Misstatements

The Difference Between Misstatements and Lies

I'd like to discuss the phrase, actually the word, misstatements. Been throwing it around a lot recently. People have been hiding behind this term, misstatements, to, well, excuse abject lies. Misstatements that are repeated over and over again for many years and that are joined with other misstatements to create a particular thrust, a particular story, that is in and of itself false.

Those aren't misstatements. Those are lies. I'd like to illustrate the difference by demonstrating my own fallibility. Rather embarrassing, but hopefully everyone will forgive me. I have gotten stuck in my mind over the past couple of decades a particular date.

And the date is off by five years. And what I'm referring to is I'm normally pretty good with dates, especially when it's on a subject that I've taught before and I've taught church history. And one of the things I like lecturing on is the subject of the Greek New Testament.

It's history, how we got it, especially the early editions of the Greek New Testament. And so I can tell you that Erasmus' first edition came out in 1516. There were five editions between that and 1535.

And the third edition was the most popular and all the rest of that stuff. But then between that and then Beza's work at the end of the 16th century, we have the work of Robert Estienne, better known by his Latinized last name, Stephanus.

And Estienne actually put out a couple of editions of the Greek New Testament, but the one that had the widest distribution and the greatest impact was that of 1550. But for some reason, and I haven't been able to figure out why, I looked at my church history.

Notes.

I don't know where it came from. 1550 is not the date that I've associated in my mind. I keep saying 1555. And to my chagrin, it's even in the King James Only controversy. I apologize. It's not 1555, it's 1550.

Maybe 1555 flows off the tongue better. I just don't know. But I got 1555 stuck in my head. What has made this extremely embarrassing for me is that I think it was in the late.

90s.

I had the opportunity while back on Long Island to handle a 1550 Stephanus Greek text. I saw a 1611 King James version and this and these ancient works from a Christian, a collector back then, back there.

And many of you have heard when I have done lectures on the history of the Greek New Testament and things like that, you've heard me tell the story that I've told that brother that he needed to put me in his will to make sure that that 1550, but I kept saying 1555, Stephanus text found a good home.

And, well, amazingly, yesterday that brother made that come true. And here is, this isn't a facsimile. This is a 1550 Stephanus Greek text in incredible shape. I will show you here. Here's something from the book of Acts right there.

Now interestingly enough, the 1551 is the one where verse numeration was first introduced. So this would be the last one that he did without the verse numeration, the verse divisions. But this is the real thing.

A 1550, not 1555, Stephanus Greek text. I hope to be able to show that at some of my talks in the future and talk about a little bit more of its history and things like that. But the point is, even when it arrived, I tweeted that I had just received a 1555 Stephanus.

Text.

And right here, right in the front, is the date. Let me see if I can, you can probably see that there. There's the date in Latin numeration. And that's 1550 right there in front of me. And I still put 1555.

Some things just get stuck in your brain. And that would be a misstatement. Now what is the difference between the fact that over years, probably for 15 years, I have repeatedly, if you were to go out and you were to dig up my old lectures and things like that, you would catch me repeatedly saying 1555.

What's the difference between my repeated misstatement of the date on the 1550 Stephanus text and Ergen Kanner's constant repetition of falsehoods about when he came to the United States, whether it was 1969, 1978, 1979.

I mean, that's only nine, ten years. I was off by five years. Of course, we're talking about the date of a Greek text, not when we did something. But what's the difference? Some people would say there's no difference whatsoever.

It's just simply a misstatement. That seems to be the approach today, is that, well, all Ergen Kanner is guilty of is misstatements. Well, let me try to give you an example from this that might illustrate what the real problem.

Is.

Let's say I had published a scholarly paper, or was working on a scholarly book, in which basically I was asserting that Robert Estienne, Stephanus, had actually borrowed some of his textual decisions from somebody else in a book that had been published in 1552.

Well, the problem is this text is 1550, and so to make my thesis work, I would have to change the dates. I would have to put the publication date after the publication date of this other book that I'm saying he borrowed from, or I'd have a gross anachronism.

And so if you could detect, in my words, an overarching theme, an attempt to create a conclusion that required the utilization of those dates, and that would reflect upon why I was making these misstatements, that these misstatements were actually supportive of something else I was trying to communicate, or trying to prove, or trying to present to people, then you'd start getting a little bit of a parallel to what we have with Eric and Cantor.

Now let's say you found a dozen places where I made misstatements, and they all had to do with the same subject. Let's say that you find another misstatement regarding the dating of that other book that SDN allegedly copied from, and I've actually changed the date on that, and a whole complex of misstatements start to come together, and they all have the same purpose, just like we have, well, came here from Turkey, always lived in majority Muslim nations, learned English watching shows that were not even being shown in Turkey at that time, trained and committed to the principles of jihad by the age of nine in a madrasa inn, and we have three possibilities here, Istanbul, Beirut, and Cairo.

We now have three different places where not just once, but multiple times, Eric and Cantor has claimed that he trained in jihad in a madrasa in Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Hmm.

You start seeing a pattern, and then you add to it. Attempts to pretend to speak in Arabic, but no ability to do so. Documentation from his own website claiming to have debated Islamic imams in Arabic in.

Mosques.

No evidence of that ever having happened, and given that he clearly doesn't speak Arabic, that would have been a bit of a comical thing to watch. You see, these misstatements are part of a much larger complex of false statements that most old-fashioned folks would call lies.

But today, we have people running around saying, well, Dr. Cantor has apologized for his misstatements.

Really?

I was just listening a few moments ago to a series of lectures that Dr. Cantor did in May of this year. Now, if you're not familiar with the timeline, this is well after his exposure as a fraud. This was when the information was really starting to come out hot and heavy, including the divorce papers were now out, and things like that, that demonstrated that Eric and Cantor's I Came Here in 1979 from Turkey story was completely bogus.

It was a lie. And I was very interested to see what would Dr. Cantor do, knowing that he's going to have a microphone in front of him, either on him or right in front of him, and now people are listening and people know.

And we'll have some more comments on this. I may play segments on the Dividing Line program I do tomorrow. But basically, one of the things he did was decide to identify myself and others as haters. We are haters for having asked these questions, dug up this information, connected the dots and discovered that Eric and Cantor had created a persona for himself that doesn't really exist.

And if you actually have repented and apologized for misstatements, do you identify the people who found your misstatements as haters? He said, I hate him. Of course, he lied about me, called me a hyper-Calvinist, which as soon as anybody does that, you know that there's someone who could never hold their own in a meaningful conversation because they have to lie.

But it was not the type of phraseology that you would expect from a man who was actually in any way, shape, or form repentant for his misstatements. It was, however, the language of a person who is feeling a tremendous amount of pressure about the fact that he has lied and he's been caught in the documentation as clear and compelling.

So you see, there is a logical and necessary difference between a misstatement, that's not a 1555 Stephanos text sitting there, that's a 1550 Stephanos text there. I probably, thanks to that good brother, won't make that mistake again.

I think now that I actually have one, that the ministry has one, will probably get the.

Date right.

And, of course, I want to dig even more deeply into its history so that I can spend much more time in discussing its importance because it is an extremely important text. It really is the foundation stone of the Texas Receptus, and hence the King James Translation.

Of the Bible.

So it is wonderful to have this resource. But I probably won't make that misstatement again. But you know what? I'll make others. I'm getting older. Sometimes, when you're speaking quickly, we've all said, and Paul said, but it was Peter who said it, or Peter said it and Paul said it, or, as it says in Romans, and it's actually in 1 Corinthians, we've all had opportunity to notice the gross miscitations of Matthew 23 -37.

We try to be as accurate as we can. It's one of the reasons that we have to be very careful in using citations from early church writers in regards to the text of the New Testament, because when preaching, you so often are summarizing a text, quoting a text from memory, sometimes conflating things.

It happens. It happens. And Ergin Cantor has said, well, I've made some misstatements while preaching. Haven't we all? Well, we have all made misstatements, but I've never made up fake debates. I never did.

I've never claimed multiple times to debate Shabir Ali when I hadn't. I've never made up places that I've never lived and claimed that I did. Huge difference between the occasional misstatement or even the consistent misstatement, a date.

You know, maybe someone might think that the piece of the church in 313 was in 312. I mean, something did happen in 312. Maybe someone could do something like that. Do it consistently over time. But when it is a complex of misstatements that have a common thread and purpose, as we have with all of Ergin Cantor's, then you don't have misstatements.

You have lies. Dr. Cantor, I don't know if you ever watch any of these things, but it's not hatred that motivates someone to point this out. It's actually love for the truth. Now, I would like to suggest that the people who are actually showing you hatred, sir, are the people who are aiding and abetting you in avoiding confession, repentance, and restoration.

Those are the people who are not showing you Christian love. People who have stood up for the integrity of the pulpit, people who have stood up for the integrity of ministry to Muslims, are not the people who have shown you hatred.

You're the one who chose to make up this persona. You're the one who stood in front of audiences and said these false things. The time has come for you to admit that, to confess it, to repent of it, to apologize to those people that you have offended and misled and seek restoration.

Those people who are promoting the idea that, well, this is just mere misstatements, those are the people who are joining with you in bearing the burden for the falsehoods you've already told. So that's the difference between misstatements and lies.

We can tell the difference between the two, and remember, it's the 1550 Stephanus text. Thanks for watching.