Hyles: Supernatural and Spiritual Fraud

God’s holiness separates Him from all that is common and profane (Isaiah 6).  He remains alone non-contingent (Ex 3:14), without variableness nor shadow of turning (James 1:17). God by nature works outside natural bounds, so He also saves beyond the natural.    Jesus made this point in John 3:3 when He told Nicodemus:

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

“Born again” translates two Greek words—gennao anothen—literally “born from above.”   Jesus also describes this as being “born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:6).  God performs man’s conversion alone.  The Gospel isn’t a technique, but “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom 1:16).  Church growth isn’t a strategy, but God giving the increase (1 Cor. 3:6).  Christ builds the church (Matt. 16:18) and we shouldn’t want to get in the way of that.  The best we can produce are human, temporal results.

The Power of God

During Hyles’ lifetime, he often spoke of the power of God.  One of his more famous speeches he titled Fresh Oil, taken from the last part of Psalm 92:10,  “I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”  He said that after experiencing no numerical results for one year at a little church he was pastoring, he began praying intensely for the power of God and told God that he would sacrifice anything for it.  At that time, his dad dropped over dead and after the burial, Hyles claimed to have laid on his dad’s grave for hours, maybe weeks, having lost all track of time.  Having gotten up from there, he reported that he never saw a week go by that he didn’t see a person converted.  In many messages, he said the same kind of thing, that despite his not being sinlessly perfect, his great results came from the power of God.  Others all over the country hungered for the same power as Hyles had so that they too could have the same consequences in their ministries.  In most cases, after Hyles spoke, the front and aisles of any building would be filled with almost everyone in the auditorium, who wanted the same thing in their lives that he had.

Whether you believe in the Hyles’ view of the fulness of the Spirit or of the outpouring of the Spirit or not (which I don’t), was the work in Hammond supernatural and did it come from the power of God?

Hyles talked about the power of God in his life and on his ministry.  He said that his work became a success after he had this supernatural experience and received the power of God.   The story he told makes him look as though he paid an incredible price to get it.

Night after night I would walk through the pine thickets of east Texas, up and down the sand hills, begging God for His power. If you had driven down Highway 43 outside Marshall, Texas, on the way to Henderson, Texas, in the wee hours of the morning, you could have heard me praying, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and begging God to give me power.  I was losing weight. I couldn’t eat. What I did eat came back up! My family was worried about me.  My deacons got together and said to me, “Pastor, you’ve got to take care of yourself. You are going to get bad sick.” . . . .  We prayed from 1:00 until 2:00; from 2:00 until 3:00; from 3:00 until 4:00; from 4:00 until 5:00 and sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning the sweet power of God settled upon us, and I knew that God had given me some fresh power, some fresh oil.

The message to you and me is that we too could have what he had only if we were willing to sacrifice like he did.  The key here is:  like he did.  Jack Hyles wanted it more than anyone.  He sacrificed till he was sick.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but the story is about him.  We don’t have what he had because we didn’t have the desire that he had for the power of God.  If we did, we could have it too, and we would have the results too.

The Programs of Hyles

We don’t see this hoop-jumping to get God’s power in Scripture anywhere, except possibly the priests of Baal, but they weren’t worshiping God when they cut themselves, danced, and screamed.  Not-in-Scripture is enough to reject it.  What is ironic, however, and tell-tale is that the very Hyles that says it is the “power of God” that caused what happened was also the one that produced the huge manual of success methodology called The Hyles Church Manual.  What we came to find with Hyles was that the power of God was not what brought the people into First Baptist in Hammond.  Between his Let’s Go Soulwinning tapes and booklet and his Church Manual and then reinforced annually at his pastor’s school, we found that his own methods (Hylesology), ones not found anywhere in Scripture, were what brought the numeric success and the “professions of faith” at Hammond.  These are what people mimicked everywhere to produce the phenomena of the “Hyles’ Church.”

Hyles laid out in incredible detail the way the church grows.  It grows by means of the little talk someone does in persuading someone to pray the “sinner’s prayer.”  It grows by means of the method of getting those people who prayed the prayer into the baptistry.  It grows by means of the programs, promotions, and rewards.  In his church manual, written in 1968, he showed how he kept the people coming.   Here’s my synopsis that really is just a sampling of what Hyles did:

We don’t do anything on the natural high days like Easter and Christmas.  We must plan something special on the natural low days like Memorial Day weekend.   For the summer, a natural low period, we must keep them coming through numerous special Sundays, like Carry-the-Load Sunday.   We plan for a special holiday and give some material thing that day to get them to come.   We plan special seasonal days through the year, like Back-to-School Sunday, and give something out on those days.  We plan days for special activities.  We have a ten week fall push and a ten week spring push.  We have departmental and class contests.  We give away big prizes and many prizes to the workers who are winners.   We have four special colossal days a year that are even the biggest pushes of the year.  We have teacher’s meetings to scold and reward them for the numbers of people who come.  We have bus contests, giving prizes to those who have the best bus attendance.  We give gifts to bus riders.

Hyles also told how to advertise in the papers, on television, and over the radio, what kind of flyers to make and use, as well as everything from how to paint the busses to how to design and decorate the auditorium.  Everything was engineered to facilitate a kind of psychological and emotional impact on a person, and as it is described, not a spiritual one.  Hyles’ entertaining brand of speaking, the kind of Sunday School presentation, the upbeat congregational and special music; everything was created to keep someone coming back for the very reasons why those techniques were used.

The Contradiction

Does this sound like someone who trusted in the power of God?  If someone was trusting in the power of God, why would he think that he needed any of these strategies and conditions to produce results?  Isn’t the power of God greater than any of these?  If God were to get the glory from something produced by His power, in contrast what would happen from all these things that were caused by Hyles?  If Jesus through the Holy Spirit was the big draw of First Baptist of Hammond, why would any of these gimmicks and techniques be necessary?

Of course, the power of God was not the basis of the Hyles’ numbers and success.  The power of God also produces purity.   The proliferation of personal and family corruption and the power of God couldn’t be operating simultaneously.  The power of God doesn’t cause something centered on man but on God.  The power of God doesn’t give explanations of Scripture that defy the plain, grammatical-historical, and historic meaning.  The power of God doesn’t depend on all these strategies and techniques.

Hyles related the power of God to his successes, providing a cover for man-made maneuvering and blaming God for his gimmicks.  By doing so, he led many into a false view of spirituality.  The numbers became the best test for spirituality, therefore, authenticating all of the Hyles’ methods.  God was responsible—responsible for shallow, psychological preaching, worldly promotions, fleshly manipulation, and twisting of Scripture.   All of this caused a massive lack of discernment.   The Hyles followers were led to believe that they had no ability or right to judge someone so “used of God” as he was.  If you questioned, you must be wrong, because God’s power was more evident with Hyles than it was with you.

Hyles hype went from one high to the next, consummating with the once-a-year pastor’s school, in which Hyles showed-off everything that he did.  In the end, it wasn’t the power of God that caused the growth there at Hammond, but how hard Hyles and his followers worked their programs, how well they performed them, and how slick they promoted them.   Hyles was very proficient at what he did, better than any others whose conscience would allow them to operate like him.  Their successes perpetuated themselves by means of the self-promoting marketing done through their spectacular multimedia.

Jack Hyles mastered and then reproduced a means in which he could tap into a few natural motivators to get men to work for him:  fear, pride, and greed.  Men naturally fear being a failure and they know that success is judged by numbers.  When men followed Hyles or used his patterns to operate, Hyles rewarded them with recognition of all different types.  Often his pastor’s school was a vehicle to get it done, but some of it came because Hyles sheer notoriety.  If he said you were an up-and-comer, you now were one.  Hyles brought with him a kind of power, but it wasn’t God’s.  It was political power in his own growing circle.  He could make you or break you.   In a large way, you could make the line-up for a conference and the potential remuneration.  On a lesser level, you could get a new suit, your name on a plaque, or an honorary doctorate.  Or you could lose all that, and go to the dark side of the moon in the Hyles orbit.

None of this was about the power of God, but about Jack Hyles.  None of it was about the glory of God, but about Jack Hyles.  Even if Jack Hyles said it was about God, God knew that it wasn’t.