OP, I have been part of online chat communities for years and years and have seen this kind of thing happen first-hand a lot more than people would probably believe or expect on here. Including couples who claim to be engaged to each other when they've never actually met in person. 
and in some cases these relationships have worked out, in some a real meeting just didn't turn out to be what they'd both hoped for and the relationship fizzled out for various reasons, and in some cases one or other party had embellished a lot of the information about themselves not to necessarily scam anyone but just to make themselves be less undesirable or more attractive to the person they are talking to.
The thing about internet chat is that it's easy. You can engage with each other, talk when you want to, and then when you don't you switch off the computer and walk away from it until you're ready to go back. And that also means that you generally can choose to only show your sunny side to the person that you're talking to. It also means that you build up a fantasy picture of the person that you're talking to, and before you know it their personality (or the bits of it that you see online) become the person you are attracted to iyswim.
I don't think you're necessarily any more gullible than anyone else, although I do think that you've potentially built up a picture of the relationship that you could be having with this man when the reality is that it's highly unlikely a future would be possible due to the constraints of the distance between you. That's the thing about online, it gives us the opportunity to talk to people in parts of the world where we would otherwise never have met them, and to form bonds with those people.
But the reality is that even on here people engage with others who they initially know only as a username and then trust that they are who they say they are when they give money to their cause, or donate something for their child or give them a phone number to talk about their issues etc. It's no different really apart from the fact that it's not a romantic relationship, but it's still becoming closer to someone online when there are no guarantees as to their authenticity.
What you need to ask yourself is, what is there to be achieved by meeting up? The reality is that he's in SA, you're in the US, an actual relationship where you are able to get together, marry and have children and a future is incredibly unlikely to be achieved in the short/medium term. How will you sustain your relationship once you've met up and established whether the attraction is what you both think it is? Because going back to just online communication then isn't going to be the same as it was now.
I do agree that if a relationship is a future prospect then meeting is something which has to be done. However you say he's never had a long term relationship, doesn't have a job although is building this business from his bedroom, how is he going to afford to fly to the US and stay in a hotel there especially given the exchange rate between the rand and the dollar?
Given what he's told you about himself it does sound as if he's probably been somewhat honest about who he is, however, being attracted to someone who lives in his bedroom and is running an online business when that attraction is limited to the conversations you're having on skype is vastly different to building a relationship and a life with someone who would potentially want to maintain that lifestyle in the family home. Iyswim.
He's attractive to you because he's lovely to talk to, and as a person he probably is. But if you take the online him and convert it in all its entirety into an RL person, can you see that as being the kind of relationship you would want to be in for the foreseeable future?
PS: South Africa is in general a devoutly Christian country, which is probably why he's been quoting from the bible etc, he's likely been brought up on it.