Evangelist Tim Lee: Ergun Caner Misspoke, He Did Not Lie

The Liberty University Statement and the Evangelical Cover-Up

But, uh, first, I, um, I, we need to do an update on the great evangelical cover-up. I mentioned last week the news, the big news. In fact, we needed a press release on Eric Cantor's website to let us know, uh, that Eric Cantor, though he has never lied, uh, was not only dismissed as president of Liberty Theological Seminary, but now has been dismissed by Liberty University and TOTO.

Uh, even though we're told that a teaching contract was extended to him, he has left Liberty and has gone to Arlington Baptist Bible College, uh, a school with all of, uh, a little less than 150 students.

Uh, I would imagine Cantor had some classes at Liberty with more than 150 students, but a King James-only fundamentalist Bible college. I mentioned last week, I don't see that as a real good fit, you know?

I just, I, can you tase somebody when they're wearing a white shirt and a dark tie? Is that really possible? Uh, I'm not, I'm not sure how that works. Um, but anyway, um, that was interesting in and of itself.

But then yesterday or the day before yesterday, one of the uh, a blog article appeared at the FBC Jack's Watchdog blog, uh, that pretty much paralleled the information I have received from inside Liberty.

We've always said that Radio Free Geneva was from a bunker deep beneath Liberty University, so we might be able to hear things that other people can't hear. You never know! You never know! Has anyone really looked?

Anyway, uh, that's what he was so busy doing last year. Oh, where is that thing? Um, anyway, anyhow, um, the, the information pretty much paralleled what I had been told. And, uh, you know, basically the idea was that, you know, Cantor was given a certain amount of time to find some place to go, but, but he needed to go.

Tim Lee's Claim That Caner Did Not Lie

And, uh, what is really interesting were the comments that were posted that, um, that give us some more insight. Specifically, uh, comments by one Evangelist Tim Lee. And, uh, this fellow looks like he's a, uh, a Marine, and he lost his legs, I think, in Vietnam.

I don't know his whole story. I, I've never heard him speak. Don't know anything about him. All I know is, according to him, quote, I was the chairman of the committee that crafted the statement concerning Ergen.

Ah! We wondered who was on the committee. We wondered who did the investigation and all the rest of these things that resulted in his no longer being president, but still teaching at Liberty. And he is quoted on Cantor's website, uh, about being so excited that Ergen Cantor had gone to Arlington, uh, Baptist Bible College.

But twice in his comments, Evangelist Tim Lee says, we never once found that he lied. We never once found that he lied. Instead, we did find numerous instances of misspeaking. Misspeaking, one word. He was rebuked and reprimanded.

I can promise you much more care, promise you much more careful about what he says and how he says it. He was rebuked and reprimanded for misstatements, for misspeaking. Why do you rebuke people for misspeaking?

I mean, all the examples, for example, he himself gave an example of what he means by misspeaking. Uh, he said in front of 10 ,000 people that day, I said, I stepped on a 60 pound mine and it blew me several feet in the air, ripping both of my bodies off my leg.

Now the mine didn't rip both of my bodies off my leg, as I only have one body, it ripped both of my legs off my body. I had said it right hundreds and hundreds of times, but that day I got it wrong. My children were listening back in Dallas via internet.

They were on the floor with laughter. That's a misstatement. That's a misstatement. You meant to say certain words and other words got in the way. We've all done that. There are different kinds of misstatements.

I've given you an example of a misstatement that I made a number of times. I got a wrong date from history stuck in my mind and I don't know how it got there, but I many times talked about the 1555 Stephanus text at 1550.

I had an extra five in there. I've corrected that now, but it was a misstatement. Honest. I wasn't trying to create a persona about myself or anything else in the process. Those are misstatements. We've even heard Eric Cantor talking about, well, you could get the names of your kids wrong.

I will admit, that's something I've never done. I don't know how you would do that, but hey, okay. These are misstatements, but we all know that for it to be true that we never once found that he lied, that means that means this committee, the chairman of this committee, a man with a proud service record, a war hero has a level of naivete that is absolutely shocking and should mean that he should never be allowed to go to a used car store by himself.

That's the only way I can put it. Folks, we can tell the difference between lies and misstatements. If you are a, if you're a police detective, you're trained to be able to detect what? Inconsistencies in people's stories and be able to detect misstatements versus lies.

Now, a misstatement like the one that he gave about blowing his bodies off of his leg, that's an obvious one. That's just a, uh, tongue gets in front of your eye teeth, can't see what you're saying type situation.

Those are, those are easy. And misstating a date from ancient church history, uh, getting the date of the council of Constantinople wrong or something like that. Those are, those are easy. But you see, all of us, all of us adults anyways, know that there are certain telltale signs to lies.

Misstatements are random. Misstatements do not have connection with other misstatements that just happen to be on the same subject. And you don't generally repeat misstatements over and over again, unless it's the type of thing where I got the wrong date in my mind.

You don't tend to repeat them and then you never expand upon them. If you do, they're not misstatements. You are saying those words purposely and for a meaning. So let's think about some of Ergenkander's misspeaking and misstatements.

Repeated Misstatements and the Construction of a Persona

Not only did he make the statements, but he also put them in print. Now, do you really think that, um, evangelist Tim Lee would put his misstatement into print so that it appeared on his website, in his bio for years on end?

More than one website? When Ergenkander claimed to have come to the United States in 1978 or 1979, when his bio said 1979 on the Liberty webpage for months, if not years on end, and he repeated this in numerous contexts in numerous places, how can that be a misstatement when it was a decade off?

Did he not know what was on his websites? When you have something in print and that is repeated over and over again in numerous different contexts, how can that be a misstatement? Can you really get the difference between when you were a teenager and when you were just a two-year-old kid mixed up in your mind so that you keep repeating the wrong thing and even put it into printed material?

Is that, is that a misstatement? And given that it's connected with other misstatements, like I was born in Istanbul, which he repeated more than once in different contexts. Now, misstatements generally are one-time thing.

Did he really think he was born in Istanbul? And he makes the argument, Mr. Lee makes the argument, well, you know, 98 out of 100 times he got it right. Really? How many times does he give us where he really was born in his testimonies between, say, 2001 and 2010, February of 2010 specifically, when yours truly started blogging about this stuff?

Where did he get it right? Now, he did get it right. And this is further evidence this wasn't a misstatement. Because when you make misstatements, you don't say the correct thing to certain groups and misstatements to other groups.

That's exactly what Erdogan did. When speaking to a Turkish newspaper, all of a sudden he was honest. He, he, no misstatements. He didn't claim to be able to speak Arabic or Turkish. And he knew where he was born.

He knew he was born in Sweden, not in Turkey. And he knew he grew up in Ohio, not in Turkey or Istanbul. Never made any claims about training in madrasas in Beirut or Cairo or Istanbul, did he? Not one talking to people could check him out.

No, no, he didn't, didn't do that. But when talking to gullible groups, large groups who would feed on his, on his, his stories, all of a sudden misstatements come popping out all over the place again.

Lies, Misstatements, and the Limits of Discernment

You see, I bet you evangelist Tim Lee doesn't appreciate it when people are discovered, as many people have been discovered recently about claiming to be military personnel with war service, various people in politics.

People claim to be Navy SEALs and they weren't Navy SEALs. And I'm sure that evangelist Tim Lee doesn't like that. I bet you he'd be able to recognize anybody who claimed to have served in Vietnam, but didn't.

I bet you he'd be able to sort of, sort of root them out. Don't you think he'd be able to tell where the errors are in the story? Don't you think? And yet he'll accept Ergin Kanner's story and say, he never lied.

He never lied about training in madrasas in Beirut and Cairo. What about, what about those videos where he's, he's talking about speaking Arabic? And what about his website where it talks about him debating imams in mosques in Arabic?

It's really hard to do when you can't actually speak Arabic. And when we have no evidence of any Muslim imam that will come forward and say, oh yes, I debated Ergin Kanner. No one will do that because he doesn't do debates.

Was it a misstatement to say that his father brought his wives with him to America when he only had one? And you notice that the theme here, they're all related to the same thing to create this persona of Ergin Kanner being this expert on Islam.

Do misstatements, do they breed other misstatements on the same subjects? Evangelist Tim Lee knows that none of that's true. And that's why it's really hard for me to understand how the chairman of the committee that drafted the statement, which was a non-statement, it was a political statement.

It was a statement that only made the situation worse. It didn't make it better. Evangelist Tim Lee knows that Ergin Kanner did lie. And if you say that someone didn't lie when you know they did lie, is that a lie itself or is that just a misstatement?

That would be the question. I wrote to Evangelist Tim Lee. I've invited him to come on the program. I would like to talk to him about it. I'd like to ask him about these things. He could really shed some light on all this.

But as long as people keep saying, oh, misstatement, just a misstatement, this great evangelical coverup will continue on. And all those, discernment ministries that have been involved in propagating this coverup will demonstrate once again that there's not much in the way of discernment going on there.