8: History of the IFB Part 5 - Jack Hyles

This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement and to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now, here's your host, John Hollifield. Hey everybody, welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. I am your host, John Hollifield, and excited about the content we're going to be covering today. As we go through this history of the IFB, we are now getting into the part where I'm going to be discussing the life and ministry of the guy who becomes the leader of the movement for a couple of decades, and that is Jack Hiles. Before we get into that, though, just some things off the top. In the world of IFB news, you have, in the structure of the Independent Fundamental Baptist, you have emerged about a decade ago what is considered the new IFB, and this is being led by a lunatic out in Arizona named Steven Anderson. And all God's people said, Amen. Never! Bluh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. No! What you see in the Hollywood movie is a lie. This is the truth. And when you come to church, you should expect to hear the truth about every subject. And tonight, you're going to hear the truth. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. I have no love. No love! Then get out of here. Get out of here! You're destroying America! It doesn't work, stupid! I'll stand up to him. Take me on! Huh? Come on! What are you going to do about it, you big bully? No! Because you know what? They are compromising, and they are tools of the media to brainwash you! and uh steven anderson got quite a cult following on youtube with his youtube page just blowing up how many of those people were actually listening to steven anderson and buying in what he said and how many of those were actually listening to make fun of what he said i don't know i know some people keep up with steven anderson just to listen to the craziness but uh he is somebody that maybe we will cover in an eventual episode but the new ifb is is not it's not huge it and it's very extreme very cultish and very abusive and um made the news this is not this actually i just found out about this but this has been going on for uh almost a month now but it hit the news that his uh sex scandal going on there at the church that he's tried to cover up and uh so you can look into this and uh do some research on there there's there's an investigation going on i think there's an investigation a formal investigation going on uh his sons were uh talking about sex you know getting turned on by sexually abusing uh girls and i think that they're out of high school but um i read some of the comments that they made and i'm not going to mention them here on the podcast because they're they're awful um but uh this is something to to look into do it basically what happened though is he's lost a lot of people in his church over this because he he's first of all he covered up tried to deal with it internally and then is going to blaming the young girls and their families and that kind of stuff like that so uh that's what's going on with steven steven anderson another bit of news not ifb news but another thing that has uh just came out a couple of days ago was a faith healer uh and a rising star maybe rising isn't even a proper thing he is a star in that faith healing world is a guy by the name of todd white now if you haven't seen the documentary american gospel you need to watch it it is fantastic it's really good uh it is now available on netflix if you don't have netflix you can go to amazon prime and rent it there uh but you need to watch it now in that they do an examination a little bit of todd white's ministry uh todd white this past sunday preached a message that i also encourage you to go find look it up on youtube and listen to it because uh what he says in that message is absolutely amazing um he really basically says that he has been preaching the wrong gospel he quotes charles spurgeon he quotes ray comfort and the way of the master which i love their evangelism things that they do and uh basically apologizes for the way he's been i mean it is it's what he says is like wow this this is this is a god thing this is awesome now uh i really want to i really hope and that is my desire that this that todd white has been converted todd white has come across come back to come to to biblical theology and his ministry is now going to change that is what i hope i really do and and listen this is not me saying this this didn't happen to this guy that's not i'm not saying that what i am saying though is i have done before i got into doing this stuff into the ifb i did do some i've done extensive research into the health wealth prosperity gospel and those guys and um if i were to say keep an eye out for things i would say uh just just just keep an ear open keep an eye out let's watch and see what happens and i say that listen please i say that with all the hope in the world that this guy really did uh was converted because this is nothing new in the health wealth prosperity movement um this honestly let me say tell you what is the other possibility of what's going on here the other possibility is that todd white is taking a page out of benny hen's handbook and doing damage control now let's let's move away from todd white for a second go over to benny hen anytime there was an examination done on benny hen's ministry you go and do the research i think there was a inside edition episode done abc news covered him anytime there's something like that that happens benny hen would then come out with some kind of big statement that he's repenting that he's changing and it never happened you know he's trying to save face and show his followers that what they exposed him for the fraud that he was he was sorry he was wrong and he is now going to do proper ministry but it never changed the most recent thing was i think a year ago uh he did this and it made waves because of social media and uh everybody said benny hen's repented benny hen's repented and benny hen said that he repented he said that what he was doing was wrong however a month later you find benny hen asking for people to sow a seed of a thousand dollars or more benny had never repented he's doing damage control now here's what could be going on with todd white this film american gospel came out and it actually came out i think a year or two years ago i want to say two years ago and uh i watched it pretty much when it first came out but it hit netflix and when it hit netflix it really started to spread many people were watching it in fact not very long ago within the last month todd white actually came out uh ridiculing the american gospel documentary and calling it done by somebody maybe demon possessed somewhere along the lines that lines he said that what could be going on is that todd white saw this and todd white has seen what's going on and is now actually trying to do some damage control now i don't want to believe that that's the case but i think we need to exercise discernment with what's going on and i really do and i encourage you i encourage you to believe that this is a true repentance but true repentance always follows action how do you know somebody is truly repented by not just what they say but have they changed their behavior if todd white has fleeced people and you have to understand what's going on what todd white used to do he'd go out in public and specifically knowingly he knew what he was doing deceive people with these leg lengthening routines that are parlor tricks that are snake oil salesman tricks that that are from start to finish deceptive that's what he would do so this is what i would look for in repent in true repentance from todd white i love what he said love love love what he said but if he's fleeced people and fleece people with his ministry trying to gain money from them i would look for him to then turn around and send the money back give money back now that's not been a big part of his ministry but i also would look for him to come out publicly and say that what he was doing there specifically he needs to get specific he has a public ministry it did these things publicly they were publicly exposed and so therefore he needs to publicly repudiate his past actions and i think those types of things follow true repentance biblical model zacchaeus in the bible okay so zacchaeus was a thief he robbed people using his position as a tax collector and he took more and then pocketed it when jesus came and he was converted with jesus his repentance led him not just to stop stealing from people but it led him to then repay them fourfold more than what he had taken that was an example of true repentance and what you find in a new testament method of people trying to change their actions is uh is what's called the put off put on principle you don't just put off a a sinful habit or a sinful action you you change by putting that off and putting on something better uh the classic example is when does a thief stop becoming a thief not when he stops stealing but when he becomes a giver okay so look for that in todd white again let me finalize that section by saying this i hope listen guys i hope i really do i want to believe todd white what he said was great again go listen to it it was good it was a good message and so uh we'll we'll see how that plays out uh so now into the ifb uh history we have covered ifb history we've looked at the early fundamentalism looked at uh the ifb forefather j frank norris they consider him for his their forefather possibly that's that's true uh his connection with john r rice did an interview with matthew lyon on the life of john r rice and the last episode i sort of talked about the 50s to the 70s uh and and talked about um the the way the ifb expanded with different people like rolloff lester rolloff in the girls homes you had oliver b green on the radio you had uh lee roberson with tennessee temple and highland park baptist church starting south wide baptist fellowship meetings and you had all of these things now an interesting thing happens in the 80s there's a there's a paradigm shift in the 80s okay so a couple things happen let me let me break these down first of all in 1980 john r rice dies and i really think that that's a catalyst in the ifb movement john r rice dies in 1980 in 1981 lee roberson resigns his church now lee roberson still has an influence in the ifb movement he continues to travel around help churches but he resigns his church and his church slowly begins to decline after that 1983 lester rolloff dies in a plane crash so within three years you have three big names sort of lee roberson not as much but but the other two their their ministries are are finished curtis hudson was a pastor in georgia uh who had grown a large church he takes over the sword of the lord ministry in 80 after rice dies so john r rice dies curtis hudson comes on the scene uh he was already preaching conferences and he comes on the scene as the director the head of the sword of the lord curtis hudson begins to really push jack hiles and jack hiles becomes the quintessential leader of the ifb movement so this is what we're going to do now i want to go and begin to discuss the life of jack hiles okay this is very important to really understand even today where the ifb movement is okay so jack hiles jack hiles was born and raised in italy texas which is uh real south of dallas when he was 18 years old he enlisted in the army and uh became part of the 82nd airborne division during world war ii he and his wife beverly were married during the war after the war he completes his education at east texas baptist university which was then east texas baptist college in marshall texas after he graduates from there he begins to travel around and preach in texas churches and uh it becomes popular in texas area people like his preaching and then he takes a church in texas the um miller road baptist church in garland texas that's in dallas county and he pastors that church for six years now while he's pastored when he takes the church the church has about 44 people uh when he leaves the church six years later he had grown it to 4 000 members and it was during these days that jahiles left the southern baptist convention he led miller road baptist church out of the southern baptist convention and became an independent baptist um in 1959 jack hiles leaves garland texas and moves to hammond indiana to take the first baptist church of hammond now here's something interesting when he arrives um the church membership was about 700 and about a third of the members left the church after hearing his preaching they didn't like his preaching style so a third of the church leaves so he gets there 700 a third of the church leaves so he goes down to like what 400 then he begins the process of taking the first baptist church of hammond uh... out of the american baptist association so then they become a uh... independent baptist church so then during these years hiles takes the first baptist church of hammond indiana from a couple hundred uh... membership to more than twenty thousand uh... it was recorded in the nineteen nineties that uh... first baptist was probably the largest church in the nation um... in nineteen seventy two i mentioned this last time in nineteen seventy two jack hiles and russell anderson founded and begins the hiles anderson college uh... hiles anderson college never sought accreditation though because hiles insisted school accreditation would undermine his ability uh... to control how the college ought to run and there you have the the fear that still seems to run in the camps of ifb colleges of accreditation i remember when i was in college this accreditation thing would still come up from time to time and everybody thought well if you're accredited the government can tell you what to do which is a very ignorant understanding of accreditation um... so he's got the college the church has grown by leaps and bounds the college is growing he's he's uh... preaching at the sword of the lord conference he's starting his own conference at his church called pastor school which brings in thousands of ministry people and pastors each year and so he's really setting himself apart in nineteen seventy five time magazine described the phenomenon in an article titled super church and it talked about his bus ministry uh... and the the phenomenon of the growing bus ministry the first uh... it notes that the article in time magazine notes the first baptist church of hammond sunday school which regularly ran almost 14,000 people pushed the church to a record attendance of 30,560 on march 16th 1975 um... so you see just massive massive growth within first baptist hammond and jack how's ministry he wrote many books i'm going to talk about his books a little bit later but he wrote many books um... and uh... they sold quite a bit of copies uh... i remember when i was in bible college one of my bible teachers who married hiles's granddaughter used to say that uh... his book uh... uh... hiles wrote a book called blue denim and lace and that book sold one million copies and if he only made a dollar on it per book which he didn't he made more than that that's one million dollars he's brought in on one book one book alone okay so uh... he is not hurting for money as well during this time so let's see where am i at all right so he holds these pastor school conferences now the interesting thing about the hiles place is at first baptist churches hammond other than for the for instance the sword conferences would rice built the sword conferences on bringing guys across the country to come in and train pastors and ministry people the pastor school however was basically just a a conference for everybody to come the first baptist to learn the first baptist way of doing things in fact um jack hiles actually wrote a book that is called the hiles church manual and that sold a lot of copies and so many basically took that book and it was basically how jack hiles did ministry and they they copied ministry and doing their churches out of that book and so you see his influence was far reaching during these years but uh hiles ministry is riddled with scandal riddled with scandal and uh in the early 80s i'm going to talk about his family towards the end but the the early 80s um so okay so jack hiles hires his son dave hiles dave hiles goes through college all this stuff becomes the youth pastor uh so dave hiles becomes the youth pastor there at the church and uh you should you should do some research on the dave hiles situation dave hiles um in fact there's a lawsuit going on with the church right now with it's it's the lawsuit is levied against dave hiles jack uh dave hiles first baptist church of hammond indiana and how's Anderson college because dave hiles uh raped and uh several teenage girls while he was there as the church youth pastor and um so so he was doing this and it wasn't just one joy evans writer and uh it was a fantastic fantastic lady uh is is working this lawsuit right now you should hear her testimony uh how god has has restored her life uh through that tragedy but she's not the only one there were many others that were during this time just i'm not talking about during hiles dave hiles's life i'm talking about just at first baptist as a youth pastor teenagers and dave hiles did this to many girls and it was it was joy's story that really sort of it was joy's situation that really caused the rip so joy's done with it and she decides that she talks her parents find out she tells her dad her dad who was wendell evans who was the president of the college goes to hiles he follows her to a hotel she informs dave that it's over she's not her dad is out in the parking lot watching and uh then she gets out of there and leaves you have to listen to the stories that guy was terrifying but um but you need to listen to her story so after that jack hiles is is confronted with this so then what is what do you do you're supposed to call the police right turn it in no no what happens is is that I don't and listen I don't care what they say uh what what they the way they try to to to cover this thing up the fact of the matter is is he was sent to another church by his dad jack hiles had him resign he left the church he goes to texas goes to miller road baptist church in garland texas and becomes the pastor there and that was how they handled that situation and most people there at the church at the time knew what happened it just you just didn't talk about it and um so that was the dave hiles thing there's a lot more about dave hiles his life but as it continues it goes with first baptist church and hiles now dave actually comes back to first baptist and is received back and it's not long after that before he causes another embarrassment with his dad but the first thing that i want to get to talk about when we get to the scandals is uh 1989 okay so 1989 robert sumner robert sumner produces the story the publishes a story called the saddest story we ever published you can look this up you can google it and you can go it is lengthy but you can google it it accused hiles of sexual scandals financial misappropriation and doctrinal errors these charges were denied by hiles who deemed them lies he was accused of a decade long affair with his secretary jenny nishik who happened to be the wife of a church deacon victor nishik okay so here's where it gets a little bit crazy so in 1989 this story is published now if you want to know who jenny nishik is if you ever see this is crazy but if you ever see any store any clips of jack hiles preaching you'll see him preaching you'll see behind him people in the choir loft now to as you're viewing it to the left of him the first lady on the first row right next to his his view is his wife beverly house on the other side the lady is his secretary jenny nishik okay so that comes out in 1989 and that starts a ripple effect within the ifb movement so this is 1989 jack hiles is the leader of the movement he is you know major major influence and this story gets published in fact if you read uh i'll try to link this book to the show notes uh jerry kafitz wrote a book called the profane pulpit after jack scott went to prison and he talks about how whenever this stuff started coming out he was there at the church they were instructed not to read this stuff they were told at the at the church do not read it and if somebody catches you read it they would turn you in and report you and you would get in trouble interesting so that happens in 1989 then in 1990 victor nischick releases his book called the wizard of god where he talks about his dealings and his story and his problems with jack hiles and how it ruined his marriage they slept apart and uh and so uh in my in my heart and mind uh i uh i have no doubt uh just to illustrate the point uh in 1970 uh uh jack hiles took took all the staff people on a cruise uh to the caribbean husbands and wives and uh in those days uh my wife and i and beverly hiles and jack hiles were inseparable socially a foursome we always were together and uh on the cruise ship uh jenny my wife was uh assigned the job of tour director and after the festivities and the dinners in the uh in the uh dining halls uh jack and beverly uh jack and jenny would uh would retire to plan next day's activities and i would not see my wife until the next morning and i found out in subsequent years that beverly hiles also did not see her husband until the next morning while on the cruise so somewhere in the bowels of a big cruise ship those two uh managed to uh spend evenings and nights together and they so in 1985 i uh i confronted him we had a big stormy seven hour standoff how many hours seven hours seven hours in his office in his office with any red lights on the secretary's phone or not it was an evening so uh uh-huh we started at 6 30 and uh and we went almost till one o'clock in the morning if not later but it was just a lengthy standoff and i basically demanded my wife back and i basically demanded that the relationship cease and of course he denied everything and i told him that if he uh in any way damaged or caused my my marriage to be uh uh uh dissolved i still wanted my wife back i still wanted to uh to try to establish a a relationship uh however flawed it was and i told him that that if he didn't cooperate i was going to go and talk to beverly hiles and i did that and that's when he uh basically made that notorious statement to me that uh if you want to have the same relationship with beverly that i have with jenny you have my permission same year so the wizard of god comes out the same year 1990 a guy named voyal glover he was a lawyer and he was a member of first baptist church which i think was for about 20 years he realizes what's going on leaves the church he ends up writing a book a rather lengthy book this is the longest one published it's over 400 pages called the fundamental seduction the jack hiles case and in that he really lays out the case now it's it's this aura that he projects of authority this aura of confidence everybody likes somebody that comes off confident and shrewd themselves and jack hiles probably does it better than anybody else yes absolutely he gets up there and he is definitely in charge and people like that people need that sense of security that somebody is in charge now somewhere along the way you had a falling out well i uh i don't know that i would call it so much a falling out as a uh uh an education an education yeah a realization that all was not right in la la land but uh my pastor was was not all he pretended to be i learned subsequent to to the writing of the book that in fact some of the times of our greatest needs we had a ninety thousand dollar surplus but at the right time pastor hiles was saying we need money yeah yeah he's telling us we're broke we don't have money the the principal who said he didn't know what was in the account and he truly didn't um uh is without supplies well you paint an amazing picture of financial success with uh pastor hiles and his church in fact an astronomical picture right oh clearly this is a what kind of money are you talking about well that's one of the questions what kind of money are we talking about nobody really knows the total income of the church and that's one of the problems that exists over there is you don't know how much is going in coming in and you don't know how much is going out um i don't know the total income of the church i know in the book i made some very uh educated calculations he has a ministry and this is only the book ministry this has nothing to do with the tithes and the donations that's right he took this book ministry and has admitted to these things in various forms including his church recently took this book ministry and placed it under the umbrella of the church but continued to control the funds uh no deacon that i've talked to former deacon or present deacon knows the disbursements of that account of those funds now in looking at how he's statement he made the following statements published these statements said if he kept one dollar for every book that he's put out or sold he would have 12 million dollars so i i assumed that he sold 12 million books uh i did a rough estimate i got the faithful field on obligation to buy books oh absolutely sure i got a ready-read audience sure i've had uh i've had people tell me they've bought every book he's ever published uh i didn't know about many of them but not every book so you have all of these things going on with with hiles and the big the big story so that you have the dave hiles scandal and just when he thinks that he's got that sort of calmed down this stuff comes out about hiles affair with with jenny nishik his financial improprieties um his i mean the guy made tons of money he owns the church basically he owned many buildings in hammond his daughter said i'm going to play a clip towards the end of his daughter talking about it and uh and so so you got this situation going on victor nishik actually talks about this where he says that his wife uh he was having they were having marriage issues because she had become so loyal as hiles secretary that she was and he believed that she fell in love with him hiles loved her and they had this affair going on and then they went in for marriage counseling and hiles told him to move to the basement so he moved to the basement and hiles would go and have a relationship with his wife till finally he broke out sort of the you know and he says he was under mind control this guy was god to them and you didn't do whatever the pastors spoke for god the pastor spoke as the oracles of god their pastor was jack hiles so therefore jack hiles was the voice of god to them and that was what was taught and so therefore it took him a while for them to break out of this and then he ended up leaving and writing this book so you have these going on the next thing is not in 1991 the next scandal that happens with with first baptist church and hiles anderson is the case of a v ballinger a v ballinger was a deacon a v ballinger was a deacon at first baptist church of hammond who then was arrested and went on trial for pedophilia in march one of hiles deacons a v ballinger was convicted on charges he molested a seven year old girl in sunday school a lawsuit by the girl's family charges hiles told the parents that deacon ballinger just likes little girls if we can judge the world some baby can judge within our center a v ballinger should not be judged in the courts of hammond he should be judged by wise people in first baptist church of hammond if he's judged at all so this deacon was sexually abusing a child in the sunday school department and was caught the the sibling of the child that he was messing with he was abusing decided to speak out and was trying to get people to notice this then the family tried to say something then a sunday school teacher that had walked by and seen something going on spoke out as well so he's arrested they go to trial and here's an IFB name that you might be interested to hear David Gibbs the lawyer is brought in to defend him and and David Gibbs represents A.V. Ballinger now A.V. Ballinger is actually found guilty after the testimonies he is found guilty and becomes a registered sex offender sentenced to prison and after the trial is over before his prison sentence starts they decide First Baptist Church of Hammond decides to throw a major celebration party for him and they give him a check for $25,000 they have people lined up like crazy to honor him and it's really really disgusting and gross I want to show you something about First Baptist Church I probably shouldn't say this but I think it shows your greatness here's a man who's been accused of an awful crime here's a man that has been falsely accused falsely tried falsely convicted we didn't ask him to resign the deacon board nor will we we didn't ask him to resign his sunday school class or his job as an usher he's kept on going or resign his job on the bus ministry didn't ask him to I mean I was the guy that led in that I mean I was the guy that said publicly you heard me say if he goes I go so John we're both gonna have to go but I said that and here's the greatness of you folks last Wednesday night we had deacon election to re-elect the deacons whose time was up and others the leading vote getter for deacon last Wednesday night was A.V. Ballinger remember them that are in bonds as bound with them and them which suffer adversity being yourselves also in the body my Bible says that the adversity that this man is having to endure is to be entertained and born and remembered by every single Christian we also being in the body what's happening to this man is happening to my faith it's happening to my Savior it's happening to my testimony I am to remember the word remember there doesn't just mean that I'm supposed to kind of mull it in my mind it means I'm supposed to identify with I'm here tonight to tell you that I'm committed to doing some things and I want to encourage you to do some of these things you listen to me first of all I believe the Bible commands us to identify clearly with those that for doing right are suffering adversity I see across America Christians that grow shy Christians that say boy I hope it all turns out I'll pray for you but they're nowhere to be found when the person's standing in the battle thank God this church is not like that at all thank God this is a church that steps up with pride and says and it is an honor to be identified with brother Ballinger so all of these scandals are going on and then something happens now this is another set of videos that you should go check out and look into on YouTube but you have a news organization that decides that well they get word about this pastor who is arrested for pedophilia or rape I can't remember which one right off the top of my head well they begin to report on this issue and then they start to do an investigation and their investigation their journalistic investigation leads them to First Baptist Hammond and then they begin to start investigating that and so by the time it's all done they produce this segment on the news channel that airs six days in a row called Praying P-R-E-Y-I-N-G from the pulpit Eyewitness News has learned a group of fundamentalist churches around the country have a pattern of abusing children the abuse includes severe discipline in one case there was sadistic torture and in another it may have involved murder as we've told you in a series of special reports this week exclusively on Eyewitness News TV2 investigator Vince Wade has learned the alleged child molestings at Washtenaw County's North Sharon Baptist Church appear to be part of this pattern of abuse Vince joining us now with another of his special reports on Praying from the Pulpit Rich the leadership of the North Sharon Baptist Church was educated at a Bible college in Sherrillville Indiana run by Jack Hyles a hellfire and brimstone preacher well known in fundamentalist circles over the last few years Hyles has been a source of scandal and controversy for fundamentalist believers Hyles has one son David who had his own ministry until he was run out of two churches due to scandals involving wives in his congregations as you will see the son of a famous preacher man is a suspect in something far more and this news program during this time becomes huge and it really shines a light on what's going on there and it talks about other people that's left First Baptist Hammond it talks about Hyles they interview Vic Nishik they get a chance to they have Hyles on there and I mean it really lays out everything it talks about Dave Hyles it talks about Dave Hyles problems so whenever he left First Baptist Hammond he goes to Garland Texas while he's in Garland Texas a janitor was coming out and found a briefcase that seemed wrong to be in the trash so he pulled the briefcase and the briefcase popped open and there were nude pictures of women in the church found out the briefcase belonged to Pastor Dave Hyles when everything came out to find out Dave Hyles was having affairs with multiple women in the church over I think 14 or 15 women at that time he's married to Paula whenever this comes out after it Paula knew about all the girls and teenage girls in First Baptist but she stayed with him after this comes out Paula divorces him was did David's dad know that he was a adulteress before we went to Texas and the answer is definitely yes and there's a hundred people that know that including himself and why he lies about that I'll never know I went to him twice about things that I had heard about David things that I had dealt you know I had one of the girls beat me and David's sister up telling us that he was sleeping with him and we told his dad another occasion was a girl that was working at the cemetery and the guy that runs the cemetery knows this I don't know if he ever went to Hiles about it I assumed he did I'm not sure he made David go to him first he may have hung that over David's head as a threat by saying he'd go to his dad I don't know but I told his dad about that so I don't know I think the only immorality was going on was between him and the girls he was seeing and there were a lot of them he wised up though after we went to Garland he didn't have affairs with single girls anymore there was one divorced woman he was sleeping with but he found out that sleeping with teenagers they talk they like to talk but if he kept with the married women they had as much to lose as he did so they weren't as willing to talk and they didn't in fact we had somewhat of a war going on all these women in our church thought they were the one and only and when it came out that there were 14 or 15 of them we had a war going on there and then he ends up marrying one of the girls he had the ladies he had an affair with in garland texas brenda and uh i believe her name was brenda and then um they get married well he leaves texas he goes back to first baptist to hammond while he's at first baptist to hammond the guy still can't stay out of it and so he ends up uh somebody finds out that there's these uh this sex magazine that has nude pictures of people that are soliciting um other couples to get have swinger parties with them and uh somebody sees that from the church and they find out hey that's dave's wife and so then people find out that that's dave's wife so when pastor school happened actually what happens is people take these things and they start handing them out to pastors as they're coming in for pastor school and of course jack hiles couldn't ignore it then and so he had to send him off one more time but also dave hiles ran into some other legal trouble whenever his stepson who was only i think 18 months old uh died in their home and the subsequent cause they couldn't determine because of they wouldn't allow him to do an autopsy and they they uh had the funeral uh really quick but uh investigators and journalistic uh investigators believe that it was the cause was physical abuse david hiles set out to follow in his father's footsteps the zest for women cost him his pulpit and his first marriage when david left a texas church in disgrace he and his girlfriend brenda stevens moved to bowling brook illinois with her two children by her first marriage it wasn't long before her youngest son 17 month old brent stevens came to the attention of abuse investigators in 1985 they found him with a broken leg plus eight or nine bones in various stages of healing paul cielino was a homicide investigator for the illinois department of children and family services he and his team fought unsuccessfully to keep brent away from david and brenda i wasn't concerned this child was going to be abused again i was concerned this kid was going to wind up dead that was my concern his concern was justified a few months later brent stevens was found dead in his crib due to bureaucratic bungling an inconclusive autopsy was done at a hospital instead of the morgue but at the inquest david hiles invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination brenta the mother of the dead child was a no-show as for the status of the investigation this case is an open case still today and nothing's been done it can't anything be done absolutely it's a murder case i would even go further and say that if i could get david and brenda in a court of law they'd both get convicted of murder without a doubt i have a dead child with a history of abuse and i have two people who were the only people who access that child that night and i would almost bet the 12 repairers would convict them on almost that evidence alone and so that's what's that's all this stuff comes out in that program of praying for the pulpit so after this is over there's so much heat and people there is a reaction by this time there is a reaction within the ifb and so people start this is so you're talking about early 90s here within the ifb people start distancing themselves from hiles unless you're from hiles unless you graduated from first baptist of hammond but around the other sections you start to see a distancing from jack hiles so they have a press conference and you can go watch this on youtube as well they have a press conference really deal with anything that is in the the the program or give explanations for it was really just a press conference to attack the media instead of explain these stories we have been viciously and maliciously misrepresented they have attacked us at our strongest point and that is our belief in purity our love for children and our compassion they are saying that there is a network of churches with child molestation scandals that have a tie with hiles anderson college and first baptist church of hammond indiana i do not mean to be mean i do mean to be mad never a lie was spawned by lucifer out of hell any greater than to cast reflection upon the purity and motives that are holy of our bus ministries here okay the last major issue during hiles life is in october 1997 an attorney named vernon patria files a lawsuit against first baptist church of hammond now this lawsuit was accusing the church and the pastor of allowing a mentally retarded woman to be sexually assaulted for six years now was it saying hiles did it or anything like that but it's saying the lawsuit was saying they knew about it or leadership in the church knew about it and covered it up and allowed it to go on for six years the woman was induced by agents of the church in 91 to ride a bus to attend sunday school at first baptist she was in the care of the church when she was sexually assaulted molested battered and raped more than once until 1996 hiles was sued because he and his church failed to do their duty to protect her the lawyer said the pattern of assault became can be traced to a sunday in 1991 when a first baptist teacher saw someone abusing the woman and reported it to church leaders and police but the parents were never told and she kept going to church where she was threatened into silence the sexual abuse ended when the woman developed a horrible infection and was taken to a doctor to find out what was wrong when the doctor couldn't understand where the infection was coming from she was admitted to a hospital where they found embedded in her a plastic object the woman then told what had happened to her recalling that a church program instructor led her to a room and served as a lookout while two or three males raped her now Howells denied all of these things said that if he had known about it it wouldn't have happened but the only problem with this now whether he knew about it or not I don't know but the fact of the matter is there is a pattern of covering these things up that exists there and so for that reason that casts serious doubt on whether he did know or not it's hard you can't believe him so what ends up happening in the 1997 lawsuit is they they end up settling the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money so that is the scandals now Hyles ends up dying in 2001 and when he dies in 2001 the church he was grooming the next guy to come the next guy that became the pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond was his son-in-law Jack Scott Jack Scott married his daughter Cindy and many that were there during those during the Hiles years and remember this have told me that Hiles groomed Scott for years because Scott everybody sort of had an idea Scott was going to end up taking over and seemed like the man for the job and so when Jack Hiles died in 2001 I believe it was only a few months later and Jack Scott became the pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond so that is Jack Hiles now he dies in 2001 he did stay pastor of First Baptist Church for quite a long time but let's look at some of his preaching and some of the books that he wrote now okay so Hiles wrote quite a bit of books he wrote approximately 50 works in his lifetime over 14 million total copies in circulation including his popular Is There a Hell which was based on a sermon that he preached at the Sword of the Lord conference he had another work Enemies of Soul Winning and the Blue Denim and Lace book I have a book here that I'm going to examine some of his teachings that I think are really awful on teaching on preaching he had a book in the book Enemies on Soul Winning Hiles taught that one could not be born again unless the King James version was used somewhere along the line in that person's life wow okay he so he wrote quite a bit of books he wrote and most of the let me say this when you talk about Hiles' influence and his bad doctrine the abuse of theology the problems with his teaching people will say well that's just First Baptist Haman that's just Hiles but here's the problem through pastor school the students coming out of Hiles Anderson College and his books okay all of these problem areas of his teaching was spread and so a lot of the issues that you have come from a lot of these things and so this philosophy was spread like crazy throughout the IFB world I think a lot of the problems with the cover ups and abuse had to do with a book that he wrote on justice and then there's also here's some bad preaching he did you think about the ideas of how you just cover up things and allow the preacher or the man of God to keep on serving and that a lot of times a lot of that has to do to a message that he preached on how to increase God's patience tonight I'm going to speak on the subject how to increase God's patience and were used again many folks in the Bible and were never used again now some people in the Bible committed sins that caused them to forfeit ever being used of God again and others in the Bible committed those same sins and were used of God again and what was the difference of the people who were used of God as a certain! sin and the people were not used of God after committing the same sin I'm going to tell you look at the life of Samson Samson always loved God and wanted to do right and he always gave all he had I'm saying listen Samson was valuable to God now here's a carefully God God God said I need the fellow too much to put him on the camp he's doing too much good for one little bad thing to cause him to forfeit his chance to serve me now I want to say a few words I want you to follow me with Samson number one God degree of patience with you when you stumble is determined by how fast you were running I said God degree of patience with you when you stumble is determined by how fast you were running statement number two your chance at a second chance will depend on what you did with your first chance why didn't God give David a second chance because David did a heap with his first chance some of the other really bad blasphemous things that he's taught there's a message that he talked about a helpless God what I'm trying to say is this God is hand tough and God is paralyzed because God man knows not God's language and so God tonight comes and says just as you need my mighty power to do my work I need your power to do my work also he preaches in one message says that Jesus did not pay it all I want to speak tonight on the subject Jesus did not pay it all I'll ask you not to worry about turning to it again but I want to just read a line or two for you who now rejoice in my suffering for you now that's talking about Calvary and fill up that which is behind or lacking of the afflictions or suffering of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake did you hear that Paul said there's something lacking in the penalty Jesus paid now he said it's my job to make up that my job to finish out the atonement it's my job to finish out the vicarious death of Christ let me read the verse we didn't read a while ago and add to it one that we did and listen carefully to this one for we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus sake that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh in you Paul is saying not only did Jesus die a vicarious death for you but Paul is saying to the church at Corinth and the church at Colossae that he also vicariously died for them the title of my sermon is Jesus did not pay it all we sing Jesus paid it all all to him I owe sin had left a crimson stain he washed it white as snow I'm speaking tonight on the subject Jesus did not pay it all and then there's one according to and my theology really is just frustrated by this one that he preached called why don't you forgive God this morning I'm going to change the message and I've got a sneaking suspicion I'm going to preach a truth that has never been voiced exactly like this in the hundred years of our church's history I'm going to speak this morning on the subject why don't you forgive God why don't you forgive God you say preacher you mean why doesn't God forgive me no no no I'm speaking on the subject why don't you forgive God but you say brother Hiles God has never done anything wrong you're exactly right we have a wonderful God he's never done anything wrong but most people think he has and since most people think he has I'm asking you to forgive him so Jack Hiles was not somebody that had his theology straight he did not preach expositionally he actually ridiculed expositional preaching I think he preached over 50 years and there are sermon libraries online that have tons most of his preaching you're talking thousands of sermons and all the sermons you cannot find one time where Jack Hiles preached through a book of the Bible his theology was terrible his moral character was terrible his he it was a cult atmosphere there at his church let's talk about his family so he had four kids he had David which we talked about who David to this day still has not apologized for the abuse that he has he has still not owned up to it and he has still not repented of it but yet now he started a mystery fallen in grace ministries where he tries to reach out to pastors that have messed up in the ministry and I'm like listen guy you need to get right with God and so that that's his son now also you have his daughter Cindy Cindy marries Jack Scott they become the next royal couple there at First Baptist Church of Hammond and when Jack Scott falls in 2012 he's now in prison and while he's in prison they divorce they have another daughter named Becky and they have a daughter named Linda now this is Linda's testimony about her dad and her family and that church well I grew up outside of Chicago and my dad pastored actually a wonderful church there that through the years evolved into a 50,000 member cult it operated and still operates under the guise of an independent fundamental Baptist church but those who have left the followers who have tried to leave the outsiders even the media it was on 2020 last year recognize that it's clearly a cult every member was in complete obedience to my father they didn't dare disagree or be disloyal for fear of being publicly ridiculed or punished or banished for doing so they didn't go on a vacation without asking my dad's permission and if he had said to drink the kool-aid I'm not kidding they would have my dad lived a double life one of righteous family man and dynamic speaker in the public eye but one of sordid sexual secrets privately secrets that only my siblings and me and my mom knew he hated my mom hated her treated her terribly abused her and even turned his own children against our mother we hated her he told us she was crazy we thought to make him happy we hate her too our home was full of turmoil hatred stress strife and as a little girl it was isolating it was intense and it was frightening he had affairs he had a mistress for many years the wife of a sunday school teacher built her family a beautiful home right around the corner from our house you could see their family from our back door it was it was craziness living one way preaching another now here is my problem with first baptist church of hammond today okay that is the legacy and influence of jack hiles when you examine his life you examine biblically what he taught you examine biblically what he preached you examine his morality you examine the way he handled finances maybe one that'll be something that we cover one time sometime is proper use financially of a pastor's money you examine the fruit of his family okay is this somebody that we should look back to and honor is this somebody that is worthy of lifting up I have serious reservations about lifting up any man but him there's I just don't find anything positive to say about the guy and this is where it ends up being and here's the problem and you find the same thing with j. Frank Norris but look at how many people came to Christ so that's what it is and it all comes down to the results the amount of numbers the amount of people that come through that church and that becomes the preeminent thing that becomes the most important thing and I think that is extremely unbiblical antithetical to the Bible to scriptural teaching and I think it needs to be reexamined now here's my problem as I started this off by saying this is my problem with the current state of First Baptist Church of Hammett now since Scott left John Wilkerson became the new pastor and people many people say things have changed there prove to me that things have changed by taking down Hiles statue prove to me that things have changed by stop lifting up Jack Hiles okay this guy is not someone that in any shape or fashion needs to be looked at or regarded in the church okay so this Jack Hiles memorial that they got set up there that gives me serious reservations because if you are honoring or regarding or lifting up somebody who quite honestly didn't exhibit anything Christ like was extremely disqualified in ministry and you don't see that or you see that and won't do anything about it that gives me serious reservations about you Jack Hiles and legacy still lives on his influence and legacy still lives on I mean it was just you were listening to IFB preacher clips and a couple months ago you have Jeff Fugate in Kentucky honoring John Hamblin by giving them Jack Hiles ordination certificate like it's some type of piece of historical artifact that is worth millions I mean the man the idol worship of Jack Hiles is still present with the IFB today his influence is still there and it really deserves taking an examination within the IFB of who this guy really is so Jack Hiles is not somebody that is a worthwhile character a worthwhile preacher pastor figure personality in the independent fundamental Baptist movement for them to rest their hats on and so I'm going to stop right there next time my goal is to sort of talk about what else was going on within the IFB movement during that time and bring it up to sort of the current landscape of the IFB movement and wrap up the history section of the IFB in the series that we've been doing in the history of the IFB so thanks you guys so much for listening and if you you can find or follow the podcast on Facebook Twitter and Instagram I'm working on getting a YouTube page going working on that and also I have plans to spread it across podcast platforms but I appreciate the response thus far and until next time guys to God not the pastor be the glory to Thank you. Thank you.

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