Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-28-25

This week’s message is an essay I was asked to write for The American Spectator magazine this week. I have edited it somewhat, mainly for length, for the Monday Ministry blog. It addresses the life and recent death of noted pastor John MacArthur. It is an interesting coincidence that MacArthur’s death followed, by mere days, the death of evangelist Jimmy Swaggart (about which I also contributed to TAS and here). They were not only prominent preachers, but they had many points of disagreement – points that were indeed pointed.

MacArthur and Swaggart were, since the death of Billy Graham and with the possible exception of his son Franklin (who has not a similar ministry of pulpit Sundays and mass meetings), these two men represented, and prominently, the two main strains in contemporary Christianity. So their deaths invited comparisons.

Faithful readers know that I am from mainline Protestant tradition, and an encourager of liturgical worship. But I am also Pentecostal, and – as might be decided here – was offended that MacArthur called my people counterfeit Christians and of the devil. (Swaggart and his son called MacArthur “evil” for rejecting Holy Spirit gifts. Tit-for-Holy-Tat…)

MacArthur’s substance and style was judgmental and sounded dogmatic… unless and until he facilely shifted beliefs. He was, for instance, a hyper-Calvinist and (see essay) could easily be called Arminian – but he once stated that he could not explain contradictions in his faith “because God is sovereign and mysterious.” Well, just so. I welcome the mysteries because we need reminders that God is in charge, not our feeble logic.

I just wish some preachers would not cherish their judgmentalism. It smacks of a need to feel superior, and might offend those who struggle for the Truth more than they seek spiritual comforts.

John McArthur, the de facto leader of one of American Protestantism’s major contemporary wings, died on July 14, 2026 at the age of 86. The son and grandson of preachers, MacArthur was the author of more than 150 books and pamphlets; was still active in the pulpit of his church, Grace Community Church of Sun Valley CA, and head of his Master’s University and Master’s Seminary; and hosted a daily radio program/ media ministry, Grace To You.

As a Bible scholar he produced a Study Bible and the Legacy Standard Bible, which has sold more than 2-million copies and has been translated into two dozen languages.

Through such activities John MacArthur became prominent beyond his spiritual base, which could roughly be characterized as Reformed. His influence indeed bled far, with his books, appearances, and pulpit activity; assiduously, he taught in weekly sermons the entire Bible, verse by verse, totaling decades of methodical messages. Otherwise MacArthur’s theology was difficult to label: He was born Baptist; attended Bob Jones University and Biola University; adopted elements of Calvinism, even hyper-Calvinism including predestinarianism and a pre-millenial eschatology. If a distinction must be drawn, John MacArthur was more a teacher than a preacher.

Intra-denominational distinctions in America have through the centuries inspired more intense debates and divisions than secular squabbles. The American church, whose major concerns once were focused on the place of the Social Gospel, has in many venues split into disagreements – often laden with bitter judgmentalism – over matters of the Rapture (when believers will be taken to Heaven and avoid, or not, the End-Times Tribulation); whether the New Testament’s Gifts of the Spirit (prophecy, healing, tongues, etc) given to the First-Century church are valid today; and Modernism/Liberalism.

There are new and shifting alliances in the church, according to issues – such as the Catholics and some Protestants agreeing on abortion and public schools – but for the most part there is a bit of Holy Anarchy in the American church. The umbrella-term “evangelical” has become almost meaningless to everyone except sloppy pollsters. And there are disagreements and sometimes latter-day anathemas exchanged between mainstream denominations, Fundamentalists, Charismatics and Pentecostals, Seeker-Sensitive churches, the emergent movement, Reformed traditions, the Metro movement, accommodationists and relativists, Holiness churches, Christian Zionists, Orthodox Protestants, High-Church schismatics, holders of the Prosperity Gospel, “New Covenant” believers, Mega-Church devotees, Lordship salvationists, Christian Nationalists. and Dispensationalists holding to Pre-, Mid-, and Post-Millenial Tribulation beliefs; etc.

It is interesting to note that, despite his public persona and speaking style – which seemed, and frequently was, stern and judgmental – John MacArthur reflected several and shifting theological strains through his spiritual evolution; and sometimes would bridge various traditions. He was rather a strict Calvinist but never became a Presbyterian (for a time he called himself a Baptist Calvinist, not as an oxymoron). He called himself at one time a “Leaky” Dispensationalist, allowing wiggle-room in discussions about God’s role in history and the coming Tribulation. He fanned the issue of “intersectionality,” maintaining that women had no role in church leadership, especially behind the pulpit (he also called his stance “Complementarianism.”) For years he was dogmatic in defense of a doctrine he called “Incarnational Sonship,” basically maintaining that Christ became separate and holy only upon his earthly birth – a fair description of his singular belief – but he later recanted and admitted that the Old Testament clearly portrayed and illustrated incidents of the pre-Incarnate Jesus. MacArthur eventually identified with St Augustine’s self-corrective “Retractationes,” however writing that “I doubt I’ll ever have the time or energy to undertake” such work.

To many Christians, MacArthur’s major theological battles were with Pentecostals; and many saw great confusion, even harm, to the church. He championed what he called “Cessationism,” the argument that the Gifts of the Spirit – ministry blessings conferred to Christian converts in the Age of the Apostles, nine in number including gifts of healing, wisdom, prophecy, ecstatic prayer, knowledge – were obsolete after the first century. Pentecostals asked for a Biblical citation about their expiration, but none exists. MacArthur would ask whether Pentecostals and Charismatics (virtual exchangeable labels) have ever witnessed miracles like healings in our days… to which millions (and spreading rapidly in the contemporary church) answered “Yes” to the dare. Nevertheless MacArthur held a “Strange Fire” conference that savaged the Gifts of the Spirit, and wrote three books condemning Pentecostals.

In non-doctrinal controversies, as with many contemporary ministries, John MacArthur was not immune. He insisted that Martin Luther King was a “non-believer” who “misrepresented everything about Christ and the Gospel.” Capturing as many headlines as his Covid stances, he resisted public sympathy for a woman in his congregation, Eileen Gray, over sexual abuse, including of her daughter Wendy by a Grace Community employee. MacArthur criticised her but invited prayers for her abuser husband David, even after he was sentenced to serve 21 years to life in prison for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child and child abuse. According to an eyewitness, Gray had confessed to MacArthur years earlier that he had molested his daughter. Many publishers, after this controversy became public, rejected a new MacArthur book about the “War on Children,” and MacArthur ultimately self-published the book.

And leaders of what fairly might be called the two major camps within Protestantism have died within a month of each other. Jimmy Swaggart was the most prominent Pentecostal preacher, with a widespread ministry whose influence touched Charismatics, ecstatic worshipers, Fundamentalists, etc. Swaggart died on July 1, 2025. Two weeks later John MacArthurd died. Once again (very generally speaking) he can be seen as representative of another major group of Christians and traditions – Reformed traditions, Biblical exegetes, etc.

The passing of these two very influential leaders, and so close in time, does not portend a vacuum in American Christianity; but it easily might allow different factions to draw closer. President Trump, who reached out to Swaggart’s next-generation preachers, and who occasionally called both Swaggart and MacArthur (evidently a follower of the Swaggarts’ worship services) already enjoys a fellowship with America’s faith community.

Having bequeathed a huge body of scholarship and micro-focused Biblical exegesis to his subsequent generations, John MacArthur can now, presumably, be counting for himself the angels on the heads of pins, as was his wont.

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Click: The Church’s One Foundation

7-21-25

A “dialogue with God”? Is it presumptuous to imagine a conversation with the Almighty, to anticipate what He would say, or answer, to us?

In my case, and maybe yours, it is kind of presumptuous to imagine what I might say, minute to minute. I can be kind of random. But for the sake of understanding Scripture, attempting to better know the Lord, seeking His will… we can carefully imagine a dialogue from His point of view.

After all, the Bible is the inspired Word of God (“in-spired,” God-breathed), through which He talks to us. The commands, words, and sayings of the Lord are all first-halfs of conversations. Myriad heroes of the faith, in Scripture and out, testified to having a dialogue with God – some saints (as all believers can be classified) even contending, pleading, sometimes disagreeing with the Lord. Only good can come from increased and sincere communication.

By the way, all of us have dialogues with God every day already. Perhaps continuously if not continually. That is the “channel” of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. Sometimes the Holy Spirit masquerades (ha) as our “consciences,” but there is conversation. If it occasionally seems like a one-way conversation, so be it. Our silence – or God’s seeming silence, sometimes – can speak volumes. The Creator of your soul is not going to let you drift away.

So here is a dialogue I imagined recently, between one of our fellow mortals and God Almighty:

Lord, I am sorry to have been out of touch, but I’m really hurting right now.

You know that I want you to share your burdens with Me.

Things are not going great in my life. I pray, dear God, that you can change my rotten circumstances.

Is that everything that troubles you?

Lord, there is so much more. My finances, my job situation, are really on the edge…

And you ask Me to…

Lord, I plead with You to change my circumstances! I’m drowning!

Your family and friends, are they by your side?

God, that’s part of the circumstances. I’ve let my marriage fall apart. I have let my friends become strangers. You can do all things! Can you fix these awful circumstances?

I know all these things, My child. I have been waiting to hear from you…

Father, forgive me; I know what I have done. I have not sought You out lately. I’ve been out of touch. That’s a circumstance, too, that I need healed. I am hurting and desperate. Can you change my circumstances?I need You!

My beloved child, I don’t need to change your circumstances. I need to change YOU.

I have offered the way. You need to change you. Draw closer to Me… Love My Son…

… and, My child…

Let’s have some more dialogues, OK?

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I Speak Jesus

7-14-25

We heard this week of the nightmarish floods in central Texas, and we saw, too, the landscape of devastation that brutally swept away a wide swath of land, houses, and recreational sites. We also learned of Camp Mystic, a Christian kids’ site, where dozens of young girls disappeared in a rising and rushing wall of water. Many people are missing, perhaps never to be found.

Early on July 4, 2025, the Guadalupe River at Kerrville was flowing at three cubic feet per second, according to USA Today. At that rate, it would fill an Olympic-size pool in eight hours. But soon after sunrise that day it was gushing at 134,000 cubic feet per second, a rate that would fill the same pool in less than a second. The river height surged from fewer than 12 inches to more than 34 feet.

Among the heartbreak we all shared with victims and families, there were stories of bravery, sacrifice, and faith. Young female Christian campers sang hymns and Gospel songs while the horrors still swirled. Boys up and down the Guadalupe River saved lives. Parents of drowned children told the world they knew their kids were in a better place, in the arms of God.

“The rain falls on the just and the unjust”… and so, obviously, does rainwater-turned-floodwater. The full verse from Matthew Chapter 5 is He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. In other words, our rewards and punishments are in the afterlife; and in the meantime in this world that is beautiful but also corrupted by humankind’s sin, we experience both conditions apart from our innocence or merit.

There are ignorant cynics whose knee-jerk reactions to events like the Hill Country floods are “How can a loving God allow…” and “What sins did those little girls commit…?” Christians occasionally ask the same questions. Naturally. But we live among disasters, tragedies, and horrors every day of our lives. They touch all our lives. Questions are scarcely ever asked, however; and answers are seldom discussed, despite the fact that they are right before us. Not easy answers, but solvable.

I will ask a few; and answer them all.

We bemoan the drug problem in America. Tons of drugs illicitly arrive at, and through, our borders. Millions of Americans are addicted; hundreds of thousands are dying. Criminal cartels manage this toxic invasion.

How to stop this condition, end this nightmare? – Monitor the border? Stop the Chinese from manufacturing, and Mexico smuggling? Lock up dealers? NO. Let us eliminate the demand. If this were a thoroughly Christian nation, there would be few customers for drugs. End of that problem.

We note the scabrous reality of human trafficking in America. Millions of people have pierced the borders, and the government has no idea of their numbers or locations… or activities now that they have blended into the population. Many children are sexually exploited; women are abused; millions are working as virtual slaves in fields, factories, and homes.

How to stop this condition, end this nightmare? – Arrest every human trafficker? Deport every child and abused woman? Stop the smuggling at the sources, lock up gang leaders? NO. Let us eliminate the demand. If this were a thoroughly Christian nation, there would be few customers for prostitutes, child pornographers, vulnerable people. End of that problem.

The shocking numbers of fatherless homes and illegitimate children? If this were a thoroughly Christian nation, the family unit would return and be respected; sex would cease being a vile sport. The sin, and emotional scarring, of abortion? If this were a thoroughly Christian nation, people would be responsible, and be repulsed by the idea of killing babies. Abuse, violence, crime? If this were a thoroughly Christian nation, people would respect others… and themselves, again.

The stark truth is that most of our societal, cultural, and moral crises in America would virtually disappear if there were no market for them.

If and when that millennium comes – if average people came to their senses and returned to decent standards and Christian values – we would still have the challenge of those who profit from these awful acts. I do not mean only the dealers, traffickers, and gangs. I mean Hollywood, the TV producers, popular singers, publishers who promote the deadly problems we face – the hidden enemies who glamorize illicit sex; glorify violence; ridicule the nuclear family; normalize a drug culture; and denigrate religion.

Their operations might dry up, if the hungry audience disappears and ceases to provide the demand. None of these people will go away easily. But life is not a game; our nation and our children, and the very Kingdom of God, are at stake. Remember that Jesus said that He had come not only to bring peace to the earth, but also a sword, the weapon that divides and severs.

My word to America 2025 is from II Chronicles 7. It has become a familiar verse lately, cited by people who pray for revival – but I believe wrongly cited. Many people plead to God that He will bring revival, but that is not how He works. We must bring revival… kindle the souls of the people… mend our ways, ourselves.

People should practice all the admonitions in this chapter, which includes:

The Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to Myself for a house of sacrifice.

If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people; if My people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land…

But if ye turn away, and forsake My statutes and My commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them, Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of My land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for My name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations.

And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passeth by it; so that He shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and unto this house?

And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath He brought all this evil upon them.

Have we forsaken the God of our fathers? The supply of sin is abundant, but can we end our insatiable demand for it? As a nation, we are demonstrating that we love sin more than we love our Father God.

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Brian Delaney performs Gram Parson’s jeremiad Sin City in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn, where Gram died, too young.

Sin City

7-7-25

This week I share an article I wrote for The American Spectator magazine. It was occasioned by the death of Jimmy Swaggart, one of Christianity’s great evangelists and certainly the premier “televangelist.” I knew him slightly – more specifically, I interviewed him several times as I worked some years ago on a projected book about him and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis.

More than that, I was a follower of his ministry and was baptised in the Spirit – became a Pentecostal – under his teaching. My family and I attended many crusades. Through “ups and downs,” as people will ask; and my wife and I are weekly worshipers today. His son Donnie and grandson Gabriel carry the message admirably, teaching and preaching.

“Ups and downs”? I almost would rather learn from a human being who has been redeemed then… well, someone who suggests that he or she never has fallen. As Theodore Roosevelt said, It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

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As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Hebrews 9:27-28).

America was largely founded, substantially settled, and essentially established on Christian foundations. The models for colonies’ governments, and the blueprints for “framing” documents, were Biblical. Even Deists among the Founding Fathers generally acknowledged the Bible as their guide for designing constitutions and the governing documents.

America’s spiritual moorings were derived from more than such influences, however. The nation often has had “parallel leadership” from among Christian figures. Pilgrims came to the New World in search of religious freedom. Among them were Puritans. Before the Revolution – and helping to fuel its liberty-loving fervor – was the Great Awakening. Preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley brothers were enormously influential throughout the colonies and new United States. In the next generations the Second Great Awakening, and religious figures like Henry Ward Beecher and his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe persuasively argued against slavery and for social reform. Open-air revival meetings were conducted on Wall Street and other major sites.

… and so through much of American history. No matter the tenor of political changes and social trends, preachers, evangelists, and Gospel songwriters influenced broad swaths of American culture. Camp-meetings as Americans moved Westward; massive urban revivals; new denominations. Clergy as best-selling authors and influential lecturers have always been prominent in public debates. The D L Moodys, Billy Sundays, Aimee Semple McPhersons, and Father Coughlins of yesterday prefigured “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham.

While one segment of America was discovering Jesus in California in the 1960s and ‘70s – the “Jesus Movement” on the beaches – another revolution was sweeping through more traditional neighborhoods, families, and denominations: Pentecostalism. There were many leaders, including Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. They sustained ostracism from mainstream denominations, yet they flourished. Many of them built huge empires that eventually were undermined by corruption and scandals, frequently self-inflicted.

The death of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who died on July 1, 2025, is a case in point. He became a figure of major influence in American religious life and even politics, endured scandal and self-abasement, and was an actor in a sad but not uncommon scenario… but his last chapters reflected redemption and “overcoming.” His flock remained with him, or regrouped. He rebuilt his major Pentecostal movement through fidelity to its basic tenets, but also by shifting the focus and presentation of his message, or God’s message as He received it.

Forty years ago Jimmy Swaggart was invited to the White House by Ronald Reagan; and last year a new president, Donald Trump, placed calls to his office. In the 1980s Swaggart graced the covers of weekly news magazines; recently he was feted at his 90th birthday celebration by the likes of Bill Gaither and Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham who once disdained his style of preaching and much of its substance. Between the “first and second” Swaggarts he also overcame near-universal opprobrium after being caught with prostitutes.

By the time of his death Swaggart was the longest-running televangelist and possibly the most prominent expositor of Protestant Christianity in the world; certainly the leading exponent of Pentecostalism, which is sweeping the globe, especially south of the Equator. His ministry of frequent and massive crusades across America and in numerous overseas countries was supplanted by a media ministry, the only 24/7 Christian cable channel offering exclusive programming of a single ministry. Myriad worship services originate in his large headquarters in Baton Rouge LA; he published a monthly magazine and produced dozens of CDs and DVDs featuring his own distinctive performances and those of his large and talented worship team. Scores of published books and tracts written by Swaggart are ministry staples.

Over his career Swaggart inadvertently provided an additional meaning to the Biblical phrase “Born Again.”

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Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on the Ides of March, 1935, within months of his cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a pioneer of rock and roll; and Mickey Gilley, the popular country-music star whose nightclub Gilley’s was the setting of the movie Urban Cowboy. The clan – whose family tree resembles, rather, a twisted vine – counts other piano-playing preachers and recording stars. Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee’s sister), for instance, began her career in the 1960s and still records and performs, with a large following in Europe as a rockabilly queen. That family tree, planted and nurtured around little Ferriday LA, is replete with inter-marriage, multiple marriages (Jerry and Linda Gail each having tied the knot seven times through the years), adultery, and illegitimate siblings and cousins. In that medley, Jimmy and Jerry Lee were double first-cousins.

Jimmy Swaggart himself had one marriage, to Frances Anderson of Wisner LA; and one child, Donnie, who was named after Swaggart’s older brother who died in infancy. It is curious to note that Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles all had older brothers who died in accidents when they were boys. The rural South of the 1930s dished up a strange, but common, set of touchstones – tragedy, poverty, violence, music, religious fundamentalism.

After his hardscrabble family of drinkers, roustabouts, and lawbreakers got saved in a tent revival, young Jimmy felt a calling to be an evangelist. After his marriage at age 17 (Frances was 15), they travelled with Donnie and a lone accordion, singing Gospel songs and preaching – initially to sparse groups, and sleeping in their car or in church basements.

In 1957 his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, recently signed to a recording contract with Elvis’s label Sun Records, mightily defined rock ‘n’ roll with massive hit songs like Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and Great Balls Of Fire, making tens of thousands of dollars a night and appearing on network TV. Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips of Sun Records arranged to launch a Gospel line with Swaggart its featured performer. But the young evangelist declined the offer, believing that God wanted him to preach, not sing.

Swaggart was destined – called – to do both.

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In the late ‘50s Swaggart gradually expanded his ministry from small churches and modest tent revivals to larger crusades, recording traditional Southern Gospel songs and attracting radio air time. The dynamic music was “bait,” he said, to draw people to the preaching; and vice versa in other cases.

Through the 1970s and ‘80s, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries grew exponentially. He established a church in Baton Rouge, Family Worship Center; he founded a Bible College; his radio empire expanded to television, buying time on stations to form a de facto network; crusades became major events in major venues in major cities… expanding to mass meetings in many countries around the world, often filling entire stadiums. Many of his singers and musicians, like Janet Paschal and John Starnes, graduated to successful solo careers. By the mid-1980s his telecast, now a full hour in length, was carried on 250 stations. Swaggart’s template for crusades was a Friday evangelistic message; a Saturday “invitation service” for people to respond to altar calls; and a Sunday service explaining the Gifts of the Spirit for those eager to receive them.

The on-stage evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was electric – a handsome, talented, exuberant musician, singer, and preacher. Inevitably his anointed messages were accompanied by sweat and tears and “hard” preaching – against sin, apostasy, liberal theology, “dead churches,” and such. He had little trouble criticising rival preachers, some by name; and he received criticism back. The Christian Right was ascendant in politics at the time; Pentecostal and Charismatic ministries were naturally compatible with those social and political impulses.

But “Pride goeth before a fall,” and a spate of scandals soiled the Pentecostal movement in the mid-1980s. Jim Bakker had sex with a church secretary and was later sent to jail for financial improprieties at the tacky Christian theme park established by him and his tacky wife Tammy Faye. Jerry Falwell, who had successfully penetrated the political world through his Moral Majority, embarrassed himself in the scramble for Bakker’s empire. Oral Roberts said that God would kill him if supporters fell short of donation-goals. (The goal was met, and the Lord did not immediately take Roberts’s life.) Ministers engaged in “Name It and Claim It” promises, and invented a seductive “Prosperity Gospel.” Many other ministries were embroiled, seemingly every other month, in sex or financial or doctrinal scandals.

An Elmer Gantry-type if there ever were one, Swaggart continued his hellfire preaching at the time, severely criticizing many of his fellow evangelists on moral and theological grounds. Many rapacious “reporters” like Geraldo Rivera and CNN’s John Camp devoted themselves to finding chinks in Swaggart’s armor. Beyond defending himself and the Gospel, his attitude and body language in interviews signalled the Pride about which Scripture warns.

Indeed it foreshadowed a fall – from grace, from a mass following, and from respect and respectability in the Christian world. In 1988 a rival Louisiana preacher with whom Swaggart had tussled caught Jimmy with a prostitute, in a cheap motel outside New Orleans. The preacher’s men took photographic evidence and slashed Swaggart’s tires. A nation-wide scandal ensued; Swaggart confessed in an apology to God and Frances and Donnie that was picked up by a multitude of TV stations and magazine covers. His tear-stained face and contorted expression were cemented in the public’s mind as the new face of Pentecostalism. Swaggart’s denomination, the Assemblies of God, rebuked him and ordered corrective steps designed to rehabilitate the preacher and rescue his ministry.

Swaggart accepted some discipline, ignored other recommendations. He self-exiled, but returned to his pulpit sooner than the AG ruled. The denomination eventually revoked Swaggart’s ministry credentials. Offerings and donations drastically dropped. Enrollment at the Bible College fell from 1451 to 370. Grass grew in the cracks of Family Worship Center’s parking lots.

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During these very times I was working on a project about the Cousins Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mickey Gilley. I had interviewed all three and many of their relatives, associates, even students at Swaggart’s Bible College. Even a prostitute he was caught with.

His confession aligned with the facts. Whether his apologies – more correctly, signs of repentance – were sincere, became a matter of fierce debate.

After the service at which he returned to the pulpit, I approached him and expressed the hope that his failing, and what I assumed would be his repentance and rehabilitation, could make for a powerful message to a public comprised, after all, of sinners and flawed people. And that I would tell that story without tabloid flavors. He replied with what I have since called a Pentecostal No: “Brother Marschall, I’ll pray about it.”

In Jimmy Swaggart’s message that day, the theme centered on the Biblical figure of King David – that he too (I add the “too,” because it was obvious Swaggart drew a comparison to himself) engaged in lust and adultery, and was guilty of much. But none of that, Swaggart noted, changed the fact that God had a call on David’s life. With that anointing, David eventually carried out amazing tasks that God had set before him.

It was a facile argument, given the circumstances in Baton Rouge that morning, and yet it was theologically sound.

The road that Jimmy Swaggart walked thereafter, whether out of desperation or by design – his or God’s – has been unique. Perhaps it was a strategic withdrawal from the ministry’s program. The overseas crusades largely ended, as did many stateside crusades. The face-to-the-world aspect of his ministry became the home church, Family Worship Center, featuring three services a week and various camp meetings and special conferences. An extensive media ministry was established through his new outlet, SonLife Broadcasting. A core group of staffers, musicians, singers, and teachers remained, loyally. A children’s ministry was expanded.

The ministry outreach grew, particularly exegetical material (Swaggart’s Bible studies total more than 7500 pages). He claimed a divine revelation that directed him to address “the message of the Cross,” asserting that aspect of Jesus’s sacrifice as the proper focus of Christians’ faith. In the course of his latter-day ministry activities I have joined those who believe his ultimate repentance was sincere.

Swaggart was joined in the pulpit by his son Donnie and grandson Dr Gabriel Swaggart. In the years before his death they assumed virtually all the ministry duties, excellently – breaking a pattern of many televangelists’ kids being weak shadows of their fathers, with the exception of Franklin Graham.

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In Jimmy Swaggart’s last decades his fervent delivery mellowed, but not his message. Hellfire themes continued. He never softened his Pentecostal distinctives (his son and grandson emphasize the Gifts even more than he had), and his publications and sermons continued to attack false doctrines and flawed theology in some denominations.

If parts of the general public did not know, or forgot, who Jimmy Swaggart was, it was due to his decision to “feed the sheep” and focus on his congregation; on SonLife’s media outreach; and sharing his theological brand. Appeals for, say, hospitals in India were supplanted by campaigns to provide thousands of Expositor’s Study Bibles to countries around the world. These were important goals of Swaggart until the end, and along the way he acquired new friends (as calls from Donald Trump, Bill Gaither, Mike Lindell and a wide variety of others attest) and in new fields of activity. Gabe, and especially Donnie, became increasingly active and vocal in conservative politics.

… which brings to the fore, full-circle perhaps, the traditional and essential place of Christianity in American life. Jimmy Swaggart’s ultimate re-emergence and influence, and a new (or renewed) America where Donnie Swaggart is invited to White House prayer meetings, and Gabe Swaggart is honored at the Louisiana State Senate, testifies to an important aspect of faith – ultimately, “overcoming” in this corrupt world. The perseverance that lifted the piano-playing preacher from Ferriday, Louisiana was largely spiritual but also spoke of definition and redefinition; of dispensing and seeking forgiveness; of knowing God and making Him known. Somehow, an American story too.

Jimmy Swaggart’s struggles, victories, and personal “overcoming” will be a testament living beyond his grave.

He breathed his last earthly breath, as country folks say, about 8:30 a.m. on July 1, 2025. Donnie made the announcement on various ministry platforms, and quoted a verse from II Timothy that his father cited as he was slipping away in recent months:I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.

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Looking For A City