WATCH! JIMMY SWAGGART IS DEAD. DANIEL WHYTE III SAYS THAT EVEN THOUGH HE IS AN OLD-FASHIONED, BIBLE-BASED, BAPTIST PREACHER, ON A POSITIVE NOTE, HE DID ENJOY THE EARLY DAYS OF JIMMY SWAGGART’S OLD . . .
WATCH! JIMMY SWAGGART IS DEAD. DANIEL WHYTE III SAYS THAT EVEN THOUGH HE IS AN OLD-FASHIONED, BIBLE-BASED, BAPTIST PREACHER, ON A POSITIVE NOTE, HE DID ENJOY THE EARLY DAYS OF JIMMY SWAGGART’S OLD BILLY SUNDAY-STYLE PREACHING AND SINGING, AND HE ENJOYED HIS SINGING EVEN MORE, ALL BEFORE SWAGGART’S DRAMATIC FALL INTO THE ARMS OF A PROSTITUTE.
ON ANOTHER NOTE, DANIEL WHYTE III REPEATS SOMETHING HE HAS OBSERVED AND STATED BEFORE, AND THAT IS WHILE THE PENTECOSTAL HOLINESS PREACHERS SEEM TO PREACH WITH MORE POWER AND ENERGY BECAUSE OF THEIR EMPHASIS ON PRAYER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, THEY FAIL BECAUSE OF THEIR LACK OF EMPHASIS ON “RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD,” PREACHING THE WORD CORRECTLY, AND OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD, WHEREAS, THE MORE ORTHODOX, BAPTIST—BIBLE-TYPE PREACHERS “RIGHTLY DIVIDE THE WORD” AND PREACH THE WORD CORRECTLY, BUT DUE TO A LACK OF PRAYER, THEY FAIL BECAUSE THEY LACK THE POWER AND ENERGY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THEIR PREACHING.
DANIEL WHYTE III CLOSES BY SAYING IT APPEARS THAT DR. BILLY GRAHAM IS THE LAST OF THE RENOWNED EVANGELISTS WHO HAS LEFT THIS WORLD WITHOUT A SCANDAL BY FOLLOWING THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AND THE “BILLY GRAHAM RULE,” WHICH IS VERY SIMPLY NEVER BEING ALONE WITH A WOMAN WHO IS NOT YOUR WIFE. WHYTE ENCOURAGES ALL PREACHERS TO “GO AND DO THOU LIKEWISE.” WHYTE ALSO ADDS, SAD TO SAY IN THIS DAY AND TIME THAT A PREACHER SHOULD NOT BE ALONE WITH ANOTHER MAN OR ALONE WITH CHILDREN. WHYTE SAYS HE NEVER SAW THE DAY THAT HE WOULD HAVE TO SAY THAT.
After the Jimmy Swaggart—prostitute scandal, “America’s pastor” Billy Graham weighed in: “If it happened to evangelist Jimmy Swaggart it could happen to me; this holy man of God won thousands of souls for Christ. He is already wounded; let us not finish him, let us heal and lift our soldier.”
The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who built one of the nation’s biggest broadcast ministries in the 1980s from his Baton Rouge headquarters, died Tuesday.
Swaggart, who went into cardiac arrest on Fathers Day, was 90 years old.
Once called “the most charismatic televangelist of the 20th century,” by 1986 he was the country’s top-rated TV preacher.
But two widely publicized incidents involving Swaggart and prostitutes threatened to derail the ministry. His televised confession to the first encounter — “I have sinned” — was seen across the country.
At its peak, his Jimmy Swaggart Telecast was being broadcast by upwards of 200 television stations and watched by two million households. His thriving church complex on Bluebonnet Boulevard consisted of more than a dozen buildings, including dormitories, television production studios and warehouses to handle the bundles of mail that came into the ministry every day.
Photos: Remembering Evangelical pastor Rev. Jimmy Swaggart
Four decades later, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries still operates out of Baton Rouge, offering a 24-hour TV network of current services and other programs, a nationwide radio network of 75 stations, the K-12 Family Christian Academy and a Bible college.
“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,” the church posted on Swaggart’s Facebook page. “He was not just a preacher—he was a worshiper, a warrior, and a witness to the grace and mercy of God.”
Gov. Jeff Landry on Tuesday issued a statement: “Rest in peace to Rev. Jimmy Swaggart. He devoted much of his life to bringing people to Christ. Our prayers go out to the Swaggart family during this difficult time.”
Rise to fame
Swaggart grew up in Ferriday, the son of a sharecropper. He had two famous cousins — Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock and roll pioneer, and country music star Mickey Gilley.
Swaggart’s path toward the ministry can be traced back to his late grandmother, Ada Lewis Swaggart, who joined the Pentecostal movement and was eager to share her faith with her extended family.
“She taught him, and he drank it all in,” his cousin Frankie Gene Lewis recalled during an a A&E biography that aired in 2001.
Swaggart was only 8 years old when, standing on a Ferriday street, he first spoke in tongues, talking of atom bombs and wars that had not yet happened, according to the A&E biography.
Years later, Swaggart would decide to pair music with his preaching when he set out on the backroads of Louisiana.
Old black-and-white footage of tent revivals show a young Oral Roberts preaching at the podium. Roberts became a role model for Swaggart, who would later well surpass his mentor in popularity.
Once dubbed “the Mick Jagger of religion” by TV reporter John Camp for combining gospel music and preaching, Swaggart began to attract larger and larger crowds.
In 1960, Swaggart was ordained as a full minister in the Assemblies of God church.
Swaggart continued to gain popularity, recording a gospel album every year and traveling far outside Louisiana to evangelize. After years on the road, the family bought a house in Baton Rouge in 1968, and Swaggart’s electronic church was born.
He launched a telecast in 1973 and began airing taped replays of his church services in 1975. Those services were later translated into dozens of languages.
Dana Robert, director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University, said Swaggart was one of “the most important televangelists in American history.”
“Jimmy Swaggart was able to harness emerging media in the 1980s and was a master at using television to grow his brand and grow his audience,” said Robert, a Baton Rouge native who went to high school with Swaggart’s son, Donnie. “He rode the global Pentecostal wave into international prominence.”
By 1979 Swaggart had outgrown his headquarters behind the former Bon Marche Mall that he had opened 10 years earlier. So he started looking for a new home base.
Jimmy Swaggart World Ministries purchased more than 200 acres of land along Bluebonnet stretching from Interstate 10 to Perkins Road. The centerpiece was a 7,500-seat church, in front of which the flags of 40 nations flew, representing each of the countries where his services were televised.
Swaggart was not only one of the biggest private employers in Baton Rouge, but also one of the city’s leading tourist draws. So many people came from out of state to visit his church that a 120-room hotel was built at I-10 and Bluebonnet in part to accommodate them.
Scandal hits
At its peak in the mid-1980s, the ministry was bringing in nearly $142 million annually.
Along with his high-profile U.S. and international television broadcasts, Swaggart was heard on 2,000 radio stations in 145 countries, had a TV studio, a fleet of luxury cars, a plane, a bible college and a $2.5 million estate on Highland Road across from the County Club of Louisiana.
He led religious crusades in 40 countries, including Brazil, Russia, South Africa and the Philippines, where he would preach and sing before stadiums full of worshippers.
But in February 1988, Swaggart made a tearful public confession of sin, one day after it was reported that there were photos of him with a prostitute at a Metairie hotel room.
The image of the weeping pastor and his admission that “I have sinned” became a defining moment of the year and was widely rebroadcast, discussed and parodied.
Three years later, as Swaggart’s ministry was recovering, scandal struck again. He was found in the company of another prostitute after the pair was pulled over by a police officer in California.
That second fall from grace — Donnie announced that his father was temporarily stepping down for “a time of healing and counseling”— reduced the ministry to a fraction of its former size. Where thousands of people regularly attended his services, the number of worshippers was down to a few hundred.
Despite the dwindling crowd, Swaggart remained a charismatic and powerful preacher.
He also tapped his extensive property holdings. Baton Rouge real estate experts speculated that Swaggart became a real estate magnate to help keep his ministry afloat.
He turned a 12-story dormitory into an apartment complex. He sold properties that later became the Mall of Louisiana, Baton Rouge General’s Bluebonnet campus and Perkins Rowe. A dorm that was partially completed before Swaggart’s sex scandal was sold to be turned into the Renaissance Hotel Baton Rouge. He leased office space to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and The Advocate.
- My husband, but I didn’t want to hear it from him
- Other Christian women speakers
- Other preachers
- Books and other materials, but I would not take heed
GOSPEL LIGHT MINUTE X #447 WITH DANIEL WHYTE III
The question is not “Have you joined a church?” or “Are you trying to do your best?” or “Do you have religion?” but “Are you twice-born?” Jesus Christ said in John 3:3, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”.
We enter the physical world by birth. Spiritual life likewise is entered with a birth. We become members of a human family by birth; we become members of the family of God by birth, by being “born again.” There is no other way to get into the human family except by birth, and there is no other way to get into God’s family except by the new birth. Neither education, nor cultivation, nor reformation, nor “turning over a new leaf,” will accomplish this. What is needed is not a new “leaf” but a new “life”! “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
By physical birth we become partakers of human nature; by being born again we become “partakers of the divine nature”. A Christian is the product of a divine “begetting”. The second birth is not an improvement of the old nature; it is the imparting of an entirely new nature. The old nature is hopelessly corrupt and incapable of ever being made fit for His presence. The new birth requires a creative act of the Holy Spirit. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”.
Simply “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”. The Bible says in 1 John 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”. The Bible states in John 1:12,13, “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”.
You are born again, you become a Christian by trusting a Person—receiving a Person. The very moment you do this, the Lord Jesus Christ comes in and life begins!
To “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” means more than simply believing the historic facts concerning Him. Intellectual belief about Christ is not sufficient. The belief that brings salvation must be “with the heart,” that is, with the whole being. This belief also includes repentance: “Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”. The Bible states in Acts 17:30, “God … now commandeth all men every where to repent”.
This is an important question. We know that we are born again by the testimony of God’s Word. God says in John 5:24, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life”. Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as explained by God’s Word? If so, then you are saved, you are “born again,” you have “passed from death unto life.” God says so! Take God at His Word, and go on your way rejoicing!
You may “belong to a church,” you may be “trying to do the best you can,” you may be “striving to live right.” Your outward life may be the model of moral correctness, and you may be looked up to, honored, revered, and respected. Yet, if you have not been “born again” you are just as lost as if you had never heard of Christ. Yes, you may teach in the Sunday school, read the Bible, sing, shout, “feel happy,” and all the rest—but if you have never been “born again” you are still in your sins and a stranger to the Lord Jesus Christ!.