happened to catch a few minutes of Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, and was absolutely shocked by what she saw today (March 10th). We don't know if the thing is broadcast live, or is pre-recorded like most shows, but if the latter, it's even more shocking that no one decided to kill it. Roberson was doing some sort of regular thing, I take it, where he responds to "challenging" letters that people send it. In this case, when asked how a Christian should respond to a non-believer who denied that he would ever go to either heaven or hell since he didn't believe in either ...

Robertson pulled out what appeared to be a real handgun on stage and waved it around! According to [the friend], his son and a woman -- wife? co-host? -- sitting on the nearby sofa appeared to be shocked, and maybe a bit embarrassed, and another woman on the set seemed to Amy to be genuinely frightened. One or the other asked if it was loaded. He waved it around, saying that if it is real, and if he were to put it to a person's head it would still be just as real even if they denied it. And if he pulled the trigger, it would kill them just the same whether they said it was real or not.

Now, I immediately tried to find something about this by Googling, and came up empty, and Roger confirmed he had done the same thing. There's no mention anywhere of Pat Robertson brandishing a gun on the set of The 700 Club that we can find.

I went to the previous broadcasts archive of the 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network website and looked at the program for March 10. There is indeed a segment at the end called "Bring It On" which starts at 54:15 into that show, and which is introduced by a slide showing Pat Robertson's face and the title "Bring It On". They were indeed answering viewer e-mail, but Pat Robertson was not doing the answering, another man and a woman were. (I had seen them both earlier in the program doing faith-healing-at-a-distance along with Robertson, so I assume they are co-hosts or guest hosts -- clearly, I am not a regular viewer of The 700 Club.)

What's interesting is that the very first question answered was about a man who asked how to deal with a friend who was a non-believer and didn't think he would go to hell because he didn't believe in it. The answer, which was provided by the man, indeed invoked belief and the nature of reality, but there was no Pat Robertson, and certainly no gun.

I looked at the "Bring It On" segment for several other days in the archives, and it seems to be usual for Robertson to provide the answers. (Which makes sense, after all , it's his face which introduces the segment.)

[Update: Bring It On is the title of one of Robertson's books, in which he "gives real answers to Christians with tough questions." The blurb for the book on the CBN site says that is is "Derived from the actual questions answered on his 700 Club television segment of the same name," which confirms my thought that it is usual for Robertson to answer the questions.]

I have no reason to doubt Roger's friend, nor do I know (nor can I find out by Googling) whether The 700 Club goes out live or pre-recorded, but how's this for a scenario: The program broadcasts with Robertson doing the answering and waving around the gun, and, after the fact, someone decides that it's really too far over the line to be acceptable, so they re-record the segment for the archives and (as far as I know) for repeat broadcasts.

(I checked Roberton's website to see if there was anything there about him "taking a break" or anything like that, and didn't find any mention of it, nor was there anything of relevance on Google News.)

I know that "a friend of a friend" is one of those things that usually introduces an urban legend, and I'd be much happier if I could find any backing for this on the web, but I trust Roger, who's been a close online friend of mine for 5 years, and, as I said, I've no reason at all to distrust his friend (who was for a while a relatively inactive member of an online discussion group I'm a moderator of).

If anyone has any further information on this, or thoughts on how it can be verified, please drop me a note.