The Appeal to Repair the Devil’s Work

Having performed the fakery, Popoff now had to launch his money plea to the gullible. First, to establish among the staff that the break-in was real, he allowed them to come in later that morning and “discover” the damage. At that point, they were sent home, and the TV crew began taping a special segment for the next Sunday’s broadcast. Director Sherrill arranged a heart-rending shot of Peter, tears streaming down his face, standing before the smashed front door of his headquarters. Those tears were real, the result of Rod rubbing a cut onion over Popoff’s cheeks. Choking—perhaps more with laughter than with histrionics—Popoff showed his viewers the broken glass and invited them inside to see what the “Satanists and secular humanists” had done to his office and printing plant. The wrongly broken glass door stood out for any mildly perceptive mind to wonder about, but Popoff didn’t have to concern himself much with that possibility. Inside, Popoff stood beside Liz, both of them sniffing back tears. A pallet was beside them, its contents spilled around and obviously wet. Peter launched into a disjointed account of how the vandals had tried to destroy these “Russian Bibles” that his viewers had been paying to send behind the Iron Curtain. He told them that he and Liz had decided to reach into their own pockets and use their credit card to help pay for the damage. He suggested that viewers should do the same.

The Smoking Videotape

We have in our possession the original videotape that was prepared for that broadcast, along with the out-takes (unused portions) made at the same time. And on that tape is damning evidence of the scheme that Popoff perpetrated on his viewers. There is information on the tape preceding and following the video image that none of the perpetrators could have known about. First, color bars appear on that tape. This is standard procedure. Those bars and the accompanying “reference tone” on the sound track are necessary to establish the parameters of each recording, so that when the original master tape is sent out to be copied and distributed to the dozens of TV stations that will broadcast it, it will be of optimal quality. Next, the program material shows up, with Popoff leading his TV audience inside the office through the smashed window in the front door, to see the terrible damage wrought by the Devil. This is the text directly from program No. 134, broadcast on Sunday, May 12, 1985:Originally, I was going to do something else this week, but I want to show you what the Devil has done. Will you come with me?

Once inside amid the debris, he continued:Elizabeth, I’m in a complete state of shock. Friends, while you were at church, our headquarters were vandalized. Now, we’ve been experiencing Satanic opposition, but friends, I never expected that the Devil would come right into our headquarters and smash our premises. And the thing that I don’t believe was a coincidence was—is that he came right for the Word of God. I want to show you what happened. I want to show you the Devil has attacked us and they hosed down the Bibles. Now these Bibles were on skids, ready to be airlifted to the Russian border, where we were going to bring them to the persecuted underground church in our annual gospel invasion. We were excited about this gospel invasion. But now it seems like the Devil’s brought us almost to a complete standstill. Our van was vandalized. The windows were smashed. The lights were smashed. My children were almost in tears when they saw what was going on.

As the reader will know by now, this is a complete pack of lies. Amid phony tears, the Popoffs were outlining an entirely fictitious event. If the Devil brought this operation to a standstill, his initials were P.P. Next on the tape, they presented the appeal:And right now, at this moment, as we are both in a state of shock, we can feel your needs, you see, because we suffer. We suffer with you. We hurt. I feel the hurt to the pit of my stomach.... Well, it really hurts to see Satan step in like this, and try to stop God’s work in our tracks. But friends, I know that the Devil’s not going to win. I know that we’re going to break through. Yes, we did have some insurance, but it will never make up for what we’ve lost, at this moment. And friends, time is of the essence. Right now, these Bibles were to be airlifted, now, so that we could get them into the hands of our couriers, so they could go. I feel hurt, right now. I can feel your needs, because the Devil has attacked us, just like he attacks you. And I feel right now that God is going to let us see restoration, Elizabeth. And my wife and I had agreed—we felt this in our spirits—to loan $500 to Jesus, that we were going to borrow on our Visa card. I didn’t know at that time what was going to happen, but I felt led of the Lord to loan this to Jesus. Well, now I know that we’re going to loan this $500 to Jesus on our Visa card, and Liz, we’re going to put it into the Word, and I know that no man at any time, anywhere, has ever put something into the Word, loaned something to Jesus, whose life wasn’t changed, who didn’t experience an overwhelming, abundant, press-down, shake-’em-together, running-over measure. And I believe that many of you, friends, are going to stand with us. You’re going to loan to the Lord, loan to Jesus, and I believe that God is going to make you a par-taker of the blessings that we’re going to see.

At the time Popoff spoke those words, assuring his viewers of the hardship that $500 would mean to his family, he was pulling in at least a million and a quarter dollars a month. And, incidentally, it was Volmer Thrane who, according to Rod Sherrill, smashed up the van so convincingly. I wonder if Popoff made an insurance claim on that damage, and if so, whether the insurance company cares that they paid off on planned destruction.