Eli Gemstone (1952-) was an American televangelist and Pentecostal megachurch pastor from South Carolina who was the patriarch of the Gemstone family.
Biography[]
Eli Gemstone was born on the coast of South Carolina in 1952, and he claimed that he was called to serve Jesus while he was still a small boy. After graduating from high school, Gemstone enrolled at Bible college and began leading prayer meetings at a nearby trailer park. From there, he began speaking at a local church. He founded the Gemstone Salvation Center in Rogers, South Carolina in 1979 with his wife Aimee-Leigh Gemstone, and, through his writing, sermons, and his 1998 television show, "The Righteous Gemstones", he reached over 18 million viewers monthly in 70 countries. He became a multi-millionaire from the televangelism and megachurch industry, and he soon included his sons Jesse and Kelvin in his megachurch as evangelists, while his daughter Judy Gemstone worked as a secretary. The Gemstones settled on a massive family compound in rural South Carolina, where each of the family members had their own mansion, and they were protected by a private army of well-trained security guards. During the 2010s, the Gemstone family attempted to expand their megachurch at the expense of smaller congregations, undertaking trips both across America and across the world, including a 24-Hour Baptism Marathon in Chengdu, China in 2019. Gemstone became rivals with the Locust Grove First Baptist Church pastor John Wesley Seasons after deciding to expand his church with a Locust Grove campus, and the situation worsened when his son Jesse and a few of his friends attacked Seasons at his home while masked, believing him to be the man blackmailing the Gemstone family. Eli was unaware of this, and he became fierce rivals with Seasons after he threw a potato through the window of Seasons' church due to Seasons' propaganda campaign against the Gemstone Salvation Center. Seasons later sent armed men to vandalize the Salvation Center, but Eli himself held them at gunpoint and forced them to run naked through the mall where the center was located, sending a humiliating message back to Seasons. At the same time, Eli came to have a rivalry with his estranged brother-in-law Baby Billy Freeman, whom he placed in control of the Locust Grove campus, only to discover that Freeman still held jealous grudges against him. Freeman even went so far as to include Judy as a singer and dancer at the campus to make Eli jealous of him, as he had been the one to give Judy attention while Eli failed. Eli Gemstone was later kidnapped by Scotty Steele, the real blackmailer, alongside Jesse and Jesse's son Gideon Gemstone, and they were rescued by the police after they were forced to give up the church's safe money to Steele; Steele was killed in an accidental car crash by Freeman as he tried to flee with the money. Eli Gemstone fired his children from the church after discovering the fact that they had concealed the blackmail plot, and he also grew angry when he discovered that Jesse was responsible for the rivalry with Seasons. Ultimately, Gemstone was able to convince Baby Billy to return the stolen money after Baby Billy - who had been struck by lightning - had a vision of his sister asking him to forgive Eli, and Gemstone also welcomed Seasons into his church as one of his pastors, giving a sermon on forgiveness that same day.
Gallery[]
