Thank you Dr. Bob for defending the nature of this thread. My comments were included here without personal vandetta, etc., rather in response to who I believe is the preacher that has done the most damage to the overall cause of Baptist Fundamentalism. I chose Jack Hyles and his son Dave Hyles.
Dave Hyles preached numerous "revival" Youth Conferences to young people back in the early 80's. I attended a few of these meetings. He hounded us on purity and having pure minds (Even wrote a book on it!). He actually used a very deceptive technique--In his messages on purity, he painted pictures in our minds by describing for us detailed female anatomy, and then talked about the pornography movement. After successfully filling all our minds with this stuff, he yelled at us for our ungodly thoughts and began the high pressure altar call for us all to come forward and "Get right with God". Everyone went forward.
Needless to say we were curious as to why Dave Hyles did not show up one year as the keynote preacher!
It was found out that he had had active affairs with at least 13 women, and had deposited a briefcase filled (with photos of him with the women) into a trash container. A boy in his church discovered the briefcase, and he was caught red-handed.
Suffice it to say that this qualifies him as a damaging preacher.
As to Jack Hyles, there is the old saying that "the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree." Jack is the tree, Dave is the fruit. Years after Dave was caught, Jack made the comment that his son Dave was one of the greatest Christians he knew.
In 1989, a lengthy expose on Jack Hyles was published by Robert Sumner, that laid bare the goings on at First Baptist Church, and the accusations of female mis-uses by Jack. A book was later written by Glover that documented the many gross sins of this preacher and his son. In his reply to all these accusations, Jack Hyles evaded all the really tough accusations and tried to explain away some of the accuasations that would be harder for his accusers to re-verify. My belief is that even if only 50% of all that Sumner and Glover wrote were true, then Jack Hyles is indeed one of the most dangerous and destructive preachers of the 20th century.
As to his doctrine and contribution to the movement, he helped explode radical KJV-Onlyism, he sadly moved much of Fundamentalism toward Arminianism, he discourage any form of liturgy from church services by turning services into carnival acts where prizes are given away. He is responsible for introducing fundamentalism to the bait and switch evangelistic tactics (give the kids a hamburger to get them to come to church), and he was really loose on divorce--even encouraged someone to divorce once with someone in mind already that he should re-marry.
I could drone on and on, but you get the point. This and much more is why I listed Jack and Dave Hyles as my most damaging preachers.
Chick
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