Oral Roberts

 

"I need some very quick money, so I know when March comes I won't be taken.  I'll get to live."
  -- Oral Roberts, 1987

Granville Oral Roberts was born in Ada, Oklahoma on January 24, 1918.  He was the youngest of five children to the Reverend Ellis Roberts and his wife Claudia.

Roberts grew up poor and his health often suffered.  He almost died of tuberculosis when he was 17, but he recovered and later finished high school.  He'd attend both Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University, but never completed a degree.

In the 1940s, Roberts followed in his father's footsteps and answered the call to serve God.  He hit the road as a traveling faith healer, conducting his sermons in a large mobile tent.

Roberts took a break from traveling in 1945, when he accepted a preaching position in Toccoa, Georgia.  He was unaware however, that the Georgia conference of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church preferred local ministers to head their congregations and he was asked to move on.  Although his time in Georgia was brief, it had two long-lasting impacts on Roberts and his family.  It was there that daughter Rebecca met her future husband, Marshall (see Trivia below).  Also, Roberts claimed to have healed two of his parishioners, later stating "I was approaching my hour."

Buoyed by this, Roberts returned to the road in 1947.  He conducted faith-healing sessions all over the world, using his own monthly magazine Healing Waters to promote them.  His tent revivals became very popular with the faithful, and through the years, he'd conduct more than 300 of them on six continents, eventually healing more than two million people.  Roberts eschewed the term "faith healer" however, stating "God heals - I don't."  During this time, Roberts first began proclaiming that he could raise the dead, and not just to vote. 

In 1954, as television was becoming increasingly popular, Roberts took advantage of the new medium, becoming one of the first televangelists.  By 1957, his program The Abundant Life was reaching more than 80 percent of all viewers.  That's more than your average Super Bowl.  He also hosted primetime specials throughout the 1970s, all of which were ratings juggernauts.  Here's one such broadcast from 1958.

Stating that he was acting on orders from God, Roberts founded Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1963.  With a motto of "educating the whole man," it is still accredited today, offering 70 undergraduate and 20 graduate programs.  As of this posting, it has more than 4,000 students, most of whom choose ministry as their field of study.

God spoke to Roberts again in 1977, telling him to build the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Tulsa.  Construction began in 1979 and the center accepted its first patient just two years later.  At the time, it was the largest health facility in the world, designed to merge both prayer and medicine in the healing process. 

The center proved too costly to maintain however, and in 1987, Roberts famously declared that if he didn't raise $8 million by March of that year, God would "call him home."  Although he was ultimately successful in raising the money, the facility closed its doors in 1989.  It was later converted into a high-rise office center redubbed "CityPlex Towers" (above).

Controversy would visit ORU as well.  In 2007, Roberts' son Richard resigned from the presidency after being named in a lawsuit alleging improper use of university funds.  Roberts himself stepped in to fill the vacancy, but his term would be short lived.

By 2009, Roberts' health was in decline, and he ultimately passed from pneumonia on December 15.  He was 91 years old.  CBS News covered his life and passing.

Roberts was buried in his family plot at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Location: Section #45, Lot #61
Inscription #1: Something Good is Going to Happen to You
Inscription #2: God is a Good God (3 John 1:2)

Wife Evelyn passed four years earlier.  The two inscriptions on her half of the marker say "Don't Turn Him Away" and "In Your Presence is Fullness of Joy (Psalm 16:11)."

Rest in peace, Oral Roberts.

Trivia

• Roberts authored a library's worth of books on spirituality and his personal faith, with such titles as Expect a New Miracle Every Day, Attack Your Lack and When You See the Invisible, You Can Do the Impossible. Check out his many works on Amazon.
  
  
• Roberts was a pioneer in preaching by mail.  He ran a direct-mail marketing campaign aimed at rural Americans and immigrants from other countries.
  
  
• When Oral Roberts University first opened its doors in 1965, students were required to sign an honor code, pledging not to drink, smoke or have premarital relations.
  
  
• Roberts and his wife were preceded in death by two of their children. Daughter Rebecca Nash, along with her husband, died in a plane crash on February 11, 1977.  Oldest son Ronald committed suicide on June 10, 1982, after receiving a court order to enroll in a drug treatment center and after coming out as gay.
  
  
• After the City of Faith Medical and Research Center opened its doors, Roberts claimed that Jesus appeared to him in person commanding him to find a cure for cancer.
  
  
• In 1987, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed poked fun of Roberts in his Bloom County comic strip, rebranding his iconic Bill the Cat character as "Fundamentally Oral Bill."
  
  
  
  
  
• Comedian Sam Kinison is buried in the same cemetery as Roberts, just a short distance away.  Believe It Or Not!
  
  
• This blogger met one of Roberts' nieces while visiting his grave.