The famed Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, the Louisiana-born televangelist and founder of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, was hospitalized Sunday after suffering a cardiac arrest.
At a special evening prayer service at the center, Swaggart’s son, Donnie Swaggart, told parishioners that he and his son, Gabriel, found the reverend, 90, unconscious at his home at around 8 a.m. on Sunday and immediately called an ambulance. Medical personnel were able to restart Jimmy Swaggart’s heart.
“This morning at a little after 8, Gabe and I rushed into mother’s house,” Donnie Swaggart said. “Dad had gone into cardiac arrest. He never regained consciousness. We both took turns giving him chest compressions until EMT could get there. I’ve never seen so many people arrive at one time, and I want to thank them. They were able to get a heartbeat back.”
Donnie Swaggart added: “Right now, he is in ICU, and without a miracle, his time will be short. But we believe God — we’re not giving up. We’ve already told the doctors we don’t want to hear anything from them. We will make decisions in our own time. But we’re going to give the Lord an opportunity to work.”
Swaggart began his career as a televangelist in 1975, starting Jimmy Swaggart Ministries and the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College in Baton Rouge. He published dozens of Christian books, and in the 1980s, when his program appeared on more than 250 TV stations, he traveled to South and Central America on ministry trips.
However, his popularity declined in the late 1980s after he confessed to adultery and was implicated in a scandal involving prostitutes, which caused him to lose his clerical authority in the Pentecostal cooperative organization, the Assemblies of God, and forced his church to leave the denomination.
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