Where is the Church in the Ergun Caner Scandal?

I have something queued up, we were told that certain folks might be calling in, but I did want to address a few issues.

Some of you may have noticed that the AP story, actually a follow up AP story on the

Ergenkanner scandal appeared on Fox News yesterday. But when Fox News has it, you know, between all of their stuff about what a

Hollywood star just got a facelift and all that important news that Fox News tends to have out there.

When Fox has picked it up, then it is all over the place. The irony was, the whole story was about how the supporters of Ergenkanner are disappearing.

I felt like writing to the reporter and saying, I know where they are!

They're right behind me, okay? I know exactly where they are, and they have not fallen silent in any way, shape, or form.

You know, I don't know if, I have been told, I've been told lots of things.

My email box is a very interesting place these days. And it does make me wonder if someone may not be monitoring all email being sent from liberty .edu

to domain name aomin .org. It does make me wonder.

But I have been told that there has been a very concerted effort on the part of Ergenkanner supporters contacting pastors all across the

United States, attempting to create a groundswell of support for Ergenkanner.

And I don't see that happening. I think a lot of folks, I think anyone, anyone, who takes more than half an hour to just sit down and do some reading and some watching, just watch some videos, just,

I mean, it would take you a lot longer than that to actually even begin to review the amount of information.

Just reading through the court documents and the stuff that's been posted, it would take you a long, long time.

And I understand that a lot of people don't have that kind of time to invest.

But the fact is, if you just spent that amount of time, I think that's why there's silence. Because you just have to go, oh boy, well, what's the response to all this?

What's the answer to court documentation that someone lives in the United States in 1969 and their own words?

More than once now, we've documented that Ergenkanner said that. Yeah, moved here in 1969.

But then he also said he moved here in 1978 and 1979. And he's telling two different stories, two different groups of people.

Someone that he figures can check them out, he tells them the truth. And gullible Christians from the pulpit of a church he tells a different story to.

And that's the whole issue. So the information is right there.

But I was thinking this morning about something I have tried as best I possibly could to try to bring some positive things out of this situation, something edifying.

People have commented, for example, on the video that my brother Issam and I did on Ergenkanner and Arabic.

I tried to insert into that things that would be helpful for people to understand and know.

It wasn't just, oh, see, he messed that one up again. Oh, not even close on that one. Oh, not even close. Tried to discuss some of the backgrounds.

I've had a number of people comment that they had thought, you know, hadn't even thought about the fact that you would expect to hear unique elements of the

Arabic language coming out in what someone's saying if they're even attempting to speak Arabic, that there are letters in Arabic that do not exist in English and pronunciations do not exist in English as well.

And you'd expect to hear those things. And that's not what you hear. Instead, you hear what you normally hear on TBN, you know, when someone is trying to give proof that you need to be sending in $69 based on Psalm 69 and they start speaking in tongues to demonstrate this is the case.

And so, you know, that's how you handle it. So I tried to insert that kind of stuff, tried to get something positive out of this entire scandal in the process of actually dealing with the issues.

And so this morning, I was thinking about the fact that if you go onto the

Veritas Seminary website today, you will see two big banners, you know, they look like something you put up in your church, something like that, for Bible conferences this

July. And the thing to note about both of them is that one of the speakers in both is

Erick Kanner, along with people like Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes and people involved in apologetics that are a part of Veritas Seminary.

And I started thinking about, you know, where are my fellow apologists in this situation?

Where are the discernment ministries? Where are the people who can go through all sorts of historical documentation demonstrating that this cult leader and that cult leader was wrong?

And they make those conclusions on the basis of significantly less clear and compelling information than has been provided in regards to Erick Kanner.

Where are all those folks? I remember once in Philadelphia, I was at a conference.

This was prior to the writing of Chosen but Free and The Potter's Freedom.

And so it was back when Norman Geisler liked me. And it was between 1994 and 2000 because he was making reference to the

King James Only controversy. He says, James, you go get those King James Only folks, we're right behind you. We're a long way to go.

We're a long ways behind you, but we're right behind you. Well, that's humorous, but it does sadly seem to address something.

And that is where, why is it that I sort of, I'm not alone there, you know,

Turret and Fan and Jason Smathers and the Squirrel up in Montana, there are a few of us and a few

Southern Baptists here, there and everywhere. But in general, it seems like a lot of folks just don't want to rock the boat.

And it's sort of like, well, we'll let you do that, James. You go ahead now. You make yourself a pariah forever.

And we'll just, and I sort of wonder because, you know, sometimes you look back at when movements got started and the

Christians at that time didn't seem to be really quick to pick up on things and, you know, speak the truth when it needed to be spoken.

And that causes a bit of a problem. And so one of the thoughts across my mind was, okay, these presentations with Veritas Seminary are taking place in July.

Allegedly, we are going to have some kind of a result from the

Liberty Seminary investigation, Liberty University investigation by June 30th.

What if they come out and say, Ergin Cantor has been lying in churches?

What if he's no longer the president of Liberty Seminary come July? Will he still be speaking at those conferences?

Will the results of the inquiry be clear enough to address whether Ergin Cantor is an expert on Islam or not?

And if he is, what's the basis of it? Is it solely the fact that he wrote on the Crusades?

A fact that I've brought out many, many times that people like Peter Lumpkins don't listen to everything I say, they just, you know, very selective.

Is that it? Is that, or is it not clearly obvious in his own presentations that his claim for expertise in regards to Islam is his upbringing as a

Sunni Muslim in Turkey, Ankara, over on the border with Iraq.

Now, a couple of things crossed my mind at that point. The first that I think is really important, and I'm sort of criticizing myself here, and I've got lots of people who've been joining me in that, why is it that Liberty University is being seen as the final authority in this matter?

I mean, certainly in regards to whether Ergin Cantor should be the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, yeah,

Liberty University is the final authority on that, for obvious reasons. But I simply have one question to ask all of my friends and those who are not my friends in the audience, and that is, where is the church here?

Where is the church? Where is

Thomas Robert Baptist Church? I believe, in fact, in the introduction to what we were playing in the pre -feed,

I believe that he is a member of Thomas Robert Baptist Church.

I think that's what exactly was said in the introduction. He didn't correct that. So, where is

Thomas Robert Baptist Church in this? Now, see, a lot of people automatically go, well, why should they have anything to do with this?

Because we have so eviscerated the authority of the church in evangelicalism that Thomas Robert Baptist Church, most evangelicals will go, well, why should they be involved?

Folks, it's because they have a member of their church that has been standing behind dozens and dozens of pulpits and lying to the people sitting in front of him.

Oh, but he wasn't teaching falsehood about the Trinity, and he wasn't teaching much truth about it either, but he wasn't teaching falsehood about the

Trinity. These are just exaggerations. Come on. And what it seems to me is that we have had a glaring light shown upon the evangelical world and its view of the pulpit.

One of the things that I really, really appreciate about the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is that we protect the pulpit.

I have seen one, two, three.

I have seen three people, other than the elders of the church or members of the church, but I wasn't there for that one or I would have been preaching.

So for me, and I've been a member there since 1989. So right at this summer would be 21 years.

I have seen three men, other than the elders of the church, ministering in that pulpit.

Jim Renahan, Albert Martin, and John Skaggs. Those are all ministers, but those are the only three that I've seen.

I don't remember anyone else. I really don't. There may have been some others, but I would have been gone at that time, possibly.

I don't know. The reason for that is not because we think there's nobody worthwhile or anything else, but we believe that the ministry of the word of God from the pulpit before the people of God is the central act of worship of the church.

One of the things that Rich and I were talking about recently, and I've, I know I've talked about this before.

Ironically, the first time it really bugged me was at a conference in Chicago where I was speaking and so was

Norman Geisler. But the praise leaders, the singers, would get up and say, well, we're going to have some worship before the speaker comes.

So in other words, in their mind, the worship was the music. The worship was the singing. The worship was the lifting of the hands and the lifting of the voices.

And then when you're done with worship, the guy talks. And I couldn't control myself.

It bugged me so much that eventually, after one of the sessions, before I started, I just simply said, I just need to say something.

You know, I appreciate what these guys just did. They're very good. But we aren't done worshiping. In fact, may

I suggest that this is when the real worship starts. And I use this phraseology in my prayers when

I lead the pastoral prayers at church. Lord, help us do the work of worship. And so it just seems to me that while it is important for Liberty University to deal with the problem they have in the president of their seminary and his myth -making, his documented myth -making,

Liberty University is not the final arbiter of these issues.

Even if they do the right thing, and we hope and pray that they will, even if they are completely open and they really do answer all the questions and they really do bring all the facts to bear, which we hope and pray will happen, all they can do is deal with Ergenkanner, president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

They can't deal with Ergenkanner, man behind pulpit, minister

Ergenkanner. That's Trinity Road, that's, uh, not

Trinity, uh, Thomas Road Baptist Church. Was I saying Trinity Road before? Anyways, Thomas Road Baptist Church. That's where it should be being dealt with.

Why isn't there an investigation there? The authority and the duty of the church to safeguard the purity of the proclamation of the gospel and the handling of the word of God is part and parcel of the issue here, but no one even seems to be thinking about that.

I mean, I've said from the beginning, this is an integrity issue. This is an integrity issue, but it's an integrity issue within the church.

And yet, so few even care about that. One of the things that has offended me so much about so much of the lying that has gone on in defense of Ergenkanner, the ad hominem attacks against me think

I'm the issue here when I'm not the issue at all. But one of the things that offended me most is people said, well, you know, you're just doing this because he's an

Armenian. Let me tell you something, folks. If Ergenkanner was reformed,

I would have been significantly rougher on him than I've been because I'd hold him to a higher standard.

Not only that, if he was reformed, I actually could have gone to a church with a biblical authority structure to address the issue.

I could have gone to the elders. But you see, in so much of evangelicalism and in Baptist circles, there's no biblical view of a plurality of elders.

There's no biblical view of the protection of the pulpit. The pulpit has become something that, let's face it, many churches has disappeared because there's no room for it in front of the band.

It's been replaced by a guy in jeans and a graphic tee who wants to relate to you, not to proclaim to you the word of the living

God. And don't get me started on that. But I really think that this is one of the major issues here, and it's been missed.

Where is the church in this? Where is the church in this situation?

I can't seem to locate it. Can't seem to find it. So whatever happens with the inquiry from Liberty University, however it comes down, either the right thing, factual, full, open disclosure, all the issues dealt with, which we can hope and pray for, but I'll be perfectly honest with you,

I'm not holding my breath. Or if it's the worst thing that can happen, a full -blown cover -up.

Well, what Ergin actually meant was he became a naturalized citizen in 1979 and, you know, the

Duke's a hazard. He was talking about Daisy Duke and how she's hot, you know.

Yeah, behind a pulpit. Hey, it's just a little bit of exaggeration, a little bit of theological leverage there, you know.

Which will only result in 2020 and Nightline and all the others beating a path down to Lynchburg.

Or somewhere in between. Whatever the result is, unless the church addresses this, it will not have been addressed.

That's why, did you all see the thing, what was that guy's name? He was the head of the big evangelical thing and he got caught with having a three -year,

Haggard, Ted Haggard, you know, three -year -long relationship with a gay prostitute and all the rest of this stuff. He's starting a new church.

He's starting a new church. And people sit around going, why?

Why? What are people looking for? Are there so few good churches left?

Why? There is massive ecclesiastical ignorance in evangelicalism today.

And this situation is demonstrated. We were playing as our pre -feed, let people know that we're on and we're feeding and so on and so forth, a portion of a sermon from January 23rd of this year by Ergen Kanner.

It is 98 % entertainment. It's telling jokes.

It's telling stories. The same stories and jokes we've heard over and over again. You know, sometimes a little bit of a twist.

Very well delivered. He's very good at his timing. He is an excellent speaker. But there wasn't enough theology or Bible in it to keep a hungry saint alive.

And I've listened to a lot of these things. And others of you have listened to more of them than I have. I don't have time to. And it's always the same thing.

You tell some stories. You get people laughing. You go to the text for about three and a half minutes. You throw some

Greek words out, and then it's back to the stories. And that has become accepted as pulpit ministry.

And the results we see all around us. The results we see all around us. That's... There you go.

So, where's the church? Where's the church in all of this? That's what needs to take place.

There needs to be Thomas Road. Needs to stand up and do what a church needs to do.

No matter what Liberty University does. Am I going to hold my breath on that one? No. But we could hope and pray.

Because that's what needs to take place. 877 -753 -3341. I'm going to stay on topic here.

Jordan, we'll get to you. Just hang with us. But I want to stay on topic here. Let's talk with David.

Hi, David. Hey, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing good. I just want to...

I want to say thank you for being out there and doing this. And you are on the right side of history.

Yeah, the problem is when you're on the right side of history, you're normally dead before anybody finds out about it.

Well, I mean, you mentioned like 2020 and other secular news organizations. I really feel this thing's on the cusp of blowing up that big.

Oh, yeah. And I'm glad you used the word liar. I don't know if you used it before, but today was the first time that you used that word, at least that I heard of.

And that's what it is. I mean, there have been exaggerations and misrepresentations, but it's just straight up a lie.

I mean, if you say that you debated Shabir Ali and you never even met with the guy, that's a lie.

Well, not only said it once, you put it in a particular location, and now you refuse to say who it was you debated in that location because you say you misspoke.

You said a second time and connected with Abdul Saleem, someone you know is not, in fact, a

Muslim. It's the, you know, all this stuff coming together.

And then the thing that really got it for me, because, you know, I have honestly, Ergun seems like a likable guy in many ways.

And so I have tried to recognize it. I've tried to put to the side what happened in 2005, 2006.

I've tried to look at the information. But here's the problem. We have two instances now, two instances, a

Turkish interview and the 2002 AP story, where at the very same moment we can demonstrate

Ergun Kaner was traveling the country, staying behind pulpits, saying I was raised in Turkey, son of an

Islamic scholar, and I came here in 1978 and 1979. At the very same time he's saying that to those people, to the

AP reporter and to the Turkish newspaper who can check if he knows

Turkish or Arabic, he came here in 1969. He knew that he was telling two completely different stories at the same time.

I don't know how anybody can look at that and go, oh, you know, just mixing things up, just mixing things up.

It's not possible. It's just not possible. You touched on it a bit, but I feel sad for some people in Lynchburg, and that's his family.

Of course. He's a family man. I mean, he's married and he's got kids, and I just cannot. I mean, that's just shameful.

And they've got to know. I mean, he doesn't come home speaking Arabic, you know what I mean? And they've been around him enough.

I mean, you mentioned his brother. He's got to know. And I'm just wondering, what are these people thinking? Because, I mean, not only is it morally wrong, anybody, you don't even have to go to a believer.

You could go to a nonbeliever, and they're going to tell you don't do that because it doesn't work. You talk to people enough from a pulpit.

You know, you're on YouTube, and many, you know, multiple times you're saying you can speak

Arabic and Turkish and possibly other languages. You're saying you're meeting with all these people and you never have. Eventually, that's going to get out there, and you're going to get caught.

Eventually. Eventually. See, that's common sense. But to be honest with you,

I cannot imagine the mindset of standing in front of an audience and saying these things when you know that what you're saying is not true.

I cannot conceive of this. I'm scared to try to pronounce Arabic words, and I know those are the right words.

I mean, I don't know Arabic, but the few times you drop it in there, I'm scared to do that. Sure. Well, I'm not even going around telling people

I speak Arabic. I'm just saying, like, the few times that you might, you know, say, like, Issa or Allah or something, and then you just say, couldn't

I, shouldn't I just stick with the English words? And, in fact, if he had done that, he'd actually be in less trouble.

He's trying to throw these Arabic words out there, and he's not even using them correctly. But see, all of it, all of it is, and this is one thing that, again, if someone calls in today, maybe we can have a discussion on this, but there are people who have defended him who, in essence, have adopted what

I call the theoretical avalanche approach. And that is, theoretically, if you could plot the course of every single rock in an avalanche, you could move out of the path of any single rock.

But avalanches do not come one rock at a time. And what people have been doing is they have been failing to see the cumulative effect of all of these issues.

They're saying, well, you know, maybe he rushes when he speaks, and that's why we can't understand his

Arabic. We understand his English just fine, and he allegedly learned that from the Dukes of Hazzard. I mean, come on.

You even, but let's say you come up with a plausible explanation of one fact.

But then you go over here, and three different times you say Ramadan is 40 days long. Right. And then you go over here, and it's avalanches come.

I think it's pretty clear that he's, in the

Mohammed Khan Arabic, he's got like about 50 different ones on YouTube with different titles.

Right. And the one that you played, and granted, he was focusing on the Arabic, but when he talked about who

Abraham, in the Quran, sacrificed on Mount Moriah, and he says Muslims say it was

Ishmael, and he even said that the Quran says that. And no, it does not.

I even knew that little bit, and I could catch it that fast that it's left ambiguous. And so later

Muslims have gone back, and they've debated amongst themselves whether Ishmael was Isaac, and actually there's varying traditions on that one.

But he buys into that whole, I guess you could say pop thing, kind of like with the striking women that's mentioned in the

Quran. Well, yeah, and that's what I tried to bring out and got my head handed to me on a platter when

I pointed out something that Emir Kaner had done in just accepting a particular interpretation of Surah 4, 157, the substitution view, and not even mentioning that there's all sorts of reasons not to think that that's what it's actually talking about.

He presented it to his audience as if, well, the Quran says that somebody else was put upon the cross. There's only one, yeah.

Exactly. All sorts of different views. And so it was that kind of thing that, again, made me raise the question, why is it that people are going to churches, and these men are standing in front of us and claiming to teach

Islam? As far as I can see, the whole thing is their story.

And so if the story isn't true, then you have a real problem here. Well, one thing that I don't know, maybe it's an issue that I have with you on this, because I'm trying to fill this thing out.

One thing that was said, and I don't know if it's accurate or not, is when this was coming out, he, you know,

Eregin and his handlers or whoever, they came out with this information that was like, oh, yeah, well,

I am a Muslim. Here's why, and my dad, he's from Turkey, and he's a Muslim, all this. And you were saying, and you were right in saying this, well, not right, but the gist of what you're saying was right, is that no one's saying that he's not ever a

Muslim. Well, I was saying the Christians, the Christian critics of Eregin Kanner have not ever, to my knowledge, have never said that he was not a

Muslim. It's Mohammed Khan that said that. I believe you're saying that, because, again, the guy, the YouTube video that you post, the one who's bringing this out to you, it appears that that's what he's saying.

And to be fair, I don't fully blame him. Oh, no, no, I don't blame him. I just think that the evidence is overwhelming that Eregin Kanner's father was clearly a

Muslim. The court documents bear out the fact that there was a dispute between Eregin Kanner's mother and his father as to the continuing education of the boys in Islam.

There's not even a question about that. The whole point is, before they were 10 years old, he was out of the house, and they were raised by their

Swedish grandmother and by their hippie mom, that's using Emir's description, became a hippie.

So there's no evidence of this jihadi training, living in Turkey, and all the rest of that,

Cairo and Beirut and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. So that's the problem.

You know, dad, the reason why I like the video you put out that said, you know, that a disbeliever, an unbeliever can at times be something that's truthful.

Of course. And one of the reasons I could see, and I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here, is that where some people, you know, they're a little bit skittish at taking a

Muslim at their word or believing. I know, I know. Is the fact that there have been, to be honest, on YouTube and elsewhere,

Muslims who have lied about former Muslims that have become Christians. No question about it.

I mean, the one that's in my mind is Waleed Shabbat, and that they were saying all kinds of false things about him.

They never doubted that he was an Arabic speaker, an Arab, but, you know, that they said he was

Christian flange and all this. And the documentation was there that he was who he said he was, and they still didn't want to believe.

Said false things about Jay Smith. Right. You know, they do that on YouTube. And so I, in a way, for me, to me it's almost an opportunity to put it back on a

Muslim. I would say, well, you know, Muhammad in the Koran is about as knowledgeable as Christianity, as arrogant as Islam.

They get it wrong all over the place. Even these guys you've been putting on your website, you know, the one, who was it, one of the guys that was debating?

Oh, Gerald Dirks? No, no, he was one of the Muslims, and he was saying this stuff was in Greek. He was saying all this

Greek was saying this. He doesn't know Greek, and he was getting it wrong. I'm not sure which one you're referring to.

Yeah, look, we have over and over again. The point I'm trying to make is that they're getting it wrong all over the place.

Ahmed Didat would say stuff that wasn't true. Exactly. Ahmed Didat was just as bad with some of his mispronunciations there in Canterbury.

But there's, we have tried to be consistent. I have, over the years, criticized the people

I have on the Dean Show who claim to be former Christians who are clueless, who are clueless about what

Christians believe. It really does doubt if it is true.

Well, not only that, it's sort of funny because you have former youth ministers, aha, yeah, and deacons, deacons, yeah, and they're being turned into experts.

Well, David, yeah, we're sort of agreeing with each other on a lot of this stuff there. I hear you. The one issue, though, is...

Real quick. Yeah, I mean, has anyone put out the idea there of, okay, going to Eric and Canter and saying, you know, okay, look, brother, you're lying, clearly, but you are a brother.

If you will come forward with this and be honest, you know, maybe on our end there's some grace and there's some compassion and, you know, maybe you don't have to be kicked out of the

Liberty, maybe, maybe not, we don't know, there are consequences, but, you know, maybe we can help your family. I mean,

I would like to see that kind of thing, that we're not just trying... Well, David, well, David, I posted a plea to Eric and Canter at least two weeks ago.

It is in his hands to end this today. Mm -hmm. You're right.

If he wanted this over with, it could be over with today, because the fact of the matter is, he's the one who by his silence has, in essence, incubated this entire situation.

Mm -hmm. Don't tell me that if he lived in Turkey up until 1978... Look, I can sit here right now,

I'm a little bit older than Eric and Canter, and I can tell you my kindergarten teacher was

Mrs. Sullivan, my first grade teacher was Mrs. Miller, my second grade teacher was Ms. Ashinger, even though she got married right at the end of the year and broke my heart because I was in love with her, but, and I went to...

You remember that? And I went to Rossmoyan Elementary School and I can... I lived at 501

St. Mark's Road, 301 St. Mark's Road and 5

Belmore Road in Camp Hill and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I remember those things. He could tell us, what street did you live on in Ankara?

What city did you live in? Put us in contact with your relatives that could testify they saw you there.

That's not difficult to do. Right, right. He could prove his story. His cousins and whatnot in Turkey.

Exactly, he could prove his story today if he wanted to, but he is the one keeping this going.

Don't throw this on me, it's Ergenken. He's pulling other people into his sin.

I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that... I mean, I do think he's conscious of what he's doing, but there does seem to be a level of...