Televangelist Jim Bakker held up a blue and silver bottle, gazing intently at the label, as he questioned the woman sitting next to him.

"This influenza that is now circling the globe," Bakker said on the Feb. 12 broadcast of The Jim Bakker Show, "you're saying that Silver Solution would be effective."

His guest, the so-called "natural health expert" Sherrill Sellman, falsely implied that the liquid would likely be effective. The coronavirus impacting more than 120,000 people worldwide does not yet have a known treatment or cure.

"Well, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it has been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours," Sellman said. "Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it."

Silver Solution "has been proven by the government that it has the ability to kill every pathogen it has ever been tested on, including SARS and HIV," Sellman continued. Four 4-ounce bottles could be yours, a message on the screen said, for just $80.

Selling a fake "treatment" for the COVID-19 disease violates state and federal law. On Tuesday, the state of Missouri filed a lawsuit against Bakker and his production company to stop them from advertising or selling Silver Solution and related products as treatments for the coronavirus.

Bakker and Morningside Church Productions have violated Missouri law by "falsely promising to consumers that Silver Solution can cure, eliminate, kill or deactivate coronavirus and/or boost elderly consumers' immune system and help keep them healthy when there is, in fact, no vaccine, pill, potion or other product available to treat or cure coronavirus disease 2019," the Missouri Attorney General's Office wrote in its application for a temporary restraining order. Bakker and his company are based in the state.

Bakker gained fame in the 1970s and '80s as the host of The PTL Club, a Christian television program he hosted with his then-wife, Tammy Faye. He stepped down from PTL after a sex scandal and later spent several years in prison after a jury found that he had defrauded his viewers out of millions of dollars.