Irvin Baxter, a prominent Trump-supporting Evangelical pastor and televangelist who once blamed the coronavirus pandemic on premarital sex, has died of the coronavirus.
Endtime Ministries, which Baxter founded in 1991, confirmed that Baxter died on Nov. 3 as a result of complications from COVID-19. He had been hospitalized after testing positive for the virus a week prior.
“Irvin went on to his great reward. We celebrate his life, but at the same time, there is sorrow, there is grieving,” said Dave Robbins, co-host of the ministry’s television program “End of the Age.”
Irvin Baxter had recently appeared on the “Jim Bakker Show,” where he preached about “the sin of fornication” before marriage and claimed that the pandemic was God’s way of giving us all “a wake-up call.” (You can watch the clip from the show, which was captured by Right Wing Watch, at the top of this post).
“I was thinking, as I was putting all this together in my mind, about the sin of fornication. I thought about fornication and I did a little research. There are 7.5 million couples living together in the United States, this is not worldwide, just in America. 7.5 million couples. That means 15 million people that are living together unmarried. And that’s increased over the last 10 years by 138%. Now, in addition to that — I hope this research is not correct, but I got it straight from the encyclopedia — it says that 5% of new brides in America now are virgins. That means 95% have already committed fornication!” Baxter said in the clip.
After going on to spew anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, he went on to explain what message he thought God was trying to send by way of this, um, biblical plague.
“If we think we can just ignore God and live a sinful lifestyle, well, we cannot do it. You know, I believe in what you’re saying, that God may be using this as a wake-up call,” he said. “This coronavirus may be a privilege, because I’ll tell you right now, there’s a much bigger judgment coming. It’s in the Bible.”
For the record, the CDC has identified the source of the novel coronavirus as originating from bats, not “fornication.” But we’re all entitled to our opinion. At least Irvin Baxter, who also once called critics of Trump “satanic,” won’t have to see the results of this election.