The "Lost" Wilkins Frog in the Throat Found!

The Digitized Ankerberg Footage and the Missing VHS Edit

Okay, something really interesting just happened. I was just sitting here in channel, and a fellow came in and he said, I'm a little confused. I've been watching your videos on the Mars thing. I have the video of where Wilkins voice gets scratchy and he says, I lost my voice.

He's laughing, takes a drink and then goes on. And I'm like, no you don't. He says, yes I do. And you see, all I've ever had have been the two VHS tapes from the John Ankerberg show. I think we got these, I don't know, about a year after, well less than a year after.

This was when the Mars stuff started. We had to pay like 89 bucks for them, which back then was a lot of money. We really put it out to get this. And I gave you in the previous video I made how the fourth program begins.

And I noticed as I was looking at these, the first two programs, they had this nice edited opening and all this stuff, but then after that they stopped. And that would reflect the fact that what actually happened was Ankerberg lost his major outlet shortly after this stuff took place with Christian Broadcasting.

And that was what happened in that situation. But this is all I've had all along. Well, lo and behold, what's happened is John Ankerberg has digitized this material. And in the process of digitizing, clearly because of this controversy and the claims that these people made, he went back and that stuff was still on tape.

And so what they did is they re-edited the fourth program. And I guess I could be a little upset here. To make room, they reinserted that whole thing. And see, what had happened was Don Wilken wasn't talking fast enough and getting to the point fast enough.

And you'll see in the new version, which is the original version, Ankerberg's trying to get him to, so what'd you find, what'd you find, what were the results, Don? They'd cut out his needing to take a drink of water.

They cut out part of his answer. And they had started farther into his answer. And then I picked up and provided more stuff. So what they did is they took me out. I'm gone. Everything I said about Ripplinger at that point is now disappeared.

And that made the room for them to do more of an introduction to the program and then include what he did. And now you can see, now we'll be able to see. It was the beginning of the fourth program, just as I said it was.

And you're able to see how everyone is laughing. How there's not panic, it's like, oh, you're like the King James, oh, like Mars is trying to make it look like. He's laughing. He's looking over at the King James guys.

He's like, no, I lost my voice, isn't that funny? And you can tell he didn't actually lose his voice, just a little raspiness in his voice. He takes one drink, goes, okay, I'm ready to go. And away we go.

And so now, finally, after all this time, the exact incident itself is back in the programs. And so what I'm going to do here is I'll give you that. And then I'll fade right back into the edited version was on the VHS tapes that actually aired.

So you can see what the differences between the two were and see that, once again, all the accusations, if that is all God can manage, sorry, guys, these King James only folks, that really, it still amazes me that anyone, what amazes me is that the King James only guys let Tex Mars do that.

You know who should have been telling Tex Mars that he was completely out of line were the three King James only guys. Not us. But, of course, they never did that. So first will be the digitized version, which will show you exactly what happened.

You'll see Don Wilkins laughing about it, taking a drink, going, okay, I'm ready. And then you'll notice, you'll hear Ankerberg going. In fact, I'll start it where they're showing New Age Bible versions and you hear Don Wilkins cough even before Ankerberg goes to him.

Listen to that and then I'll give you the VHS version, which I put in the preceding video. That'll give you all the documentation you could ever want on this particular issue.

The Setup for the New Age Bible Versions Segment

Follow the arrow of the dragon down, she says it's the new case against the NIV, the new King James, and the New American Standard Bible, plus a group of the other modern translations. And I have the general editors of those Bibles right here, and gentlemen, I'd like you to respond.

And Dr. Joe Chambers is also representing Gail, so he'll kind of take your response. Don Wilkins, you're representing the New American Standard Bible. And Gail, in her book, she groups all of you together and she says that the new translations, NAS, NIV, New King James, have an occult bent to them.

They introduce New Age philosophies into the church. They spread mysticism and liberalism and line by line they are changing the face of Jesus Christ and Christianity. Now, the people that read this book, it appears to them that she has a mountain of documentation to back up what she has said.

What do you think about the evidence and the documentation in this book?

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. It's documented right there. Okay. It's come back. Hold on, hold on. All right, you all ready?

Try it out. Hi. 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? Okay. What do you think about the evidence and the documentation that she has produced?

Critique of Gail Ripplinger's Documentation and Misquotation

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 or a misquotation or it's a deliberate deception of people, misleading them about what facts there are.

What do you think of her documentation? I think it's ridiculous, it's careless, it is full of holes. Everything I've seen in Ripplinger's book, virtually everything she says is either a misquotation or a misleading of the truth of people, and I'll give you a good example.

She focuses in on, among other things, on Wescott and Hort, and these were fine men of the church, fine Christian men.

What do you think about the evidence and the documentation in this book?

I think it's ridiculous, it's careless, it is full of holes. Everything I've seen in Ripplinger's book, virtually everything she says is either a misquotation or a misleading of the truth of people, and I'll give you a good example.

She focuses in on, among other things, on Wescott and Hort, and these were fine men of the church, fine Christian men, who together put together the text that, as it's evolved in our use of it, has become the text that most of us use, and we think it's the best manuscripts.

Westcott, Hort, and the Charge of Spiritualism

She quotes his son, who wrote a biography about Wescott, as saying, Wescott's son writes of his father's lifelong faith in what, for lack of a better name, one must call spiritualism, and this is page 407 of the New Age.

Now I looked at the books, I looked at the actual biographies that the sons wrote for each of their fathers, and what he actually said is, what happened to this guild, he's talking about a club that his father was in, in the end, I have not discovered.

My father ceased to interest himself in these matters, not altogether, I believe, from want of faith in what, for lack of a better name, one must call spiritualism, but because he was seriously convinced that such investigations led to no good, and what he actually said was that his father dropped out of it because, in large part, of his lack of faith in spiritualism.

Ripplinger completely leaves that out and makes it say that he had a lifelong faith in spiritualism. That's just the opposite of what was true, and it's a deliberate misstatement of the facts.

I think we need to point out the fact that a lot of the type of complete misrepresentation we have here, I think part of the reason that we see it is not so much a specific desire maybe to twist something, but there are things in New Age Bible versions that Mrs. Ripplinger claims God gave her.

For example, on page 149, we have something called acrostic algebra, and you take the NASV and the NIV, and by some mathematical process, you take out the AV, and the last letter that's left is SIN, and this somehow is supposed to demonstrate that these modern translations have something wrong with them.

Acrostic Algebra and Claims of Divine Revelation

Well, I asked Mrs. Ripplinger in a radio debate, first of all, why did you call it NASV? Throughout the rest of your book, you called it NASB. She said that's what God calls it. Even all through the rest of the book, she said NASB instead of NASV, and when I asked her where did you get acrostic algebra, well, God gave it to me.

Now when people make claims like that, being honest and inciting from one particular place, being honest and saying, well, Westcott also happens to have, and in fact, in a passage that Dr. Gipps cites in his own book, they like to go after Westcott and say, well, see, he found this thing of Mary, and Dr. Gipp accuses him of Mariolatry.

When you read the actual passage without the little ellipses that Dr. Gipp and Gail Ripplinger both use, you discover that he talks about the superstition of the monks, that they should have been out in the society.

He right afterwards finds a crucifix, and he says, I wish it had been empty, that is no Jesus upon it. He frequently spoke of the Roman superstition, so on and so forth. So by selectively editing these things, you can make these people look bad, and remember, as long as you really believe what this says, that there is this great conspiracy, it's easier for people to go ahead and bend the facts, bend the truth, to try to promote this conspiracy.