Life in the Word of Joyce Meyers

Life In The Riches Of The World

The following doctrinal statements outline the basic beliefs of Joyce Meyers. From this four basic doctrinal beliefs, heresy is quite visible.

ETERNAL LIFE AND NEW BIRTH: Man's first step toward salvation is godly sorrow that works repentance. The new birth is available to all mankind. When Jesus Christ is accepted as Savior, salvation takes place; man becomes born again; and his spirit becomes eternally alive to God. (II Corinthians 7:10; I John 5:12; John 3:3-5)

BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT: The Baptism in the Holy Ghost and fire is a gift from God as promised by the Lord Jesus Christ to those who are believers in this dispensation and is received subsequent to the new birth. This experience is accompanied by the initial evidence of the speaking in other tongues as the Holy Spirit Himself gives utterance. (Matthew 3:11; John 14:16-17; Acts 1:8; Acts 2:38-39; Acts 19:1-7; Acts 2:4)

SANCTIFICATION: The Bible teaches that without Holiness no man can see the Lord. We believe in the doctrine of Sanctification as a definite, yet progressive, work of grace commencing at the time of regeneration and continuing until the consummation of Salvation. (Hebrews 12:14; I Thessalonians 5:23; II Peter 3:18; II Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 3:12-14; I Corinthians 1:30)

THE GODHEAD: Our God is One, but manifested in three persons • the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Philippians 2:6; John 14:21-26) God the Father is greater than all • the Source of the Word (Logos) and the Begetter. (John 14:28; John 16:28; John 1:14) The Son is the Word flesh-covered, the One Begotten, and has existed with the Father from the beginning. (John 1:14; John 1:18; John 1:1) The Holy Spirit, Who is eternal, proceeds forth from both the Father and the Son. (John 15:26)

Joyce Meyers said from her TV Broadcast "God rose up from His throne and said to demon powers tormenting the sinless Son of God, ‘Let Him go.’ Then the resurrection power of Almighty God went through hell and filled Jesus ... He was resurrected from the dead the first born-again man"

And another, "There is no hope of anyone going to heaven unless they believe this truth I am presenting. You cannot go to heaven unless you believe with all your heart that Jesus took your place in hell"

Like an experienced salesman, Joyce Meyers uses household vocabularies garnished with "heavenly nonsense phraseology" filled with heresies, mistaken by many as spiritual truth. In general, her preaching are all fake medicines, false salvation, false hope, false beliefs, bringing people into false heaven.

Who is Joyce Meyers:

Joyce Meyer authored over 70 books and conducts close to 20 conferences per year. In 2004, almost 2.5 million copies of her books were sold, and well over 1 million “were donated around the world”. Her television program is broadcast to two-thirds of the globe and her radio program is broadcast on hundreds of stations worldwide.

She received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma and a PhD in Theology from Life Christian University in Tampa, Florida. In February 2005, she was selected by Time Magazine as one of the top 25 evangelical leaders in America.

The heresies of Joyce Meyers are common among the charismatic preachers and TV evangelists, as much as her pleading for fund raising.

From Fenton to fortune in the name of God

Reprinted from: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Saturday, Nov. 15 2003 by Carolyn Tuft and Bill Smith

Joyce Meyer says God has made her rich.

Everything she has came from Him: the $10 million corporate jet, her husband's $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children — all blessings, she says, straight from the hand of God. It's been an amazing run, nothing short of a miracle, says Meyer, a one-time bookkeeper who heads one of the world's largest television ministries. Her Life in the Word organization expects to take in $95 million this year.

Just look around, she told reporters last month from behind her desk on the third floor of the ministry's corporate offices in Jefferson County. "Here I am, an ex-housewife from Fenton, with a 12th-grade education," she said. "How could anybody look at this and see anything other than God?"

In many ways, Joyce Meyer is an American Cinderella. Describing herself as sexually abused as a girl and neglected and abandoned as a young wife, Meyer has remade herself into one of the nation's best-known and best-paid TV preachers. She has taken her "prosperity through faith" message to millions.

"If you stay in your faith, you are going to get paid," Meyer told an audience in Detroit in September. "I'm living now in my reward."

Meyer, 60 and a grandmother, runs the ministry with her husband, Dave, and the couple's four children. All of the family, including the children's spouses, draw paychecks from the ministry. But the way Meyer spends her ministry's money on herself and her family may violate federal law, legal and tax experts say. That law bars leaders of non-profits -- religious groups and other charities -- from privately benefiting from the tax-free money they raise.

Last month, Wall Watchers, a watchdog group that monitors the finances of large Christian groups, called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and six other TV preachers to find out whether their tax-exempt status should be revoked.

Meyer and her lawyer say she scrupulously abides by all federal laws. Meyer's rise to prominence followed years of struggle. But by 1998, Charisma & Christian Life magazine was calling her "America's most popular woman minister." Last year, Meyer was the keynote speaker at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory tour, a gathering of some of the nation's most influential politically conservative leaders.

And today, her TV shows, regional conferences and fund raising from her Web site bring an average $8 million a month to her ministry. Of that, the ministry says it spends about 10 percent — $880,000 a month — on charitable works around the globe. Her star has risen so high and so fast that it amazes even Meyer. "Dave and I feel almost like, 'Can this really be us?"' she said. "We feel like we're the most blessed and honored people on the face of the Earth."

"Every nation, every city" Meyer's ministry stretches around the globe. From a 15-minute St. Louis-area radio show in 1983, it has spread to virtually every corner of the civilized world, largely through the reach of satellite and cable transmissions and the Internet.

In the United States, her "Life in the Word" TV show airs on local channels in 43 states, from Pembina, N.D., and Crowley, La., to Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles and St. Louis. Meyer has become a household name in areas of Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia — about 70 countries in all, according to her ministry's magazine.

She says the ministry gets 15,000 letters a month from India alone. In September, an Arabic language translation of her program began airing six times a day on the Life Channel network in the Middle East. Meyer hopes to use the network to bring the message of Christianity to 31 Islamic nations.

"You've got to keep in mind that nobody's ever done this," Meyer said. "When a Western woman shows up in Western clothes, preaching the gospel of Jesus in the Arabic language, it's going to be rather interesting." Meyer and her husband say the ministry has the potential to reach 2.5 billion people every weekday. Despite the ministry's far-flung success, the couple say they still have work to do.

"Every time we feel like we've reached our peak, God opens more doors," Dave Meyer says. The couple's recent slogan, printed on posters in the ministry's headquarters and on banners at its conferences, sets out an ambitious goal for the future: "Every nation, every city, every day."

Devoted followers and dogged critics

Meyer's hard-edged, often self-effacing preaching has won her legions of followers, many of them women who see her as part minister, part trusted friend. "She's so down-to-earth," bus driver Eva McLemore, 43, said at one of Meyer's recent conferences in Atlanta. "She makes you feel like she's your sister, that she can totally relate to you and understand you with no condemnation, no judgment."

Her style also has prompted criticism from those who paint Meyer as a get-rich-quick carnival barker focused on one thing: how to get the most money from the most people in the shortest time.

Ole Anthony, head of the Dallas-based religious watchdog Trinity Foundation, says, "She is in the typical genre of the TV evangelists who have become wealthy on the backs of the poorest people they are supposedly ministering to." Besides being a charismatic speaker, Meyer is the author of more than 50 books on a variety of topics, from self-help books on dieting and marriage to deeper, more philosophical themes.

Two of her most recent books, "Knowing God Intimately" and "How to Hear From God," deal with building a faith-based relationship with God. She also sells audiotapes and videotapes, enough to fill several pages in the ministry's product catalog.

Meyer makes no excuses for hawking her books and tapes and for relentlessly pleading for donations on her Web site, on her TV show and at her conferences. "They don't let me on that television for free," she said at the Atlanta conference. "The gospel is free, but the pipeline that carries it is not."

A penchant for nice things

Meyer is fond of nice things and is willing to spend for them. From an $11,000 French clock in the ministry's Fenton headquarters to a $105,000 Crownline boat docked behind her vacation home at Lake of the Ozarks, it's clear her tastes run more to Perrier than to tap water.

"You can be a businessman here in St. Louis, and people think the more you have, the more wonderful it is," Meyer said in an interview. "But if you're a preacher, then all of a sudden it becomes a problem.

"The Bible says, 'Give and it shall be given unto you.' "

The ministry's headquarters is a three-story jewel of red brick and emerald-color glass that, from the outside, has the look and feel of a luxury resort hotel. Built two years ago for $20 million, the building and grounds are postcard perfect, from manicured flower beds and walkways to a five-story lighted cross.

The driveway to the office complex is lined on both sides with the flags of dozens of nations reached by the ministry. A large bronze sculpture of the Earth sits atop an open Bible near the parking lot. Just outside the main entrance, a sculpture of an American eagle landing on a tree branch stands near a man-made waterfall. A message in gold letters greets employees and visitors over the front entryway: "Look what the Lord Has Done."

About 510 people work there. It's an office much like that of any other business, where clerks open mail, accountants count money, editors tweak Meyer's videos, technicians copy tapes, and warehouse workers send out the tons of Meyer's tapes and books to paying customers. The only sign of a church inside is a chapel, but the public is kept out. Only employees worship there.

The building is decorated with religious paintings and sculptures, and quality furniture. Much of it, Meyer says, she selected herself.

A Jefferson County assessor's list offers a glimpse into the value of many of the items: a $19,000 pair of Dresden vases, six French crystal vases bought for $18,500, an $8,000 Dresden porcelain depicting the Nativity, two $5,800 curio cabinets, a $5,700 porcelain of the Crucifixion, a pair of German porcelain vases bought for $5,200.

The decor includes a $30,000 malachite round table, a $23,000 marble-topped antique commode, a $14,000 custom office bookcase, a $7,000 Stations of the Cross in Dresden porcelain, a $6,300 eagle sculpture on a pedestal, another eagle made of silver bought for $5,000, and numerous paintings purchased for $1,000 to $4,000 each.

Inside Meyer's private office suite sit a conference table and 18 chairs bought for $49,000. The woodwork in the offices of Meyer and her husband cost the ministry $44,000. In all, assessor's records of the ministry's personal property show that nearly $5.7 million worth of furniture, artwork, glassware, and the latest equipment and machinery fill the 158,000-square-foot building.

As of this summer, the ministry also owned a fleet of vehicles with an estimated value of $440,000. The Jefferson County assessor has been trying to get the complex and its contents added to the tax rolls but has failed.

Stylish sports cars and a plane

Meyer drives the ministry's 2002 Lexus SC sports car with a retractable top, valued at $53,000. Her son Dan, 25, drives the ministry's 2001 Lexus sedan, with a value of $46,000. Meyer's husband drives his Mercedes-Benz S55 AMG sedan.

"My husband just likes cars," Meyer said.

The Meyers keep the ministry's Canadair CL-600 Challenger jet, which Joyce Meyer says is worth $10 million, at Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield. The ministry employs two full-time pilots to fly the Meyers to conferences around the world.

Meyer calls the plane a "lifesaver" for her and her family. "It enabled us, at our age, to travel literally all over the world and preach the gospel" with better security than that offered on commercial flights, she said.

Security is important to Meyer, who says she has received death threats. She has a division of the ministry dedicated to her safety. Her officers wear pistols; they guard the headquarters' front gate, keeping out anyone but employees and invited guests.

The ministry bought a $145,000 house where the security chief lives rent-free to keep him close to the ministry's headquarters.

The family compound

The ministry has also bought homes for other key employees. Since 1999, the ministry has spent at least $4 million on five homes for Meyer and her four children near Interstate 270 and Gravois Road, St. Louis County records show.

Meyer's house, the largest of the five, is a 10,000-square-foot Cape Cod style estate home with a guest house and a garage that can be independently heated and cooled and can hold up to eight cars. The three-acre property has a large fountain, a gazebo, a private putting green, a pool and a pool house where the ministry recently added a $10,000 bathroom.

The ministry pays for utilities, maintenance and landscaping costs at all five homes. It also pays for renovations. The Meyers ordered major rehab work at the ministry's expense right after the ministry bought three of the homes.

For example, the ministry bought one home, leveled it and then built a new home on the site to the specifications of Meyer's daughter Sandra and her husband, county records show.

Even the property taxes, $15, 629 this year, are paid by the ministry.

Meyer called the homes a "good investment" for the ministry and said the ministry bears the cost of upkeep and maintenance because the family is too busy to take care of such tasks.

"It's just too hard to keep up with something like that when you travel as much as we do," Meyer said.

She said that federal tax law allows ministries to buy parsonages for their employees, so the arrangement does not violate any prohibitions against personal benefit.

Meyer also said the decision to cluster the families together was a way to build a buffer to better ensure privacy and security.

"We put good people all around us," she said. "Obviously, if I was trying to hide anything or thought I was doing anything wrong, I wouldn't live on the corner of Gravois and 270."

The irrevocable trust

Meyer says she expects the best, from where she lives to how she looks.

Much of her clothing is custom-tailored at an upscale West County dress shop. At her conferences, she usually wears flashy jewelry. She sports an impressive diamond ring that she said she got from one of her followers.

Meyer has a private hairdresser. And, a few years ago, Meyer told her employees she was getting a face-lift.

Not everything is paid directly by the ministry.

Last year, the Meyers bought a $500,000 atrium ranch lakefront home in Porto Cima, a private-quarters club at Lake of the Ozarks. A few weeks later, they bought two watercrafts similar to Jet Skis and a $105,000 Crownline boat painted red, white and blue that they named the Patriot.

In 2000, the Meyers also bought her parents a $130,000 home just a few minutes from where the Meyers live.

The Meyers have put the Mercedes, the lake house, the boat and her parents' home into an irrevocable trust, an arrangement that tax experts say would help protect them from any financial problems at the ministry.

Meyer says she should not have to defend how she spends the ministry's money.

"We teach and preach and believe biblically that God wants to bless people who serve Him," Meyer said. "So there's no need for us to apologize for being blessed."

Meyer's "trusted" board

For the most part, Meyer can spend the ministry's money any way she sees fit because her board of directors is handpicked. It consists of Meyer, her husband and all four of her children — all paid workers — as well as six of Meyer's closest friends. (Ministry officials said that daughter Laura Holtzmann has now resigned; state records still list her on the board.)

"Our family is a huge help to us," Meyer said. "We couldn't do this if we didn't have somebody we trusted."

Board members Roxane and Paul Schermann are such close friends that for more than a decade they lived in the Meyers' home. The ministry employed both of them as high-level managers and in 2001 bought them a $334,000 home. Roxane Schermann no longer works at the ministry; her husband continues as a paid division manager. The Schermanns bought the house at the same price from the ministry in January.

Delanie Trusty, the ministry's certified public accountant, also serves as the ministry board's secretary.

The board decides how the ministry's money is spent. The salaries of Meyer and her family are set by those board members who are not family members and are not employed by the ministry, Meyer's lawyer said. The arrangement meets IRS regulations, the lawyer said.

"We certainly wouldn't have enemies and people we don't know" on the board, Meyer said. "That wouldn't make any sense. Anybody who has a board is going to have people in favor of you."

Meyer and her ministry refuse to tell how much the ministry pays Meyer, her husband, her children and her children's spouses.

"I don't make any more than I'm worth," Meyer said. "We're definitely within IRS guidelines."

Such an overlap between top administrators and board members concerns the IRS because "the opportunity to manipulate and control the organization is easier to accomplish," said Bruce Philipson of St. Paul, Minn., the IRS group manager of tax-exempt organizations for this region.

The followers stay loyal

Meyer's followers don't seem to care how much of her ministry's money Meyer spends on herself. In interviews with some of her followers at her conference in Atlanta in August, all said they believe that Meyer helps them and that she deserves the wealth.

William Parton, 32, an Atlanta policeman, said people should not care what Meyer does with the money.

"I think if they believe they are doing what God has called them to do, and they have a following, and people enjoy listening to them, even if it's just for entertainment value, just like sports athletes, they deserve to live however their means dictate," he said.

Michael Scott Horton, who teaches religious theology at Westminister Theological Seminary in Escondido, Calif., said attitudes such as Parton's are exactly what evangelists like Meyer bank on.

"These poor people want to believe that they have that kind of faith," Horton said, "that they're going to risk it all on the say-so of this supposed man of God standing up in front of them."

None of her critics seems to rile Meyer. She says her material success is a reflection of her commitment to God.

As she puts it: "The whole Bible really has one message: 'Obey me and do what I tell you to do, and you'll be blessed.'"

Money pitch is a hit with followers

Reprinted from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Monday, Nov. 17 2003 by Carolyn Tuft and Bill Smith

The spray on Joyce Meyer's hair and the sequins on her tailor-made pink suit sparkled in the bright stage lights. She stood before 8,000 people in the arena where the Buffalo Sabres play hockey. Meyer's rough, homespun south St. Louis drawl thundered out to her audience, which suddenly had become silent and still.

To give is godly, she said. Never fear giving too much in the name of God, even if it means sacrificing dinners out during the three-day conference. Fear, she said, is the work of the devil.

She lectured for nearly an hour before ending with the same plea she'd been delivering for a decade: "Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries/Life in the Word. And million is spelled M-I-L-L-I-O-N." Many in the crowd flipped open their wallets or pulled out their checkbooks.

No one came forth with a million dollars that day in June. But in September, the ministry says, an East Coast woman gave stock worth that amount. Meyer then asked for more. "I didn't have that thing for five minutes and I said, 'OK, God. Next I'll take $5 million,'" Meyer later told an audience in Tampa.

It is this kind of hard-edged audacity that has made Meyer one of the biggest names in big-name TV evangelism and has endeared the Fenton grandmother to millions of faithful supporters worldwide. At 60, she shows no signs of slowing down as she stretches herself further. In St. Louis last month, Meyer asked for a $7 million check. "That would really bless me," she said.

Meyer's 20 or so conferences each year, where followers usually have their only opportunity to see and hear her live, are part old-fashioned tent revival, part motivational rally and part unrelenting sales pitch.

Meyer attracts her fans to her gatherings with promises of a free conference. The only conference with an entrance fee is her annual St. Louis women's conference, which charges $50 per person.

Yet, from the moment followers enter one of her free conferences, Meyer pushes for their money.

"God does not need our money. The giving thing is not for Him, it's for us," Meyer told a Detroit audience in September. "I should not have to work to try to support myself."

The Post-Dispatch attended four of Meyer's conferences: Buffalo in June, Atlanta in August, Detroit in September and St. Louis in October.

The newspaper found virtually identical elements at each conference — heavy doses of modern religious music, an unwavering religious faith of her audiences and a strong, focused effort to bring in money.

Joyce Meyer Ministries is, without question, a well-oiled moneymaking machine.

Selling as the doors open

Faithful followers line up outside the arena hours before a Meyer conference begins. The doors open exactly two hours early. Some fans arrive in dresses and matching handbags. Others wear jeans and T-shirts. Still others wear miniskirts or shorts. Sheri Davis, 39, a former St. Louisan living in Atlanta, wore an "I Love Jesus" motorcycle jacket.

White women over 30 are Meyer's biggest audience. But all ages and races are represented. The relatively few men in the crowds seem to accompany wives or girlfriends. Children play in the aisles.

After bags and purses are checked by security, Meyer's volunteers hand the followers a 20-page catalog listing Meyer's products for sale.

Just a few steps inside the arena, followers find 100-foot-long tables with Meyer's items for sale. People crowd them, jockeying for places to look at Meyer's products. Videotapes, audiotapes, books, CDs, calendars and coffee mugs are stacked up to 10 high. Prices range from $3 for palm-size books of 60 pages to $110 for videotape and audiotape packages. The average cost of a videotape is $22.

Meyer's ministry depends on more than 100 volunteers from local ministries to help work her conferences. Her workers flown in from St. Louis handle the sales. Followers, their arms overflowing with books and tapes, line up in roped-off lanes similar to those at airport ticket counters. Ministry workers behind the counters keep 10 credit card machines whirring.

Nearly everyone in attendance carries a plastic Life in the Word bag containing the products they bought.

Inside the arena, followers troll for seats as close as possible to Meyer. They seem undaunted by having to sit behind two cameramen, perched 10 feet above the center of the crowd.

Another camera, mounted on a mobile arm like those used on TV programs such as David Letterman's, is positioned beside the stage to catch Meyer's every move and her audience's reactions.

The stage is set to look like the gates of heaven, with towering columns and flowing drapery. An image of a blue sky with puffy clouds is projected behind the stage.

On each side of the stage is a large video display. Each flashes messages to the audience:

"Buy $500 worth of product and get $100 free."
"The music now playing is from our 'Free at Last' CD and is available at the product table."
"The tapes of these sessions can be ordered at the product table."

Minutes before the session is scheduled to start, Meyer's daughter Laura Holtzmann steps onstage. She urges the audience members to buy Meyer's books and tapes and offers them special deals. She tells them not to be discouraged by long lines at the product tables. The lines move fast, she says, because 15 Life in the Word employees are working them.

Holtzmann tells them that their money will go to good causes — 50 charities.

In June in Buffalo, a video outlined one of Meyer's charities: Her ministry says it has sent care packages with Meyer's books and shampoo to 789,898 prisoners in 946 prisons in more than 40 states. Unnamed men identified as prisoners tell how they love Meyer. The tape ends, but no one applauds. The crowd wants to see Joyce.

The videos often show followers giving testimonials on how great things happened to them after they gave to Meyer. In Buffalo, Meyer called a woman to the stage to talk about how her husband gave his last dollar after seeing Meyer at a conference. Her husband's name: Dan Goodson, Meyer's general manager.

Enter: Joyce Meyer

At each conference, Charlie and Jill LeBlanc come onstage and sing modern gospel songs, preparing the audience for Meyer. The video screens flash lyrics so the audience can sing along. After each stanza, the screens tell the audience members how they can buy CDs containing the songs.

Meyer walks onto the stage, singing along. The audience goes wild. They hang on every word. When she tells them to do something — stand, say amen, answer her the audience quickly responds.

Hundreds yell: "We love you, Joyce," "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord."

Meyer keeps the audience standing. She tells them that through her, God will cure their headaches, depression, stomach problems, drug addiction and homosexuality.

In Buffalo, Meyer instructed the women in the audience to place their hands on their stomachs while she spoke. Most did. She told them she had healed all of their female problems. She announced that she once did this and a woman with cancer went to the doctor and found it had gone away.

Meyer then told the audience, which had been standing for an hour, that she was going to heal their backaches. She let them sit down.

"I know someone is already feeling better," she quipped.

Meyer then delivered her sermon for giving. She told them that some Christians are worried that if they give it all, they will end up with nothing. If they give, she said, they can expect much more in return.

"Sowing and reaping is a law," Meyer told the Buffalo audience. "If you sow, you will reap. I believe stingy people are very unhappy people. I want you to give your best offering. I believe one person could write one check to cover all of the expenses of this one conference."

A middle-aged man wearing worn jeans pulled a wad of $20 bills from his pocket and placed them in an offering envelope. An elderly woman in a wheelchair wrote out a check for $100.

As hundreds of volunteers passed around white paper tubs resembling movie theater popcorn buckets, Meyer lectured on her partnership program. She said regular partners who allow her to deduct a monthly donation directly from their bank accounts get a tape of the month, the ministry's monthly magazine and are prayed for "as if in the room."

She said she has 120,000 partners that have monthly donations taken out of their bank accounts. She's hoping to double that number by next year.

"Don't procrastinate, because procrastination is the tool of the devil," she warned the Buffalo audience.

After the offering, the bucket-bearing volunteers were ushered to a remote part of the arena. There, ministry workers counted the money, supervised by Dave Meyer, the ministry's business administrator and Meyer's husband.

A practical message

While money pleas dominate most of her conferences, Meyer also gives a practical lesson. It's the main thing the followers come to see. Each lesson is edited for use on her TV show and videotapes that she sells.

On June 26 in Buffalo, Meyer's message was about "thinking big." She told the crowd that everyone there needed to become a "fresh piece of clay, starting over."

"Stretch out your borders. Enlarge your tent," Meyer urged. "You need to stop telling God what you've done wrong all the time. You need to move on."

Meyer told them they should never let their disabilities or disadvantages stop them. Like her — an abused girl, and a housewife from Fenton when God called her to preach — He has a plan for them, too.

"I don't care what anyone says about me," she said. "Just hide the wash. Mmmm, mmm! I feel like the Holy Ghost."

The hall erupted in shouts of "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord."

"Don't let mutterers stop you in life," Meyer told them, shaking her fist in the air. "People are jealous, critical. They're resentful. Most people want what you get but they don't want to do what you did to get it."

She told a biblical tale about Zacchaeus, a short man who wanted to see Jesus so badly that he climbed a tree. Jesus liked his ingenuity so much, he went to the man's house to eat dinner with him.

"When an opportunity comes before me, I go for it," Meyer said. "Thinking about it kills it. Narrow-minded people almost always miss their miracle. They look for Him to come in the front door, and He comes in the window."

Dress well, live well

Outside the Philips Arena in Atlanta in August, about a dozen people had gathered nearly three hours before Meyer's conference was set to begin.

One was Ronald Granville, 45, of Sacramento, Calif., a seminary student. He wore a black shirt with white and gold letters that said, "God has been so good to me." Granville said he's heard the criticism of evangelists like Meyer: They live the high life while many of those who support them live at or near poverty.

"That's between them and God," Granville said. "If they're getting the word of God out, why should they ride around in a 1980 Pinto? Is Joyce Meyer supposed to come out here in Salvation Army clothes or patched-up jeans?"

Meyer wears nothing but the best. Her clothes are tailor-made. She has a private hairdresser. Her nails are perfect. She wears glasslike slippers and dangly earrings and sparkly necklaces.

Her workers back in St. Louis pack the things she needs at the conference. Perrier water is a must. It takes four 18-wheelers to carry her products and stage setup from St. Louis to each conference.

On the road, Meyer and her husband live in exclusive hotels.

In Detroit, they stayed in a suite in the Townsend in Birmingham, Mich., the area's richest suburb. The Townsend houses movie and rock stars when they appear locally. Privacy protection is the hotel's hallmark, and it prides itself on its "discreet" handling of each guest. Suites cost about $1,500 a night.

Meyer's magnetism

There is something magnetic about Meyer's appeal to women. Much of this appeal is Meyer's willingness to share nearly every aspect of her life, including sexual abuse by her father, her quick temper with her four children, how she hates it when her husband over directs her — telling her how to walk or to close the blinds while undressing in front of hotel windows.

In St. Louis last month, Meyer told her audience about an exploded hemorrhoid that had sent her to the hospital during her Thursday evening session.

All of Meyer's past flaws are an open book to her fans: She chain-smoked. She drank. She slept with men she had just met. She stole things she didn't need.

And those are the things that endear Meyer to her followers. Her advice hits home: Forgive those who hurt you. Copy others' successes. Believing will heal you and make you wealthy.

At times, Meyer's speeches ramble as if she is speaking thoughts at the very same time they occur to her.

"I can stand up and talk all day and not even know what is coming out of my mouth next," she told the Buffalo audience in June. "That's my gift."

In Atlanta in August, Meyer's followers wanted to see her perform one of her classic acts. Meyer hinted she might do her so-called robot routine. Hundreds of women began chanting: "Robot, robot, robot. . .!"

Meyer finally went into a stiff-armed, animated walk, her representation of a self-indulgent, windup robot that repeats the phrase: "What about me? ... What about me? ... What about me?"

Meyer demands order at her conferences. In St. Louis, Meyer commanded that nobody leave the hall during her sessions. She said she has to talk for two hours without going to the bathroom, so if she can wait, they can wait.

In Buffalo, when her microphone was not positioned the way she liked, she stopped the conference and ordered an employee to the stage to fix it.

Meyer wanted to teach them to talk in tongues, a practice that she says caused her, in part, to leave her Lutheran church in St. Louis. She ordered the crowd to stand and told them she was filling them with the Holy Spirit.

"Soak in the Holy Ghost," she demanded. She began muttering inaudible words. Many followed her lead.

"I believe His presence is here," her voice thundered.

A middle-aged woman wearing a white bow in her hair and a hunter-green dress began howling, "Oh, Jesus ... Oh, Jesus." She collapsed on the steps inside of the arena. Meyer's workers quickly whisked her away.

"Thank you, God, for reaching the people tonight," Meyer told them. "We're not going to leave the way we came."

Meyer's money pleas

Sometimes soft, sometimes tough, Meyer's plea for money, like most things she does, is matter-of-fact and without apology.

"Some of you need to sow a special seed this weekend," Meyer told her Detroit audience. "Don't be a $10 man all your life. Don’t even be $100 men all your life. You have to give sometimes until it hurts. It needs to cost you something." Sometimes, she's more demanding.

"I don't have to stand here and beg," she told the crowd in Buffalo. "What God wants you to do here tonight is to pay for somebody else to watch my show."

Meyer told her Detroit audience about those who are unhappy with the way she pleads for money.

"People say, 'I don't want to hear about the money, the money, the money, the money. I came to hear Joyce. I didn't come to hear about the money,'" Meyer said. "Giving will change your life. When God gives you an increase, you give more."

Meyer often stands on stage hawking her products. In Atlanta, she held an enormous basket, overflowing with 50 of her books — "free" for a $1,000 offering. She showed off new tape offerings packaged like suitcases. At one point, Meyer struggled to carry four of the massive tape cases, which sell for $110 apiece, across the arena stage.

"I need to see you leaving my meetings just like this," she said. She pointed out that her audiotapes are cheaper than the $100 an hour that some professional counselors charge. She told her flock in Buffalo that they have to stop being jealous of people like her who have nice things.

"Don't be jealous of what somebody's got," she said. "It's not about somebody getting your money. You need to give."

Reporter: Carolyn Tuft E-mail: ctuft@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8105

Reporter Bill Smith: E-mail: billsmith@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8125

02/24/06