That whole
Jimmy Swaggart debacle ran deeper than most people know. During Swaggart's ministry's expansionary years; he had wanted Assemblies of God (AOG) minister and evangelist Marvin Gorman's support base as it was the largest in Louisiana at the time and overlapping with and competing against his own. So like any good businessman, Swaggart hired a private detective to follow Gorman around and sniff out any dirt he could find on the man. He hit pay dirt.
Apparently, Gorman was involved in various adulterous sexual affairs and liaisons. So, Swaggart exposed him and Gorman was defrocked from the AOG, abandoned by his base in shame, and his ministry ended. Without even a "reach around" (e.g. compensation of any sort whatsoever), Swaggart then swooped in and picked up Gorman's old support base expanding his own empire further exactly as he had planned.
While, as you can imagine, Gorman was
furious. So he launched a carefully orchestrated retaliatory attack of his own on Swaggart that was two-pronged.
The first prong was to divert Swaggart's attention by slapping him with a $90 million dollar libel case. It worked. Swaggart became consumed with fighting it. Ultimately, Gorman
did win his lawsuit and the jury awarded Gorman's television and crusade ministries $9 million with an additional $600,000 for defamation and $400,000 for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
But, of course, the jury award was mere peanuts to the monetary amounts these guys were used to working with. Swaggart's ministry often topped out at more than $150 million a year at the time. Much more importantly, the lawsuit had put stress on Swaggart (stress can cause people to engage in stress relieving behaviors that may not be moral) while diverting his attention from the retaliatory move Gorman had planned.
For Gorman had hired a private detective who had gotten the goods on Swaggart's own sexual misconduct. To trap Swaggart, Gorman hired his son Randy and son-in-law Garland Bilbo to stake out the Travel Inn on Airline Highway in New Orleans where they used a camera with a telephoto lens in the window of the motel's Room 12 draped with a black cloth and caught Swaggart on photos with Debra Murphree a local prostitute.
Revenge time had arrived. Gorman went to the AOG with his file on Swaggart and turned it in. Despite Swaggart's enormous power and influence, the AOG followed their disciplinary policy to a tee and immediately suspended Swaggart for three months and then soon extended the suspension to their standard two-year suspension for sexual immorality. Believing that Swaggart was not genuinely repentant; the AOG defrocked him, removed his credentials and ministerial license, and distanced themselves.
You can't make this stuff up folks. It's a real world soap opera I tell you.
Jimmy Swaggart consorted with prostitutes at the height of his TV ministry. During that time, he was condemning other tele-evangelists for their sins. When the Assemblies of God, his governing body tried to discipline him, he refused and kept right on with his ministry. He is NOT a good example of a teacher you should be listening to. In fact, neither is Hagee, who is a Word of Faith teacher, who doesn't know the Bible and puts his own spin on everything. My thought is if you want answers, go to the Bible, not TV evangelists.
