RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Deep Topics Jerry Falwell Is Meeting Jesus

Supposedly.

Falwell died in his office at Liberty University this morning. He was found at 10:45 unresponsive. CPR efforts failed and Falwell was pronounced dead.

if there is a jesus, he should be taking Falwell to account for misleading his followers and swindling money from them.

Television Evangelist Falwell Dies at 73
By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer
52 minutes ago


The Rev. Jerry Falwell speaks at a rally on ...
LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality.

Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents.

"Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said Tuesday.

Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.

He also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.

Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.

In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: "Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?"

Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.

Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.

In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.

The case was depicted in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt."

With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on "non-moral issues."

Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.

Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Falwell essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized.

In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.

Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.

The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.

"He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry," said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.

In 1987, Falwell took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after Jim Bakker's troubles. Falwell slid fully clothed down a theme park water slide after donors met his fund-raising goal to help rescue the rival ministry. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL's financial problems.

Largely because of the Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals, donations to Falwell's ministry dropped from $135 million in 1986 to less than $100 million the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled.

Liberty University was $73 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, and his "Old Time Gospel Hour" was $16 million in debt.

By the mid-1990s, two local businessmen with long ties to Falwell began overseeing the finances and helped get companies to forgive debts or write them of as losses.

Falwell devoted much of his time keeping his university afloat. He dreamed that Liberty would grow to 50,000 students and be to fundamentalist Christians what Notre Dame is to Roman Catholics and Brigham Young University is to Mormons. He was an avid sports fan who arrived at Liberty basketball games to the cheers of students.

Falwell's father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography. He said his father made a fortune off his businesses _ including bootleging during Prohibition.

As a student, Falwell was a star athlete and a prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian's speech after he was caught using counterfeit lunch tickets his senior year.

He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at age 19. He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.

"My heart was burning to serve Christ," he once said in an interview. "I knew nothing would ever be the same again."

Falwell is survived by his wife, Macel, and three children, Jerry, Jonathan and Jeannie.

And another hateful, phony, homophobic asshole bites the dust.

After That gay guy saved Gerald Ford from being shot by former Manson member Squeaky Fromm at a public appearance in 1976, Falwell appeared on the Tomorrow Show, hosted by Tom Snyder.

Snyder asked Falwell what he thought of this.

Falwell : " It doesn't matter who he saves or how much good he does, that gay man is going to hell unless he stops being gay.

Snyder : " What if a hetersexual man kills his entire family? Does he go to hell?"

Falwell : " If he asks Jesus for forgiveness, that man will go to heaven."

Fuck off, Falwell!

Have fun in hell!

Beware the Beardrage!

W H O A !

Today is Wednesday, May 16, 2007.


And Jerry Falwell is still dead.

Liberty Student Arrested on Bomb Charges
By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer
5 hours ago


LYNCHBURG, Va. - A Liberty University student who told a family member he had made bombs and planned to attend the funeral of the Rev. Jerry Falwell was apparently upset about an anti-gay fringe group that protested at the funeral, authorities said.

Officials were still trying to figure out what Mark David Uhl planned to do with the bombs. Police do not believe he intended to disrupt the funeral Tuesday or harm the Falwell family, Campbell County Sheriff Terry Gaddy said.

Uhl, 19, was being held without bond in the Campbell County Adult Detention Center on charges of manufacturing an explosive device. It was not known if he had a lawyer, and messages seeking comment left at numbers believed to belong to his family were not returned.

Uhl, of Amissville, was arrested Monday night after a family member contacted authorities, who found homemade bombs in the trunk of Uhl's car, Major Steve Hutcherson said.

Gaddy described the five bombs as "sort of like napalm" and about the size of soda cans.

"We do not believe the Falwells were ever in any danger," he said.

The funeral proceeded at Thomas Road Baptist Church without incident. More than 10,000 people attended the service on the campus of the evangelical university, which Falwell founded.

Investigators determined that Uhl had problems with a group that protested at the funeral, Gaddy said. The Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church sent about a dozen members to protest across the street from the funeral, claiming Falwell was a friend to gays. The group also has picketed soldiers' burials, claiming the deaths are God's punishment for a nation that supports homosexuality.

Falwell frequently spoke against homosexuality, and gay rights advocates have consistently opposed him. A group of Liberty University students staged a counterprotest; it wasn't clear whether Uhl was involved.

Jesse Benson, 19, of Zanesville, Ohio, said he lived with Uhl this year and that both shared the view that the Westboro group is a "sorry, disgraceful bunch of people," but that he was certain Uhl would never have done anything to harm them.

"He had a very, very deep respect for Jerry Falwell, as do I," Benson said in a telephone interview. "Jerry Falwell would not have approved him harming anybody for any reason. Out of respect for Jerry Falwell, he never would have done anything."

It wasn't clear whether Uhl knew the group planned to go to the campus, but the group had listed the funeral as an upcoming event published on its Web site.

Benson said Uhl was in Liberty's Army ROTC program and was studying to become an Army chaplain. Gaddy said investigators in Fauquier County were interviewing several people who had been in an ROTC program with Uhl in high school and may have been involved in making the bombs. One is now in the Army, he said.

The sheriff said Campbell County authorities informed the Falwell family and Liberty security personnel of the arrest Monday night, and gave security personnel photos of other possible suspects in case any of them showed up at the funeral.

Falwell, 73, died a week ago after collapsing in his office at the university. His physician said Falwell had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart rhythm abnormality.

More than 33,000 people had viewed his body over four days as it lay in repose.

A private burial was planned on the grounds of Liberty University near a former mansion where Falwell's office was located.

This liberal won't miss him despite what the "opinion journal" says. I'm not going to cheer his death either but he said & did things that made the world a bit nastier IMHO.

Falwell did quite a bit of damage, MEM. I'm certain he poisoned a lot of minds towards gays.

Let's hope that no "worthy" successor takes his place.

I'm surprised this didn't get more press.

Me too. Falwell had made a lot of enemies on Earth...