209 thoughts on “Hero Worship: Jack Hyles’ Birthday 2011”

      1. Had to go fast. The people here are CRAZY fast!!! (If I hadn’t checked my facebook first I would have been first.) This is the second time Darrell has put something up for us West Coast readers. (in the evening rather than in the morning.)

        1. I’m not really a “people” here, and feel a tad bit guilty for being first. I’ll concede it to you, if you’d like.

        2. No, you keep it. It wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t do it myself. (It is the little things…) And if you aren’t a “people” then what are you? But thank you anyway. That was quite generous of you.

        3. You are so kind, John, and if you are not a people here, then none of us are. There was no entrance exam.

        5. Good point, Seen Enough, although an entrance exam might make a good post. It would help me determine if I’m a “people” or not. Although, the fact that I keep commenting probably makes me a “people” in the sense that I meant it. And in that case, I’ll keep my first, thank you very much!

  4. “You could have chosen a college where you would have actually gotten educated.”
    You could have chosen a college where they wouldn’t have run you ragged and made you feel guilty when you couldn’t keep up.”
    “You could have chosen a college that wasn’t run by crazy megalomaniacal cult-leaders running it.”
    “You could have chosen a college where you wouldn’t have been hit on by the crazy megalomaniacal cult leader’s son.”
    But you chose HAC. SUCCKAAAA

      2. Awww… C’MON! Get a bucket, or barf-bag and a bottle of pepto and click on the little arrow. It will be fun. (I would try to use guilt to make you do it, but I know that here pretty much everyone’s guilt glands have been burnt out a long time ago. At least mine has.)

    2. Okay, I turned it on, but hearing his nasty voice is creeping me out. How do you do it, Sims?? 👿

      1. If I told you how I did it, you might think less of me. (I picture him standing before God with his fundy-tron and then I make up the dialogue.)

        1. I do not think less of you. What is a fundy-tron? Also, I finished it, but am nearly overcome with nausea, because the certain knowledge that while he made this cheesy speech every daggone year, he was controlling huge gross cover-ups of perversions of every kind, MAKES ME SICK. My blood boils. I wish I had never met him. I wish the whole nasty place did not exist. I wish young people were not still being led astray. 👿 👿 👿

    3. Awesome post! Yeeesh, let’s see, Nixon fingers pose at least twice (isn’t that AOE considering watergate, well I don’t know what years those pics were taken but surely the slide show was done since then), when they show him and a few of his cronies walking down a path, there is a cop following close behind-was he going to arrest him or was he a body guard? Weird. When he says I was always thinking about you or something like that it was on a picture where he was surrounded by young women looking so adoringly at him and estatic, was that a coincidence? Only three of the staff had college educations themselves? And it was really creepy when he said, “your mommy called me and she doesn’t want you back at home” considering how they treat young people over 18 as though they are gradeschool children, it was extra creepy. The whole thing was about 100 times longer than it should have been, oh, and was that big red balloon over his head his EGO? It was all so self-congratulating. 😕

    4. Pretty funny, and brought some much-needed balance to the video.

      I must say that Jack Hyles is a master at the weaving of words — it’s quite an impressive speech.

      Did he really give this each year? It sounded like it was from an early year. Later on, they certainly changed their tune about not wanting FBCH and Jack Hyles to take the place of their home church and pastor: Later on, they would encourage students to NOT go home because no church had the standards & “soul-winning” of FBCH.

      1. Yes, Guilt Ridden, you are right. This was probably done when we were there because early on he changed that tune. My first year or so he said he didn’t want to take the place of our pastors, he still wanted us to yell, “THATS MY PREACHER” if we ever saw him in public (nice, huh?) but by my final year they were reluctant to let us go home for Thanksgiving break because our parents didn’t “get” what they were trying to do with us and couldn’t possibly understand.

        1. They DON’T want you to go home, because your parents “won’t understand”??
          RED FLAG! RED FLAG! RED FLAG!
          Cult alarm! Cult alarm! Cult alarm!

        2. Big Gary wrote, “They DON’T want you to go home, because your parents “won’t understand”??
          RED FLAG! RED FLAG! RED FLAG!
          Cult alarm! Cult alarm! Cult alarm!”

          Sounds like they lost too many students during holiday breaks. I imagine the students would go home and tell stories about how bats&%* crazy the place was the parents would tell them to transfer somewhere else.

          So to solve this “problem” they would prevent the students from returning home. Kinda like a fundy Brandenberg Gate. Gotta climb walls (rebel against the authority) just to get out and be free.

  5. I am now too churned up to sleep later. DARRELL!! What is the Insomnia Plan? The Nausea Plan? The I-Nearly-Said-The-F-Word-To-The-Video Plan? I think the world of you, my young brilliant friend, but there has to be an Escape Plan…. (looking wildly around) 😯
    I know. Pinky and the Brain, on YouTube. 💡

    1. I kindof thought this post was just for you and me. I think we are the only two here old enough to be affected by this man. What year did Jack-hole Schaap take over?

      1. After I was gone, even the second time. He and I were on faculty at the same time. JH died in 2001, so shortly after he wrested the pulpit from all other takers, Schaap was in.

    3. It’s okay to say the f-word to the video. It won’t send you to hell and might make you feel better! 😉

      3. I did that once including the hand gesture but not to this video. I felt fine about it because what the guy on the video was screaming about women deserved such a response! 👿

  6. The “Fundy-Tron” is my imaginary version of what we used to be told was your whole life playing to be judged at the judgement seat or whatever it was.
    When I started it playing, Ray said, “He made that same speech when WE were there.” HAHA Funny you said that. He just rolls his eyes when I listen to the stuff on this site. He did get away with alot, but I think he is paying for it now.

    2. Tell Ray yes, he made the speech every year. It was even worse sitting through it in the faculty section, and already having doubts. 🙁 👿

      1. Wow, I can imagine being on the faculty, and having your spiritual eyesight clearing, and hearing words come out that you know aren’t true.

        My heart goes out to you for what you went through.

        May God give you a special blessing today.

        1. GR, you are very kind. And yes, in the early years, late seventies, again when I was there in the mid-eighties, he gave it at the start of the year. Also, being the wizard that he was,, he knew that insisting we not replace our home pastor with him, would only drive the more rabid students to do precisely that: make him their god.
          I so distinctly recall being in the faculty section when a perfect idiot of a male teacher gave a chapel invitation to stand up if you knew that HAC was the only college that was God’s will for every single young person who was considering college. I was so horriied that I was numb. I did not stand. In that entire section, maybe five or six of us remained seated. I fully expected to be called on it, and within a few days, I was. To my amazement, Wendell Evans made my excuses for me, by saying he was certain that my thinking was that HAC did not, of course, want undesirable worldly students. I knew, that day, that HE knew it had been an absurd invitation. I also knew that it was not what you knew, there, but who was on your side, that mattered. 😯

        3. I have to echo Big Gary: that’s really pretty bad – I LOATHE, HATE, and DESPISE such petty manipulation… I wish the “male teacher” had been severely reprimanded for such a thing, but he was probably rewarded for showing his loyalty.

          Yuck!

        4. His last name was Grady, as I recall, and he was a bug-eyed nincompoop who even LOOKED unbalanced.

        6. Exactly. He once preached in chapel that the state of California was so evil, that even students from there had sin issues. HUGE stink from that one. They finally got rid of him. 😯

        7. But imagine how insane you have to be, to look extreme at HAC! Hey, I just made a rhyming couplet. I may construct a sonnet, with this at the end….

        8. I don’t think he made that “sins of Californians” thing up. Even when I was there if ever I was asked where I was from I got one of two reactions: Either a very interested “high five” type response like I would probably be very willing to get high and jump into bed with the person, or a “I better get away quick before it rubs off and I am tainted with her Californication.”

        9. I never thought that about you. I had never heard of that whole CA thing till that bozo preached on it. 🙄

  7. First, what’s up with the soundtrack in the background? I’ve heard that fundy music before on a video. Second, why is there a birthday celebration for a dead guy.

    On a side note, I attended Pastor’s school in 2004-2005 or so and when I went I was appalled by the amount of Hyles worship up there. There were statues to the man around every corner. Reminded me of the Chinese restaurants with the fat Buddhas on the counter.

    1. “why is there a birthday celebration for a dead guy?”

      Maybe he’s not dead. . .maybe he and Elvis are on an elevator somewhere. . .

      4. Elvis, Hyles, and Hitler are roommates now (because none of them are really dead, see) …

        1. Elvis, Hyles and Hitler walk into a bar…

          …The bartender looks up and says, “Is this some kind of a JOKE?” 😀

        2. If you played the “Which of These Things Is Not Like the Other” song from Sesame Street with pictures of Elvis, Hyles, and Hitler, I’d pick Elvis. 😈

        3. Hyles said that he once met Elvis in an elevator. And don’t forget he led Ted Williams to Christ.

    2. I really don’t mind them celebrating JH’s birthday; in their world, he was a great man that did great things for God, and in this country we celebrate the birthdays of especially great men.

      To be absolutely clear, IMO JH does not deserve such remembrance; I think he has been as destructive to Biblical Christianity as Billy Graham has been.

      1. “I think he has been as destructive to Biblical Christianity as Billy Graham has been.”

        Wait a minute, what?

        You know, once I had my Fundy blinders ripped off, I discovered that Billy Graham was actually a pretty decent guy. His Wikipedia page says he was #7 on Gallup’s poll of most admired people of the 20th century – and I believe it. You ask the average Joe on the street about Billy Graham, and they’ll probably have a good opinion of him. You ask the average Joe about Bob Jones Sr., and they either say, “Who?” or, “That racist?”; ask about Hyles and you’ll get, “Who?” or, “That nutjob?”

        I’m not saying that popular opinion means everything, but the fact that Billy Graham’s ministries have touched a great deal of the world and his charities are well-run says a lot to me. BJU, HAC, and any other Fundy U doesn’t have near the global reach BG did/does, much as they’d like to beg to differ. The Fundy attitude towards Graham has a lot more to do with jealousy than unBiblicalism on Graham’s part. Putting him on the same level as an abusive megalomaniac is a bit ridiculous, sorry.

        1. Sorry, I should have been more clear in my statement: The considered opinion in fundamentalism is that Billy Graham has had huge numbers as an evangelist (which is good), but his linking up with Catholics and heretics mitigates the good. No fundamentalist wants to be associated with Billy Graham. I don’t know him, but am sure he is a nice person, and he he a generally positive acceptance in the world.

      2. What’s even more funny, in a sad sort of way, is that more people believe in man-made global warming than the crazy Elvis conspiracy stories.

        1. Global warming is man-made. The earth’s temperature is slowing rising due to the activities of man, specifically related to the burning of fossil fuels.

    3. I almost spewed coffee into my laptop reading the fat Buddhas comment. Do they throw money at them for luck “blessings” like the Buddha statues?

      2. I didn’t know about the statues everywhere. Anybody got a picture of these statues? (Of Hyles, I mean, not Buddha.)

        Can you get a small one with a magnet on the bottom for the dashboard of your car?

        5. Re. the version Seen Enough linked to:
          The references to the Beast in Revelation are a bit over the top, but I’ve got to agree that I can’t see how that ceremony with the wreath and the rifle-shooting is anything other than worshipping before a graven image.

        6. I do agree on it’s being OTT, but what struck me is the intensity of feeling on both sides; on the one hand, that truly bizarre ceremony, which should be reserved for a REAL fallen hero, fallen in battle, not into depravity and disgrace! Also, the cruel irony of that being a sculpture of him with his wife! His WIFE, whom he steadfastly ignored, till he was in deep doo-doo! Them OTOH, the video post-er, and his accusations of idolatry. That is one angry dude!

        7. After watching the video Admiral posted–Was that the HAC Militia? Neither TTU nor BJU had a militia when I attended them. I guess they are in safer areas.

        8. Seen Enough,

          That video spelled it out pretty well. However, I don’t have issues with the statue itself. People put statues up all the time and its not that big a deal. But at HAC, they have statues everywhere….In nooks and crannys in the hallways, in the auditorium etc.

        9. It is ironic (or something) that when I first arrived on campus, they were re-vamping the hallways to the chapel because they still had the “stations of the cross” which had contained statues of saints and little cups for holy water on the walls. (Each dorm room had a little cup for holy water by the doorway) We used ours to set our keys in. (The campus used to be a convent) So they took down all the Catholic statues and replaced them with JACK HYLES??? And they can’t SEE the irony or hypocracy or whatever it would be called???

        10. The campus was a Capuchin monastery. Admiral, I do not have problems with statues either, but that ceremony, with the gun salute? Come on! That type of rite is generally, and correctly, reserved for heroes, and usually that means of a military type. I think the guy who made the one I posted WAS OTT, but I did understand his anger at the nature of the ceremony. There is only so much Jack Hyoes worship that can be tolerated. 😯

        11. So they took down the Stations of the Cross, the images of the saints, and the holy water containers, and they replaced them with images of Jack Hyles?

          What’s wrong with this picture?

        12. Yep. I think the statues of Hyles must have been *erected* (tee hee) after he died and got his sainthood. Then of course it became ok to have saints and statues and interceders in prayer and all that jazz. They did all they could to cleans the campus of any traces of the Catholics though. Whew!

        13. Please allow me to introduce my dear friend Sims, mistress of the double entendre! 😉

        14. Well according to the Wikipedia page, Jack did serve in the 82nd airborne. So it would be fitting to have military honors of some type.

        15. Honors at the funeral, sure. But since his statue is already up and in place, I’m sure this isn’t his funeral, so honors at this time doesn’t seem to be appropriate. 🙁

        16. It was a 3 volley salute they did; not 21 gun. My bad. It’s still usually done only at funerals. It would have been proper at his funeral; at another ceremony, not so much, except for, perhaps, Memorial Day.

        17. Beth,

          7 Guns x 3 shots = 21 Guns, no? 😛

          May God bless you and any future statues that you may have erected in your honor,

          Admiral

  8. I can just imagine my former pastor watching this and worshiping his idol. The whole thing makes me sick. I can imagine what it does to those of you who went there. 😥

  10. They didn’t even have air-conditioning in the dorms? Sheesh!

    I bet he had it in his office.

    1. He did. I was only on faculty, and I did. Also, this may be kind of old. I thought they did eventually fet a/c, but am not sure why I think that….

      1. My private non Christian college did not have a/c and this was in FL in the late 90’s. They did eventually get a/c but not while I was there.

        2. In Florida, yes, that’s cruel.
          In Indiana, not as bad, especially if school was out for the summer.

        3. No, we were there, and it gets hellishly hot and humid in Crown Point, IN, I assure you.

        5. We were near the beach so we constantly had a breeze so it wasn’t intolerable. It was rather amusing that the girls dorms lacked a/c, cable, and the convience of dorm fridge the guys dorms had all of that plus a game room.
          Our dorm was a converted historical hotel, and it was gorgeous. We had the original dining room with Tiffany windows, hand carved chairs, painted ceiling. The rotunda had more Tiffany windows, hand carved columns, gilded ceilings, mosaic floors.
          The guys dorm by contrast was a building built in the 90’s and was as ugly as can be. I would take the girls dorm any day over the guys dorm.

    1. Maybe they were afraid we would get a whiff of “freedom” and wanted to limit access. Or maybe they thought we would be tempted to sneak out. Or jump.

      1. “jump” – that was good (great) for an early-morning chuckle… (emergency arose – 3.5 hours sleep; hope to make it up later)

    2. No AC, and they wouldn’t let you open a window?
      Cancel what I said above about it not being so bad.

    3. when I was there in the mid 90’s they let us open windows. I do not know when they changed it but I am glad they did. There was only about 5 days in my entire 4 years there I wished for A/C. So I didn’t really care.

      1. I opened my windows, in my time there, too. Maybe it depended what floor you were on.

        1. Bottom floor. Not allowed. Probably the sneaking out thing. I knew a girl who was dating a security guard and she regularly snuck out that back stairway at the end of the dorm wing to kiss him goodnight every night. Then they put an alarm on that door so she had to use a window. (She was determined.) She finally quit school and married him and they lived happily ever after. (So far as I know)

        2. Thank God. Anyway,, you were on Frye’s floor. She did not want you all to see what was going on outside HER window. 😯

        4. I was on Frye’s floor my second or third year. I spent time at Baptist City and then first floor of the monastary rooms (those tiny brick isolation rooms that were designed for one monk with no possessions but by using bunk beds they were able to squeeze two girls into each 4×6 room.

        5. No, not a swat team, silly! Her favorite girls, leaning in for the goodnight kiss. How could you have forgotten?? 🙄

        6. it wasn’t the lack of a/c that bothered me, it was the MOLD in the ceiling tiles that made it hell in the dorms (bricks) 😡
          whichever one of us had the top bunk would get a sinus infection immediately. We would switch to the bottom bunk one of us had an important thing coming up. like a date or student teaching…sad
          we tried complaining about it…but were told we were complaining…….

  12. Can’t help thinking of Richard Nixon with that opening pic holding his 2 arms high waving the v sign. “I am not a crook” “I am not a crook”

  13. Okay, so just before I woke this morning, I dreamed of HAC. That happened fairly often years ago, but then didn’t, for at least ten years. Now that I read and love SFL, it has happened a few times. It is a trade-off, I guess. The funny thing is, in these more recent dreams, I am always fully aware of what liars these people are, and I am always trying to do something to correct it. This beats the heck out of the dreams of decades ago, when I was always just frustrated, scared, and trying to escape. 😯

    1. Mine were always frustrated, scared, lost, unprepared and couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to be doing.

      I am so glad to not have those dreams anymore.

      (Oh, and always on a bus or in a basement classroom.)
      I can’t believe I didn’t realize WHY I had those dreams back when I was having them. DUH!

      1. Wow, Sims. That is really a testament to how sincerely if not unconciously traumatizing your time at HAC was. I am glad that you are healing from that time in your life. I KNOW that coming out and saying the truth is very liberating and at times can be the hardest thing. I’m glad that there are websites where people can come and get that stuff out of their systems. A couple of days ago I said that I HATED the house I grew up in in a very dangerous inner city neighborhood of Chicago. I had never come out and said the words before. Everyone in my family has nightmares of that house to this day and we are in later middle age. Yet I had never said the word hate. It felt really good. Hope this helps.

        1. Thank you for the encouraging words. I think just about everyone has stuff from their past to cope with. (Not just the fundies) I am well past having too much of an emotional reaction to these things because so many years have passed since it had a hold on me. But I still do suffer from some of the mind-screwing they did. Things such as always wondering if I am “good enough” or if I have done enough for God this week, feeling guilty for not winning souls or even for how much I CARE about things that I *ought* to care about, along with many other false and unacceptable ways of thinking plague me constantly. I feel like I know better but just can’t get the phonograph in my head to get un-stuck.

    2. Seen, I think it represents a breakthrough that you now fight back in your dreams. Congratualations.
      (No little smiley, I’m serious this time.)

      2. Thank you, BG, I see it that way, also. I have the Lord, mainly, to thank for that, and my late husband. Also, raising children alone, dealing with straitened means, etc., while certainly not my choice, was very empowering. When they were pretty much grown, I looked around and realized, hey, I did okay, by the grace of God and the wherewithal He gave me, and not a fundy was ever in sight. Thank God. ❗

    3. I usually dream that I am in the dorms and married. I am trying to hide my kids and husband because I am afraid I will get kicked out if they find out I have had sex.
      Or I am in class in short pajamas. I am trying to find coats or anything to cover up with when Wendell Evans walks in room.

  14. The video itself is creepy enough, but to find out it was made long after the man died, well, that’s just spooky. I guess this is the Fundy response to Halloween.

    1. Haha! Freddie = Jackie. And now for a good title. How about “Horror at Hammond?” 👿

      2. “The Hyles Hammond Horror.”
        It would be better if I could work a little more alliteration in there. 😕

  15. I am afraid to go to the bottom of my photo-box, but I bet I have enough pictures of him in there to do a similar video. I have one of him wearing an ice cream vendors smock, pushing an ice cream cart, and several of him on pizza night,(One in the doorway of my dorm room surrounded by adoring fans) and I think one of him and me standing next to each other smiling…

    {hangs head in shame}

        1. I very clearly remember him one time saying in a chapel service, “I just want to make love to each and every one of you kids.” I looked in horror to my husband (then fiancee) and he whispered, “I don’t think he knows what that means.” I sat shocked at the fact that not one person challenged him on that statement, or offered to explain to him the meaning of that phrase. (And I don’t think he was so sheltered that he didn’t know what he was saying…)

        2. Oh, YES! I distinctly recall that he did not know what it meant! Or at least, wanted it o look that way! Someone finally told him, though, because by 1984, when I returned, he had stopped. Why didn’t he just ask Dave? He had a pervert right there, for all the info he could ever want. 👿

        3. NO kidding! For him to be so blissfully clueless when his son was poking everyone that wandered in his path was quite hard to believe.

  16. I never understood how we are to be proud that we give God second rate. There is nothing holy about torn up window shades, no air conditioning, or poor housing facilities. At least the first Fundy U I attended (no longer Fundy, by the way) had a place to hang my clothes.

    The dulcet tones of The Man bring back memories of many Fundy High chapels in which he was the guest speaker. I think I’ll go find some oldies rock or CCM to listen to to purge the memory.

    1. Or, as I say, Pinky and the Bron, on YouTube. Did the trick for me, last night! 😆

      1. Happily, last night I was driving back from my son’s away football game, (He got his first touchdown, [11th grade] A 72 yard run on a pitch-out!!!) and missed this until morning.

        So anyway, I got a good nights sleep without P&tB and only woke up to this. I agree that they are therapeutic.

        1. Congrats to your son! My boys are football players as well and I was doing the same thing last night. A 72 yarder! That’s just plain fun!

        2. Congrats to your on! One of mine played all four years in high school, and every Friday night, that is where I was. You had a big big moment, too! How fun! :mrgreen:

    2. Uncle Wilver, one thing I clearly remember was how much they pushed the idea of “FIRST CLASS” Gotta do everything FIRST CLASS! Don’t give God second best or less than FIRST CLASS. But now that you mention it, you are absolutely right. The window shades in that one picture surprised me because When I was there they were new, but still, NOTHING there was remotely close to “first class” but we didn’t know any better.

    1. I had a revelation last night (of sorts.) I was trying to figure out WHY so many people were sucked in by him and WHY we allowed him to put us into bondage the way he did. I think I figured something out.

      Being in bondage in Hammond, Indiana isn’t a lot different than being in bondage to sin. Some of it was just being blind and following along with what we were told to do, but part of it was that it was comfortable to have a list of things to do and things not to do because in having our list we could always judge how we were doing. (Usually not as great as we ought to have been doing.) But anyway, now that I am out of all that, sometimes I struggle with that question. “How am I doing?” Some of the reason people follow this crap (because LOOK at him! I mean, he wasn’t being followed for his LOOKS!) but some of it was that people (some) WANT someone to take charge and say, “Here is what you need to do.” It takes the burdon off of them to figure out and decide what God wants them to do if they just can follow a man. I don’t know. It is too early to pull my thoughts together much better than that. (not even light yet here) Anyway, this site has been VERY helpful to me to pull things out, take a look at them and then replace them in a way that seems to fit a little better. It is the best free therapy anywhere.

      1. Oh, a HUGE part of it is that need for an authority figure who is visible to the eye, yes. Which explains why kids from dysfunctional families of various sorts did so well at worshipping him.

        1. The really frightening thought here is the parallel to why kids with no positive authority figures gravitate to gangs. Pastors who have an extra-biblical sense of pastoral authority (and parents that allow it)do more to harm families than what they claim to be separate from does.

  18. “If you don’t love us now, you’ll learn to love us.” Is that a threat?

    More like, “If you don’t love us now, you’ll be brain washed, manipulated and guilted into doing as we say. And, don’t even try to call mommy in a vain attempt to escape.”

    What a freak! Our former pastor attending HAC in the mid-late 80’s. I didn’t know much about Hammond or Jacko when we decided to join our local ifb church, but the information on this sight has explained so much of our ex-fundy church pastor’s behavior. Lesson: It pays to do your homework. If we had known then what we know now….

    1. I hear they’ve got Lester Roloff’s death plane on display. Why not a pickled Jack Hyles propped up in a glass case?

  20. The temerity/audacity to claim Hyles Anderson (or whatever fundy institution he may have been at — Texas references were confusing) is an institution where you “can not be more loved”. It’s doubly so for HAC, but you can’t find institutions where you are more disdained than fundy institutions. Unbelievable.

  21. I’m not as familiar with the Hyles branch of the Fundy world. Do people in it just not know about his affair(s)? or do they write it off as conspiracy?

    1. I didn’t know about it while I was there, but I knew all the people involved. We were fed a very careful mix of half-truths and outright lies by those in leadership there. I think quite a few people knew or had guessed, but they had been conned into believing that it would hurt the cause of Christianity if this “great man” fell. Or they were afraid of being considered “disloyal” and shoved to the side. I found out all of it after we had already moved away and gotten out of the movement. If we had still been in I probably would have been one of those who said, “That is IMPOSSIBLE that is just an attack of Satan and lies from disgruntled ex-church members.”
      I was too innocent at the time to imagine something so evil even existed.

      1. They also kept a very careful control over any information we ever would have had access to. There was no internet, and any books or publications had to make it through the screening at the bookstore before we could read them. My husband subscribed to The Biblical Evangelist while we were there (I think that was the publication that finally broke the story) and that was how we found out.

        1. I went to the Lake County Public Library, on the college bus, yes, in Merrillville, every chance I got.. I checked out whatever I wanted. I do recall Arlys Cooper, Room Inpector, writing up a few girls for their library books, but I never got written up. Mine were not lurid or bad in any way, though. All she had to see was a bodice-ripper cover, and bam! Also, I got away with reading a few more adventurous books because I was tricky enough to get the ones with old worn covers. She was too dumb to think about really checking the contents….

    2. Even in our legal justice system cases are sometimes based on the preponderance of circunstantioal evidence. following you will find three links that you can read for yourself and come to your own conclusions. For me the most damning was the “Biblical Evangelist” article, particularly Judy Nischik Johnson’s letter to Hyles. Judy is the Nischik’s daughter, she lived in the midst of the storm so I place a lot of credibility on her perspective.

      http://www.biblicalevangelist.org/jack_hyles_chapter3.php

      http://home.conservativebabylon.com/2007/11/09/jack-hyles/

      http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/hyles/testim.htm

      2. I just read the Biblical Evangelist article. I would say “Holy crap!” but there’s nothing holy about Hyles’ actions. Just crap.

        1. That article, yes, written by a fundy, nevertheless is one of the most powerful items ever written in the history of fundy-dum, as far as what it did: it led to the downfall of Jack Hyles. More and more of us began to see truth, and light. More of his old faithfuls left the college, and left the church. Many are still fundies, but freer fundies, I like to think, and quite possibly on the road to complete deliverance. Jack Hyles, in his turn, went completely around the bend. He was on the defensive. He had to act like he liked his wife. He had to constantly do damage control for his son. He out-ruckmaned Ruckman, with a bizarre new obsession with the KJV. His entire focus changed, and changed forever. It would never be the same. There would no longer be churches on waiting lists to get him every Monday and Tuesday. The old theme of saving America was changed to saving his own sorry ass. So few people in America still wanted him. It was a downward spinning spiral right to his grave. His grave, BTW, is haunted by a demented remnant, who still go, believing that praying THERE somehow shows God that the prayer should count MORE. You will never get an accurate count of how many are enrolled at HAC, nor of church attendance, because of how they lie. But the heyday is soooo over. Thank God. 🙄

        3. “freer fundies on the road to complete deliverance”…. I guess that describes me and i like it. Thank you for the post, and for the thought I had of a conference theme “Saving the World, and Hyles’s Sorry Ass”

      3. Wow, I am in kind of a state of shock after reading only the first link. Wow, I don’t even know what to say. I know that even though my fundy church is of the BJU “camp” I recognized some sayings that the founding pastor used to say, I guess he must have learned them from Hyles. There were a ton of typos in that article by the way and in the beginning the writers seemed more interested in saving the “movement” of fundamentalism that anything else, what about all that independence guys? Wow, did I say wow? That was a whole lot of stuff going on in that church and college. Yeeeeesh. 😯 😯 😯

      4. Thanks for posting those links. That’s seriously scary. Perhaps what is more scary is that no one could (or would) confront his inappropriate behaviour and take him out of the pulpit. How monarchical, and well Jim-Jonsey.

    3. Katherine, there is no evidence of Jack Hyle’s “affair”, so that’s why many people don’t believe it — even his main accuser (Nischik) would not accuse him of actually having a sexual relationship with his wife.

      Leaving that aside, to me, there are plenty of other issues (such as documented here) that are big problems with him and the methods he promoted.

      1. Well, GR, that’s a funny thing about adultery. People usually are careful enough to not get caught in the actual sexual act. But there was way too much smoke there for there not to be a fire.

      2. I could be wrong but I believe the accusations of the affair were in the divorce papers that were filed. Not that everything in a divorce filing is 100% true (a lot of he said, she said). But why go through the problem of creating a fictional story of your wife sleeping with the great Dr. Hyles just to divorce her? Something definitely smells fishy.

      3. I’m not a math genius but let’s see, Hyle’s wife told a close friend he hadn’t touched her in 20 years, add to that that they had separate bedrooms and that was common knowledge around the church and that Jennie N. didn’t let her husband touch her for what like 18 years, and they had separate bedrooms and that Hyles is the one that paid for the separate bedroom and two offices with one door in between the two, well, I crunched the numbers and come on!!!! Yep, no one ever caught them in the act….. They probably did it multiple times a day if you ask me!!! 😯 😳 😯

      4. my mom’s best friend’s mother worked in a hotel and she once delivered porn videos to a hotel room where Hyles was staying with the woman in question. I know this only counts as hearsay, but, for what it’s worth. This poor woman had no reason to lie about it–she was so steeped in FBC that even after this happened, she stayed in the church.

  22. You could have gone to a college that was accredited
    You could have gone to a college that would give you a qualification recognised worldwide
    You ladies could have gone to a college where your education would have been just as useful as the men’s

    Instead you came here – best of luck with that in the outside world

  23. So, gang, what should we do to celebrate Jack Hyles’ birthday?

    Roger our secretaries in front of their husbands or wives? (But what if I don’t have a secretary?)

    Cover up our sons’ felonious actions? (But not everybody has a depraved, criminal son.)

    Start a fake “college” where hardly any of the faculty is qualified and give out worthless degrees after mind-f**king the students for years?

    Build temples to ourselves and publish books about our own greatness while the hungry go unfed, the sick go untended, the prisoners go unvisited, and the poor, the orphan, and the stranger perish for lack of hope?

    Nah, that’s all a bit grandiose. Let’s just tell some tall tales about our holiness and choke a dog (no, wait, don’t choke a dog– that’s cruel and illegal) for old times’ sake.

  24. Isn’t it in I Corinthians that Paul was reprimanding the Corinthians about worshiping a certain preacher…like Apollos and a few others he named and said they work for God, but it is God who makes the end result possible? Funny, how it seems some preachers would rather be noticed and put on a pedestal and give themselves the glory and not give the reverence where reverence is due. So sad.

    2. Preachers are wrong when they seek adulation for themselves. The congregation is wrong when they fawn on men they consider “great”. We are all equal in the body of Christ.

  25. And at this juncture, I am perfectly delighted to ask: HOWDYA LIKE THEM PHILLIES?????? 😆 😆 😆 Life is SWEET!!!!!!! :mrgreen:

  26. “Brother Hyles doesn’t replace your pastor.”

    Unless your pastor disagrees with “Brother Hyles” or dares to accuse him of any wrong-doing. Then your pastor is a heretic!

    “Don’t go home. You stay here where you’re loved and wanted, and what-not”

    Be afraid of all that the “what-not” entails!

  27. I remember hearing Jack Hyles for the first time in chapel at Bob Jones in 1969. Even as an 18 year old westerner, oblivious to much of the megachurch and IFB movement, my reaction was one of instant dislike. How I wish I would have paid attention to those early radar warning signals…not doing so ended in lost decades of wrong thinking and damaged lives. I’ve learned from my teaching career that young students can smell and spot a phony early on…never ignore those first questions and doubts when experiencing people and what they are selling. The saddest thing about the IFB movement is that people who should have known better allowed it to happen. Most of these guys couldn’t have held a job outside of their little IFB world. Thanks for your work. It comes with a price, I’m sure.

    2. Careful, Mirele. I have gotten anonymous weird letters from Hammond, for insisting on same. 🙄

    3. His late mate Merile merrily said
      Immortality can’t be bought in a jar
      This just in: Justin’s had enough of cure-
      Alls, gonna quiz the neighbor kid with the
      Fish on his car

      He says: I don’t know why you care
      I don’t know what’s out there
      I don’t know how it’s done
      Just take me to your leader, son

  29. I about fell out at: “You could have chosen a college that has hangers where you could hang your clothes.” 😯

    1. Next time I’m asked for an example of an oxymoron, I’ll say “arrogant humility.”

      1. I imagine ‘arrogant humility’ would be something
        like false humility, which would make it much less
        of an oxymoron.

  32. “You could have….” And you *certainly* should have!!!!

    Hey by the way why is it that every fundy video has the same sound track? Where is this music from? I mean seriously every video particularly promotional material has this song.

    Also what is with all the poses of him holding up both hands with the peace sign? I didn’t think he was a hippy loving liberal so what is up with that?

      1. I kind of figured he’d have to be, but if it happens once that is funny and ironic. Twice? Something is up with that.

        1. Well, you know how they are. If he did it once and got a laugh then of course he will just do it again for a “different” crowd to get a laugh again. Problem was, if you were a college student you were in EVERY crowd. So we got to enjoy his material again and again and again. Rolaids anyone?

  34. What’s frightening to me is that he said several things that were truly good, but the one that got (by far) the biggest reaction from the crowd was “history of victory for our kind of fundamentalism”. What does that tell you about what is caught (if not necessarily taught) at HAC?

  36. Was he serious in that little speech when he said that only three of HAC’s faculty had college degrees?

    If so, why, oh, why would anyone go to school there?

    1. He was satirizing an often-heard accusation. I taught there, and had my degrees: but, as you may know, they were FROM HAC! Also, I did NOT have a doctorate, and the only ones I knew of, there, with earned doctorates (as opposed to the absurd honoraries) were Wendell Evans, Pete Cowling, and Mark Rasmussen, the last of which is long gone, and again, his doctorate was earned at–you guessed it!–HAC.
      I must say though, for the level of English I was PERMITTED to teach, I was more than adequately able. It was basically the same old A Beka crap, except I was not allowed to give many assignments, of any depth or length, at all. I was even told to dumb things down, because this was first and foremost a PREACHER’S college, not some elitist dealie. 👿 😯 🙄
      In a class which I was the first ever to teach there, (Teaching English in the Secondary School) I got away with the most, and had the most liberty. But again, the rumors of our being electronically bugged proved to be true, because I was continually being questioned about things I said in that class. 😕

      1. I should explain: I had left HAC, after my graduation, and had taught very happily in another state. I was asked to return, after four years elsewhere, and I did. My four years away had opened my eyes, though, and it was not the same experience for me AT ALL, when I was there the second time around! Thank God I met my now late husband, who was completing his master’s degree, and we married and left, after I had been on faculty only two years.
        But, that is where I got the agenda I had for that new class, and that is where I spoke out the most, and THAT is the one about which I faced the most questions from higher-ups. 😡

  37. I could have chosen a college where I wouldn’t have gotten sick with mono (I didn’t kiss anyone). I could have chosen a college that would have spared me a little time for myself. I could have chosen a college where you are not forced to walk in dangerous Cities every weekend. I could have chosen a college that didn’t make me rip out and redo that damn zipper in the skirt a hundred times, damn perfectionist teacher, and why the heck did we have to sew a pair of panties? My handmade panties were too…dare I say it, sexy, I left them there for fear of getting in trouble with my parents for having, ehem sexy panties. The word sex(y) was a bad word. I could have chosen a college that had actual dorm rooms, oh what the heck, I never saw it anyway. I could have chosen a college that allows the opposite sex ‘uhho’ to shake hands. I could have chosen a college that allows students to worship and serve their own way without mandating so many hours of slavery, um service (we were used to build his church and his ego). Oh I could go on. I remember that speech, I feal cheated now knowing it was the same ol’ over used speech. Thank goodness, I only had one year there.

  39. Ha! Well, I went to HAC – in fact I show up at 5:03 in the video (was the pianist for the Hylander Singing Men).

    Then my “Babylonian Captivity” was over, and I went to Concordia Seminary and now am ordained as a pastor in the Lutheran Church. 😀
    LOL

  40. Brother Jack Hyles was awesome. Those who hate him would be much better off if they learned from him.

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