Gene Scott is Dead

If you never saw Gene Scott on T.V. you will not understand why this guy was so great.

Back in the 1960's Gene was the pastor of a big A.G. church in Glendale. My Dad was pastor of a big P.C.G. Church in Higland View. (Both are in L.A.) They were both fairly prominent in their respective denominations. But Gene went whacko. There is no doubt that he was an educated man. He had a Stanford Ph.D. but he was nuts.

According to my dad, Gene's bizarre behavior began in the early 1970's with rumors of fraud and an investigatin by his denomination. Eventually, he was either kicked out of, or volutarly left the A.G.

He wen't totally off the deep end in 1977. I will never forget the time he lined up a bunch of wind-up monkeys and said, "this one is Governor Brown, this one is the Attorney General, this one is..." and he wen't on to name all of his accusers.

And some of his cigars were huge!!!!! I mean they were monsterous!!!! The enormity of the man's tobacco was was beyond words. And what fire he could shoot out of them! It was as though he was a human flame thrower. Sometimes, it would take him 5 minutes for him to get the things lit. And the whole five minutes the camera would be getting a close up of his face. It was crazy!

Sometimes he would sit and read other people's books to his T.V. audience, stop after about an hour and say "Man, this is good teaching. You gotta pay for teaching like this. Get on the telephone." Then he would walk off the set until enough people called in to donate money. And when he was off the set the crew would run tape of him or his wife riding one of his 300 horses. Or even more strangly, a live shot of his empty chair for 15 or 20 minutes at a time.

In the early 1980's he taught on the pyramids. It was fascinating. Utterly useless and possibly heretical, but fascinating none the less. Especially, to the 12 year old boy I was then.

But when he taught on the Bible, he was brilliant. There might not be another man in the late 20th century who had more knowledge about the Bible than Gene Scott. His preaching on Ruth and the kinsman-redeemer had me in tears for several nights as I watched the telecast in my childhood. It was amazing preaching. But I remember thinking, "What he is saying is true but he doesn't belive it".

One thing that a lot of people do not understand about Gene Scott is that he wasn't just a hedonist. He was a telological hedonist. I believe he was really trying to find Salvation by follwing the Reformation (particularly Martin Luther's) teaching on Galatians. But his egoism was nearly unbearable.

Now that he has certainly met God, I hope Gene recognized Him as the peace he never seemed to have on earth.