Sam Gipp, CalciumBoy, and the Ankerberg Incident

The Ankerberg Incident and the Wilkins Footage

This morning, I was directed to a new video from Calcium Boy, the King James only advocate that Tom in the Box did such a wonderful impression of. And in this particular video, he provides a, well, a phone answering machine message from Sam Gipp.

Now, Sam Gipp was the representative of the Peter Ruckman perspective on the John Ankerberg show back in 1995. And many times, I saw one of the other participants, Dr. Thomas Strauss, looking very uncomfortable with the kind of responses that Sam Gipp was providing.

But this, again, is about the issue of the Don Wilkins frog in the throat. And you may recall that a few weeks ago on my blog, I posted video. I had had for many years the VHS video from the Ankerberg show.

But because of this particular incident, when the digitized versions were made available on the Ankerberg website, they put back in the actual videotape itself, the video footage of what actually took place.

I have always said that at the beginning of one of the episodes, Dr. John Ankerberg went to Dr. Wilkins. And he told us beforehand, he said, okay, Don, I'm going to come to you and I'm going to ask you about the Gail Ripplinger material.

And you see the introduction. He goes to Dr. Wilkins. Dr. Wilkins chokes. He has a frog in his throat. He had flown all the way from Athens, Greece. He was on prescription medication for migraine headaches.

And one of the side effects is drying you out. He takes a drink and then he goes on. In fact, he goes on longer, clearly, than John Ankerberg wanted him to. He wanted a shorter, harder-hitting response than was even offered.

And so I posted all this a few weeks ago. And evidently because of that, Calcium Boy contacted Sam Gipp and asked Sam Gipp about this. And Sam Gipp directly accuses me of lying. Well, one side, we both have one person that was there.

And one side has videotape. The other side has nothing. One side has the consistent testimony that we've given from the beginning. The other side has nothing. And one side can regularly document its assertions.

The other side, again, has nothing. And so I want to play for you Calcium Boy's video so you can hear Sam Gipp's accusations. And then I'll respond to them. And then I'll take a look at just an example at Sam Gipp's The Answer book.

And I can just show you some of the various falsehoods, how easy it is just to open a page and find where King James Only advocates, especially Reckmanite advocates like Sam Gipp, simply provide erroneous facts.

They're not facts. They're errors. And let you, the viewer, decide if this does not once again demonstrate the utterly bankrupt nature of King James Onlyism and those who promote it. So let's take a look first at, first I'll play you Calcium Boy's video.

Then I'll replay for you again the exact incident as it took place. It's the only incident that took place in regards to this. And then I'll respond to what Sam Gipp had to say.

Sam Gipp’s Accusation on Calcium Boy’s Video

James White put a video on YouTube that supposedly debunks the story of Don Wilkins losing his voice on the John Ankerberg debate. He's got some footage on there that is supposedly the lost footage. He calls it The Lost Wilkins Frog in the Throat Found.

I called Sam Gipp and asked him to watch this video and call me back and tell me if that is the actual footage or not. And he watched it and he left a message on my answering machine which I'm going to play for you right now.

Well, first of all, that book.

Oh, I'm losing my voice. I need a little water here first here. All right, hold on, hold on.

We'll pick it up there when he gets his voice. It's happening right there. There it is. There's a document right there for this moment. OK. It's coming back. Hold on, hold on. All right, you all ready?

Try it out. Hi. Yeah, I think I'm all right now. All right. All right, so we'll pick it up right there. All right. You ready? OK, what do you think about the evidence and the documentation that she has produced?

Well, let me tell you that we, when this book came out, the Lachman Foundation, we realized that we had to respond to it eventually. That it was getting around and people were starting to make phone calls and ask questions and things like that.

And so we spent six weeks going through it, or at least going through parts of it. I think she said she spent six years working on it. And frankly, we didn't feel like we had that kind of time to go through that.

What did you find? We found, what I personally found, is that virtually everything she says is wrong.

Why the Wilkins Clip and the Transcript Contradict Sam Gipp

Now, I'm not certain that even Calcium Boy recognizes that by putting Sam Gip's comments up, after he himself put Tex Marr's comments up, he has produced a contradiction between the two. Because, you see, if you go back and look even at the article that I posted sometime, it was either 95 or 96, it's been up for well over a decade.

I quote from Tex Marr's. Tex Marr's gives one story. And he recognizes that what happened was, if you go back and read Tex Marr's own stuff, that Ankerberg had gone to Wilkin to answer a question about Gale Ripplinger.

That's correct. He had gone to him at the beginning of one of the programs. He went to Don Wilkin. He told him beforehand, OK, I'm going to come to you. As he had told me before other programs, I'm going to come to you.

Here's what I'm going to ask you. Here's how we're going to get started. He went to Don Wilkin, and he asked him about Gale Ripplinger's book. That's when, as you saw in the video, he had to take a drink of water and then went on to talk about Gale Ripplinger's book.

Now notice what Sam Gipp is doing. Sam Gipp says, no, no, no, he was in a different situation where he went to each of the translators, the NIV, New King James, New American Standard, and he said, did any of your translators die, go insane, or lose their voice?

That did happen, but not here. And actually, Calcium Boy posted where Don Wilkin gave his response at. That wasn't the same incident. I was there. I saw it, and I have the videotape. So the difference between us here is Sam Gipp can say that is deception, that is not the exchange, that is just deception.

James White has to know that. If the truth hurts, you've got to lie. Well, one of us has the videotape, and one of us doesn't. Who's telling the truth? I tell you, I'm telling the truth. I've told the same story since 1995, 1996, when the article that's still on my website was posted.

Now the video that was originally taken out has been reposted, and guess what? It shows that what I've said all along has been consistent and accurate and truthful. It's Sam Gipp who is not speaking the truth.

Now, I am willing to allow that maybe his memory after all these years isn't as clear as it might have been, and now that we have the videotape, but wait a minute, Sam Gipp saw the videotape, and in spite of the videotape, makes these false accusations.

Let the reader determine, let the viewer in this case determine what is the truth. I picked up Sam Gipp's book, and I started looking through it once again, and just wanted to read you a few things and just point out that, well, truthfulness is a little bit difficult for Sam Gipp to maintain his writings.

Sam Gipp’s Errors in The Answer Book on the Septuagint and Textual Criticism

For example, under, this is called his The Answer book. Let's see the date on this specific one, copyright 1989. Question number nine, what is the LXX, that is the septogen? Answer, a figment of someone's imagination.

Dr. Gipp actually denies the existence of the Greek septogen. Something that only the most radical King James only advocates to this day, would in any way, shape, or form say. It is very clear that the Greek septogen was available to New Testament writers, and that in fact they themselves utilized the Greek septogen in their citations of the Old Testament text.

On page 67, this is question number 17, most New English translations available today are from those same, these same corrupt Roman Catholic manuscripts. In the hands of the common man, these Bibles do nothing.

They're perfectly safe to the powers that be. The idea that the translations or the manuscripts, the translations they use manuscripts that are quote unquote Roman Catholic, is again just pure ignorance as to the history of the church.

As if these earliest manuscripts themselves were around at the time that Roman Catholicism started. Dr. Gipp is granting to Rome a legitimacy that she does not have. There was no Roman Catholic Church at the time of Sinaiticus, or Vaticanus, or the papyri, or anything like that.

At the earlier question number six, page 30, don't the best manuscripts support the new versions? Answer, no, the best manuscripts support the Bible, the authorized version. Then he explains this, the new versions are only supported by about five of the over 5 ,000 manuscripts of the Bible text.

That's just absurd. It ignores all the papyri, it ignores all the early unsealed text. Five? This is just, it's just silly. I don't know how anyone who actually knows the field can make such assertions.

Critics of the Bible claim these manuscripts are better than those used by the translators, the authorized version. This is not so. Well, what manuscripts were used by the authorized translators? They primarily used printed text, which were based upon earlier manuscripts.

They used Erasmus, they used Beza, they used Stephanos. But what manuscripts did they actually use? How many did they actually use? 5 ,000? No, not even close. Maybe, maybe a dozen were used by Erasmus.

I'm being generous at that point. So that is just completely bogus. The two most prominent of these, Vaticanus, which is the sole property of the Roman Catholic Church, and Sinaiticus, are both known to be overwhelmed with errors.

Isn't it interesting that Sinaiticus is now online? And as such, people can now check out some of these claims for themselves. It is said that Sinaiticus has been corrected and altered by as many as 10 different writers.

Well, when one manuscript's in use for, oh, 1 ,200 years, 1 ,400 years, that's understandable. In Vaticanus, it's found the evidence of very sloppy workmanship. Time and again, words and whole phrases are repeated twice in succession or completely omitted, while the entire manuscript has had the text mutilated by some person or persons who ran over every letter with a pen, making exact identification of many of the characters impossible.

I have no idea what he's referring to. And again, you can go online today and examine these things and see whether these assertions are true. They are not. There may be places where someone overwrote something in either Vaticanus or Sinaiticus.

But that all of them, the entire manuscripts, have suffered this? Obviously not. Both manuscripts contain uninspired, anti-scriptural books which are not found in the Bible. In other words, there is an expanded canon?

Well, maybe, but that's assuming that just because a book appears in the manuscript means it was considered canonical. And again, there are Byzantine manuscripts that have the same books or similar types of collections of books.

In them, that Gip, for some reason, doesn't mention. This is the very essence of King James-only-ism, is the utilization of double standards. Making an accusation against things that are not used in the King James, that would be just as equally applied against the manuscripts that were used in the translation of the King James.

The only place where these error-laden, that he mentions, unreliable manuscripts excel is in the quality of the material used on them, etc. etc. And then on page 31, and yet in spite of these well-known corruptions, they are the basis for many new versions, such as the New American Standard Version and the New International Version, rendering these versions critically flawed and unreliable.

And of course, none of these translations are merely slavish reproductions of Sinaiticus or Vaticanus. Shows no knowledge of the papyri. Shows no knowledge of the very rich realm of textual critical studies of the New Testament at all.

This is the kind of material that Sam Gipp and the Ruckmanites like him produce. They are unreliable in their writings, and on this subject, in regards to what happened during the taping of the John Ankerberg show, they prove themselves to be just as unreliable.

One side has the facts, the other side has nothing to offer whatsoever. Let the viewer decide. Thanks for watching.