R. L. Hymers Jr.
Robert L. Hymers Jr. is a conservative Baptist pastor noted for his evangelistic sermons and for his emphasis on classical Protestant conversion.
Planning to go to the mission field, he joined the First Chinese Baptist Church of Los Angeles in January 1961, when he was nineteen years old, where he received his early theological training from the pastor, Timothy Lin,[3] Ph.D. (1911-2009).
On October 24, 2009, Hymers spoke at Timothy Lin's funeral, held at the First Chinese Baptist Church of Los Angeles.
Hymers served in a number of capacities at First Chinese Baptist Church while attending college at night and working full-time for the Division of Corporations of the State of California.
Former members of the now-defunct Fundamentalist Army have alleged that Hymers used ethnic slurs and struck them or humiliated them before crowds.
James O. Combs, editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune, wrote the constitution for the new church and spoke at the inauguration service.
In 1986, Dr. Ronald Enroth wrote an article for Eternity Magazine that suggested Hymers closely restricted the lives of his congregants, including mandating that all church elders and ministers carry vitamin C on their persons at all times.
Enroth, who maintains that other members of evangelical Christian clergy refer to Hymers as "unconventional", and "uncompromising", also pointed to a bulletin insert from Hymers' church: "The reader is told that Christmas and New Year's Eve are Christian holidays, not pagan feast days.
'"[10] In 2008, Dr. Robert L. Sumner, who reviewed Hymers' ministry at the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle in 1988, said "I concluded at the time that all the charges, including abuse and anti-Semitism, were untrue.
Ruckman claimed that the King James Bible is given by inspiration of God and is perfect, and even corrects the Greek text from which it was translated.
[17] Hymers has written extensively against what he calls "Decisionism" which he believes started about the time of Charles G. Finney, a nineteenth-century evangelist who disavowed the central teachings of the Reformation and made salvation hinge upon the will of the sinner, rather than the grace of God in Christ.
[18][19] Hymers argued that a denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ is heretical, stating that it is a central doctrine of historic Christianity.
On the same day, his church, the Baptist Tabernacle, chartered a plane that trailed a banner reading "Pray for Death: Baby killer Brennan".
"[2] However, he maintains a strong commitment to the anti-abortion movement, and continues to write against abortion, which he has compared to Hitler's Holocaust.
[9] Hymers led two demonstrations against the movie: The first included about 200 of his followers, and occurred at Universal Studios; it featured a small plane overhead that carried a banner proclaiming, "Wasserman Fans Jew-Hatred W/Temptation".
Meanwhile, another plane appeared overhead, trailing the same banner about Wasserman, while the crowd chanted about the film being "bankrolled by Jewish money".
[25][26][27] These demonstrations caused an outcry from the Jewish community; several evangelicals and other members of the Christian clergy called Hymers an "anti-Semite".
"[28] Irv Rubin, who was at the time the national chairman of the Jewish Defense League, maintained that he "sympathized" with the concerns of evangelicals, "but Hymers wants to make a Jew-hating thing out of it".
[31] He maintains that he takes the Scofield Study Bible's view that the "Abrahamic Covenant" grants favor to the Jews and, thus, to the state of Israel.
