Brother Stair

From RationalWiki

Ralph Gordon Stair, better known as Brother Stair, is a nutty radio preacher who leases airtime on many AM stations and on shortwave. He runs a commune of followers in South Carolina where he allegedly has a great deal of control over them, including not letting any of them have sex without his permission.

Brother Stair belives in: King James Only, speaking in tongues, New World Order conspiracy theories, rejection of modern technology (except for, obviously, radio) and living in an isolated agrarian community like the Amish, Young Earth Creationism, rejection of modern medicine, rejection of the celebration of holidays like Christmas and Easter, Jesus-only baptism, and men must wear beards and women must wear their hair in buns, etc. You get the idea. If it's on the lunatic fringe of Christianity, Stair believes it.

Stair claims to be the "Last-Day Prophet of God" (or sometimes, the "seventh" such prophet, with William Branham being the sixth). He spends much of his radio broadcasts denouncing just about every other Christian minister as a false prophet. He claims to have prophesied Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 back in the 1980s, and also did prophesy that Ronald Reagan would be removed from office and nuclear attacks would wipe out many U.S. cities by 1988, the latter two of which didn't happen. Oops...so much for the "Last-Day Prophet of God".

Stair pled guilty in 2002 to charges of sexual misconduct toward underage members of his commune, but then after serving two months returned to preaching as if nothing had happened. In 2007, a jury found him liable for over $700,000 in damages in a civil suit brought by former followers, but the case is on appeal and he has yet to pay; this would bankrupt his ministry if successful.