Jim Bakker remembered a photograph someone had sent him. He was building Heritage, and his little boy followed him in the background.
“All he wanted was his dad,” Bakker recalled. “But I was too busy. I missed it.”
Following Bakker’s death, we are revisiting his archival interview with Charisma founder Stephen Strang and a separate church appearance included in the video. In those conversations, he spoke about the family moments he had missed, the beliefs he had reconsidered and the faith that remained after his losses.
Speaking with Strang about the book he had written, Bakker explained whom he had initially wanted to reach.
“My real first motivation was to write it for my children and my grandchildren,” he said. “I owed them a heritage or legacy of what I did and did not do.”
He also wanted others to understand what he had learned about God during the darkest years of his life.
“I want to let people know that through the valley, through the most devastation, God will never leave you and he will never forsake you,” Bakker said.
During the church appearance, he recalled his son visiting him alone in prison around his 16th birthday.
“I had to go to prison for this boy to spend the first day with me in his lifetime,” Bakker said.
At the end of the visit, his son told him, “Dad, this is the best day of my whole life.”
“He said, ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to get your attention,’” Bakker recalled. “He said, ‘I wanted just to spend one day with you and have you to myself.’”
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Bakker turned that memory into an appeal to pastors: “Preachers, don’t go around the world and win the world and lose your own kids.”
In his conversation with Strang, Bakker reflected on the collapse of PTL, his imprisonment and the beliefs he reconsidered after losing the life he had built.
He said he once understood his houses, cars and boats as God’s rewards.
“I thought God was rewarding me. I was preaching this message of prosperity and I was living the message of prosperity,” Bakker said.
Prison forced him to examine that understanding. He described watching his house burn to the ground while incarcerated and losing his marriage.
“I thought God had abandoned me,” he said. “And I’m amazed how many people today really believe that God doesn’t love them anymore.”
Bakker said a dream in which Christ told him to see through His eyes prompted him to study Jesus’ words. For two years, he wrote them out by hand.
“I wrote out every word Jesus spoke. I wrote it out by hand,” he said.
As he studied, he began to grieve over what he had taught. Jesus’ warnings about riches challenged the message Bakker had preached.
“I had taught things that were opposite of Jesus Christ,” he said.
He also reconsidered the pace of his ministry. Bakker described working seven days a week, building networks and buildings while believing he was pleasing God.
“We do not and we cannot earn God’s love,” he said.
Bakker recalled a time earlier, alone in prayer, when he believed God told him, “Jim, I want you to come apart and be with Me more often.”
He acknowledged that he had failed to make it to that time again before going to prison.
“I was going 100 miles an hour,” he said. “When I started PTL, it was like stepping on a roller coaster.”
Asked about opportunities to change course, Bakker said others could learn without experiencing what he had.
“A person doesn’t have to go to prison to learn what I learned,” he said.
He called for elders and Christian leaders willing to warn ministers directly. He also described how power could isolate a leader, with associates filtering information and offering praise until the leader lost touch with ordinary people.
“The only mirror to see yourself as you really are is the word of God,” Bakker said.
He urged daily Bible reading and immersion in all Scripture. He warned that growing wealth and influence could change a minister without his realizing it.
“And there’s one thing God will not tolerate, it’s pride and arrogance,” he said.
Through his losses, Bakker said, one relationship remained.
“I watched the money go. I watched the houses go. I watched the cars go. I watched some acquaintances go,” he said. “But, I want to tell you something. Jesus never left me. Jesus never walked away.”
His understanding of his calling changed as well. He said he had once considered winning the world to Christ his personal responsibility. After prison, he described a different priority.
“My goal is to have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, to walk with him, to fall in love with him,” Bakker said. “And if I do that, then I will hear him because I’m walking with him every day, and I’ll automatically do my part to win the world to Christ.”
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a journalism background from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and at the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
