TEGA CAY, S.C. - Jim and Tammy Bakker have hired celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli to help them regain PTL, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell called their efforts "un-Christian shenanigans" and said God would decide the battle.

Belli, vowing to stop "all this bloodsucking" over the PTL, said today the ministry's disgraced founder and its new leader should install singer Pat Boone as an interim caretaker.

There was no immediate reaction to that statement from either Boone or Falwell but it was believed highly unlikely that Falwell would agree to such a move.

Belli met Sunday with the Bakkers to discuss how to return the PTL ministry to its founders and said that after Falwell hears the facts, "he'll send Jimmy back to his pulpit."

Bakker said Sunday for the first time that he wants to regain control of the ministry he handed over to Falwell in March amid a sex scandal.

The silver-haired California attorney spent four hours with the Bakkers at their million-dollar lakeside "parsonage" and afterward joined the couple in meeting reporters.

"They told me what the facts are, and I told them what the law is," the 79-year-old San Francisco lawyer said in the driveway of the lakefront home where the Bakkers live. "I don't think he was properly advised before he resigned."

The Bakkers stood arm-in-arm during the news conference. Bakker said he wanted to make peace but had to seek legal counsel when the ministry's new leaders filed for reorganization under federal bankruptcy laws.

Belli said, "It's an incongruity that these men of God are in a rassle or a hassle or some litigation. I'm sure once Mr. Falwell hears the facts, he'll send Jimmy back to his pulpit."

Belli's clients have included Jack Ruby, who killed John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald; victims of the Bhopal , India, chemical leak in 1984; and families of the people killed when the Soviets shot down a Korean Air Lines jet in 1983.

Falwell said later he was glad the Bakkers "have such excellent representation" but added:

"I personally do not feel that the future of Heritage Village and the PTL ministry will be determined, however, in the courtroom."

"I am sure the federal court will take into consideration that it was under Reverend Bakker's leadership that the terrible violations which brought about the virtual collapse of the ministry occurred," he said.

"Most of us who who love Reverend Bakker and who love the PTL ministry are saddened that he would put himself ahead of the survival of the ministry," Falwell said. "However, I believe that God will overrule all this monkey business and will recover this ministry."

Belli said he didn't feel Bakker's side of the story had been properly told.

"We're going to tell it without venom. This is a man of God. Mr. Falwell is a man of God. If there's anything to the limited wisdom the good Lord has given me, I hope he'll give me enough to see these people through their travail."

In other PTL developments, Falwell announced that "little babies are dying" because his ministry has lost so much money and that the Heritage USA theme park closed its water slide and train ride for the day to "give Sunday back to God."

Falwell's PTL directors placed the television ministry and theme park resort into bankruptcy June 12, two days after the Bakkers returned from California. And it is in bankruptcy court, apparently, that the fight over the ministry will be waged.

The Bakkers resigned from PTL in March when Bakker admitted he had paid $265,000 to hush up a one-time sexual tryst with a church secretary in 1980. He asked Falwell to take over the ministry.

When Bakker decided a week later he wanted to return, Falwell refused to step down, accusing him of monumental greed, deceit, bisexuality and theft of PTL's bank accounts.

Falwell, who raised $8 million for PTL during its "May Miracle," said after church services in Lynchburg, Va., that his own ministry is in financial trouble now and "we need a miracle here in Lynchburg."

The "holy wars" have soured so many contributors, Falwell said, that he has been unable to build a planned home for unwed mothers, who are "going to abortion clinics because we don't have that home built."

"We are going to build it," he said, "but we're frozen in our tracks right now, and little babies are dying because of it."

Falwell said, "Had I known three months ago when I was asked to assume this leadership what I know now, I would not have done it."