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David Stout


NextImg:Jimmy Swaggart, Passionate Televangelist Ousted by Scandal, Dies at 90

The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.

His death was announced by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, in Baton Rouge, La. It provided no other details. Mr. Swaggart had been placed in intensive care at a hospital after suffering a heart attack on June 15, his son, Donnie Swaggart, who is also a preacher, told a prayer service that morning at the family’s ministry. “Without a miracle, his time is short,” he was quoted as saying.

Mr. Swaggart’s voice and passion carried him to fame and riches that he could scarcely have dreamed of in his small-town boyhood. At its peak in the mid-1980s, Jimmy Swaggart Worldwide Ministries had a television presence in more than 140 countries and, along with its Bible college, took in up to half a million dollars a day from donations and sales of Bible courses, gospel music and merchandise.

In his prime, Mr. Swaggart strode the stage like a bear, his voice thundering with emotion, dropping to a near-whisper, then rising again, sometimes to the accompaniment of tears — his own as well as those of his followers — as he spoke of his love for God and his disdain for the Devil.

“Satan, you’re in for a whupping!” was a typical Swaggart warm-up.

But Satan may have sometimes won a round. In October 1987, Mr. Swaggart was photographed entering a hot-sheet New Orleans motel with a woman. In a later television interview, the woman said that she and Mr. Swaggart had several encounters, describing them as “pornographic” but as not involving intercourse.

Early the next year, the Assemblies of God, the huge Pentecostal organization under whose auspices Mr. Swaggart ministered, suspended him from preaching for a year and ordered him to undergo rehabilitation.


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