BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Steven Guzzardi)Jim Bakker has always been a huckster. These days, Bakker, the disgraced PTL (Praise the Lord) Club televangelist who fleeced and defrauded his audience out of more than $150 millions, got involved in some juicy sex scandals, and served time in prison, has set up an apocalyptic shop in Blue Eye, Missouri. Located in Stone County, about 30 miles southwest of Branson, Missouri, Blue Eye, according to the 2010 census, had 167 people -- 75 households and 48 families. It is in Blue Eye that Bakker is staging his televangelical and entrepreneurial resurrection, at a 700-acre property called Morningside, which is an intentional Christian community.

"A time of trouble is upon us," Bakker -- a huge supporter of President Donald Trump -- warned his audience during one episode of The Jim Bakker Show.

Whether it's the WannaCry ransomware attack; ISIS; terrorist attacks in the homeland; or devastating flooding in Texas, Bakker and his wife Lori, claim to have the right goods: "'Staying Alive' food - buckets full of freeze-dried products apparently capable of sustaining survivors through the Apocalypse," the Daily Mail's Annette Witheridge, who bought a bucket, sampled some of the food, and found it unappetizing but edible, recently reported.

In mid-May, BuzzFeed's Kelsey McKinney reported that the buckets are "the kind … that might be used to feed slop to pigs on a farm, and inside each are 18 dishes in freeze-dried food packets, making up almost 50,000 calories that, according to the purple labels slapped on their sides, have a 25-year shelf life."

Add a little water, sit back, and survive the apocalypse.

The Daily Mail's Witheridge pointed out that John Wigger's new book, PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Evangelical Empire, exposes Bakker as "one of the biggest criminals of the late twentieth century."

Wigger writes that Jim, and his first wife, Tammy Faye, went on some "extraordinary spending sprees – $24,500 on furs and $27,500 on jewelry on one single Manhattan shopping trip and $170,000 on three antique cars in one day."

Bakker and Tammy Faye -- famous for her ornate and often gaudy eye makeup -- were the cat's pajamas in the Christian evangelical community in the 1970s and 1980s. By the middle of the 1980s, BuzzFeed's McKinney pointed out, "The PTL Club reached 5.7 million monthly viewers, according to a 1985 study commissioned by the Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1986, proceeds for the ministry came to $129 million, and by 1987, PTL employed almost 3,000 people and had an annual budget of well over $150 million."

Everything the couple touched turned to gold. The PTL Club, aired on the PTL Television Network founded by Bakker in 1974, was like the Las Vegas of televangelical projects. Celebrities like Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Mickey Rooney and Mr. T., showed up for conversation on Bakker's set, and his supporters flocked to his Heritage USA theme park.

The scandals that brought Bakker down were both financial and sexual.

"Bakker was … indicted for fraud in 1988: eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. In 1989, he was found guilty on all 24 counts and was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison," McKinney reported. Bakker did not serve anywhere near 45 years; getting out of prison after only five years, due to several judicial sentencing reductions and good behavior while in prison.

Then there were accusations of rape "by a woman named Jessica Hahn who … in 1987 … accused Bakker and another man of raping her when she was 20 years old."

"Hahn," McKinney reported, "who has said in many interviews that she idolized the Bakker family, said she met with Bakker in a hotel room in Florida in 1980, believing that she was there to watch his children. There, she claimed, she was drugged by Bakker's accomplice and then raped by both men separately. Hahn kept quiet for seven years before the Charlotte Observer broke her story. Bakker later claimed that though he did have sex with Hahn, and that his company cut her a $265,000 check to pay for her silence, he did not rape her. Criminal charges were never filed, but once it became clear that his secret was going to be revealed through the Observer story, Bakker stepped down as the head of PTL. And the Assemblies of God ministry, which Bakker was a part of, immediately expelled him. Bakker's fall quickly became one of the most epic scandals in American evangelical history."

While Bakker was in prison, Tammy Faye divorced him and married their close friend Roe Messner. Tammy Faye died of cancer in 2007. "She has been replaced by lookalike blonde Lori, 18 years Bakker's junior, who he married after a whirlwind 50-day romance," the Daily Mail's Witheridge noted. "Lori, 59, admits to a drug-using, promiscuous past – according to the couple's website she had five abortions by the age of 22 and then endured an abusive marriage before finding salvation and meeting Bakker in 1998."

After returning to television, Bakker joined with most of his conservative Christian evangelical brethren in becoming an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama, going so far as to claim that Obama "sounded like the representative for Antichrist."

These days, there are fewer networks carrying his show, and there's an admittedly smaller, but nevertheless loyal audience. During the 2016 election he called Hillary Clinton the "bride of Satan," for her support of gay rights and abortion. "If America elects her, it could lead to Armageddon," he said. Ironically, her election would have been a mega-boost for his business.

A lifelong Republican, Bakker went all in for Trump. "I'm not supposed to tell you this," Bakker said on his show last September. "But I have eyewitnesses. Donald Trump is a very tender man, and he weeps. He wants to please God more than anything else. He wants to be president of the United States and make things right in this country because he loves God almighty. God has called, I believe, Donald Trump."

After the election, Bakker boasted that he thought he helped Trump. After all, he said during a broadcast in December, "Trump thinks I did, because he called and thanked me."

Bakker also made a point of condemning the Women's March on Washington as being a gathering of "demon-possessed people."

Freeze dried food is not the only thing marketed at the Morningside General Store: There's camo gear, folding chairs, 36-inch snow shovels that collapse into small boxes, giant rolls of duct tape, a folding BBQ, industrial-grade flashlights, packages of batteries, iPhone backup chargers, hammers, and multi-tool pocketknives.

Back in the studio, Bakker and his guests discuss the End Days, assuring his fans that the rapture may be just around the corner. But, if it's not the apocalypse, Bakker's freeze dried food and other equipment could help people prepare for hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural or man-made disasters.

Despite Trump's victory, Bakker continues churning up the fear. "People have stopped storing food, and I'm concerned about it," Bakker says. "People feel like because Trump was elected, good times are here again. But I'll tell you what: America is fighting like never before. There are thousands of people who would kill our president if they could ... that's how evil the world is. Something big is going to happen soon."