Latest / 4-Freedom Podcast / 169. Fundamental Footprints - Examining Hyles-Anderson College – A Legacy of Influence and Concern

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169. Fundamental Footprints - Examining Hyles-Anderson College – A Legacy of Influence and Concern · 4-Freedom Podcast

• 0:11
  I was 13 years old the first time I walked into a church that
• 0:14
  big 5000 people packed into an auditorium, scrambling for seats
• 0:20
  in the balcony at a youth conference in Hammond, IN.
• 0:23
  It was electric. A man in a suit and glasses
• 0:27
  brushed past me. I didn't think much of it till
• 0:30
  someone later told me that was Jack Piles himself.
• 0:34
  That night a skinny preacher in a burlap suit preached a message
• 0:39
  called America America. He showed a 3 minute abortion
• 0:44
  video that left no one dry eye and when he shouted somebody's
• 0:49
  got to stand up and say that's not right, I felt something pull
• 0:54
  that my heart. I walked the aisle and
• 0:56
  surrendered to preach along with hundreds of other teams.
• 1:00
  That skinny preacher in the burlap suit, his name was Jack
• 1:04
  Stop. Fast forward five years.
• 1:08
  I'm a freshman at How's Anderson College.
• 1:11
  Nothing could have prepared me for the Chicago winters.
• 1:14
  Wind chills, 20 below. Frostbite warnings. 5 months
• 1:19
  without seeing a blade of grass. But in the middle of all that
• 1:23
  ice and snow, I was asked to be a bus captain.
• 1:27
  Freshmen usually didn't get that kind of responsibility.
• 1:31
  My first weekend out visiting my new route, I got a call.
• 1:36
  Jack Hiles had died, but Jack Scott, the same man who preached
• 1:41
  the message that changed my life, was going to take the
• 1:44
  reins. Surely the future was bright.
• 1:49
  My future, however, wasn't. I found out that as a bus
• 1:54
  captain, I was financially responsible for the Christian
• 1:58
  School bills of the kids on my bus route.
• 2:01
  So semester after semester, my own tuition was siphoned away
• 2:06
  and I fell further and further behind.
• 2:10
  Then came the TV incident. My roommate, one O 5, had one.
• 2:17
  It was against the rules. It wasn't mine.
• 2:19
  I didn't watch it, but I didn't snitch either.
• 2:23
  And at that school, silence was guilt.
• 2:27
  I walked into that room. Sitting at the disciplinary
• 2:30
  table was a who's who of fundamentalism.
• 2:34
  Jack Scott, Ray Young, John Francis, Darryl Moore, Wendell
• 2:41
  Evans, Eddie Lapina, just to name a few.
• 2:45
  They told. They told me I'd be punished
• 2:48
  like I own the TV myself. That weekend I packed up what
• 2:52
  little I had left. I was done with the rules.
• 2:56
  I was done with the nepotism. I was done with the double
• 2:59
  standards. I never found out if I was
• 3:03
  expelled or not. I just left.
• 3:07
  Ten years later, my life had changed.
• 3:10
  I was married, graduated from college, back in the ministry,
• 3:15
  on staff at my home church, and one day my pastor called me in.
• 3:21
  Jack Scott, the man whose sermon once moved me to the altar.
• 3:26
  I'd taken a 16 year old across state lines for moral purposes,
• 3:31
  lost his family, lost his church, lost his freedom.
• 3:35
  And in that moment, I thought to myself, somebody should have
• 3:40
  told him that wasn't right. I found my freedom in you.
• 4:20
  I found a toy I can't lose, and thank God it's true.
• 4:27
  You wrapped your arms around me and heaven broke through.
• 4:31
  From the moment she found me, I found my freedom.
• 4:38
  Welcome to the Four Freedom podcast.
• 4:40
  This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for
• 4:44
  everyday Christians with everyday issues.
• 4:48
  Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Morris.
• 4:55
  Welcome back to the Four Freedom podcast.
• 4:57
  It is a great Lord's Day that we just had this last weekend with
• 5:01
  Resurrection Sunday and every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday,
• 5:05
  but it's always more special when it is the Easter
• 5:08
  celebration, the festival of the Resurrection.
• 5:11
  And we are excited to be back with you.
• 5:15
  Be back with you today recording.
• 5:17
  And we just finished up our woke series, which was a great time.
• 5:20
  Great info, great feedback that we have from you guys and we
• 5:24
  appreciate that. And we're starting a new five
• 5:27
  part series leading up to our summer break and we'll give you
• 5:31
  more information about that. Just, you know, a little bit,
• 5:34
  but Brett, Resurrection Sunday just happened.
• 5:37
  How was that for you guys and what what were some highlights
• 5:41
  from this weekend for y'all? Man, we had a massive, massive
• 5:44
  Sunday man. We had a lot of people in the
• 5:47
  property and we had still had some families out.
• 5:50
  If we'd had our normal families plus all the guests and people
• 5:54
  we had, we probably wouldn't be able to fit them all.
• 5:57
  We had a children. Wish I had had a children's
• 5:59
  church Sunday. Kids loved it.
• 6:01
  Egg hunt we had breakfast that morning.
• 6:04
  We had main service at 9:00 AM. It was a massive, massive
• 6:07
  success. I got visitor cards and it was a
• 6:11
  successful Sunday. Like I I heard about your
• 6:15
  sunrise service. I know you were you're preaching
• 6:17
  on how Pagan Easter is and preaching against the Easter
• 6:22
  Bunny and and things like that. I think that's noble to preach
• 6:25
  on. I I applaud you for that.
• 6:27
  You. Know like I like I always say
• 6:30
  someone's got to do it. And if not me?
• 6:33
  Exactly, exactly. So.
• 6:35
  But yeah, we had a a great Sunday, great turn out.
• 6:40
  It couldn't have went any better and I'm just looking forward to
• 6:45
  next Sunday. Try to ride this way, baby.
• 6:49
  That's right. I love it.
• 6:50
  Yeah, ours. Ours was great as well.
• 6:52
  We did have a sunrise service at 6:30, several visitors there.
• 6:57
  Our thing, Brett, was our spring break fell the week before
• 7:00
  Easter this year. Normally it falls the week
• 7:02
  after. And so because of that, we had,
• 7:05
  man, probably 30 people, ten families that were out on
• 7:09
  vacation. And so that that was a big hit.
• 7:11
  But we had some visitors there, some visiting families, some
• 7:13
  visiting folks from the community, which was a good
• 7:16
  thing. And excited about what Lord's
• 7:19
  doing. We've got some some big things
• 7:21
  coming up with our graduation Sunday.
• 7:24
  That's always a big time for us. And just, you know, trying to
• 7:29
  reach the people that are around us and to get people plugged in
• 7:32
  and such a great thing. Brett, how was your, did y'all
• 7:37
  have a spring? You, you homeschool your kids.
• 7:39
  You're one of those weird people that homeschool.
• 7:41
  But do y'all don't do a spring break or anything or how's that
• 7:44
  work out for y'all? We, we do a spring break, We, we
• 7:46
  let the boys take off, you know, and not do their school work the
• 7:49
  week of. And I think our spring break was
• 7:52
  the week after the school's spring break.
• 7:57
  But just like you, we, we met, we had some low Sundays around
• 8:01
  before and after spring break with families going out of town.
• 8:05
  And that's fine. But you know, the kids got to
• 8:08
  got to have a week off of school work and you know, things were
• 8:13
  for going good for them. They've got basketball and
• 8:15
  friends. And so they're they're, they
• 8:18
  were just tickled pink. They got to take off.
• 8:21
  They vegged on getting video games the whole time.
• 8:24
  Oh yeah, Fortnite. And, you know, playing
• 8:27
  basketball and playing Fortnite, I mean, I wish I had it that
• 8:31
  easy when I was a kid. Right, right.
• 8:34
  Yeah. We, we took this last week off
• 8:36
  during spring break and we went to Georgia, Stone Mountain, GA
• 8:40
  had a great time at the campground down there.
• 8:42
  We camped out for 3-4 nights. And then we drove over to
• 8:46
  Atlanta and went to a Braves game and had to hang out there
• 8:50
  with a little bit. Got to go to their new stadium.
• 8:52
  I've officially been to all three of their stadiums and so
• 8:56
  that was a great time there. And then we had our our Easter
• 8:59
  bash on Saturday and I had a great time with the kids.
• 9:02
  But yeah, it was, it was a good week, good weekend, good time to
• 9:05
  get away from some things and reconnect with the family and
• 9:09
  just had a great time. Let's see what we got coming up
• 9:13
  on the calendar. Don't forget, if you are going
• 9:16
  to be in Dallas, in and around Dallas for the National Southern
• 9:21
  Baptist Convention in in Dallas. We've this year hit us up.
• 9:27
  I think it's going to be June 8th through 11th.
• 9:31
  I think those are the dates, but hit us up.
• 9:34
  Me and James are going to be there.
• 9:35
  We're going to be hanging out with some guys think Marcus
• 9:38
  Merritt will be there around Luther Rice tent and booth and
• 9:44
  we want to meet you. We want to talk to you.
• 9:47
  We want to have conversations with you.
• 9:51
  We want to a meet up. So just let us know we'll be
• 9:54
  there and getting some of that free swag stuff we all get.
• 9:59
  And so, man, I come away from that convention with so many
• 10:03
  books. I've still got pens here in my
• 10:05
  office from the last convention. These paintbrush pens, they,
• 10:10
  they passed out, man, they, they're really bad.
• 10:12
  I don't like them, but I've got plenty of them.
• 10:15
  But I am looking forward to the convention this year and what
• 10:19
  else we got going on. Yeah, I'm super pumped about the
• 10:22
  convention, the time where our family gets to get away.
• 10:25
  It's sort of a, a vacation slash recharge in the ministry.
• 10:29
  Lots of great preaching. Get to see some family, not only
• 10:33
  friends, but also by my actual family lives.
• 10:36
  I've got some, my sister lives in Dallas, about 45 minutes
• 10:39
  north of Dallas. So I'll be there the week before
• 10:41
  as well, hanging out with them. And so I'm I'm pumped about it
• 10:44
  as well. Love the the books that we get,
• 10:47
  the resources that we get to help encourage us as pastors.
• 10:51
  What a great time that is. And then we are also our our
• 10:55
  cigar line's out. This is a small way where you
• 10:57
  can help support our podcast and we are really close to rolling
• 11:03
  out our sweet cigar, our sweet. That should be the the time
• 11:09
  where we will. Hopefully next week is as our
• 11:13
  time where we will. We're sampling our sweet ones
• 11:17
  and then it'll roll out and all four of our cigars will be out
• 11:20
  and we've got some good things coming up in the future.
• 11:23
  So if you haven't went over to our cigar web page, 69 cigars
• 11:27
  back slash for freedom. The leaks also in so notes go
• 11:32
  over. Check it out the great small way
• 11:34
  where you can encourage us by supporting the show and getting
• 11:39
  on some great things. Father's Day is coming up.
• 11:41
  Graduation time is coming up. Great gifts that you can give
• 11:45
  out for during that time. You may have someone that's
• 11:48
  about to give birth and go and have a celebratory cigar.
• 11:51
  That's a great way to do that. And got some some wonderful
• 11:55
  things there for you. And then, Brett, last thing,
• 11:59
  Israel's coming up. Are you excited about Israel,
• 12:03
  man? I'm very, I'm very excited
• 12:05
  about, I mean, for freedom in the Holy Land.
• 12:08
  And I would love nothing more than to have some of our
• 12:10
  listeners on the trip with us. I think that would be a great
• 12:14
  opportunity for us and them if we could go with some of our
• 12:18
  listeners to Israel. I've been thinking about those
• 12:21
  buffets. I've been trying to explain to
• 12:24
  people the massive buffets in these five star hotels that we
• 12:29
  stay at in Israel and, and things like in the in, in
• 12:34
  Tiberias, in the Sea Galilee. I mean, for breakfast buffet to
• 12:38
  have no pork, no bacon, no sausage, you still have plenty
• 12:42
  of options. And then I can't wait to wake up
• 12:46
  1 morning and and go out to the Sea of Galilee and watch the
• 12:49
  sunrise over the Sea of Galilee. Just imagine being Peter out on
• 12:54
  the boat fishing all night. And then man, it's just, it's an
• 12:59
  amazing, amazing thing. We're going to places this next
• 13:03
  trip, this coming up trip. That mean you haven't went on
• 13:06
  before? We haven't been to some of the
• 13:08
  places like the upper room. OK, it may not be the actual
• 13:13
  upper room, but think about this.
• 13:15
  I was watching a video on this the other day.
• 13:18
  The steps going up to the upper room that's there now are the
• 13:23
  Roman steps. So these are the same steps that
• 13:26
  Jesus would have, would it would have walked on as he was walking
• 13:29
  from the upper room to the garden and man, just things like
• 13:34
  that out of the Church of the Flagellation.
• 13:36
  I want to go down. I want to see the stone.
• 13:40
  And so these are some things that I want to do.
• 13:43
  And so I can't wait for Israel. I'm excited about it.
• 13:47
  Reserve your spot now, pay the registration and let's go to the
• 13:53
  Holy Land. Yeah, I had some great
• 13:55
  conversations this last week. I, like I said a couple weeks
• 13:59
  ago, I got to share with my daughter's class just the garden
• 14:03
  experience leading to the crucifixion, the Via Del Rosa,
• 14:06
  being able to talk through those things with them.
• 14:09
  But then I had some conversations this week with
• 14:12
  some individuals from our church and our community that were
• 14:15
  excited and possibly wanting to go and just had some questions
• 14:18
  about it. Man, I was just energized
• 14:20
  talking about it, talking about where we were going to stay, the
• 14:23
  cost of it, how one guy told me, he said, man, I, I priced this
• 14:27
  trip out years ago and I, I couldn't get it for this cost.
• 14:30
  And so I, I was encouraged to hear that.
• 14:33
  And so wonderful time. If you're ever wanted to go,
• 14:37
  now's the time to go. There's boots on the ground,
• 14:39
  there's people that are there. Marcus Merritt just got back and
• 14:43
  said it was a great experience, a great time, and so we are
• 14:47
  looking forward to going and we hope you join us.
• 14:50
  All that information is on our social media pages and on our
• 14:53
  website for freedompodcast.com. You can go over there and check
• 14:56
  that out and jump in on the trip with us.
• 15:01
  I know your heart will be blessed.
• 15:02
  I know we'll be blessed to have you with us.
• 15:04
  And it'll be a wonderful, wonderful time to experience
• 15:08
  Israel with the For Freedom podcast.
• 15:10
  And so we're excited about that. Well, Brett, we are starting
• 15:13
  into a series of the, it's going to be a small series, A5 week
• 15:18
  series. John started the podcast 169
• 15:23
  episodes ago and he started with the history of the independent
• 15:27
  Fundamental Baptist movement. And it really started with J
• 15:30
  Frank Norris. He was the founding father
• 15:32
  branching off from the Southern Baptist Convention a couple of
• 15:35
  times and starting a couple of different associations, which
• 15:40
  eventually evolved into the Independent Fundamental Baptist
• 15:43
  movement. And from there we, we, we talked
• 15:47
  through just a couple of people. But, but really what happened
• 15:50
  was we started talking about the King James only issue and the
• 15:53
  King James only movement. And we really never picked back
• 15:56
  up on the history of the founding of the independent
• 15:59
  Fundamental Baptist movement. And So what me and Brett have
• 16:01
  decided to do is we're going to jump in with really what
• 16:06
  happened after J Frank Norris, who were the people on stage?
• 16:09
  What happened and how did the movement begin to flourish?
• 16:13
  We're going to start today talking about how's Anderson
• 16:16
  College, the legacy and the influence of that college and
• 16:20
  Jack Howells and the concerns that we have with the
• 16:25
  organization. And over the next four weeks
• 16:28
  after this, we're going to talk to Bob Jones, Pensacola Crown,
• 16:32
  some of the legacies, J Franklin, Rutman Roloff, Lee
• 16:37
  Robertson, some of those other Carl Hatch, Tom Malone, some of
• 16:41
  those other guys, and even Bob Jones senior there in Longview
• 16:45
  and Texas. And begin to talk through some
• 16:47
  of the influence that have began to happen because it started
• 16:50
  with J Frank Norris, but then it began to branch out.
• 16:53
  And so we're going to talk through that over the next
• 16:56
  little couple of weeks. We've got a pretty loaded topic,
• 17:00
  one that's going to ruffle a few feathers, but it's one that
• 17:03
  needs to be talked about. Absolutely.
• 17:05
  We're diving into the history, the influence, and the
• 17:08
  controversy surrounding how's Anderson College school that's
• 17:12
  been at the center of the independent fundamental Baptist
• 17:15
  world for decades upon decades. I was talking to my mom just a
• 17:20
  couple of months ago, Brett, about how's Anderson and the
• 17:23
  influence that it had. I, I grew up in an independent
• 17:27
  Fundamental Baptist Church, but never actually heard the name
• 17:30
  Jack How's until I was about 16 or 17 years old.
• 17:34
  And man, it was not that our, our new pastor that come in when
• 17:38
  I was just a young child, six years old, seven years old.
• 17:42
  He, he wasn't really big in the name dropping and so he would
• 17:46
  just preach and love people. Now the pastor before him, Jack
• 17:50
  Howes actually had came and preached at our church and we
• 17:53
  preached around and said my mom and dad knew who he was, but
• 17:57
  just never was a big topic of conversation.
• 18:00
  And so Brett, why? Why are we why are we talking
• 18:02
  about this? What's what's the reason?
• 18:04
  Well, I'll tell you, we're not just doing this to stir the pot.
• 18:08
  We're not doing this just to throw stones.
• 18:11
  This is about transparency, helping people think critically,
• 18:16
  especially those looking at Christian education option
• 18:20
  options. Because look, I wasn't told when
• 18:24
  I went into this house, Anderson.
• 18:27
  No one told me what I was in for.
• 18:30
  Nobody told me the history. Nobody told me what was really
• 18:33
  going on. I went in it with with blinders
• 18:36
  on. Jack Kyles was my pastor's hero.
• 18:40
  And so we want to, all we want to do is get the information out
• 18:44
  there. We want people to know what
• 18:45
  they're getting into. Yeah, and I think by part of
• 18:49
  doing that, we, we want people to think.
• 18:51
  We want people to think critically, use the brain that
• 18:53
  God's giving them. But but in doing that, we must
• 18:56
  start at the beginning. So how's Anderson College?
• 19:00
  HAC, as people like to word it, was founded in 1972 by Jack
• 19:07
  Howes himself, who was already becoming a major figure in the
• 19:11
  IFB world. At the time he was traveling
• 19:14
  evangelist people were taking note of him.
• 19:17
  He took First Baptist Church of Hammond, which was a Southern
• 19:20
  Baptist church, and had left the convention and became part of
• 19:24
  the independent movement that was going on that J Frank Norris
• 19:28
  had began. And now he is making this
• 19:31
  national spotlight in the lot of the same way that J Frank Norris
• 19:35
  was doing it. But now he started to college.
• 19:37
  So now he's got preacher boys, he's got young men, he's got
• 19:41
  families moving to the area to begin coming to this college
• 19:46
  that he started. Now, James little factoid, did
• 19:50
  you know that how's Anderson used to be a monastery?
• 19:54
  I did not. Yes, it was a monastery.
• 19:57
  There are tunnels underneath from that the nuns used to use.
• 20:03
  There's a tunnel from one of the girls dorms to the island in the
• 20:08
  middle of the lake. So these are things that people
• 20:13
  need to know about it. But yeah, it was a monastery at
• 20:16
  one point. Are those tunnels operational?
• 20:20
  No, and there's actually some some some old stories about
• 20:25
  things that were found in the tunnels.
• 20:28
  And I don't know if I could repeat that the stories on here,
• 20:33
  but but it was quite the conspiracy theories going on
• 20:37
  with the tunnels were used for but that the name House Anderson
• 20:42
  actually comes from Russell Anderson.
• 20:46
  This was a businessman. He was a devout supporter who
• 20:49
  financially backed the school. Anderson poured a ton of money
• 20:54
  into this dream school that Hiles wanted a place to train
• 20:58
  pastors, missionaries and Christian workers who would go
• 21:01
  out and quote UN quote, change the world, but under a very
• 21:05
  specific strict ideology. And Russell Anderson would come
• 21:11
  to the school, we'd hear him preach from time to time.
• 21:14
  He'd come and speak. He's a nice man.
• 21:17
  I've had conversations with him in passing.
• 21:20
  And so I've met Russell Anderson a handful of times.
• 21:24
  Yeah, You know, the the college itself was built really in
• 21:28
  essence. And I know you've mentioned
• 21:30
  this, but Jack Howells built it in essence to serve the
• 21:34
  Birmingham ministry of the church.
• 21:37
  You know, he used to say in his tapes, I'll never take a college
• 21:39
  to build a church. But what he did, he used the
• 21:42
  college to build the ministry of the First Baptist Church of
• 21:44
  Hammond and where he's pastored and, and served for many years.
• 21:49
  And under House Anderson, under Jack House's leadership, the
• 21:52
  church claimed attendance of 10s of thousands and had the largest
• 21:58
  Sunday school in the world at a time and the largest bus
• 22:01
  ministry in the world. And I mean, to say that this was
• 22:06
  massive within an understatement.
• 22:07
  This was a huge undertaking of mega churches before mega
• 22:11
  churches were big. You know, we've got some mega
• 22:13
  churches going on in the world right now, but but this was a
• 22:17
  undertaking and the grand scale of, I mean, overcoming complete
• 22:21
  city blocks to build churches on.
• 22:24
  And he believed that the key to continuing that momentum was to
• 22:28
  training what he what we we fondly attribute to what we call
• 22:33
  soul winners who followed the house method of reaching the
• 22:37
  loss by winning the loss through door to door evangelism and bust
• 22:41
  Ministry of Soul winning. Right.
• 22:43
  And let me remind you what the exact quote was that House used
• 22:48
  to say. He used to say this.
• 22:50
  I will. I will never use my ministry to
• 22:55
  build my people. Wait a minute.
• 22:56
  No, I will never use my people to build my ministry, but I will
• 23:00
  use my I haven't typed here wrong, but he said I will use my
• 23:07
  ministry to build my people and not my people to build my
• 23:10
  ministry. That that's it.
• 23:12
  But, you know, that's a lie if I ever heard one, because that was
• 23:15
  the total opposite of my experience.
• 23:18
  And listen to college was a farming system for the
• 23:22
  ministries of the church. You're supposed to be there.
• 23:26
  You're supposed to be getting an education, but the education was
• 23:30
  secondary to the ministries of the church.
• 23:35
  And you didn't have time to work on your classes and your
• 23:37
  schoolwork and with work and things like that.
• 23:40
  And so, but yeah, this method that you were talking about,
• 23:44
  it's a very narrow method, heavy focus on soul in and door to
• 23:49
  door evangelism, separation from the world and really separation
• 23:55
  from other Christians too. We were the only ones that had
• 23:59
  the truth. We're the only ones going to
• 24:01
  heaven. We're the only ones are going to
• 24:03
  be the bride of Christ. And you had to fit this, this,
• 24:08
  this Jack Heil's mode, even to the point where he would preach
• 24:12
  that Jesus fit the Jack Kyle mode, that Jesus had a tapered
• 24:17
  haircut and Jesus was clean shaven and the beard that was
• 24:21
  plucked out of his face was the 5:00 shadow because he usually
• 24:25
  shaved. And so getting up preaching that
• 24:28
  Jesus fit the Jack Kyle's mode and that would just manipulate
• 24:32
  everybody to want to look like him.
• 24:34
  That's. Right.
• 24:35
  Yeah. You know, I remember thinking as
• 24:38
  I was growing up that the independent fundamental Baptist
• 24:41
  movement was this massive movement of a few.
• 24:45
  It, it was a big movement, I'm not going to lie.
• 24:47
  But when I left now even went to conferences and people asked,
• 24:51
  you know, it's hitting a round table and they'd say, Hey, you
• 24:53
  know who, where, where'd you grow up at?
• 24:55
  And I'd sort of be like, oh, independent Baptist Church.
• 24:58
  And you could see everyone knew what it was and their eyes were
• 25:02
  like, Oh, well, that's one of those guys.
• 25:04
  But man, there was so many that once we realized that the pool
• 25:09
  was not as big as it was and there were bigger, better things
• 25:12
  out there. And, and the neglect, I would
• 25:15
  say that this is in our show notes, the neglect I would say
• 25:18
  that that we had growing up was the Bible was, was first and
• 25:22
  foremost man, we love our Bible. And then that was held at the
• 25:25
  highest esteem, but the discipleship ship and the
• 25:29
  growing and owning our faith was not there.
• 25:32
  And I think that's the biggest struggle that we had You you
• 25:35
  spoke of the mold. The mold was was very strict,
• 25:38
  right? We we know this.
• 25:39
  The the dress codes were non negotiable.
• 25:41
  Men had to have short hair, could not touch the ears, could
• 25:45
  not go sideburns, couldn't go past the cut of the ear.
• 25:48
  I don't know if that's how Jack Howes and and theirs was.
• 25:50
  I know it champion could not go past the cut of the year, had to
• 25:54
  wear white shirts and ties all the time.
• 25:57
  Women had to wear skirts past the knees, no pants.
• 26:01
  And we're not even give getting into the rules of music, dating
• 26:04
  and movies, but you can name it of as as strict as you wanted.
• 26:09
  That's where it was at and there was some strict rules there.
• 26:12
  Exactly, and you talk, you know, I, I will say I will agree with
• 26:16
  you that they as far as even my experience, they love the Bible,
• 26:21
  but they weren't taught the Bible.
• 26:23
  Just looking back over all right, I'll tell you this.
• 26:27
  I pulled up a message maybe a couple months ago of my pastor
• 26:32
  preaching at our old home church.
• 26:35
  He's the pastor. He doesn't pass there anymore,
• 26:38
  but he was in town. They let him preach on Wednesday
• 26:40
  night and I listened to it for a few minutes and it was the same.
• 26:45
  Same preference driven pet peeve sermon he preached.
• 26:50
  I heard him preach for 20 years. Just the same thing.
• 26:54
  Reheated. No exegesis, no digging into
• 26:58
  Scripture, and then we would just starve for Scripture.
• 27:02
  And with that kind of attitude, you just didn't get it.
• 27:05
  OK. And and you mentioned the dress
• 27:07
  code. I didn't, I'm like you.
• 27:09
  I didn't have a problem with the dress code as far as what they
• 27:12
  required me to do because like you said so many times, that's
• 27:15
  what you sign up for, OK. I mean, I, I'm talking about
• 27:20
  while I was there and in it, I didn't have a problem with it.
• 27:23
  While I was there and in it, I didn't have a problem with the
• 27:26
  double standard of the music because like for instance,
• 27:29
  Southern Gospels against the rules.
• 27:31
  So no cathedrals, no Legacy 5, no Gaither Vocal Band, no, no
• 27:36
  inspirations. OK, but here's the thing, the
• 27:39
  dorm suits, they would confiscate the music and you go
• 27:43
  into their offices and they'd have these vast libraries of
• 27:46
  music in their office and they'd show this music off to people
• 27:50
  like it's trophies on a wall. Like they, they've got a 8 point
• 27:54
  buck on the wall and and they they listen to it in their
• 27:58
  office, but kept it away from us.
• 28:00
  I thought that was a double standard.
• 28:02
  And James, let me tell you who I really felt sorry for this
• 28:04
  college. I really felt sorry for the
• 28:07
  girls because I could leave the college anytime I wanted to.
• 28:12
  But the Gordon, the girls, man, they, they were stuck there.
• 28:15
  They couldn't leave the property unless there were three of them.
• 28:19
  One of them had to be an approved chaperone, which meant
• 28:21
  one of the group of three had to be a junior or a senior.
• 28:25
  I think in general, the students, they weren't treated
• 28:29
  like adults. We were treated like kids at
• 28:32
  camp and all these rules we had to follow.
• 28:36
  It was just legalism, packages, holiness.
• 28:39
  They were more concerned with outward conformity than inward
• 28:43
  transformation. Well, absolutely.
• 28:49
  And that's the that's the struggle with it because
• 28:53
  oftentimes we would hear preach right, get them saved and the
• 28:56
  the Spirit take care of the rest.
• 28:58
  He'll cut their hair, he'll cut their beard, He'll he'll make
• 29:00
  them dress right. It was this legalism and
• 29:04
  sanctification that we talk about all the time.
• 29:07
  But but we want to talk about some influential figures and the
• 29:10
  impact they've had as we talked through some of this part of
• 29:14
  House Anderson, what they did and, and part of the influential
• 29:17
  figures we're not going to even mention today.
• 29:19
  We're going to be mentioning over the next couple of weeks
• 29:22
  and the spread of what House Anderson has has done over the
• 29:26
  years. And so some big names that come
• 29:28
  out of House Anderson. The first and foremost would be
• 29:30
  Jack Scott as you mentioned the cold open, but it stands out.
• 29:34
  He was Jack House's son-in-law and eventually the successor to
• 29:38
  First Baptist Church of Hammond. Right.
• 29:41
  And I'll tell you a little story.
• 29:43
  My very first day at Howe's Anderson College, I just pulled
• 29:47
  up to the college to start my college career.
• 29:49
  I get out of the my truck in the parking lot, a hand slams down
• 29:53
  on my shoulder. I turned around and it's Jack
• 29:56
  Scott. And I'll never forget what he
• 29:58
  said to me. He said, hey, buddy, I need a
• 30:01
  bodyguard because I was such a big guy and man, I thought, man,
• 30:05
  I had just been blessed by a St. You know, I had the I had his,
• 30:10
  his holy anointing on me now because Jack Scott put his hand
• 30:14
  on my shoulder. Little did I know, little did I
• 30:18
  know, little did I know. But yeah, Scott had a a meteoric
• 30:22
  rise in that world until he fell.
• 30:26
  Of course, most of us know. And for those of you who don't,
• 30:29
  he was convicted in 2012 for taking a minor across state
• 30:33
  lines for immoral purposes. That scandal rocked the whole
• 30:38
  IFB movement. Yeah, I remember when that came
• 30:41
  out, I was in Idaho and we were leaving the independent
• 30:47
  Fundamental Baptist movement at the time.
• 30:49
  And, and that came out and it just rocked my world because not
• 30:54
  only that happened, but two other sexual incidents happened
• 30:58
  where men were put in jail because of it, which, you know,
• 31:03
  wasn't the 1st and the last time that this happened at house,
• 31:06
  Anderson. There have been multiple
• 31:08
  accusations and and we don't have the time to go through this
• 31:10
  on the podcast. There are other podcasts that do
• 31:13
  a much better job at uncovering abuse and sex and legalism that
• 31:17
  that has happened. And so we're not going to
• 31:18
  necessarily go through all of those, but there is a systemic
• 31:23
  issue that is coming out of Howells Anderson over the years
• 31:28
  from men that have had allegations and investigations
• 31:33
  into the culture of Howells Anderson College.
• 31:36
  The Let us pray movement that came out the, the show that came
• 31:40
  out that that talked to and uncovered a lot of that and
• 31:43
  begin the the, the exposure of what's going on.
• 31:48
  Many claiming that the the system breeds cover ups,
• 31:52
  manipulation and the abuse of authority.
• 31:55
  And by looking into it and by doing the research, we
• 31:58
  definitely see that. We definitely see that the
• 32:01
  authoritarian side of it does breed this cover up and, and and
• 32:05
  man leading in a way that is hurtful to the cause of Christ.
• 32:11
  And I think there need to be accountability.
• 32:13
  That's why I think the elders and leadership are so vital in a
• 32:16
  church, because it holds us accountable for what we're
• 32:19
  doing. Exactly.
• 32:22
  And like you said, we're not here to necessarily get into
• 32:26
  that. There are other other, you know,
• 32:28
  voices, other podcasts, other shows that have got into that a
• 32:34
  lot deeper. I will mention, I will just say
• 32:37
  that I agree with you that the system breeds that kind of cover
• 32:41
  up. You've got a man at the top that
• 32:44
  that's worshipped like a mini guy.
• 32:46
  He's set up on this pedestal. He gets puffed up, full of
• 32:50
  pride. He thinks he can do no wrong.
• 32:53
  People follow him. They give him immense loyalty.
• 32:57
  There's this idea that you don't call the police, you don't
• 33:00
  involve the authorities, you just, oh, well, I'm going to
• 33:03
  send you to my buddy's church once stayed over, try not to
• 33:07
  mess up over there. And then the guy does the same
• 33:10
  thing over there. They did the church, he left.
• 33:12
  And so yeah, it's just the the culture breeds that type of
• 33:16
  abuse. But still, for years, people
• 33:20
  looked up to these leaders as spiritual giants.
• 33:24
  Countless churches across the country have pastors who were
• 33:28
  trained there and they carry that same approach to the
• 33:31
  ministry, whether it's church church growth through numbers,
• 33:35
  rigid legalism, or an an authoritarian style of, of
• 33:40
  leadership. You know, you're you're, you're
• 33:43
  taught that House Anderson to be a mini Jack Isles.
• 33:47
  And I should know, I was, I was made to read the fundamental
• 33:51
  man, his, his, his biography. We had to read it on tape to
• 33:56
  prove that we read it. We had to read it on the web
• 33:59
  recorders ourselves. Reading it on tape, you know,
• 34:03
  and, and if you know anything about Jack Howes is not
• 34:06
  necessarily a good thing. You're taught how to manipulate
• 34:09
  people into basically running their lives for them.
• 34:13
  The man of God is the final authority.
• 34:16
  Like you're taught to preach on your pet peeves and preferences
• 34:19
  and not the Bible. I mean I'll be honest with you.
• 34:22
  I left college having taking the preaching class with Jack Scott
• 34:27
  as a freshman and I left knowing nothing about preaching
• 34:30
  interpretation exegesis. I learned more for YouTube from
• 34:35
  YouTube years later than I ever did at How's Anderson?
• 34:39
  Yeah, and you know, even Speaking of of Jack Hows in the
• 34:42
  cover up and the things that were going there, you know, it's
• 34:44
  well documented from his own daughter that that there was a
• 34:49
  fair going on, that there was manipulation with the secretary
• 34:53
  and and just so much cover up that happened that that causes
• 34:57
  and breeds this type of leadership style that that we
• 35:02
  talked about and how they preach one thing and yet they're doing
• 35:05
  a different thing. There's so many others that we
• 35:08
  can talk about and we will be talking about soon, but others
• 35:12
  had different tones, but yet still shared the same IFBDNA.
• 35:17
  And that's sort of what we're going to be talking about over
• 35:20
  the next couple of weeks is the DNA that that breeds from this.
• 35:24
  So let's let's talk about the culture and concerns, Brett.
• 35:26
  OK, to to kick this off, I'm going to ask you a couple
• 35:30
  questions. This is digging into the heart
• 35:33
  of the issue. Why does this matter, James?
• 35:36
  What are the real concerns about choosing a college like How's
• 35:40
  Anderson? Yeah, I think the the first and
• 35:43
  foremost and Brett you're seeing this right now and you saw this
• 35:46
  over the last couple of years of your life is the educational
• 35:50
  quality. You just mentioned how we
• 35:52
  weren't taught how to how to expose the Scripture, how to
• 35:55
  preach scripture, how to lead people well and how's Anderson
• 35:59
  has never been accredited. And many of the credits that you
• 36:02
  get from them, they don't transfer anywhere else, which
• 36:06
  limits students severely if they ever want to pursue a grad
• 36:10
  school or even switch tracks. Maybe halfway through after two
• 36:13
  years and say, Hey, I want to go in and do this, but you don't
• 36:17
  want to take this education that I've got.
• 36:19
  I want to transfer it over to here.
• 36:20
  And the colleges are like, Nope, I'm not taking those credits.
• 36:23
  That's that's a worthless piece of paper in our mind.
• 36:27
  And so that's a huge thing. If you're going to have a
• 36:29
  college and you're someone's paying for your education, then
• 36:32
  your education needs to be at the quality of that education so
• 36:35
  that they can transfer to other universities.
• 36:38
  You know, you know, on the movie, the waterboy Mama always
• 36:43
  said everything's a devil. Food laws, the devil.
• 36:47
  Well, in the IFB world, accreditation is the devil.
• 36:51
  That means the government gets to tell you what to speak and
• 36:54
  what to say and whatnot. It's just a bunch of malarkey,
• 36:58
  bunch of baloney. You know, I was so blessed to
• 37:01
  find Trinity. Of course, Trinity, I didn't
• 37:04
  know it at the time. I'll be honest with you, James,
• 37:07
  I didn't know it until I went down to Trinity to walk and
• 37:11
  graduate and get my accredited diploma.
• 37:14
  I didn't know that Trinity was Bob Gray from Florida's old
• 37:19
  church and school that has, you know, saw the light and come out
• 37:24
  of legalism. And they're that they're doing
• 37:26
  pretty good down there. But I had no idea while I was
• 37:29
  attending Trinity ME online that that was where the school was.
• 37:32
  But I was so blessed to find them.
• 37:35
  I didn't have to start over from scratch.
• 37:37
  They accepted most of my credits.
• 37:40
  I just had to do the minimum 32 credits to get my get my degree.
• 37:45
  But that's not the case for everybody.
• 37:47
  For instance, if you were like a teaching major, OK, you would
• 37:52
  just have to start over from scratch.
• 37:55
  They wouldn't take none of your credits.
• 37:57
  You'd have to go to school another four years all over
• 38:00
  again. You know, I almost went to
• 38:02
  Pensacola. Pensacola is accredited.
• 38:05
  But of course, they were a para church organization.
• 38:09
  So my man of God wouldn't have been happy about that.
• 38:12
  But but deeper than that, it's it's, it's the culture.
• 38:17
  The environment is shaped by fear, guilt and performance.
• 38:21
  Your spirituality is measured by how many doors you knock on and
• 38:25
  how well you can form. I'll tell you a quick story.
• 38:28
  I remember our bus division going to my bus route in
• 38:34
  Chicago, which Kaminsky part where the White Sox play was on
• 38:37
  my bus route. So the whole division came the
• 38:40
  my bus route and we stood outside and got a speaker for a
• 38:44
  big day. We wanted big numbers and we
• 38:47
  were preaching St. preaching and just getting up, preaching the
• 38:52
  Romans Rd. on a on a speaker and then counting everybody that
• 38:57
  passed by as someone they got say.
• 38:59
  I never forgot that. Just just counting the people as
• 39:03
  as as they as they walk by. And that's just the kind of
• 39:06
  culture it breeds. Yeah, you're exactly right with
• 39:09
  that. And and you know, the other
• 39:10
  thing is you're not encouraged to ask questions.
• 39:14
  It's this blind faith that you have to have critical thinking
• 39:17
  is seen as rebellion. I saw this at at Champion where
• 39:20
  I went and, and I know you saw this at house Anderson.
• 39:23
  It's, it's never look at the other side and never ask the
• 39:26
  question. Why?
• 39:27
  I love that Jesus when he's teaching the, there's constantly
• 39:32
  people that are coming to him and saying, Master, can can we
• 39:35
  ask you a question? Teacher, can we ask you a
• 39:37
  question? Jesus welcomes those questions.
• 39:40
  He he answers them with grace and truth and with love and
• 39:43
  compassion and with hard facts, but yet he allows questions to
• 39:48
  be asked. You know, as you, as we went
• 39:50
  through this Holy Week, I don't know if you read through the
• 39:53
  final discord with Jesus and his disciples, how many times his
• 39:56
  disciples would say, Jesus, we don't understand what you're
• 39:59
  saying. Thomas looks at him and says,
• 40:01
  how will we know the way? How will we know these things?
• 40:04
  And and Peter responds with questions and and it just shows
• 40:08
  to show that questions breed growth and when we are.
• 40:13
  In this area where we must be obedient to leadership as it's
• 40:18
  taught by obedience by God and not ask any questions.
• 40:21
  It breeds that that sense of of not growing in our faith
• 40:26
  questions breed growth and they are encouraged us to not ask
• 40:31
  those questions. Exactly.
• 40:34
  And when, when you have that type of that type of attitude,
• 40:39
  you can't ask any questions. It's rebellious that that opens
• 40:43
  the door for abuse. OK.
• 40:45
  When leadership becomes becomes untouchable, you end up with
• 40:50
  unchecked power. And we've seen this play out not
• 40:54
  just at House Anderson in First Baptist Church, but but
• 40:57
  ministries across this movement have been shaped by this.
• 41:02
  That's when you end up with with scandal.
• 41:07
  Yeah, absolutely, Brett. Well, you asked me a question.
• 41:09
  Let me ask you a question. Why do people still choose to go
• 41:12
  here? Why are people still loyal to
• 41:15
  this organization after the fall of Jack Scott, after the fall in
• 41:19
  the the uncovering of Jack Howes and David Howes and everything
• 41:23
  else, Why do you believe people are still going and choosing to
• 41:27
  go to this College in this organization?
• 41:30
  Wow, that's a great question. You know, I think that I think
• 41:34
  the people are born into it. You know, the churches and the
• 41:38
  pastors went there, the parents went there.
• 41:41
  You know, it's, it's what they know.
• 41:44
  And to be fair, some go because they're genuinely seeking to
• 41:48
  serve God and think that this is the best way to do it.
• 41:53
  And like I said about my pastor, my pastor Jack House was his, he
• 41:57
  was his hero. He didn't go.
• 41:59
  My pastor didn't go to House Anderson.
• 42:01
  My pastor actually graduated from Tennessee Temple under Lee
• 42:06
  Robertson, but Jack House is one of his heroes.
• 42:09
  And he went to pastor school one, one year and he was hooked
• 42:14
  on pastor school and Jack Kyles and the bus ministry and Jack
• 42:18
  Hiles model. And he, he came back from that.
• 42:21
  He came back from that first pastor school and he just
• 42:25
  changed everything about his ministry to Max Jack Hiles
• 42:28
  because he says, OK, if Jack Hiles is having this much
• 42:32
  success with this model, then I need to do this model too.
• 42:36
  So then he brought it back down to us and we were just, we were
• 42:40
  just born into it. Yeah.
• 42:43
  You know, we never want to question people's motives, but
• 42:46
  what we do want to do is call out the system that there
• 42:49
  elevates loyalty to a man over loyalty to Christ.
• 42:53
  And and that confuses legalism with holiness.
• 42:55
  And we want to be a people who are challenging the status quo,
• 43:00
  who are asking the hard questions and who are
• 43:02
  challenging people to think about what they're doing and why
• 43:05
  they're doing it. And I believe that is what calls
• 43:08
  out the system and and calls out what is going on.
• 43:12
  Exactly. And look, this isn't just about
• 43:14
  1 college. It's about being discerning when
• 43:18
  choosing any Christian School. Look at the theology, look at
• 43:22
  the fruit. Look at how they handle sin,
• 43:25
  accountability, truth, things like that.
• 43:28
  Look at how they handle the word of God, how they interpret it.
• 43:33
  Yeah. And you know, if you're
• 43:34
  listening and you've been part of this and you've come out of
• 43:37
  this environment, which a lot of our listeners have, this is what
• 43:40
  we want to say. There's grace, there's freedom,
• 43:43
  and you're not crazy for asking questions, you're not crazy for
• 43:47
  being the person that is trying to figure things out.
• 43:50
  We want you to ask questions. We want you to seek the Word of
• 43:53
  God. We want you to know that there's
• 43:55
  grace and there's healing that's out there for you.
• 43:58
  But it's just recognizing the system that we're in and how we
• 44:01
  can work forward through that. Right.
• 44:04
  And listen, if you're thinking about going into the ministry,
• 44:07
  know this. The Bible is enough.
• 44:10
  Jesus is enough. You don't need to be molded into
• 44:14
  somebody else's clone to be faithful.
• 44:16
  And that's really the whole the whole message and the whole
• 44:20
  thrust of of House Anderson when I was there.
• 44:24
  It may be the same today, I don't know, but it was just to
• 44:28
  mold you into a mini Jack Hiles. And look, to be honest, God just
• 44:34
  wants you to be you. He created you specifically and
• 44:40
  on purpose. He, He molded you.
• 44:42
  He shaped you. He formed you to be the person
• 44:46
  you are. And you don't have to be Jack
• 44:47
  Piles in order to be successful in the ministry.
• 44:50
  You can be just who God made you to be.
• 44:53
  Yeah, Amen to that, Brett. That's great.
• 44:55
  You know, honestly, if we seek a college that equips us to think
• 44:58
  biblically, to live faithfully and to serve humbly, not one
• 45:04
  that tries to clone you into a man made image into ministry,
• 45:08
  believe that's what God has for us and believe that's where we
• 45:11
  need to be at. When we begin to get to this
• 45:13
  point where we're looking at what we're at and what we've
• 45:15
  been through and where we're at and where we're going is asking
• 45:18
  us and asking ourselves, saying God, who?
• 45:20
  Where do you want me to be at? Who do you want me to be?
• 45:23
  And then allow God to work in our life.
• 45:28
  Exactly. And look, if you've been hurt by
• 45:31
  that world, whether leadership, manipulation, legalism, man,
• 45:36
  just know that we see you. You are not alone.
• 45:40
  We've been hurt by them too. And look, healing is possible.
• 45:45
  So many people we overcorrect, we throw the baby out with the
• 45:48
  bathwater. When you're hurt, you just want
• 45:51
  to get away from anything that reminds you of it.
• 45:54
  But just just remember, healing is possible.
• 45:59
  Yeah, Brett, we could probably spend another hour talking about
• 46:01
  this and deep diving in, but I think that's a good place to
• 46:04
  stop for today. And I think we gave a good solid
• 46:08
  foundation of the history of how's Anderson, how it started
• 46:11
  that the people that that bread through this.
• 46:14
  And sort of what we're going to wrap up today, next week, we're
• 46:18
  going to look at one of the, as you mentioned, your pastor,
• 46:23
  another one of these pastors that has been an offshoot of
• 46:26
  Jack Howes, who went up to posture school and came back and
• 46:31
  began changing and modeling his church and eventually his
• 46:35
  college into the way of Howes, Anderson.
• 46:39
  And then we're going to be looking through some other big
• 46:41
  people and some other big areas in the independent fundamental
• 46:43
  Baptist movement over these next little bit.
• 46:47
  You know, this is this is where we can begin to help each other
• 46:50
  and reach out to those that are around us.
• 46:53
  Exactly. And listen, if this has helped
• 46:55
  you or if you've got a story to share, send us a message, drop
• 47:00
  us a line. We want to hear your story.
• 47:03
  We'd love to hear from you. So if you got a story to share,
• 47:08
  please please let us know. Yeah, and thanks for listening.
• 47:12
  And as always, until next time, to God be the glory.
• 47:16
  Great things he has done. Found my new name, Found that
• 47:22
  good grace, found that healing. And the tears fell down my face
• 47:27
  when I found my beginning that has no ending.
• 47:30
  I found that second chance. Found my best friend, Found my
• 47:32
  forgiveness, found my happiness. I've been singing ever since.
• 47:50
  Thanks for listening to the Four Freedom Podcast.
• 47:53
  If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking,
• 47:57
  subscribing, or sharing our podcast or whichever podcast
• 48:00
  platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for
• 48:04
  the Four Freedom Podcast.