A Little Rock native became a pioneering Christian broadcaster. The son of Pentecostal evangelists, Rex Humbard was born in 1919. When he was thirteen, he saw a circus tent fill with crowds in Hot Springs and decided he wanted to attract such groups to hear the gospel.
He began a local radio show and by the 1940s had a nationally broadcast program. Moving to Ohio in 1952, he started a weekly television broadcast; six years later he completed his two point one million dollar Cathedral of Tomorrow, which included television equipment and seating for fifty four hundred people. More than fifteen hundred stations in ninety-one languages broadcast his Sunday services in the 1970s, and musical guests included Mahalia Jackson, Andrae Crouch and Johnny and June Cash. E
lvis Presley was a fan and Humbard preached at his funeral. His program ran for thirty years, ending in 1982. Humbard sold the Cathedral of Tomorrow in 1994 and died in 2007.
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You can read the entire Encyclopedia entry Humbard, Alpha Rex Emmanuel - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
