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

While Barnstormation in the United States, Jimmy Swaggart was going to walk around like a Mick Jagger who was born again, all of them standing, fueled, hitting a piano, spoke in the languages, and calling for a close form of art, and called Lord to double.

There were more followers than Swaggart, Oral Roberts or Jim Bakker, a fire and sulfur pentecostal preacher, Baton Rouge, La.

However, when the ministry was traveling with a woman who showed Swaggart with a prostitute at the New Orleans motel in the 1980s, and was assigned by California Highway Patrol in the Mojave Desert, traveling with a woman who said she was a prostitute.

Defrock and disgraceful Swaggart returned to the pulpit, but participation in the church, the Ministry of Television faded and founded the Bible College.

Until the end, Swaggart died on Tuesday, An announcement By Jimmy Swaggart ministries. . He was 90 years old.

Like Rock ‘N’ Roll cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, Swaggart was comfortable and confident on the piano, and when a minister invited his team to approach the altar where he would prolong their hands to start healing to worship, he worked to a passion.

“If you think the Miller Lite will carry you home, you are wrong, anlan AnLOWN ULU during a service in Louisiana.

“If you think the president will carry you home, you are wrong,” he paused and then gently added: “This is Jesus Christ, this is your savior.”

The populist Hellfire brand, in the 1980s, “Jimmy Swaggart Telecast reached about 2 million viewers per week at 500 stations and was sent to more than 800,000 households.

Bible sold millions of albums, and when he departed, his followers were poured by thousands of people. He once said to him, “the country’s most influential speaker.”

Orum I don’t really look at this as a lack of success or success, Swaggart said to Associated Press in 1985. “This is just Lord. I feel that you want me to do what I do.”

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935 in Ferray, a small intersection eight miles away from the Mississippi River in northeast of Louisiana. It was only a few thousand tired towns, but it was likely that every soul there would know Swaggart, Lewis and other cousin Mickey Gilley. Three Ferray, the people of the town called them.

Swaggart, Rab, standing outside the Arcade Theater in Ferray city center, Saturday, waiting to watch Matine was 8 years old, he said.

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

Like his cousins, Swaggart grew up with a burning desire to get out of Ferriday. Like his cousins, he left high school and began to preach in the street corners, then took a position as a priest in a small church. The Bible has been his friend for years.

But if Lewis was explosives to gain Ascent with “Big Fire Balls” and “All Lotta Shakin ,, Swaggart made the Lord’s work in close poverty. Lewis won record sales and concerts up to $ 80,000 a month, while Swaggart was lucky to draw $ 30 a week.

Finally, Lewis buys Plymouth beat his cousin and lending his backup musicians and studio time to save a good news album to Swaggart.

Swaggart finally set out, visited the back roads of Louisiana and Mississippi. His albums were good enough and the Baritone sound will settle in Baton Rouge in 1969 and the “Camping Meeting Time” radio show began to save a mixture of the Bible, terrible warnings and road maps.

At the age of 49, Swaggart passed the Robert Schuller and Oral Roberts as the king of television preachers, reached 2 million households a week and took part in more than 500 stations. Money spilled. By 1985, the service brought about 120 million dollars a year from collections, magazine sales and goods from the Gift catalog of the Ministry of World.

The traps of everything were impressive: 100 acres of compound; 7,500 square meters house; His wife Francis and Lincoln Town cars matched for him; 1,000 Sitting Assembly Hall; Bible College; Tool Tendered Gardens; and 28 relatives on the payroll.

But the higher the rise, the greater the fall. And for Ferriday three, it would be a day of calculation.

Lewis has been hell amplifier since his youth and was no different as an adult. Drank, he took amphetamine and cheated on his wives.

He also seemed to have a close relationship with death. One son drowned in a swimming pool, the other in a jeep accident and his fifth wife died of an overdose of drugs under suspicious conditions. The fans rolled with their extremes and pitized the tragedy of life. But when he married a 13 -year -old cousin, he melted.

Started his career as a country artist, but when he embraced POP, Gilley lost most of his reserve when he entered a legal dispute with his partner at Pasadena, Pasadena, Texaden, Gilley’s nightclub. The shutter burned the ground in a fire determined by the authorities in 1990.

Swaggart’s success with the collection plate caused doubts from time to time. The former employees went to court, accused the preachers of abuse, and a lawsuit was filed for the ministry for tax exemptions against millions of people.

However, the collapse of Swaggart was born from a religious war between three pop star Evangelist and Bakker in the 1980s, and then the “PTL Club” New Orleans Preacher Marvin Gorman and Swaggart himself.

When Swaggart went after Bakker, he took the first swing and accused him of establishing a relationship with a church secretary named Jessica Hahn. Bakker was finally fired from the assemblies of the God’s sect and was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud. The sentence was then reduced to eight years, and the grocery store was parolen after only five services.

However, when the preacher went after Gorman, who had an international television minister of Swaggart, the result was very different. Swaggart accused New Orleans of doing business with various congregations and the wife of another minister. It was enough to throw Gorman from the assemblies of God.

Gorman filed a lawsuit for Swaggart’s slander and then won a 10 million dollar decision, which was reduced to $ 6.64 million, and then settled from the court for $ 1.8 million. Gorman’s revenge has not yet been completed.

Gorman suspected Swaggart himself a adultery, asked his son to queue Swaggart one night. The son found Swaggart at a Motel on the Airline Motorway in New Orleans and then checked the photos of the preacher in a room with a prostitute.

Gorman handed the photographs to the assemblies of God, who ordered to suspend for two years. Swaggart gave three months, not sure that the ministry could take such a long break, and under the auspices of Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, he returned to the pulpit.

In 1988, on a bright Baton Rouge morning, Swaggart limited the steps of the worship center and spoke uncertain about his struggle with “trial time”, “burden” and “devil”.

“Do you want some money?” Swaggart smiled widely.

“I definitely do it.”

Three years later, Swaggart was drawn for driving on the wrong side of the road in Coachella Valley. He told the passenger officers that he was a prostitute and that he had taken him as the preacher watching the Indio streets.

This time, Swaggart resigned as the head of the ministry to “reflect” rather than one hundred communists. His son Donnie took over market services.

Most days retired for Swaggart work and wrote or played the piano by singing his favorite Müjde songs. Throughout the length of his career, he wrote about 50 books and dozens of work guides and comments about the Bible.

When he preached, he was in a smaller church that the meetings would look greater and that his presence would command. When he was suppressed about his sins, he was usually directly.

“The Lord told me that none of it was straight,” he said during a prayer service.

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

Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.