As an Associated Press article points out, messages from God are not unusual for the Oral Roberts family. We need only recall the story of Oral Roberts and the 900 foot Jesus whom he said told him in 1977 to build the City of Faith Medical and Research Center at Oral Roberts University.

Thus, on the eve of a major scandal, this should not come as a surprise:

The president of Oral Roberts University speaks out. One day after ORU and several of its top leaders are named in a wrongful termination lawsuit, ORU president Richard Roberts responds. He addressed his students Wednesday morning in a chapel service.

News On 6 reporter Ashli Sims reports that Richard Roberts calls the lawsuit blackmail and extortion. And while he did not go into specifics, he told his students he is confident he will come out on top.

Clapping students greeted Richard Roberts, as he took to the stage for Wednesday morning chapel. Roberts told the students he was awakened in the middle of the night by God and told to write.

“We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person, whether they have a legitimate case or not,” says ORU president Richard Roberts.

The allegations are troubling:

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school’s involvement in a local political race.

Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner’s bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university’s nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

The professors also said their dismissals came after they turned over to the board of regents a copy of a report documenting moral and ethical lapses on the part of Roberts and his family. The internal document was prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts’ sister-in-law, according to the lawsuit.

An ORU student repairing Cantese’s laptop discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the professors.

It details dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Among them:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

• Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU’s “first lady” on the university’s Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to “underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.”

• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an “evangelistic function of the president.”

• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico’s clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, “As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off.” The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.

• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.

• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts’ home to do the daughters’ homework.

• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts’ children.

• The Roberts’ home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

A copy of the lawsuit is on the KOTV Tulsa website. A news report from KOTV offers more detail.

The futuristic architecture of Oral Roberts University.