Bartholomew's Notes

The Johannesburg Business Day reports on a campaign of TV transmitter-building across Africa:

“God TV has a strategic plan for the continent,” [Rory] Alec says. “We cover the whole continent by way of two satellites at present, with the strategy of building transmitters in each country. We have three in Kenya and are planning to launch a fourth in Tanzania.”… God TV aims to have a terrestrial transmitter in every capital city in Africa.

According to its website, God TV was founded by Rory and his wife in the UK in 1990s, when British restrictions on religious broadcasting were relaxed. With a bit of help from the Holy Spirit (and Rupert Murdoch), the channel

now broadcasts on 15 satellites reaching over 400 million people, in more than 200 nations and territories.

God TV entered the USA only last year, where it got an endorsement from Cindy Jacobs:

As Cindy Jacobs has prophesied, “GOD TV is a harvest Channel and literally thousands of people are going to come to the Lord through its programming. And God is going to use GOD TV in a major way on the East Coast of the United States… This is no ordinary time… this is a time of divine visitation, and we are seeing this through GOD TV”.

In 2002 it relocated from Britain to Jerusalem, and Christian Zionism appears to be a significant part of its teaching:

Thousands of GOD TV’s viewers and partners from different nations will be gathering in Jerusalem in May 2008 to celebrate Israel’s 60th Anniversary as a modern nation and we would love you to join with us.

…As the only Christian network to broadcast from Jerusalem, GOD TV recognizes the Lord’s unending faithfulness in the restoration of Israel as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and we know that you will be touched beyond measure as you experience the presence of the Lord in the Land of the Bible.

The channel supposedly offers an “international mix of original programming”, but many of the names of those featured are the usual neo-Pentecostal suspects: Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, Benny Hinn, Mike Bickle, Rodney Howard-Browne, Rick Joyner. Ron Luce is also on board.

Back in February I noted the plans of another Christian broadcaster to reach across Africa, in that case from Rwanda.

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As a historical aside, Business Day contrasts God TV with Paul Crouch’s TBN:

Los Angeles-based Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Christian broadcaster in the world, has been going since 1973 and in 2005 had an income of $208m. It began broadcasting in Africa in 1986. In fact, the TBN operation based in Bhisho, then Ciskei capital, was the first overseas operation outside the US. TBN, which runs on DStv, also broadcasts through terrestrial stations in nine African countries.

Ciskei, of course, was notorious as a Bantustan set up by the apartheid regime, and in the 1980s under the control of “President for Life” Lennox Sebe.

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