The Summation of the Life & Times of Wilson Hines

This is part I. More is to come...

A Preface: If you are mentioned in this document or you are associated, in one way or another, with those that are mentioned or inferred to in this document, please understand the following about the access of this document: The first page, the one your reading now, is accessible to the world via search engines; however the following pages have been blocked to the eyes of search engines. In other words, this document isn't about making people angry, digging up dirt or having a "tell all." This is about getting things off my chest.

I am almost 36 years of age. I have made plenty of mistakes and sometimes those mistakes were with the help of other people, even if they were good intentioned people.

I find that writing is therapeutic.

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A Liberal Fundamentalist by Birth

I was born at a very early age. No, seriously, it is true and neither of my parents were in attendance. It was sad and a travesty.

Now, what I mean by that was I was saved at the age of 16 in an Independent Baptist Church named Unity Baptist Church located in Mount Olive, NC. Pastor Ray Warren was the pastor at the time and it was his first summer and first revival at his new church. Pastor Warren attended Hyles Anderson College in Crown Point, IN. My parents raised me United Methodist and they had no idea on the planet exactly what I had stepped into at UBC. I was baptized three days later, which infuriated my mother and scared my father completely silent.

All they new was their baby boy had "got religion" (you have no idea how many times I heard that stupid phrase). While mother was angry, she was really angry at my Uncle (her brother) who had invited me to church that night. He stole something from her. I should have been at a U.M.C revival and "got that religion" right there at that alter. What she didn't plug into her calculation was the fact that R.C.U.M.C hadn't had a revival in almost 15 years and the last person to get saved there was in the late 1970's. The chances for me to "get some religion" at this venue was slight to nothing. I will admit that in my childhood, the Sunday School teachers there did a fantastic job of teaching me the Bible in a general sense. I knew almost all "Bible Stories" that almost no children of this post-modern generation know anything about. From Adam and Eve, Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Sampson, David, Daniel right on up the list, they made sure we were aware of things. And without that foundation, I probably wouldn't have been "ripe for the picking" when I was 16 years old. So, if they ever run across this in a Google Search, or whatever - "Thanks ladies. Really, thanks a whole lot!"

My mother kept trying everything she could do to get and keep me interested in my local U.M.C. She had me put up on the pulpit every Sunday morning reading the scriptures and I would sit up there in one of those haughty taughty chairs with the Pastor after my reading and listen to the sermon. She fully intended on this little preacher not turning Baptist on her. She allowed me to keep going to Unity on Sunday nights, but I was at Rones during Sunday morning; and of course, Wednesday nights I was right back at U.B.C.

Soul winning, Bible reading (and boy do I mean Bible reading) and heading to the woods to preach (literally). I was your average poster child for Fundamental Baptist and I gave those poor people at R.C.U.M.C a complete run for their money. I had a ball with them and when they screwed up I was the first person to proclaim it from the mountain tops. I had a paid for "full ride" at Duke University waiting for me, all the way through the Masters of Divinity program and I just couldn't wait to throw my Bible at these guys. Their theology was rancid, even at the church level. Nobody knew why they went to church; it was just a social event. Generally speaking, after I was saved, I hated every minute of it all.

One day I had a "moment of clarity" happen. I was on a "committee" at this church called the Pastoral Relations Committee. It was basically a committee that said either "We like the preacher and we want to keep him" or "this guy stinks and lets replace him." Can you imagine a 17 year old on a committee with such a delicate mission? Can you imagine anybody but a board of Deacons or Elders making decisions like these? Well, anyway, they also worked on some other projects and one "project" became a "deal breaker" for me, personally. I wasn't interested in having a DJ come in and play rap and such style music for our small group of teens. I flat out told them right then and there they were crazy and needed their brains examined. I told them what the words of some of that music preached and nobody was interested. Heck, one woman told me "Didn't David dance a dance to the Lord?" That meeting was all it took for me. I was out. I went home and flat out told my mother I was gone, never to return. She cried, screamed and made everybody in the house wonder where all the knives and guns really were that night!

A Big Jack Hyles

I have sat beside Jack Hyles in a meeting. He wasn't that big of a guy. I was six foot and 200 lbs when I was 21. I had just finished three years of Bible college. I was in my Junior year, but it was my first year at Texas Baptist College. I had spent the last five years of my life doing nothing much more than listening to Jack Hyles tapes (yeah, its been that long) and studying. The first two years I was at Crown College of the Bible in Knoxville, TN. Why didn't I just go to Hyles-Anderson in the start? That is a good question. I could answer it, but right now isn't the time. I will answer it in a later post. Of the two colleges that I did attend they are very different. The first college, Crown, is more moderate. Much more money in the school to pay for buildings and the wishes of the staff. Don't let the word "moderate" fool you. Dr. Sexton wasn't a "liberal" by any stretch of the imagination. The King James Version of the Bible was regarded as "God's preserved word for English speaking peoples." Dress and conduct standards were as high as anywhere. What made Dr. Sexton and Crown "moderate" was their temperament: Irenic. Dr. Sexton didn't "look down on" people with different standards, theology or ideas; he simply kept his head down working towards what he was doing. The anti-theses of this was Dr. Bob Gray of Longview Baptist Temple and Texas Baptist College. This man didn't have an "Irenic" morsel in his body. Not one. He was an idiot with a Bible. I left Crown because I was talked into it and I foolishly followed somebody's advice who had a horrid track record; people tried to tell me about the charlatan, but the 20 year old kid just wouldn't listen. I went to LBT and quickly found out I was in deep trouble. I was at a place that was extremely close to "drinking the Kool-Aid." I firmly believe I was there at L.B.T and T.B.C at their "height." And Gray was so empowered by his ego at this point that IF he had said something stupid like lets "drink the Kool-Aid" in one way or another most everybody there would have drank as much as their bellies could swallow. I spent one school year, 9 months, at this place and came home.

Hammer Down

Out of pride, I would not go back to Crown College. I just couldn't do it, even after Dr. Sexton had written me a personal hand-written note adjuring me to do the right thing and come back to Crown.

I didn't do it.

I spent that year preaching at a couple churches as a fill in while they looked a pastor. I tried to candidate at one and that didn't work out. Sadly, that church isn't even in existence now.

I turned to my family business of trucking. My father owned what was, at the time, a very profitable trucking company that hauled processed turkeys and pickles all over VA, NC, SC and TN.

Fifteen Years....and Counting

So, what has happened in 15 years of time: Sin, stupidity, debt, business ventures and business failures. All along with every other excuse they will tell you when you ask "What is wrong with me taking a year off of school?"

To sum it up I married in 2000 to an 18 year old girl that just had enough faith in me that I eventually would get it right. I was 26 and still getting it wrong. She had no basis to have the faith she possessed. From the time I had left college to the time we were married, life had a few mild business success and within three months of our marriage I was staring at a check for 1.5 million dollars. A buyout of a little tech startup I had started. I turned that money down because I honestly thought it was "chump change" for what I thought this business had the potential of accomplishing. I was holding out for something in the tens of millions.

I lost.

I lost everything but my wife and my house and what was in that house. Yes, I lost my car. I lost everything and I'm still paying "on it" and "for it" ten years later.

A Move to the Great White North

We moved. There were probably ten full and independent reasons why we left for Michigan. My business had failed and I was humiliated. Those two were the primary reasons for Nikki and I moving, but sometimes bad or shameful reasons produce good results.

We were looking at moving back to Knoxville to get back into college. We were a bit open minded about it and we were willing to do what was necessary to get me back in Bible college - wherever that led. Knoxville, while being my favorite option, was just that - an option. We even looked into moving to Louisville, KY to the home of Shawnee Baptist College - ministry of Shawnee Baptist Church.

Our Pastor invited a fiery preacher from Michigan with whom he went to Hyles-Anderson with some twenty years earlier to preach at the church in a revival. Lou Difilipantanio was and is an evangelist. After hearing that we were considering a move he introduced the idea of moving to Grace Baptist Church and Gaylord, MI.

The reasons he defended were good reasons, over all and they made plenty of sense.

• College: They had a fundamental college that was a "night school." They would take all of my Crown credits and I could graduate within two years. The school was really geared for adults with the hours at night, but they were looking at expanding into a traditional college as well, in the future. Most colleges wanted you to spend at least two years, or more, at their institution, regardless of how much you'd be transferring. So, this was a good fit!
• Nikki could earn a B. A. in "Education" for teaching. At this point, she already had a year of undergraduate studies.
• After my B. A. was complete: It seemed to be a good fit because my ultimate goal at this point was to teach Greek and NT Theology at a fundamental Baptist institution, such as this. I also used to desire to teach "Information Technology System" with a church and ministry emphasis. I will be up front and gladly admit there never was a whole lot of talk regarding this and of course, there was never any concrete negotiations; however the discussions that we did have led me to feel that I could easily move into a faculty position at the college.
• The youth Pastor, D. Hagland, and I went to college together. We weren't "best friends" or anything, but we knew each other rather well. He and his Wife, Amanda, were familiar faces, along with another family there that had several kids attending Crown when we were there.
• The job market was better and higher paying in Michigan than in North Carolina. This turned out to be true and false. It wasn't a better job market at all, but the pay was higher. On the other hand, everything was just a little bit more money at the "check out." The excuse was "Well, they had to ship it all the way to the North!"
• Quality of Life: It is a fantastic place to raise a family.

Look, while this is a "biography," if I get into all the details, you'll go blind reading it. Lets suffice it to say while we enjoyed three years of living in wonder of Northern Michigan, we were also very ready to get home. I'll explain why the "good points" that were laid out to me just never panned out and that will lead me right into explaining the current mind set with how I'm going to college and why I believe what I believe about the King James Bible and Textual Criticism.

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