Key Takeaways

• Televangelist Jim Bakker died October 5 at 86, nearly four decades after a spectacular fall from one of America's largest television ministries and a federal felony conviction.
• Bakker served nearly five years in federal prison before mounting an unlikely comeback, returning to Christian television in 2003.
• A pastor now claims Christian commentator Brandon Biggs privately predicted months earlier both Bakker's death and a coming plague — an intriguing coincidence that remains unverified.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Jim Bakker's life ended October 5, 2026, closing one of the most extraordinary and controversial chapters in American televangelism.

His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced that the 86-year-old preacher had died but did not disclose a cause. Bakker had suffered a stroke in 2020.

For Americans who remember televangelism's explosive growth during the 1980s, Bakker was once nearly impossible to avoid.

With his then-wife Tammy Faye Bakker, he transformed The PTL Club into a religious broadcasting powerhouse. At its height, the television ministry reportedly reached as many as 13 million viewers and generated approximately $129 million annually. The empire included the sprawling Heritage USA Christian resort and theme park in South Carolina.

Then it collapsed.

Bakker resigned from PTL in 1987 following revelations concerning a sexual encounter with church secretary Jessica Hahn and a $265,000 payment involving ministry funds intended to keep the matter secret.

An even more consequential investigation followed.

Federal prosecutors accused Bakker of raising approximately $158 million by selling followers ‘partnerships’promising accommodations at Heritage USA that the ministry could not possibly provide to everyone who purchased them.

In 1989, a federal jury convicted Bakker on all 24 fraud and conspiracy counts.

Prosecutors also alleged millions of dollars had supported an extravagant lifestyle involving expensive homes, vehicles, jewelry and other luxuries. Bakker maintained that although he had sinned and made serious mistakes, he never intentionally set out to defraud his followers.

The original sentence was extraordinary: 45 years in federal prison and a $500,000 fine.

That sentence was subsequently overturned and reduced to eight years. Bakker ultimately served roughly 4½ to five years before his 1994 release.

He therefore died a convicted felon, although that conviction did not end his ministry.

Prison became the dividing line between Bakker's two public lives.

After his release, he rejected much of the prosperity theology he had once promoted and published the remarkably direct 1996 book I Was Wrong.

Bakker said his obsession with wealth and material success had corrupted his ministry.

He married Lori Graham in 1998 and eventually returned to television. In 2003, the couple launched The Jim Bakker Show, giving a convicted former televangelism superstar something exceedingly rare in American public life: A second chance, and a second television ministry.

But controversy followed him into his comeback.

His later programming became heavily oriented toward biblical prophecy, disasters, survival products and End Times warnings.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bakker promoted a colloidal-silver product while claims were made about its ability to combat coronavirus. Regulators intervened, and a Missouri lawsuit eventually resulted in approximately $156,000 in restitution and restrictions on marketing the product as a treatment for disease.

Yet Bakker continued broadcasting.

And that makes an unusual claim emerging after his death especially interesting.

Pastor Paul Begley said during an October 8 broadcast that Christian prophetic commentator Brandon Biggs contacted him in July 2026.

According to Begley, Biggs gave him several warnings.

Two now stand out.

One concerned Jim Bakker's death.

Another concerned a potentially devastating plague associated with Russia.

Begley says he wrote the warnings down while sitting in his car.

USA Herald has not located independent contemporaneous documentation establishing exactly what Biggs told Begley in July. The account currently depends substantially upon Begley's later recollection and notes.

Still, what happened next makes the chronology unusual.

October brought both events.

On October 2, 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, an employee of Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died after developing severe pneumonia.

Reports of possible pneumonic plague triggered an aggressive Russian public-health response and international concern. Around 200 contacts were initially placed under medical observation.

Then, on October 5, Bakker died.

International attention surrounding the Russian case intensified at virtually the same time.

But there is a major qualification.

The World Health Organization's October 10 assessment says Russia reported that Shipilova died from "pneumonia of undetermined etiology," not confirmed plague. Testing of contacts reportedly found no high-threat pathogen, and Russian authorities deny that a laboratory biosecurity accident occurred. WHO says Russia reported no recent plague case in the Irkutsk region.

So, the coincidence is real.

A confirmed plague outbreak is not.