Jimmy Swaggart, a televangelist and gospel singer whose fall from grace in the late 1980s made national headlines, died Tuesday.
He was 90.
“Today, our hearts are heavy as we share that Brother Swaggart has finished his earthly race and entered into the presence of His Savior, Jesus Christ. Today was the day he has sung about for decades. He met his beloved Savior and entered the portals of glory. At the same time, we rejoice knowing that we will see him again one day,” according to an announcement from his ministry posted on social media.
Swaggart was hospitalized June 15 after going into cardiac arrest and being treated by paramedics, the televangelist’s son, Donnie, told congregants at the Family Worship Center Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during a weekend prayer meeting after his father was taken to the Baton Rouge General Medical Center. Though paramedics were able to restore the elder Swaggart’s heartbeat, he did not regain consciousness, according to his son, leaving him in critical condition.
“Without a miracle, his time will be short,” Donnie Swaggart told congregants in mid-June.
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Swaggart remained hospitalized for days, never regaining consciousness. On Sunday (June 29), Donnie Swaggart told worshippers at the church that the family had gathered around his father and it was just a matter of time.
“We want his last days to be comfortable,” he said. “We want him to be surrounded by his family.”
In announcing Swaggart’s death, the family thanked the staff, doctors and nurses who cared for him.
A legendary Pentecostal televangelist and musician — his cousins were country star Mickey Gillis and rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis — Swaggart was once one of the best-known preachers in America, filling stadiums for crusades in the early 1980s, building a massive radio and television following, raising more than $100 million a year for his ministry and feuding with rival televangelists Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts.
After Swaggart was accused of trying to take over Bakker’s troubled Praise the Lord ministry, Bakker’s lawyer warned that there would be consequences. “You will bring down the pillars of the temple on your own head like Samson,” Bakker’s attorney Norman Roy Grutman dijo in March 1987, according to The Washington Post.
Within a year, Swaggart would join Bakker in falling from grace — in large part due to a feud with Marvin Gorman, a Louisiana televangelist whom Swaggart had accused of sexual misconduct. Gorman turned around and sued Swaggart and also hired a private detective to follow him. Eventually Swaggart was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans.
After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal denomination that ordained Swaggart, he confessed during a live broadcast of a church service. During that service, he apologized first to his wife, Frances, whom he credited for all his success. Then he spoke to the rest of the congregation and his television audience.
“I have sinned against you,” el dijo his audience and a capacity crowd at his Louisiana church. “I beg you, forgive me.” He was later caught again with a woman identified as a prostitute in 1991, during a traffic stop in California.
The scandals cost Swaggart’s ministry millions — it dropped from $150 million in revenue during the mid-1980s to about $11 million in the 1990s, RNS reported at the time, and much of his television audience collapsed. The Family Worship Center Church, which could hold thousands, began to draw only a few hundred worshippers.
After a few months out of the pulpit, Swaggart, who was defrocked by the Assemblies of God, returned to ministry and remained active the rest of his life, preaching into his late 80s. Earlier this year, he joined the church’s gospel band at a camp meeting, his voice still clear and powerful.
“If you’re longing for a friend, loving and true,” he sang, sitting at a grand piano, “then turn to Jesus, he waits for you.”
That voice carried Swaggart, who was born March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, from the small Pentecostal churches he attended with his parents, W.L. and Minnie Bell Swaggart, to stadiums and revival meetings around the world. Swaggart began his ministry in 1955 and a few years later released his first album, “Some Golden Daybreak,” and would eventually sell more than 17 million recordings, de acuerdo a his ministry bio.
He first began broadcasting with his radio show, “The Camp Meeting Hour,” in 1969, followed by the “Jimmy Swaggart Telecast” in 1973, which brought him to national prominence. He also has run a Bible teaching program, A Study in the World. He started the SonLife Radio network in 1995 and the SonLife Broadcasting Network in 2010, run by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries.
Swaggart also authored 100 books, including an Expositor’s Study Bible, which his ministry said had sold more than 4 million copies, and published The Evangelist magazine for five decades. This fall he will be inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
During his father’s hospitalization, Donnie Swaggart asked supporters to pray for his mother, Frances, saying she has been the rock of their family and has been by her husband’s side in the hospital room. The couple were married 72 years.
“My mother has always been the rock and the strength of our family and of this ministry. She is a woman of faith,” Donnie Swaggart dicho en a video update. “She is a woman of God.”
The younger Swaggart said his father had not been well in the days before his heart attack. The day before being taken to the hospital, he was so ill when Donnie Swaggart arrived to take him to a prayer meeting that the son encouraged the father to skip the gathering.
“No, I want to go pray,” Donnie Swaggart recalled his father saying. “I want to go pray.”
Bob Smietana es reportero nacional de Religion News Service.
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16 Responses
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Jimmy Swaggart is the last of the famous three cousins (Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart) to die.
Beyond the Headlines: Not His Failures But His Faith, Not the Controversy But the Cross — The Jimmy Swaggart Redeemed by Grace, Now with the One Who Redeems us all.
This should be the headline, even for the TRR.
No Miguel. You don’t get to dictate what the headline should be.
The scripture is clear, “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor.”
I sure hope to see Jimmy Swaggart in Heaven. But his life remains a sobering, cautionary tale: A reputation is hard to build and easy to ruin. This should be especially sobering to those who have the honor of shepherding the flock of God. You can disqualify yourself. A little folly can ruin a lifetime of faithful service. Foolishness has a cost. The pleasure of sin for a season brings a lifetime of regret and dishonor.
These are sobering words. We don’t want to hear them, but they are true nonetheless. May God help us to run our races well.
“Murphree told Penthouse magazine that she rejected Swaggart’s entreaties to bring her 9-year-old daughter to their sex sessions, telling him, ‘Not my daughter! If you want to do it with someone else and it turns
you on, fine. But not my daughter!'”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi.com/amp/Archives/1988/05/25/Prostitute-says-Swaggart-kinky-and-cheap-too/2208580536000/
I have watched The Family Worship Center live from their Sonlife Broadcasting Network every Sunday for 15 years. They have the best singers and musicians in the world! Jimmy confessed publicly, not hiding it like the pastors of today. He held mega crusades all around the world, hauling his piano and the equipment and singers and musicians. He grew exhausted and the devil stepped in. He reached more millions than Billy Graham. His legacy is still honorable. After that fall, he spent the next 5 years, along with many other scholars, writing the Expositor’s Study Bible, of which I have a copy in large print. It is AWESOME and nearly every verse is explained in the whole KJV Bible! Then he focused on writing commentaries for every book in the Bible, and writing books. He loved his wife, and his family very much. They are all close-knit and loved him so much and forgave him of his weakness. We should too!!!!! How many of us can cast the first stone??
What a nice testimonial about Brother Swaggart! Refreshing to hear! Thank you Barbara!
Isn’t it risky to depend on one man’s commentaries? One would need to read every single existing commentary in order to get an idea of every view that exists because many contradict one another.
That’s why it’s best to trust in the words of Jesus in John 14:26 & 16:13 regarding understanding, surely? It takes both patience and trust.
Also, in both John chapter 5 and John chapter 8 (the woman caught in adultery), Jesus says “GO AND SIN NO MORE”.
He obviously knew it would be possible (especially by the power of the Holy Spirit) or he wouldn’t have said it.
But was it really Jimmy Swaggart who wrote those commentaries? The personages who run these large ministries are often CEOs that just delegate the duty to other employees.
All I choose to remember about this man Jimmy Swaggart is his famous “I’ve sinned” tear-eyed act on stage before the whole world, but he still kept on to his ministry and raked in millions at the same time. Nope, it wasn’t the Devil that stepped in…the man chose to sin!
Whenever one of these celebrities dies leaving behind forever both his fortune he made and his fame, I think of what Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose their very soul?”
It continues to amaze me that so many christians always look back on failures of mere man. If one repents God forgives and erases the sin. It is a miracle that Brother Swaggart did not just quit but his love for His Lord and souls had him continue till the end. He also changed his theology as the Lord showed him. Yes, he was not perfect but santified still. And about millions of ‘revenue’ then and now. Did anyone ever ask what the ministry does with it? Airtime isn’t free and thousands and thousands of free Bibles given away around the world neither. And yes I guess they probably had and have a big house and supercar – never heard of royalties? A lot of people casting stones here. What do you (still) do in secret that you would never confess before man? I do not idolize Jimmy but he has been a great tool for multitudes of people and for the kingdom of God.
He was the last of the old time tent revival evangelists. Warts and all, the man could preach.
God has gained a beautiful servant and he will be horribly missed down here. There is something beautiful and different coming out of Jimmie Swaggart ministries.
Turn the radio on
to a down-home drawl.
Hear a byrlcreem prophet
with a message for y’all.
“Well I’ve found a new utensil
in the devil’s toolbox
and the heads are gonna roll
when Jesus rocks.
I’ts of a worldly design.
God’s music should be divine!
Try buying records like mine,
avoid temptation”-
guilty by association….
It’s a Telethon Tuesday
for “The Gospel Club”-
Send your money in now
or they’re gonna pull the plug!
Just remember this fact
when they plead and beg:
when the chicken squawks loudest,
gonna lay a big egg.
You could be smelling a crook,
you should be checking The Book,
but you’d rather listen thank look,
the implication-
guilty by association.
-Steve Taylor, Guilty by Association
Leonard Ravenhill said years ago “God’s going to destroy that man” quoting 1 Corinthians 3:17. If Jimmy’s repentance was genuine, he would have voluntarily stepped down from ministry and faded into obscurity. He was not qualified to hold any ministry position.