The founder of GOD TV, a favorite outlet of many right-wing preachers including Lou Engle, Mike Bickle, Rick Joyner and Cindy Jacobs, has stepped down after admitting to a “moral failure” in his marriage. His wife is the network’s cofounder.
Another leader in the body of Christ has admitted to a “moral failure” concerning his marriage. Rory Alec has resigned as chairman and CEO of the network he co-founded with his wife, Wendy.
“After 20 years of service, I have had a moral failure this year,” Rory said. “For this reason, I am stepping down. Please forgive me for the disappointment I’ve caused, but I know your eyes are on Jesus who is the author and finisher of your faith and not on me, an imperfect man. It is with a heavy heart that I confirm my season with GOD TV is over for now.” Rory and Wendy Alec’s network has been especially close to figures in the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles who believe they are restoring godliness and conservative leadership to the many sectors of American society.
As Sarah Posner reported in 2009, the Alecs have tried to reach a younger audience than their counterparts at the Trinity Broadcasting Network and focus on staging large revival meetings, such as Todd Bentley’s controversial Lakeland Revival and the more politically-attuned (and smaller) 2010 May Day on the Mall prayer rally.
Recently God TV has been broadcasting live a healing revival of the Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley, from Lakeland, Florida, which Charisma dubbed the “Lakeland Healing Outpouring.” During the revival, which has been ongoing for more than a month, Wendy Alec claimed to have received a prophecy from God that “THIS is just the warm-up party—for what you shall see in the coming days shall even make these days pale—with what I have up my sleeve.” Alec also claimed a few weeks ago that Jesus told her back in 2004 that even though “Satan has been trying to forward the end timeline of the destruction of the entire East Coast of America,” his plans could be thwarted through “enough radical prayer.” She predicted that such a huge revival was coming to the east coast of the United States and that in “less than a decade the East Coast will be called America’s Bible Belt.” She is not, in other words, deterred by pursuit of the impossible.
In fact, it is the impossible that keeps the movement going—after all, one’s quest for purity, in realms spiritual and otherwise, is always an exercise in futility. So there’s always something to do, to pray for, to fast over, to repent for, and to ask for money for. All of that aspiration—and the money funding the revivals that are supposedly needed to win more souls to the chaste life of devotion to a puritanical Christ—provides the fuel that keeps God TV going.
For the Alecs, the evils of the secular world provide plenty of ammunition. Through a prayer revival in Great Britain, Alec claims God told her, “the stupor and the slumber and the secular humanistic spirits that have bound My people in this nation shall start to uproot.” In early 2007, she claimed that God told her He was preparing, “to pour out from heaven the ferocious fire of my spirit” on the West Coast of America—a “fresh new breath upon California” and not, Alec insisted, a mere repeat of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival. She said God promised a “cleansing” of Los Angeles and its “gatekeepers of the media and the entertainment industry.” And she warned the city of San Francisco, “overwhelm[ed]” by “the weight of sin,” that it would be “brought to your knees.”
Last year, the Alecs tried to exorcise demons from President Obama, freeing him from “Jezebel’s clutches.”
