“I’ll Carry It From Here”: Gabriel Swaggart’s Tearful Tribute Echoes Through His Grandfather’s Final Farewell
The lights inside Family Worship Center were dimmed—not for a sermon, not for a song of celebration, but for a goodbye. At the front of the sanctuary, resting beneath soft white roses and the worn Bible he had preached from for more than sixty years, lay the casket of Jimmy Swaggart. The man who once roared with conviction behind pulpits across the world now rested in stillness at the altar where it all began. And then, through the quiet, his grandson appeared.
Gabriel Swaggart didn’t come to preach. He didn’t offer fiery words or calls to repentance. He came with a song. A song that meant something. A song his grandfather had cherished all his life. Holding a weathered microphone in both hands, Gabriel paused, his voice low and thick with emotion as he whispered, “This was his favorite song… and he left it for us.”
The piano began—slow, reverent, each note falling like soft rain. Gabriel’s voice followed, unsteady at first, but honest and unfiltered. “I don’t know why Jesus loved me,” he sang, each word soaked in memory. “I don’t know why He cared…” It wasn’t a performance. It was personal. It was mourning turned into melody. You could hear it—the quiet ache of loss, the gratitude of a grandson standing in the long shadow of a spiritual giant, the silent vow to keep walking the path that had been cleared before him.
As he sang, people bowed their heads. Some closed their eyes. Others wiped tears from their cheeks. There was no spectacle here. No spotlight. Just one voice, trembling in the silence, lifting a prayer that had lived in Jimmy Swaggart’s heart long before the world ever knew his name. And as the final note faded into the stillness of the sanctuary, Gabriel stepped closer to the casket. He reached out, laid a hand gently on the wood, and said, barely above a whisper, “Thank you, Papaw. I’ll carry it from here.”
Then he stepped back. No one clapped. No one moved. There was no need. Because in that moment, something eternal had taken place. A chapter had closed, yes—but something had also been passed down. Not a performance. Not a platform. A promise. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was sacred. It was the kind of silence that holds more than words ever could—faith, love, legacy, and the weight of everything unspoken between generations. And in that silence, Gabriel didn’t just sing his grandfather home. He picked up the torch.