Today’s "Christian" Junkmail
by Jackie Alnor Ó 1993 The Christian Sentinel
Recently we were dumbfounded when we received a check in the mail for $7,500. The "payor" was the "Disbursements Division" of a company in Laguna Hills, California and the check had two "official signatures" on it. The notation: "RE: Sweepstakes Cash Award" was in the left hand corner of the check and the bank numbers were all where they should be. But, our suspicions were soon realized when we saw the faded letters at the bottom: "NON NEGOTIABLE · THIS IS NOT A VALID CHECK.
The letter that accompanied the bogus check gave a 900 number to call the "Awards Committee Claim Line" to register our I.D. number for an infinitesimal chance to win an authentic check. The call would only cost $3.98 per minute with the average call taking four minutes; that would be a total of $15.92 investment for absolutely nothing in return.
What a scam! It’s just sneaky enough to work, bilking people out of their hard-earned money yet at the same time it’s legal. Whoever came up with such a scheme must have worked awfully hard at perfecting the art of deception in order to get rich. It shouldn’t surprise us, however. We know the sons of the devil have their consciences seared and only care about themselves, but it is a shock when so-called Christian leaders stoop just as low with even less of a chance of getting prosecuted because they can hide behind the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom.
I remember when I was a new believer I was so childlike in my trust of all who claimed Jesus as their Lord. Even though I was street-wise and had been cynical before my born-again experience, I was a new creature in Christ and optimistically believed that older Christians were even further along in the sanctification process that I had only just begun. My bubble was soon to be burst.
I came home from work one day to find a notice from the post office to come in person to sign for a certified letter. It was a Friday afternoon and the post office would not open up again until the following Monday. I spent the next two days in a frenzy wondering what it could be. My only clue was that my supervisor at work must be sending me a warning letter for some invented infraction since I had been under continual persecution on the job after accepting the Lord.
As soon as I could on Monday I rushed to the post office and signed for the letter. The return address was the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries who were trying to raise one million dollars for some alleged emergency. I was thunderstruck. Knowing how large a mailing list Swaggart must have, I figured it must have cost him even more than one million dollars to send such an expensive mailing that required a signed return card. I regretted that I had donated anything to him in the first place.
Today entire organizations have sprung up selling the latest fund-raising techniques to help market the church. Their sleazy business is reminiscent of the money-changers in the temple that Jesus ran out with a whip. It’s one of the few times the Lord was furious in the Gospels. I’m sure He’s no less disgusted with what He sees going on now.
One such company, Response Media, in Dallas was featured on the recent Prime Time Live program that exposed televangelists Robert Tilton and W. V. Grant. The president, Jim Moore, whose clients included Tilton, gave pretend televangelist Ole Anthony a grand tour of his facilities. He gave him tips on how to build a good and profitable mailing list. His advice was to always enclose a gimmick in the fund-raising letter.
"There’s a feeling of obligation to send it back," said Moore. "And they do. And usually if they’re going to send it back, ‘Oh, I’ll go ahead and put five dollars in it.’ I’m not sure exactly all the reasons why it works, but I can tell you from years and years of experience, it does!"
And from the scores of fund-raising envelopes we’ve collected over the years it’s obvious that many unscrupulous religious phonies have personally profited by such methods. For lack of space we’ll examine just a few of them.
One of the most all-time outrageous direct mail religious frauds is the infamous Peter Popoff. (He’s the one exposed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show by the secular humanist magician, the Amazing Randi, for using a hidden microphone to receive divine words of knowledge from his wife in the audience. Unbelievably, he is back in business and on TV across the country, including our own channel 61 in Philadelphia.)
Utilizing the idea of giving something that has to be returned by a certain date, Popoff leads the pack. (It must work too or he wouldn’t keep doing it.) Here’s a partial list of Popoff’s junk gifts:
 | A tiny pack of honey – "Fast one meal with me so that your eyes can be enlightened. Then together…we can break our fast with honey…Sow a seed now - $77.00." |
| An anointed plastic glove – "Wear your Faith Glove while you write out your best check now!!…Lay your other hand on this prayer page and trace it below." |
| Black and White picture of Jesus – "Look at the eyes in the [picture] for about forty seconds under good light then blink your eyes and look up…if you want to see the way Jesus looked when I saw Him in the spirit." |
| Other items include a scratch & sniff rose, a cheap green necklace, a sanitary wipe to anoint eyes, an "anointed faith" handkerchief "just like the apostle Paul sent out," an anointed napkin and assorted prayer cloths, anointing oil, and holy cards. All this junk includes formulas on how to use them to receive miracles from God in exchange for the largest bill in your wallet or the largest check you can write. |
Other "ministries" that use the prayer cloth and anointing oil gimmicks are Oral and Richard Roberts, Marilyn Hickey, R. W. Schambach, Morris Cerullo, and too many to mention.
Speaking of Oral Roberts, my elderly great-aunt in Oklahoma has given almost all of her life savings to him. When Roberts made the notorious "give 8 million or God will take my life" threat to his supporters in 1987, my aunt was ready to empty out the remainder of her bank account. But her grown children intervened and proved her incompetent and prevented her from sending him any more money. They could not bear the expense of her nursing home should she lose it all.
One of the methods the Oral Roberts Ministry used to suck her in was sending her computerized letters designed to look as though they were personally to her from Oral himself. In fact she was so convinced that the letters were personal that when she was admitted to the City of Faith hospital she insisted that the nurses tell Oral that she was there. She insisted that he would want to know. The nurses had to gently tell her that that wasn’t the case.
Some televangelists have taken the computerized personal letter to the absurd. One from W. V. Grant is a good example. He sent a so-called authentic "miracle coin" from the Holy Land with instructions "from the Holy Spirit" to use it to bring blessings to the lives of those who send donations. While in Israel he got a revelation: "I thought of some of my closest friends. I thought, ‘Lord!, a coin like this would be such a blessing to Sister Jackie, there in Philadelphia.’"
In another "Speed Alert" letter, Grant’s computer writes, "If there is one person on this earth we can trust, it is Jackie Alnor…I just wish that Sister Grand and I could drive to Philadelphia, and continue driving until we found 5555 Elm Street (not my real address). Then we would knock at your door, and we could sit down at your table and have a glass of water or diet coke…But, Sister Jackie, time will not permit."
W. V. Grant gives some of the strangest instructions with his fund-raising letters. One with a "prayer rug" with the outline of his bare feet traced in the middle instructs the donor to: "1. Stand on the drawing of my feet, pray and sing. 2. Fill out your prayer requests on the drawing of my feet. 3. Send in your Prove God offering of $25.00. 4. Mail the Prayer Rug…back to me now." He adds, "Sister Jackie, I am leaving in just a few days for the Holy Land, I must have your Prayer Rug back so I can take it with me and put it on the ground, the very spot where Jesus feet will touch when He comes back; then I must bury it on the Mount of Olives."
In other letters we were to put the enclosed green Money size Prayer Cloth in the checkbook overnight and send half of it back to him the next day, putting the other half in our wallet to ""get rid of hindering spirits and solve the money problems you are facing."" He also sent a package of anointed salt that could be used on the tongue to lose weight, get your teeth filled, or fill your wallet, just so long as you sent some sprinkled on your offering to him.
A recent mailing from Marilyn Hickey enclosed a tiny pencil to use to write down "your miracle desire…the things in your life that you need and want to be set free from." Examples given were "financial attacks, co-dependency, lying, smoking, guilt" and a list of others. To actualize the deliverance it would take a gift to her ministry. "A key to receiving miracles from God…is to sow a seed of deliverance into the miracle soil of God’s Kingdom today," her letter continued. "EVERY HARVEST BEGINS WITH A SEED."
One of the most bizarre gimmicks I’ve ever seen came from a charlatan by the name of Jim Whittington of Grifton, NC. He sent a nail to be pounded into the wall "in the room where you feel like the devil is fighting the most," with the following steps:
1. Drive the nail in the wall. 2. Write your most pressing need on a brown piece of paper. 3. Repeat your need out loud three times. 4. Wrap a $15.00 miracle offering in the brown piece of paper and mail it before 7:30 p.m. three days from now. And he adds, "I will write you back immediately and when I do I’m going to send you the final step and tell you when to take the nail out of the wall. The devil will try to tell you not to answer this letter, but don’t listen to him. Answer this letter if you don’t answer another letter as long as you live. This letter is anointed of the Lord. I feel this letter is a message directly from God to you."
The latest trend in fund-raising that even some credible ministries are resorting to, is the petition and the survey. If these ministries were really interested in your answers they would send you a post card, not an envelope for your response. Some ministries send out petitions or surveys with virtually all of their letters. One who consistently uses this tactic is D. James Kennedy. Some otherwise solid ministries include Don Wildmon’s American Family Association, the Rutherford Institute, and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. The National Right to Life Committee also asks for petitions to be sent to them instead of to the government body that they claim they’ll forward them to.
"All ministries, including this one, need people to support them," said Bob Anderson, director of Take Heed Ministries near Pittsburgh. "But to hoodwink people into believing that you really care about their opinion, in order to separate them from their money, is down right dishonest in my opinion." He suggests that people pray to see if God is really speaking to their hearts before giving and not to be manipulated. Certainly, when God’s money is being siphoned off in the wrong direction, it takes away from the work the Lord is truly in.
The Bible says that we should be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And if we are, we will be cheerful givers knowing that when we give where the Lord leads we will be storing up our treasure in heaven. If you receive any such gimmicks in the mail you can be assured that those ministries are operating in the flesh and your money would be better invested elsewhere. But remember that the work of the Kingdom is funded by the saints and the costs of Christian publishing, radio, and television is expensive and worthy of all our support.
