Televangelist Pat Robertson warned yesterday that people should “avoid false prophets and televangelists caught up in scandal,” according to Right Wing Watch. Robertson’s co-host posed the question, “How do we know the real [prophets] from the unreal? There are so many people who are self-appointed in things like prophet, or, you know, some of the different positions…” to which Robertson responded, “By their fruits you shall know them, and what’s their track record. I mean, that’s the way you tell, if they shoot their mouth off…”
It is ironic that Robertson’s response would include the mention of false prophets’ track records and shooting off one’s mouth. The media mogul and uber conservative Christian has made so many controversial and demeaning statements, not to mention predictions on natural disasters, recessions, wars, presidential elections, and terrorist attacks, that it’s difficult to recollect them all. Only last year, Robertson reported that God had shown him who the next president would be, and said it would definitely not be Obama.
“I think He showed me about the next president, but I’m not supposed to talk about that so I’ll leave you in the dark,” Robertson said. He later told fellow crazy Benny Hinn that God told him Mitt Romney would win the election and be a second-term president. Robertson relayed the message to Romney before the election, as well as informing him that “trillions of dollars” would be flowing into the economy once he became president, “a flood of money.”
In 1976, Robertson predicted that the end of the world would occur in October or November of 1982. “I guarantee you, by the end of 1982, there is going to be a judgment on the world,” he said. The televangelist and self-proclaimed prophet is also, of course, famous for inappropriately “shooting off his mouth,” exemplified by the instance after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, which he claimed was a result of the Haitians’ pact with the devil, or when he linked hurricane Katrina to legalized abortion. Recently, Robertson flaunted his skills as a climate change expert when he refuted a Princeton study that projected less snow but more severe winter storms over the next half century.
Alisha Mims is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire.
