.

"It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,"

Lori continued in the same statement:

"For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend, and the man I was honored to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry."

Just The News reported that she posted the announcement on his TV show’s official Instagram account. Breitbart reported the same farewell went out late Monday on his official Facebook account and noted his later work with Lori in Branson, Missouri.

Even in that grief statement, she kept the focus on the pulpit and the audience that stayed with him.

"Jim loved people deeply. He loved this ministry, and he loved the friends and partners who stood with him throughout the years. Even in his final days, his heart was still for the work of God and for the Gospel to continue reaching the world,"

From Muskegon to a national Christian TV machine

Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan. He attended North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye. They married in 1961, left school, and started a traveling ministry. She sang and played the accordion while they built a life on the road and then on camera.

In the 1960s he joined the Christian Broadcasting Network under Pat Robertson. His own site biography, as carried in the Fox report, said he developed a daily children’s program called “Come On Over” and later became the first host of “The 700 Club.”

He left CBN in 1972. Two years later he formed the PTL Satellite Network. The signature show, “The PTL Club,” mixed talk, entertainers, and sermons. By the 1980s, the Associated Press figures cited in the Fox account said it drew millions of viewers and millions of dollars a year from followers.

The couple’s ministry base sat in Fort Mill, South Carolina, anchored by Heritage USA, a Christian theme park and hotel complex that became part of the PTL brand’s public face. Photos from the period show Jim and Tammy Faye addressing a television audience there in August 1986 and out together in October 1987.

Resignation, indictment, and a long federal sentence

The fall came in public stages. In March 1987, Bakker admitted to a sexual encounter with church clerk Jessica Hahn and turned PTL operations over to pastor and broadcaster Jerry Falwell.

In 1988 he was indicted for mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy after investigators dug into PTL’s finances. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison. The sentence was later reduced to eight years. U.S. marshals escorted him in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a widely seen image from Aug. 31, 1989.

After the guilty verdict, Tammy Faye sang “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” at a news conference. She divorced him in 1992 while he was still locked up, later married building contractor Roe Messner, and died of colon cancer in 2007. Messner, whose projects had included Heritage USA, was himself convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 1995 and spent about two years in prison.

Bakker was released on parole in 1995. The arc was blunt: a television ministry that raised serious money, a sex scandal that blew up the leadership structure, and a fraud case that put the founder in federal custody.

Second marriage, a new show, and another legal bill

In 1998 he married Lori. Five years later they launched “The Jim Bakker Show,” an hour-long daily broadcast his site described as focused on “prophetic and Biblical revelations” for “these end times.” In 2002, Jim and Lori adopted five children. He already had two children with Tammy Faye.

Legal trouble did not end with parole. In June 2021, Bakker and Morningside Church Productions Inc. settled a lawsuit accusing him of falsely claiming that a health supplement called Silver Solution could cure COVID-19. The settlement called for $156,000 in refunds to people who paid money or gave contributions for the product in the early days of the pandemic.

That case sat alongside the earlier fraud conviction as a matter of record, not rumor. Donors and customers were told one thing. Courts and a settlement forced a different accounting.

A pioneer’s reach and a bill that came due

Bakker helped prove that Christian television could scale, first at CBN, then through PTL’s satellite reach and the Fort Mill complex that turned ministry into a destination. Millions watched. Millions of dollars followed. That is the part of the story his friends will lead with, and Lori’s statement went straight at it.

The other part is just as documented. A sexual encounter he admitted in 1987. A fraud conviction and a multi-year federal sentence. A divorce finalized while he was still in prison. A later COVID-era settlement that sent refunds to people who had paid for a product pitched as a cure. Stroke in 2020. Death at 86 on a Monday, cause still unclear in the first wave of reporting.

American law does not grade sermons. It grades wire fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy. On those counts, a jury and a judge already spoke. Viewers who sent money in good faith deserved books that matched the pitch. That standard is not complicated, and it does not expire when the cameras start rolling again.

Faithful teaching and clean books can live in the same house. When they don’t, the damage lands on ordinary people who trusted a pulpit and a mailing list.