Jerry Falwell
“People have accused me of many things: racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, intolerance, anti-Darwinism and anti-homosexualism [sic]. Well, I tell those people there was someone else who was accused of things: our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I rest my case.”
– Jerry Falwell on himself
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was an American fundamentalist Christian pastor and televangelist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the Christian (big "C") nation of the United States of America. He founded Liberty University in 1971 and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.
Falwell led services at Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1956 to 2007. His Christ-centered leadership lead to the expansion of the church, with it eventually reaching gigachurch status, helped in no small part by the addition of a Putt-Putt for Jesus mini-golf course in 1961, a Christian-themed Holy Roller roller disco in 1977,[1] and a Christian bookstore[2] in 1984.
Falwell changed affiliations from the staunchly conservative Baptist Bible Fellowship International to the incredibly conservative Southern Baptist Convention after the BBFI failed to adequately condemn homosexuality,[3] homosexuals, and the dirty things that the latter do to each other in public washrooms, nightclubs and Vermont, and ended his self-identification with fundamentalism in favor of evangelicalism, which has more things that are tax-exempt and the groupies have bigger hair.
Early life
Falwell was born on August 11, 1933, in Fairview Heights, Lynchburg, Virginia, along with his twin brother Gene. Jerry and Gene were the youngest children – not to mention purest children – in a family of five. Jerry's father was an entrepreneur and one-time bootlegger who was agnostic, while his grandfather was a staunch atheist. The power of Christ was strong inside Jerry, allowing him not to be fooled by his ancestors' blasphemous lifestyle choices.
Jerry was recognized for his incredible intellect at a young age, skipping the second grade at Mountain View Elementary School. He held firm on this intelligence, even finding a way to obtain his driver's license at the age of 13, three years before he was legally eligible. During his teen years, Jerry excelled in athletic endeavors, playing football, basketball, and baseball throughout high school. He valued athletics for their numerous benefits: teamwork, coordination, fitness, holiness, and overall health.
Falwell became a committed Christian in 1952 while enrolled at Lynchburg College. Falwell's shift from fundamentalism to evangelicalism is said to have occurred in a roadside conversion, after having his chauffeur pull his limousine over to the side of the road so he could berate a homeless man for being lazy. "When I was done verbally castrating the man," Falwell recounts in his book You've Got a Mote in Your Eye, America,[4] "I fundamentally returned to the car, and over the roar of the A/C heard Paul of Tarsus tell me to take my fundamental fundamentalism on the road ... and what better way to fundamentally spread the Good News that people who aren't exactly like me are all going to Hell than evangelicalism?"[5]
Unsaved sinners, like Jews and liberal Christians and Californians, find it hard to detect the differences between the two different One True Paths to Heaven & the LORD, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior™, but a simple Biblical analysis (Sola scriptura, KJV only) will serve to shine the light of the Lord in the darkened minds of even the most wayward sinners who are predestined to go to Heaven, where there are no Hindus or Muslims or Catholics. He bought his first Bible the day after his baptism, and carried it with him wherever he went.
Holy career
Ministry
After graduating Lynchburg College, Falwell enrolled in Baptist Bible College in Missouri, later joining the vaulted rank of clergy.
In 1956, Falwell founded Thomas Road Baptist Church in an abandoned bottling plant, and today the church has 22,000 members.
In 1971, Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The University provides an opportunity for students to gain the benefits of a rich and diverse academic environment while simultaneously offering the opportunity to become closer to God.
Moral Majority
In 1979, Falwell organized the Moral Majority, a coalition of groups whose mailing lists reached over 100,000 clergy representing more than seven million conservative, religious Americans. The Moral Majority, part of the Religious Right, organized a series of voting drives and political demonstrations to advance their conservative point of view and enhance the moral and religious attitudes of the nation. It is best known for supporting Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and registering millions of voters to act on his behalf.
The Moral Majority played surprisingly little role during the Reagan years. Falwell stepped down as its leader in 1987, and it was finally disbanded in 1989.
Social and political views
A summation of Falwell's political views, taken from his book America: A History of Americans being American (1984),[6] follows (emphasis added):
In 1776 in the year of our Lord, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Pilgrims (good Protestants all) kicked the King of England, an Anglican (ick!), out of America because he was not American enough to be an American, and America is for Americans.
He went back to England with his tail between his legs, surrendering to George Washington after he dumped tea in Boston Harbor because tea is for homosexuals and Europeans, and Americans, being neither homosexual nor European, drink coffee. This had the double effect of winning the war against the foreign invaders and poisoning the Indians, who didn't keep copies of the Bible beside their beds, when they came down to wash there [sic] red-skinned skin in the ocean.
After pushing the Limeys and the Indians out of America the Americans, lead by Thomas Jefferson (a Christian) and his twelve apostles (Christians all), founded America based on Biblical Law, as it appears in the One True Bible™, the Bible, with particular focus on Exodus, Leviticus, Joshua and select passages from the Pauline Epistles.
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, stands for everything that America stands for: obedience to authority, military might, trickle-down economics, and killing commies.
Families
Falwell strongly advocated beliefs and practices he felt were taught by the Bible.[7] He believed in the quintessential patriarchal family in which the man of the house is the man of the house, and as the man of the house brings home the bacon to the woman in the house, the housewife, who cooks up that bacon in the kitchen in the house for the man of the house. In her spare time, that is the time left over after taking care of the man of the house in his house where he is the man of the house eating the bacon that she cooked in the kitchen in the house where she cooks the bacon brought home to the house by the man of the house, she is expected to raise the children until they're old enough to attend a Christian school, where they are taught the Truth™ that God made everything in six days.[8] Darwinism is a dirty lie, terms like "secular humanism" and "liberal Christianity" are synonymous with "sin", and Paul said that Jesus said that they, the little men of the house and little women in the house, should be good little men of the house and good little women in the house until they're old enough to be the man of the house or the women in the house.
The entire family was expected to play an active role in their local church on those days when their time wasn't filled with being the man of the house, the woman in the house, the little men of the house or the little women in the house. While there they were to believe without question everything the pastor[9] said. While at home being men of the house, women in the house, little men of the house or little women in the house, they were to take the Bible literally, except for those parts that were parables. Parables were to be taken as literally as possible, given the non-literal nature of parables. In addition, they were to not take the allegorical Song of Solomon literally, as it is sexy, filthy and erotic if read in that manner. Indeed, each of its eight chapters is sexier, filthier and more erotic than the one before.
Falwell's Moral Majority was founded on four basic tenets: pro-family,[10] pro-life,[11] pro-defense,[12] and pro-Israel.[13] These four tenets are all based on a literal reading of Scripture, that Scripture being the Bible, that Bible being the King James Version, that King James Version being in English, that English being American English, and that American English King James Version Biblical Scripture being literal.
Civil rights
He was against them.
Controversies
Homosexuality
Falwell believed that homosexuals are sinners who sin with other homosexuals, having homo-sex, which is sinful. In the Bible, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, says that homosexuals are wicked fornicators who are out to corrupt America (and the Americans within) with their sick homosexual homo-sex,[14] forcing good heterosexual Christians into gay marriages before giving them "family planning" pamphlets from Planned Parenthood and subjecting them to mandatory abortions.
While the good pastor did not actively promote ostracizing homosexuals from American society, he did regularly tell his many followers that they should ostracize homosexuals from American society. He backed up his bombastic rhetoric with both biblical passages and faith-based studies that prove homosexuals are all pedophiles that have AIDS and fill the Lord with wrath. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, being a loving God who loves the sinner but hates the sin, makes his wrath known by giving the homosexuals, who all have AIDS, AIDS. On other occasions, He (capital "H") lets Muslim terrorists fly planes into buildings that have homosexuals, people who tolerate homosexuality and homosexuals who tolerate homosexuality in them. The planes containing the Muslim terrorists probably also contain homosexuals, people who tolerate homosexuality and homosexuals who tolerate homosexuality, but only the Lord knows for sure.
September 11th attacks
On an episode of Pat Robertson's The 700 Club, aired a mere three days after the 9/11 attacks, Falwell said he believed that it was not just al-Qaeda to blame for the recent terrorist attacks:[15]
| “ | I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians and the ACLU – all those who have tried to secularize America – I point my finger in their face and say 'You helped this happen.' | ” |
After heavy criticism from the liberal media for the above speech, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said and that he was not sorry that he said it.
After heavy criticism of the speech and the apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it, and that next time God would make it much worse, with bigger planes hitting larger buildings.
After heavy criticism of the speech, the first apology, and the second apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it and that next time God would make it much, much worse, with bigger planes hitting larger buildings and He would give both the people in the planes and those in the buildings AIDS.
After heavy criticism of the speech, the first apology, the second apology, and the third apology, Falwell apologized, saying that he meant what he said, he was not sorry that he said it, and that he was going to Heaven to get the Lord to jump-start the Rapture.
Barry Goldwater
In 1981 Senator Barry Goldwater, far from being a social conservative in his old age, won the praise of the liberal media with his utterly idiotic remark that "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."
Personal life
Falwell and his wife Macel married in 1958. The couple had three pure, holy children: Jerry Jr., Jonathan, and Jeannie. Jerry is currently an attorney and vice-chancellor at Liberty University; Jonathan is an attorney and pastor in Lynchburg, Virginia; and Jeannie is a surgeon in Virginia.
Death
Being a man of his word (see above), Falwell promptly died six years later, paving the way for the End of Days.
Three days after his death, followers of Jerry Falwell visited his tomb. While there they purchased copies of his autobiography, Jerry Falwell: The Jerry Falwell Story (foreword by Jerry Falwell), from the Jerry Falwell Memorial Bookstore and, after playing a game of Whack a Mohel in the Jerry Falwell Memorial Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre, were stunned to witness him being lifted bodily up into Heaven.
After conferring with the risen pastor, Jesus is expected to return to Earth to rid the world of homosexuals, once and for all.[16]
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ It closed its doors in 1981, after Falwell noticed that roller disco looked a lot like dancing.
- ↑ Motto: Every book Man needs, including both the KJV and King James versions of the Bible. The NIV "bible" was available for a short time, but it was quickly pulled from the shelves and burned, as per Acts 19:19, after it was found to be too tolerant of homosexuality.
- ↑ pronounced HO-MO seks yoo-awl ih-tee, with emphasis, as always, on the "HOMO"
- ↑ soon to be a major motion picture
- ↑ This change meant that Christian fundamentalism – once considered the One True Path to Heaven and the LORD, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior™ – became a lesser path to the Lord (paved in gravel rather than gold and poorly lit at night, with unpaved shoulders and lined with gas stations with surly employees and dirty bathrooms), while evangelical Christianity, once considered to be a poor path to an eternity not cloaked in fire and burning and fire that burns with burning fire, rose to prominence among True Christians™ who really like to tell both non-Christians and false Christians all about how much they would enjoy Heaven if they hadn't been predestined to go to Hell. Praise the Lord.
- ↑ available from Falwell.com for $14.95 in hardcover and $24.95 in hardercover
- ↑ The Bible Says So, Baker Publishing Group, 1986
- ↑ He spent the seventh in church worshipping Himself, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
- ↑ not priest or rabbi
- ↑ homosexual families excluded
- ↑ Muslims, Jews, Roman Catholics, people with swarthy skin and foreigners excluded
- ↑ The best defense is a good offense.
- ↑ at least until the End of Days
- ↑ Romans 1:26–28 & 1:31–32, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, 1 Timothy 1:10, 2 Timothy 3:3. There are also some passages in the Old Testament which we, under the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, have to follow, as they condemn homosexuals (to death, generally), while most of the remainder of the OT we, under the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, can safely ignore, as they don't.
- ↑ The 700 Club, Sep 13/2001
- ↑ Amen.
