As a continuation from Part-1 , or should I say the conclusion I shall focus more on the evangelists' victims namely the elderly. Let's begin with that honky tonk piano playing whiz and good ole' boy Jimmy Swaggart.

Having had the knack since early childhood to espouse the Gospel according to "Jimmy" in public "arenas", it almost came second nature to "Swaggart" to get the attention of people at various rallys that he spoke at. So it did not come as a surprise to anyone when he made the transition from pulpit preacher to a super slick tele-evangelist on a national scale. Being a cousin of rock and roll great Jerry Lee Lewis, one could see the remarkable similarities in a show business kind of way when it came to entertaining an audience. Plain and simply put, he was a natural.

With his natural flair on the piano and that down home country good looks with that slicked back hair, he crashed on the Christian television scene like a comet descending from heaven. His audience mostly made up of seniors and shut-ins, poured dollar after dollar of their pittance of an income into his ministry when they barely could afford to feed and clothe themselves. Many of these poor destitute souls lost their entire savings to this "agent" of God and because in the end they felt so embarrassed for being "taken" they literally refused to seek their money back nor have him charged with a felony.

As the years passed and as Swaggart became hugely wealthy from ripping off his flock of "suckers" he started to become just a bit over confident until one day his followers woke up to a national headline stating "Swaggart caught with prostitute"! Well to make a long story short, good ole' boy Jimmy's ministry practically disappeared overnight. Following the many investigations that followed this "scandal", Swaggart all but disappeared from the airwaves until the late 1990's when he sought forgiveness from the public for his errant ways. Well wouldn't you know it, redemption came all too easy for Mr. Swaggart once more and now each Sunday his "message" is broadcast to millions nationally , and the coffers of his ministry are once more overflowing to the tune of millions of dollars. The not so surprising thing about all of this is that a lot of his "income" is derived from those very same "poor souls" that were preyed on by him oh' so many years ago. I guess it is true the old phrase " that if one does not learn from past mistakes then history is surely to repeat itself.!

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