A SONG FOR HEAVEN’S PREACHER
An Unforgettable Farewell to Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart
Over 20,000 mourners stood shoulder to shoulder under a soft, silver sky outside Family Worship Center—the very sanctuary where the Gospel had once thundered from Jimmy Swaggart’s voice to the corners of the world. That morning, there were no sermons. No altar calls. No booming organ. Just silence. A holy hush. And the presence of grief wrapped tightly around a community in mourning.
They came from everywhere — Baton Rouge locals who had grown up on the pews of that church, former addicts who had found Christ through Jimmy’s midnight television messages, old-timers who remembered the tent revivals in the 1960s, and wide-eyed young believers who had only heard stories of a man who once stirred the souls of nations with nothing more than a piano and a voice.
Then, through the quiet, a single figure stepped forward.
Alan Jackson — country music legend, believer, and friend — walked slowly to the front of the outdoor platform. He wore no flash, no glamour. Just a black suit, boots damp from the morning dew, and his signature white cowboy hat, which he removed as he reached the microphone.
He didn’t greet the crowd. He didn’t explain his presence.
He simply bowed his head for a long moment, then looked upward.
And with that unmistakable southern drawl — worn in the best way, full of grit and grace — he began to sing.
“If I surveyed all the good things that come to me from above…”
It was “I Want to Stroll Over Heaven With You” — a song as tender as it was timeless. And on this day, it wasn’t just a song. It was a prayer. A promise. A final offering.
Alan’s voice rang out, clear and reverent, with no background vocals, no band. Just a single acoustic guitar strumming slow chords into the gray Louisiana morning. The lyrics floated through the air like incense. The kind of song you don’t just hear — you feel.
“He preached like Heaven was real,” Alan whispered between verses, his voice catching slightly. “And now… I believe he’s walking those streets.”
Behind him, a towering black-and-white portrait of Jimmy Swaggart overlooked the crowd — eyes closed mid-prayer, mouth open mid-song, fingers once locked in praise over his beloved ivory keys. Below the portrait sat his casket, adorned not with celebrity fanfare, but with a single worn Bible and a white cloth that read, “To God be the glory.”
The crowd listened.
They didn’t move.
They didn’t blink.
Some held hands. Others clutched tissues. Many simply wept openly.
And then, as Alan reached the second chorus — “I want to stroll over Heaven with you some glad day…” — a murmur began among the people. One voice joined in. Then another. Then thousands. Slowly, tenderly, a sea of believers raised their voices.
It wasn’t rehearsed.
It wasn’t beautiful in the musical sense.
But it was real.
And Heaven hears real.
They sang as one — not for entertainment, but for eternity.
For Jimmy.
For the man who once said, “I am nothing without the cross. Nothing without Jesus. I am only what grace has made me.”
Somewhere behind the stage, Frances Swaggart sat in a small chair, eyes closed, lips moving silently in prayer. She clutched the final letter Jimmy had written her the day before he passed — just seven words scribbled in faded ink: “Keep preaching. Don’t let the fire die.”
And on that day, under that sky, the fire didn’t die.
It flickered in the voices of thousands.
It trembled in Alan’s final line:
“I want to stroll over Heaven with you…”
And when the final chord faded into the hush of the crowd, Alan removed his hat once more, stepped back, and bowed. No words. No encore. Just stillness.
Because this wasn’t a farewell concert.
It was a testimony in song.
The kind that rises like incense toward a place where pulpits never fall silent, and where the preacher — the broken, forgiven, beloved preacher — now walks streets of gold, finally whole.
As the crowd remained quiet, a soft wind blew through the oak trees surrounding the worship center. Leaves rustled like the turning of pages in a worn Bible. Then, from somewhere in the distance, a single white dove soared skyward.
And in that moment, it was as if Heaven itself whispered back:
“Well done, my good and faithful servant… welcome home.”