Jimmy Swaggart, fire-and-brimstone preacher, dies at 90

While he was in a barn through America, Jimmy Swaggart would prowl the scene like a Mick Jagger again, all boastful while he was strolling, screaming, struck a piano, spoke in tongues and – in a field which he perfected to a close art form – exhorted the faithful to double their relationship with the Lord by contributing to his ministry.

A fiery pentecostal preacher, Swaggart boasted that he had more followers than Oral Roberts or Jim Bakker, has lived a lush life on a 100 acres complex in red baton, Louisiana, and left evangelist crudes in a private jet with a fleet below the height, loaded with musical instruments and television equipment, television equipment basins below the height.

But his ministry was upset in the 1980s when photos surfaced showing Swaggart with a prostitute in a New Orleans motel and again when he was arrested by California Highway Patrol in the Mojave desert by traveling with a woman who told the police that she was a prostitute.

Standing and dishonored, Swaggart fell to the pulpit, but the attendance of his church has decreased, his television ministry wilted and the biblical college he founded abolished his name.

Infused until the end, Swaggart died on Tuesday at the Red Baton General Medical Center after suffering a heart event on June 15, according to a statement from Megan Kelly, family spokesperson. He was 90 years old.

Like his cousin rock ‘N’ Roll Jerry Lewis, Swaggart was comfortable on stage and entrusting to the piano, working the masses in a fervor when he invited those who were physically and spiritually sick to approach the altar, where a team of ministers threw their hands on the faithful to start healing.

“If you think Miller Lite will bring you home, you are mistaken,” he yelled during a service by his native Louisiana.

“If you think that the president will bring you home, you are wrong,” he said, stopping, then adding gently: “It’s Jesus Christ, it’s your Savior.”

His Populist Hellfire brand played well in the United States and beyond in the 1980s, when “The Jimmy Swaggart Trediction” reached nearly 2 million viewers per week on 500 stations and its monthly magazine, the evangelist, was sent to more than 800,000 households.

His gospel albums have sold millions, and when he hit the road, his disciples would flock by the thousands. Dan rather called it “the most effective speaker in the country”.

“I really don’t consider it a success or a lack of success,” Swaggart told the Associated Press in 1985. “It’s just the Lord. I think he wants me to do what I do.”

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935 in Ferriday, a small crossroads in eight Miles from Mississippi in northeast Louisiana. It was a city tired of a few thousand, but it is likely that each soul knew Swaggart, Lewis and their other cousin Mickey Gilley. The three Ferridays, the city’s folks called them.

Swaggart said he was 8 years old when the Lord spoke to him for the first time when he was standing in front of the Arcade theater in downtown Ferriday, waiting to watch a morning of Saturday.

“I felt better inside,” said Swaggart for years later. “Almost like taking a continuous bath.”

Like his cousins, Swaggart grew up with a burning desire to get out of Ferriday. He abandoned the high school, just like his cousins, and started to preach on the corners of the street, then took a pastor in a small church. The Bible had been his companion for years.

But if Lewis ‘ascent was explosive while he was heading for glory with “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going on”, Swaggart did the Lord’s work in poverty. While Lewis gained up to $ 80,000 a month from record sales and concerts, SWAGGART had the chance to scratch $ 30 per week.

Finally, Lewis bought his cousin a Plymouth beaten and lent Swaggart his rescue musicians and his studio time to record a Gospel album.

Swaggart finally took the road, traveling the rear roads of Louisiana and Mississippi, holding renewals. His gospel albums were good enough and his baritone voice strong enough for him to settle in Baton Rouge in 1969 and started the radio program “Camp Meeting Hour”, a mixture of gospel, disastrous warnings and road maps with redemption.

At the age of 49, Swaggart had exceeded Robert Schuller and Oral Roberts as a king of television preachers, reaching 2 million households per week and appearing on more than 500 stations. The money flocked. In 1985, his ministry brought around $ 120 million a year, collections, magazine sales and goods from its World Ministry gift catalog.

The external signs were impressive: the compound of 100 acres; the 7,500 square feet house; Lincoln city cars matching his wife, Frances, and himself; the assembly room which sat 1,000; biblical college; impeccably kept gardens; And the 28 parents on pay.

But the higher the ascent, the higher the fall. And for the Ferriday Three, there must have been a day of calculation.

Lewis had been a breeding of hell since he was young, and he was no different as an adult. He drank, took amphetamines and deceived his wives.

Lewis also seemed to have a close relationship with death. A son drowned in a swimming pool, another was killed in a Jeep accident and his fifth woman died of a drug overdose in suspicious circumstances. His fans rolled up with his excesses and gave birth to his life tragedies. But when he married a 13 -year -old cousin, they melted.

Gilley, who launched his career as a country artist but had a greater success when he kissed pop, lost a large part of his fortune when he entered a legal dispute with his partner in a Pasadena nightclub, Texas, called Gilley’s. Closed, the place burned on the ground in 1990 in a fire that the authorities determined was a criminal fire.

The success of Swaggart with the collector’s plate has sometimes raised suspicion. The former employees went to court, accusing the preacher of diverting donations, and prosecution was filed against his ministry for tax exemptions and disputed wills, which brought millions.

The fall of Swaggart, however, was born out of a kind of religious war which broke out in the 1980s among three pop-star evangelists-Bakker, then at the top of “The Ptl Club”, the preacher of New Orleans Marvin Gorman and Swaggart himself.

Swaggart took the first swing when he continued Bakker, accusing him of having a liaison with a church secretary appointed Jessica Hahn. Bakker was finally expelled from the name of the assemblies of God and was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud. The penalty was then reduced to eight, and Bakker was released after only five years.

But the result was very different when the preacher went after Gorman, who like Swaggart had an international television ministry. Swaggart accused the New Orleans preacher of having business with various parishioners, as well as the wife of another minister. It was enough for Gorman to be thrown from the assemblies of God.

Asked, Gorman continued Swaggart for defamation and won a $ 10 million judgment which was then reduced to $ 6.64 million, then finally settled amicably for $ 1.8 million. Gorman’s revenge, however, was not yet over.

Signubulant that Swaggart himself was an adultery, Gorman asked his son to write Swaggart one night. The son found Swaggart in a dilapidated motel on Highway Airline in New Orleans and took photos of the preacher going to a room with a prostitute.

Gorman gave the photos to the assemblies of God, who ordered Swaggart suspended for two years. Uncertain that his ministry could resist such a long break, Swaggart gave it three months and returned to the pulpit, preaching under the auspices of the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College.

By a Bright Baton Rouge Rouge Morning in 1988, Swaggart delimited the steps of his cult center and – like thousands of looks – vaguely spoke of his “difficult time”, his “burden” and his difficulties with “Satan”.

When a woman in the benches called: “Do you want money?” Swaggart smiles widely.

“I do it well.”

Three years later, Swaggart was arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road in the Coachella valley. His passenger told the police that she was a prostitute and that the preacher had picked it up during navigation in the streets of Ido.

This time, rather than facing the parishioners, Swaggart resigned from his ministry to “reflect”. Her son Donnie resumed Sunday services.

Most of the time, Swaggart retired to his study and wrote or played the piano, singing his favorite gospel songs. During the duration of his career, he wrote nearly 50 pounds and dozens of study guides and comments on the Bible.

When he preached, it was in a small church, where the rallies seem larger and his presence more commander. When he pressed his sins, he was often direct.

“The Lord told me that it was not flat of your business,” he said during a prayer service.

Swaggart is survived by his wife, his son, three grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.

The staff writer, Grace Toohey, contributed to this report.