Jimmy Swaggart

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was a Pentecostal televangelist, gospel music artist, Christian author, and instructor at the Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri[1] that publicly confessed to having sex with prostitutes during a prayer to his television audience, saying, "I have sinned against You, my Lord, and I would ask that Your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness never to be remembered against me anymore."[2]  After what would be called his "Apology Sermon", Swaggart was suspended by the national presbytery of the Assemblies of God for three months and Swaggart stepped down.  Swaggart returned to the pulpit immediately after three months, and objected to a one-year suspension, causing the Assemblies to question his sincerity and leading to Swaggart being defrocked and banned from the ministry in the Assemblies of God.[3]  Swaggart was inspired by Gordon Lindsay and William Branham's healing revivals.

Jimmy Swaggart was defrocked Friday by the Assemblies of God after he refused a one-year suspension, asserting that a prolonged absence from the pulpit would doom his television ministry and jeopardize his Bible college.The decision to defrock Swaggart for unspecified 'moral failures' was made in a telephone conference of a dozen elders of the Assemblies of God church. It commenced upon receipt of a letter from Swaggart declaring that he could not submit to the terms of his penance and rehabilitation.[4]

Swaggart was a student at Ferriday High School in Ferriday, Louisiana, where rock-and-roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis was enrolled.  Lewis was Swaggart's double-cousin and Mickey Gilley's first cousin.[5]  Lewis and Swaggart, both talented musicians in high school, partnered in talent shows[6]  and played boogie-woogie piano duets.[7]  Gilley also joined Swaggart in boogie-woogie music at high school programs.[8]

During the early 1950s, Swaggart was deeply influenced by the book, "Bible Days are Here Again" by Gordon Lindsay.[9]  In 1954, Jimmy Swaggart was a locally-known evangelist for the Assemblies of God, recognized for "great results in his ministry."[10]  He and Jerry Lee Lewis began touring as musical evangelists.[11]  They were known for their triple singing, playing, and preaching ministry.  

When Frances and I first began in Evangelistic work in the mid-1950's, the great Divine Healing Revivals were beginning to sweep the world.  I remember that Gordon Lindsay, editor of the very influential Voice of Healing Magazine, wrote many books on this phenomenon that was taking place, with one of them being, "Bible Days are Here Again". Countless times I would look at that title, even after I had read the book, and weep for joy.  Truly, the Lord was pouring out His Spirit all over the world.  The Lord was using frail, imperfect, individuals to once again proclaim the Might and the Power of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Giant tents were being constructed, actually the biggest in the world, and being filled to capacity with people who had "never seen it in this manner before".[12]
- Jimmy Swaggart

Swaggart brought in upwards of $500,000 a week preaching against sin and all its dangers, often preaching against pornography and sex.[13]  While doing so, Swaggart himself was living a secret life that was the polar opposite from his stage persona.  Those along the Airline Highway in Louisiana saw the other side of Swaggart.  Swaggart often disguised himself wearing hats, sunglasses, headbands, or combing his hair down over his face while he whisked prostitutes into seedy motels.  According to the owner of several cut-rate motels along the highway, Swaggart always used the girls' names to register.

Eventually, Swaggart's private life was discovered by his peers, and he was forced to step down from his $150 million global television ministry.

According to those who inhabit the demimonde along Airline Highway, a seedy strip of no-tell motels, their neon lights flashing adult movies, water beds and rooms by the hour, he pursued a secret life. At times, he wore hats, or sunglasses, or headbands, combing his blond hair down in front, "as if he were hiding," says a woman who has been registered for some time at Tony's Motel as Peggy Carrier.  When checking in, he always "used the girls' names to register," never his own, according to "Mr. Mike," the owner of four cut-rate motels along the strip. Over the last "two or three years," the motel owner says, he watched one of the country's most powerful Pentecostal holy men -- a man who once called himself an "old-fashioned, Holy-Ghost-filled, shouting, weeping, soul-winning, gospel-preaching preacher" -- rent rooms here in the shadow of an ominous billboard with words warning, "Your Eternity Is at Stake."Cruising about in his Lincoln Town Car, Jimmy Swaggart was wrestling Satan and his obsession down on the bayou. By his own account, he lost that round, confessing on nationwide television last Sunday to unspecified "sins" and stepping down from his $150 million global TV ministry. He admitted to paying a prostitute to perform a pornographic act, sources said, and to a lifelong fascination with pornography.[14]