Jim Bakker and Franklin Graham

I am currently reading: I Was Wrong by Jim Bakker (founder of PTL and Heritage USA).  

I liked this paragraph about a time when Franklin Graham had come to visit him.  

That night, long after Franklin was gone, I began to realize what a gutsy
thing he had done by identifying himself with me, a disgraced television evangelist as far as the world was concerned, and a convicted felon.  
Of all the people whom I might have expected to allow their names to
be linked with mine, I would never have thought that Franklin would
have risked the Graham name.  He had nothing to gain and everything
to lose by identifying with me, but he did it.  I had been in prison for
over a year now and had not heard a word from many of the people
who were regularly seen on our television programs.  But Franklin
Graham demonstrated risky, genuine Christian love.  

Desmond Smith gave us a challenge in response to an earlier blog to demonstrate risky, genuine Christian love.  Sounds like one we should all take up.  I’d like to suggest that as we do that, we not only demonstrate that love for the homeless and homosexual (2 groups a lot of Christians have a hard time loving) but also with those believe that have screwed up in their lives.  

P.S.  Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prision for defrauding the PTL partners.  On July 22, 1996, shortly after Jim Bakker had completed the writing the book I am readying, a federal jury ruled that he was not selling securities by offering lifetime partnerships at Heritage USA.  The jury’s ruling thus affirms what Jim Bakker had contended from the first day he was indicted and throughout the writing of his book.