By Iliya Kure
A renown American Christian broadcaster Marcus Lamb, has died of diabetes and COVID-19 complications, family sources say. He was 64.
“This morning at 4 a.m. the president and founder of Daystar and the love of my life went to be with Jesus. I wanted you to hear from me that he’s with the Lord,” Religion News, quoted his wife, Joni, saying during broadcast,
According to her, Mr. Lamb had diabetes and had been hospitalized with COVID when his oxygen levels dropped.
In a twitter announcement, Daystar TV Network says “It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning.”
“The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” Lamb’s son, Jonathan, said about his father’s COVID-19 illness on a Nov. 23 broadcast of the Ministry Now program. “As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on to the pandemic and some of the ways to treat COVID — there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that. And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”
Lamb was the co-founder, president, and CEO of the Daystar Television Network, the second-largest Christian television network in the world, with an estimated value of $230 million. Daystar is popular among evangelical and charismatic Christians.
Daystar has broadcast a series of programs featuring vaccine skeptics such as Robert Kennedy Jr., Sherri Tenpenny and Del Bigtree as well as a group of physicians known as America’s Frontline Doctors, who support the use of hydroxychloroquine and other alternative treatments for dealing with COVID-19.
An episode featuring Bigtree, best known for his anti-vaccine film “Vaxxed,” and Kennedy began with Marcus and Joni Lamb sitting with their young granddaughter and defending their efforts to help people do their own research about vaccines.
“Why are we doing this?” Marcus Lamb said. “Because God loves people and we love people.”
“And let me tell you something — God has made us body, soul and spirit. He’s concerned about the whole person, and so are we,” he said. “And you know that the devil can take people out before they fulfill destiny and purpose — that’s what he wants to do because he hates God. So the only way he could get back at God is trying to attack God’s children.”
Joni Lamb said on the broadcast that her husband had diabetes and that he had been hospitalized for COVID-19 after his oxygen levels dropped. She also said that he had tried alternative treatments but was not able to recover.
She said she had used the protocols that they had promoted on the program and “breezed through COVID.”
In addition to Joni and Jonathan, Lamb is survived by his daughters Rachel and Rebecca.
The issue of COVID-19 vaccines has been controversial for religious broadcasters such as Daystar. In August, the spokesman for the National Religious Broadcasters, a trade association, was fired after encouraging evangelicals to consider being vaccinated — comments his employer claimed violated the NRB’s neutral stance on vaccines.
The Rev. James Merritt, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he was grieved to hear of Lamb’s death. He had appeared on Lamb’s show several times to promote books and the two shared a love of the University of Georgia’s football team. He said that during his visits, Lamb was surrounded by family, describing him as a sweet man.
“They have got a wonderful, beautiful family,” he said. “It’s just a real tragedy.”
Lamb’s ministry made headlines earlier this year after “Inside Edition” reported that Daystar bought a private jet not long after securing a $3.9 million loan through the Paycheck Protection Plan program, funded by federal COVID-19 relief dollars. The loan was later repaid.
Daystar, which is part of the Word of God Fellowship, first went on the air in 1997, according to Daystar’s website.
Marcus was born October 7, 1957 in Cordele, Georgia and raised in Macon, Georgia. He grew up attending the East Macon Church of God.
He became a Christian at the age of five and continued in church attendance and work as he grew older. He began to preach as an evangelist at age fifteen. He graduated from high school and enrolled at age sixteen in Lee University (then known as Lee College), Cleveland, Tennessee-based Christian university. He graduated three years later.
In 1982, four years after graduation, he married Joni Trammell of Greenville, South Carolina. The couple spent their early years of marriage as traveling evangelists, visiting churches in the Southeast to teach the gospel. Marcus was ordained as a bishop with the Church of God of Cleveland, Tennessee.
In 1980, the same year that Marcus met his wife Joni, he founded The Word of God Fellowship, the company that would eventually start the Daystar Television Network. In 1984 Lamb moved to Montgomery, Alabama to begin WMCF-TV.
This was the first full-power Christian station in the state. The Lambs sold the station to Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) in 1990 and moved to Dallas, Texas. Lamb launched the Daystar network at the end of 1997.
Source: Religious News & Wikipedia