When Principle Was King

WHEN PRINCIPLE WAS KING

The Life and Principles of Dr. Jack Hyles

By: Bob Gray Sr.

Solve Church Problems

P.O. Box 150484 ~ Longview, Texas 75615 ~ (903)576-1307

IndependetBaptist.com

©2012-Bob Gray, Sr.

Published by Bob Gray Sr. at Smashwords

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There have been many dear mentors, colleagues, friends, church members, staff members, and family who have contributed greatly to my ministry and to this manuscript. Their encouragement has been unspeakably endless. I am approaching my thirty-ninth year in the ministry and have had the wonderful privilege to pastor thirty-three of those years with ministries averaging from ninety to ten thousand members. Every friendship has been precious to me. However, there is an unsung group of heroines who have often gone unnoticed here on earth, but certainly will not go unnoticed at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Lord has blessed me with some of the most talented lady staff members a pastor could ever have had the privilege of working with side by side. Their contribution to this manuscript cannot and will not be overlooked. I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for these dear ladies who, throughout the years, have made my work appear better than it really was.

*Mrs. Annette Martin*Miss Debbie Billadeau

*Mrs. Jennifer Petticoffer*Mrs. Diana Faye Ayres

*Mrs. Lu Anne Spencer*Mrs. Cheryl Zinn

*Mrs. Pam Smith*Mrs. Crystal Matney

*Mrs. Amy Walters*Mrs. Mary Robinson

*Mrs. Karen Forgy*Mrs. Martha Duckett

*Mrs. Stacy Freeman*Mrs. Nicole Clapp

*Mrs. Karen Mendez*Mrs. Debbie Kilpatrick

*Mrs. Joy Bleak*Mrs. Heather Alderson

*Mrs. Elaine Howie*Mrs. Charity Gabucci

PROLOGUE

Jack Frasure Hyles

1926-2001

First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, was founded in 1888. Little did Dr. Hyles know that his ministry would grow into a great local church and would develop into a nationwide and even worldwide impact on Christianity.

The church grew from a weekly attendance of 700 to 20,000.

The church baptized 10,000 converts a year for his last five years as pastor.

4,000 soul winners a week

The Spanish Ministry averaged 2,000 a Sunday.

The church had the largest Deaf Ministry in the world.

The church ran over 200 Sunday school bus routes a Sunday.

The church started their own Rescue Mission.

The church has the largest Educable Slow Ministry in the world.

The church operated Hyles-Anderson College, with over 2,500 students, on an 88 acre campus.

Over 3,000 graduates from HAC

The church operated Hammond Baptist Grade School, Junior High School, and Hammond Baptist High School on a 26 acre campus.

The church operated Hammond City Baptist High School for Chicago children.

The church hosted an ANNUAL NATIONWIDE PASTORS’ SCHOOL the third week in March, with thousands of pastors attending.

The church hosted an ANNUAL NATIONWIDE YOUTH CONFERENCE averaging 7,000 teens a year.

The First Baptist Church, since August 1959, had grown to a membership of 100,000.

Property values grew from $70,000 to $70,000,000.

Dr. Hyles authored 46 books and pamphlets with sales over 14 million.

Dedication to Russell Anderson

By the end of this year I will have published my thirty-first book. I believe this book will, perhaps, be the most important work God has allowed me to do thus far. None of this would have transpired had it not been for the influences of my family, my staff, my church, and my preacher friends who have brought much to light on this book in the past few years.

I owe everything to my Saviour and to those men of God who mentored, corrected, encouraged, and befriended me: men like Dr. John R. Rice, Dr. Lee Roberson, Dr. Tom Malone, Dr. Curtis Hutson, and, of course, the subject of this book, Dr. Jack Frasure Hyles.

Throughout the history of God’s work there have always been men behind these men of God who, as laymen, were a key part of the work. Often, they have greatly helped in a financial way. God sent Russell Anderson to Dr. Hyles as He has done hundreds of times for other great men of God in history. Their God-given gift with finances was given to the cause of Christ and such is the story of Russell Anderson.

One of the greatest Christian businessmen in history was a Philadelphia philanthropist and retailing pioneer, John Wanamaker, who developed a chain of department stores on the East Coast in the 1800’s. This chain of stores lasted almost two centuries. In his lifetime he helped to support one of the greatest evangelistic crusades in our nation’s history. He purchased the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad Station, the largest building in Philadelphia, for D. L. Moody’s record-breaking crusades. He also built hospitals, churches, colleges, and Sunday schools. Mr. Wanamaker gave over twenty million dollars to God’s work!

Another example was Henry P. Crowell, affectionately called The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. After hearing a sermon by D. L. Moody, the young Crowell prayed, I can’t be a preacher, but I can be a good businessman. God, if you will let me make money, I will use it in your service. That is exactly what he did! He bought a little run down Quaker Mill in Ravenna, Ohio. Within ten years Quaker Oats was a household staple to millions. Mr. Crowell gave sixty to seventy percent of his income to God’s work.

The prolific inventor of earth-moving machinery, R. G. Letourneau, once said in an interview for Forbes Magazine, I’d like to do two things. One is to design machines, turn on the power and see them work. The other is to turn on the power of the Gospel and see it work in people’s lives. When he died he held over 300 patents, one being his monster earth-moving machine which weighed 200,000 pounds and could cut a thirty-five foot swath through a jungle, knocking down trees five feet in diameter and shredding them up. Besides giving up to ninety percent of his income to the Lord, he would fly anywhere he was able to speak about Jesus Christ.

The story of William Colgate is fascinating. As a sixteen-year-old lad he left home with all of his possessions tied in a small bundle to seek his fortune. He met an old canal boat captain whom he told that his dad was too poor to keep him and the only trade he knew was soap and candle making. The old captain knelt and prayed for William and led him to Christ! The captain told him, Someone will soon be the leading soap-maker in New York. It might as well be you. Be a good and an honest man and pay the Lord all that belongs to him, make an honest soap: give a full pound, and God will bless you and make you a rich man. As a result, William Colgate gave millions of dollars to the Lord’s work.

There are many other similar stories of laymen who gave millions to God’s work. As great as these stories are, perhaps no one in history has given more to the work of God than Dr. Russell Anderson. Up to the present, he has already given thirty-five million dollars to God’s work. He is the Anderson part of Hyles-Anderson College.

On a Sunday morning in 1962, Dr. Anderson and his family visited First Baptist Church. When the service ended, a member of the church, who was a widow, asked the Andersons if they had any plans for lunch. When they told her they did not, she invited them for lunch at her home. This little act of kindness helped to begin a lifelong friendship with Dr. Hyles.

Born in Hunter, Kentucky, on May 16, 1931, Dr. Russell Anderson was a Kentucky coal miner. His coal-mining dad and hard working housewife mother had six children, four boys and two girls. One of the boys died very young. From these humble beginnings, Russell Anderson has emerged as a shining example of the work ethic, and the faithfulness of God toward those who live their lives according to Bible principles.

The Andersons lived in a three-room house in the mountains of Kentucky. It was not three rooms and a bath; it was three rooms and a path about 300 feet long, which led to the outhouse. Their house had no electricity and oil lamps were the only means to illuminate the house. Young Russell slept on a pallet, which was nothing but an old blanket placed on a hard, wooden floor.

At the age of eight, Russell went to work in the cornfields for fifty cents a day. To make money in the winter he trapped mink, muskrat, bear, and then sold the pelts to Sears or Montgomery Ward. He would rise at four or five in the morning to check his traps. Russell learned early in life the value of hard work and was willing to do whatever he needed to do to earn money.

He also worked in the sawmills and in the mountains as a lumberjack cutting timber. He bought an old mule to help him, which made him more valuable, so Russell received a raise in pay to two dollars a day. When he was in high school he worked in the coal mines on Saturdays and sometimes in the evenings and he was paid two dollars a day. After high school he worked full time in the coal mines for six years.

In 1955, Russell left the coal mines and moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan where he worked two jobs. It was there he learned how to finish drywall. He worked as a taper, taping the joints earning $1.50 an hour. Twelve-hour days were commonplace. In 1957, Russell and several other men invested $500 each to start their own drywall business.

In 1958, the hard working Russell took time out to marry, although he was not a Christian, to a Christian young lady named Maxine Ramsey. Her preacher would not perform the wedding ceremony, so Russell cursed him. He and the future Mrs. Anderson were forced to be married elsewhere.

After they were married, Russell did everything he could to pull his wife out of church, but she would not quit. He learned to tolerate it as long as she did not hound him about her religion. Russell eventually started attending Sunday school with his wife, and in 1959 he trusted Christ. He quickly started tithing even when he was broke. He increased it to twenty, thirty, and eventually fifty percent of his income by 1970. He gave eleven million dollars to God’s work in 1999 alone.

Eventually, he moved to Michigan and began building apartment buildings. He built ten apartments figuring he could retire on those ten. His testimony is this: Before I finished the first ten they were full, so I bought more land and built ten more. I hired a man to build the first ten, borrowing $60,000 from the bank and took $5,000 out of my pocket to pay him. On the second ten, I borrowed the entire $65,000. When I finished I had about $3,000 left over, so I borrowed more and built another five, then another fifteen until I had sixty apartments. At first I only wanted ten, but God wanted me to have sixty. By the time I finished building those first sixty apartments I had about $25,000 in the bank and no debt. God taught me what banks are for.

Dr. Anderson has done more and given more to spread the Gospel than any man in the history of Christianity. He has started numerous churches and colleges around the world and has not stopped in his endeavor to spread the Gospel. I have been privileged to share pulpits with him all across this nation. He is a personal soul winner and an avid defender of the faith. He has refused to be swept up in the fundamentalism that is being drowned in academia. He calls me his buddy. He is and has been a bridge to the great men of God of yesterday.

Few men knew Dr. Hyles in the way Dr. Anderson knew him. He knew his heart and carried with him his burden to train young preachers. I have watched him carry on with a broken heart even as he sees what is becoming of the legacy of his beloved friend. However, his friendship did not end with Dr. Hyles’ death. He continues to do all he can to carry on their vision and their mission. Hence, with a grateful heart for all he did and continues to do for our friend, Dr. Hyles, I dedicate this book to my good friend, Russell Anderson.

INTRODUCTION

This book is not the worship of a man, but rather the study of a man, just as many great men are studied long after their death. When a man does a great work in his lifetime and leaves a large legacy, we study that man to find out what he was all about.

Take, for example, President Ronald Reagan. More books have been written about him since his death then before it because he left a lasting legacy of accomplishments and influence. We are not worshiping the man, but merely studying him in light of what he achieved. Liberals attempt to either villanize him or redefine him. Conservatives try to keep his message and ideas alive for another generation. They are not suggesting that he was perfect or without error. They merely see the greatness of the man in the midst of his flaws.

What is history, anyway, other than the study of events and the individuals that shaped those events? Every great work in history is identified with individuals who influenced those events. Sometimes those are good, such as Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and others who authored the values of our great Constitution in the founding of our nation. Sometimes they are evil, such as the horrific Holocaust, which we immediately identify with a man named Adolf Hitler.

Yet, in both cases, there are those who seek to vilify the good works of men and even justify the evil works of others. The most often used method for minimizing or even rejecting the good works of a man is to attack the character of that man. If you hate the message, you will most likely attack or minimize the messenger in order to destroy the value of his message.

Most men who create a lasting legacy of influence experience the character attacks of those who seek to silence them and negate their message.

Often, the scope of a man's influence and legacy is in direct proportion to how much he is feared and hated after his death. Dr. Hyles remains a target of many because, by destroying him and his work, his enemies hope to negate his influence. Even though some will try to minimize the principles by which he lived, those principles will live on and his influence will only grow stronger. Why? Because they are Biblical: that is the reason they will live on through young men of God. The fuel of hatred will only expand the fire of his influence. Venomous attacks will only serve to strengthen the immunity to the enemies’ agenda.

When a man of great influence dies, his legacy usually leaves behind four types of people.

Followers

Admirers

Distorters

Haters

Consider Martin Luther, the great reformationist, as an example. There are those who still despise him because they despise the message he left behind. Others still admire him as a man of great courage and vision, even though they may not agree with all his ideas and principles. Then there are the followers who, still today, seek to study and perpetuate the teachings of the man and to preserve their purity.

That leaves us with the distorters. Who are they? Well, they are pseudo followers who are often very opportunistic. Like Judas, they follow closely enough to be associated with the man, but they are waiting for their moment to promote their agenda. Eventually, they expose themselves by selling out the man. Often, they build their work on the legacy of the man while slightly distorting his message or redefining him in order to accomplish their true agenda.

It is not my intent to waste my time fighting the haters. Actually, it is the distorters who should be most feared because they hide behind the men they are attempting to redefine. My goal is to shine the light on the truth, which in and of itself will expose the distortions and, in some cases, may eventually reveal who these Judases are.

What will that accomplish? First, it will strengthen the message that our generation so desperately needs. We need the authentic Jack Hyles brand of Fundamentalism today more than ever. Since we cannot bring him back we can at least study the principles that made the man and adopt them!

However, secondly and maybe just as importantly, it will divide the brethren. Why is that important? Fortunately, it will force the followers of Dr. Hyles, who have also become the followers of the distorters, to face the reality of what is happening to our movement. A few will take a stand for principle and return to their roots. Sadly, most will attempt to walk the fence while accusing others and me, plus those like me, of being dividers. Eventually, they land flatly on the side of the distorters.

Many of you see and hear the same things I do, but you want to bury your head in the sands of loyalty, unity, sentimentalism and your Alma Mater rather than being man enough to throw sand in the face of those who are shifting in the sands of their opportunism.

Men who live without principles are dangerous because they are often filled with the insatiable desire to be better than their mentors. A man who cannot live under the shadow of a great man is not a great man because it is an accumulation of principles, handed down from generation to generation, that proliferate greater works than these. It is not the absence of mentorship but the presence of mentorship that will perpetuate principled men!

The election of a pastor to a church is not the issue for us to consider. That is not as important to this book as the assumption that any particular pastor of a local church will automatically become the leader of a movement while violating the principles that helped create and motivate this movement. A church has every right to call whomever they desire, but no one has the right to tell the rest of us whom we are to follow. This movement is in the process of being commandeered. This is much like what is occurring in America.

A non-entity was elected President of the United States, and as a novice he has led us into extreme debt and an arrogant rejection of reason with a subtle attack on our very Constitution! He is a man-child at age 50! I have no choice, although I did not vote for him, for he still is my president and I must pray for him. He is, however, affecting my life as well as those who voted for him.

I am not a member of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, and I had and have no vote. However, when unscriptural statements are affecting me as well as the rest of the fundamental world, I have every right to come to the defense of the movement and one of its leaders, Dr. Jack Hyles. This is not about a pastor and a church; it is about a movement that I love dearly! I am a member of that movement!

President Obama uses the late President Ronald Reagan when he needs his name for validation, while privately distaining his principles. He is anti-Reagan! I am fearful that the fundamental movement we have all come to love is being confiscated by anti-Hyles principles!

I believe this book is needed now more than ever because if we do not go back to the principles we learned from Dr. Hyles, it may be too late to save this movement. In his book, Blue Denim And Lace, Dr. Hyles said this.

The word ‘faithful’ in the Bible comes from a word, which means ‘to be trusted’ or ‘to be reliable.’ It is a twin to the word ‘believe’ as concerning believing upon Christ for salvation. Faithfulness does not mean ‘not being unfaithful.’ Suppose a wife says that she is faithful to her husband. She may mean that she is not guilty of negative acts against her husband. On the other hand, she may not be doing anything positive for him. Faithfulness is not the absence of the negative, but the presence of the positive. For example, a person who does not come to church is unfaithful. He cannot excuse himself by saying he has not been to another church. We should discipline ourselves to be faithful to many things.

He goes on to list five things to which we should be faithful, one of which is principles.

Our loyalties should be to principles and not to institutions. Far too many of us have pledged our faithfulness and loyalty to denominations, churches, schools, etc. They change so gradually that we do not notice it; therefore, we change with them. The day comes when both institution and Christian have changed and neither realizes it. The landmark has been moved so gradually that, as is the case with the hands on the clock, it was not noticed. This is the reason we should be faithful to principles. When the institution goes outside our principles, we should hold the principles and discard the institution unless we can bring it back in proper focus with right principles. In these days of pacifism and people who fight capital punishment, laugh at discipline, disregard law and order, and disrespect authority, how we need a generation of people who are loyal and faithful to principle!

This is more than a study of a man's life. It is the study of how he lived his life by the principles he established as a young man, which defined his actions throughout his life and ministry.

Every man's life is filled with contradictions and failures. Well, every man except one and that is the God man who lived a sinless and perfect life devoid of any contradiction. Just like the written WORD! It is the mission of the enemy of the man, or should we say of his work, to attack those contradictions and failures to negate the accomplishments and influences of the man's work. It is the responsibility of his admirers and followers not to deny the failures nor to avoid the contradictions, but rather to help others discover the true message and principles by which that man lived.

It is the enemies of our government who viciously attack the morality of our forefathers. For example, did Thomas Jefferson or George Washington own slaves? If they did, I cannot condone or excuse that sin but it is not my job to judge their sins. It is my responsibility to keep alive the principles around which they built this great country. They, like us all, were sinners, but in their sin they did great things and we study them for the good they did rather than the sins they committed.

Even our perfect Lord has been accused, by those who hate his Gospel, of contradicting himself and some even attack the fact of his sinless life. Why? By attacking his character they will, hopefully, destroy His message. When we study a man, we are studying his message just as when we study the message of our Lord. Praise God that in him and only him we can also study the life of the man and see no failures, no contradictions and no sin.

We, who look at the events of the past, must be careful not to uphold any man as the example of perfection, but rather as the champion of the principles we seek to emulate. However, we must study the men in order to understand fully what they really believed and taught and even how and why they came to embrace those beliefs.

In studying them, we will be faced with the reality of certain contradictions and even evolutions in those beliefs. For example, in Ronald Reagan we see a great president whose own beliefs were sometimes in contradiction of each other. We also see a man whose beliefs and values evolved over time. The Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, was not exactly the same in his principles and values as was the Ronald Reagan, Governor of California or the Ronald Reagan, Hollywood actor.

He evolved as he grew and as he was faced with new truth and experience. We study the great man we knew as President and learn all we can about his ideas and philosophies. We do not worship him as a man, but we study the man as an example and inspiration.

However, even the friends and families of great men often cause them to be dually defined. For example, Ronald Reagan had two sons who have chosen to define their father in totally different lights. Ron, a liberal, has chosen to define his father in the light of his own liberal beliefs and ideas. To do that, he has drawn from private recollections of his father rather than the public record. He has also chosen to deny the evolution of his father's beliefs and take earlier statements and positions out of the context of the entire body of work. Those who dislike the Ronald Reagan, the President, love to point to Ron's out-of-context definitions to validate their own positions and to bring reproach upon the true public positions he espoused and many of us still follow.

Michael, in contrast, has chosen not to begin with his own context in defining his father, but by examining the entirety of the body of work of his father. His assertions are based on the public record, not of the man's private life, not private letters or conversations, nor of earlier snippets of the evolving man.

Michael points us to the Ronald Reagan of great accomplishment, influence and values while Ron wants us to ignore that truth and espouse the private Ronald Reagan. There is no validation of the so-called private Ronald Reagan. The public record is always a better record for anyone. Even more, Ron would have us accept only certain elements taken out of the context of his father's entire life and work.

There are those who hate Jack Hyles and his message. Then there are those who probably do love the man, but who like Ron, seek to define Jack Hyles by their values and principles rather than by his entire evolved body of work. They take private conversations, personal letters and subjects of an evolving Jack Hyles to justify the positions to which they espouse.

This book is not so much to expose them for their error, but rather to defend the true message of the man who is not here to defend himself. My goal is to look at the body of Jack Hyles’ ministry and message so that we do not lose the values he espoused and matured into, which allows us to pass them on to another generation in an unsullied state.

When Dr. Hyles encouraged younger preachers to emulate the young Jack Hyles, he was emphasizing the practical not the doctrinal, for both he and his peers grew doctrinally from their youth! He was hoping to find a commonality with those young preachers who came to Pastors’ School, for the delegates who were not running thousands, but hundreds. It is ridiculous logic to use that to endorse an uninspired King James Bible position. How sad!

Why is this so important? It is vital that those who care about our cause know the truth of what he stood for, not a watered down partial version. If we do not know the truth of history, we will make drastic mistakes in the future.

Some will say that the Bible is our instruction manual and that we should look only to it as our guide. Yes, but it is in the study of how men applied God's principles to their own lives, ministries and works that we learn to do so for ourselves.

The Bible itself is a study of men. We study sinners like Peter and Paul to see how they lived their lives by the principles of God's Word. We discover in the Bible how they lived and applied principles to their lives. Paul even admonished others to follow him even as he followed Christ.

However, the question arises; did people follow Dr. Hyles for his charisma rather than for his principles? The answer, in some cases, is obviously yes. He made them feel good! He encouraged them. He rallied them to follow him. Yet, could we not say the same for all great builders and leaders? Charisma is merely a tool of attention to give a leader an opportunity to teach or influence another.

Are we to assume Christ had no charisma when, in truth, people loved to be around him? Yet, most of them fled and forsook him at his death. We characterize charisma as being evil when, in reality, it is often a gift like a beautiful voice which we can choose to use for good or evil or for others or self. Ronald Reagan's charisma enabled him to further influence others for the good. Jack Hyles' did as well.

To be sure, Dr. Hyles was a charismatic leader who inspired others to follow his Lord and, in so doing, follow him. Like any