Televangelists Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis defended their use of private jets as a luxury means of travel, arguing that commercial planes are full of “a bunch of demons” that will bog down their busy schedules with prayer requests.

In a Dec. 29 segment of Mr. Copeland’s “Believer’s Voice of Victory” television program, Mr. Duplantis recalled a story where he was on a plane and had to unbuckle his seat belt to speak to God, The Blaze reported.

“You couldn’t have done that over an airline,” added Mr. Copeland. “Stand up and say, ‘What did you say, Lord?’”

“No, sir, no way,” Mr. Duplantis agreed.

“You can’t do that,” Mr. Copeland said. “This is so important and those of you that are just now coming into these things in the first place: Jesse and I and others … the world is in such a shape, we can’t get there without [private jets]. We’ve got to have them.”

“That’s why we are on that airplane. We can talk to God,” he said. “Now, Oral [Roberts] used to fly airlines. But, even back then it got to the place where it was agitating his spirit. People coming up to him, he had become famous, and they wanted him to pray for them and all that. You can’t, you can’t manage that today. This dope-filled world, and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. And it’s deadly.”

“It works on your heart, it really does,” Mr. Duplantis agreed.

“So anyway, I wanted to make that clear so the devil can’t lie to you and say, ‘See them there preachers spending all that money, just fat cats riding around.’ No, we’re not; we’re in business,” Mr. Copeland assured viewers. “We’re in soul business here. We got a dying world around us. We got a dying nation around us and we can’t even get there on an airline.”

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