The two men would later comfort each other when their wives died. Roberts once offered to give Thorkelson a blessing when his wife was critically ill.
Thorkelson hesitated for a moment, he said, because he had seen footage of rollicking Pentecostal faith healing sessions in which the healed would drop to the floor.
Instead, Roberts quietly anointed his head with oil and prayed.
“He gave me a blessing that was not loud, not boisterous. It was quiet, simple, sweet and sincere,” Thorkelson remembered. “Sure, he had frailties, but I never saw anybody display the light of Christ more than Oral Roberts.”
Roberts rose from humble beginnings as the stuttering son of a poor minister in Oklahoma to become a pioneer in television evangelism who reached millions of viewers at the height of his influence. He once sparked controversy by claiming that he had a vision of a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him to build a hospital in Oklahoma. The vision came at a critical time in Robert’s fundraising efforts for the hospital.
Roberts claimed in a subsequent fundraising campaign for the hospital that God would “Call him home” unless he raised $8 million for missionary work. The hospital closed its doors in 1989.
“He was a bit different from the person you had in your mind who saw this vision of a huge Jesus,” said the Rev. John Huffman, retired pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.
Roberts attended services a few times at St. Andrew’s, and Huffman visited him in the hospital after he recovered from a heart attack in his latter years.
“He was a very quiet, very gracious, warm man,” Huffman said.
