Just a very brief article in response to Peter Lumpkins, who wrote a fair but perplexing analysis of Liberty University’s investigation of Ergun Caner and the official statement it concluded with. And this will be very brief because that is all it takes.

Lumpkins felt that the official statement had definitively provided a “vindication” of Caner by somehow demonstrating that he did not “make up his life testimony” in any way similar to Mike Warnke’s fictitious background, and therefore people who have been critical of Caner’s testimony “should drink their own tonic and offer public apologies.” I will shoulder this admonishment publically and without any hesitation, immediately upon Lumpkins successfully reconciling the glaring conflict between Caner’s life testimony and the court documents which contradict it. While he is right about our inability to draw conclusions from what is not there, we surely can draw conclusions from what is there.

His life testimony is that he was raised in Turkey as a Muslim terrorist trained in jihad and then moved to the U.S. as a young teenager. Evidences (official court documents) prove that he and his family had actually moved to a quiet suburb of Columbus, Ohio, when Caner was about three years of age. The latter contradicts the former.

If Lumpkins can successfully reconcile Caner’s life testimony, which we have, with the official evidence that contradicts it, which we have, then I will be among the first to step forward and offer a public apology. But as it stands right now, it is impossible for his life testimony and the court documents to both be true. One of them is false, unless Lumpkins is aware of something that reconciles the two without likewise contradicting the ample evidence that is there.

(A nod to Carla Rolfe, who just expressed a similar request.)

There are 5 types of “gifted men”: Apostles, prophets, evangelists, teaching pastors and teachers. In the early days of the Church the apostles and prophets had some miraculous gifts (healing, languages…etc). These were so that their message was confirmed as from God. Now that message (The Word of God) has been established as a doctrinal foundation, these specific gifts are no longer necessary. It is interesting to note that apostle is Greek for messenger. So it’s important for those reading the New Testament to make a distinction between capital “A” apostles and the little “a” messengers. The first apostle (Heb 3:1) was the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ then gave the word apostle a technical meaning when he appointed the 12 (capital A). Apostle became a proper name or an official title. Also an apostle was someone who had seen the resurrected Christ. And apostles are also identified as those with very unique abilities – miraculous powers (2 Cor 12:12). Another way of distinguishing between the two would be as the Apostles of the Lord and the apostles of the churches.

The Greek word for prophet means one who speaks out. It wasn’t until medieval times that the word prophet in the English language came to be connected with the idea of prediction. Biblically it has always been connected with the idea of speaking forth for God.

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…is Christianity—at least, so recognizes militant atheist Penn Jillette, an unexpected surprise uncovered by Las Vegas Weekly in an interview last week:

Let’s talk about your TV show Bull___! Will you ever run out of theories to debunk and people to expose?

If you build a kingdom on bull***, you’re not in danger of running out of it. Our producer says that Teller and I can take any subject in the news and do a credible show on it. Sure, we like to have a villain, something to call “bull***” on, but if we don’t, we can depart from that model.

Are there any groups you won’t go after?

We haven’t tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists. I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.

Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back.

Right. And I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it. I can’t think of anything more horrific.

Of course, it might please some Islamic fundamentalists to hear you say that you won’t talk about them because you’re afraid.

It might. But you have to say what you believe, even it if pleases somebody you disagree with. That issue comes up all the time in moral discourse.

You do go after Christians, though.

Teller and I have been brutal to Christians, and their response shows that they are good f**ing Americans who believe in freedom of speech. We attack them all the time, and we still get letters that say, “We appreciate your passion. Sincerely yours, in Christ.” Christians come to our show at the Rio and give us Bibles all the time. They’re incredibly kind to us. Sure, there are a couple of them who live in garages, give themselves titles and send out death threats to me and Bill Maher and Trey Parker. But the vast majority are polite, open-minded people, and I respect them for that.

In Chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians Paul talks about spiritual gifts. He does this because the Church at Corinth has lost its way. The problem was that the Church had managed to drag into their Church life, all of the features of their former pagan existence. Their culture and the society of the city of Corinth was enamoured with the mystery religions that trace their origins to the tower of Babel, the elements of which are still present in the world religions of today. Even some “Christian” denominations show signs of such influence and practice.

In Corinth, their behaviour was a remnant of their unsaved, idolatrist days when ecstatic utterances and such practices made by pagan priests and worshipers under the control of a demon were thought to be the highest level of religious experience. These things infiltrated the Church and were confused with the true gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The Church, however, has been endowed by the Spirit of God with supernatural gifts for its ministry of edification and evangelism which are critical to its operation. It is essential that we understand spiritual gifts and also understand that Satan counterfeits them. He counterfeits them because they are absolutely necessary to the life and functioning of the Church. The Church can’t function without the operation of spiritual gifts. That’s how the Holy Spirit works.

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This is a little too ironic to not share. Over at pastor Tim Guthrie’s blog, SBC Today, we find a response from him regarding the issue of Liberty University demoting Ergun Caner from the position of dean of LBTS to that of professor as a result of their investigation into the fabricated history Caner had erected about himself. (For those who are not aware, Guthrie had involved himself rather deeply in the controversy surrounding Caner and taking heat over it.) For several months Guthrie has been rightly cautioning people against the easy temptation of gossip and to reserve their judgment until all of the relevant evidence had been collected and sifted through and the Board of Trustees at Liberty University had weighed in on the matter. (We will ignore the dissonance of Guthrie not taking his own advice, nor will we comment about how he has conducted himself in the affair.)

What I want to do here is interact directly with Guthrie’s concluding thoughts, in his article oddly entitled “The Exoneration of Dr. Ergun Caner,” to critically analyze the various statements he made therein.

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As reported by Ray Reed at The News & Advance a few hours ago, Liberty University has confirmed that Ergun Caner’s contract as dean of the seminary, which will expire 30 June 2010, will not be renewed for the next academic year. In an official statement from Liberty University, it was confirmed that Caner “will no longer serve as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.” Caner has been demoted to the faculty position of professor instead, which he has accepted.

The official statement reads in full:

After a thorough and exhaustive review of Dr. Ergun Caner’s public state-ments, a committee consisting of four members of Liberty University’s Board of Trustees has concluded that Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory.  However, the committee found no evidence to sug-gest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager, but, instead, found discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence.  Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review.  Dr. Caner’s current contractual term as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary expires on June, 30, 2010.  Dr. Caner will no longer serve as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.  The univer-sity has offered, and Dr. Caner has accepted, an employment contract for the 2010-2011 academic year. Dr. Caner will remain on the faculty of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary as a professor.

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As reported by Micki Steele of The Detroit News, Senior Trial Counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, Robert Muise, has said that the four Acts 17 Apologetics members who were arrested 18 June 2010 at the Arab International Festival—Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkalla, and Negeen Mayel—will appear before the 19th District Court in Dearborn, MI, on 12 July 2010. They will plead “not guilty” and request a jury trial. Steele also noted that Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad has declined to comment on the case, and that phone calls to American Arab Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Fay Beydoun were not returned.

19th District Court
16077 Michigan Ave.
Dearborn, MI, 48126
(313) 943-2060

When it comes to a ‘hostile audience’ situation (emphasis mine),

the Court once sustained a conviction for disorderly conduct of one who refused police demands to cease speaking after his speech seemingly stirred numbers of his listeners to mutterings and threatened disorders. But this case has been significantly limited by cases which hold protected the peaceful expression of views which stirs people to anger because of the content of the expression, or perhaps because of the manner in which it is conveyed, and that breach of the peace and disorderly conduct statutes may not be used to curb such expression.

• For more information and relevant case law, see “Fighting Words and Other Threats to the Peace,” from Annotated Constitution (2000) by Congressional Research Service.

Again the value of video footage simply cannot be understated. On Sunday evening the weekend of their arrest, after being released on bail, David Wood and Paul Rezkalla returned to the Arab Festival in Dearborn, MI, to conduct something of an experiment (along with a friend, Antonio Santana). Instead of going inside the festival, they stood outside of it and distributed pamphlets of the Gospel of John in Arabic and English. The video of the experience is incredible.

For three individuals standing on a public street handing out religious pamphlets in an American city, the Dearborn Police Department responded in under five minutes with a total of eight uniformed officers and arrested them. This is the assault on the rights and freedoms of Americans that is taking place in Dearborn, Michigan. Every year for three days in June, pursuant to a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Borman, the protections of the First Amendment are suspended within the Arab International Festival and its “outer perimeter” which, as we can tell from David’s experience here, apparently constitutes a five-block “buffer zone.” So anywhere within that five-block perimeter and the festival itself, the rights and freedoms of Americans is curtailed.

According to the Thomas More Law Center, who announced today that they are going to represent the four members of the Acts 17 Apologetics team (Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkallah, and Negeen Mayel), these videos depict what looks like Sharia law being enforced in Dearborn; as David noted in the above video, under Sharia law non-Muslims are prohibited from proselytizing under pain of death, which includes the distribution of non-Muslim religious literature. Although neither the city of Dearborn nor the state of Michigan is under Muslim rule, the remarkable miscarriage of justice carried out by the city in enacting the ban, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in upholding it, certainly caters to the spirit of Sharia law. But far more importantly, it simply defies the Constitution of the United States.

Be careful of the dragon you’re awakening.

And to all those who are attacking the characters of Nabeel and David, suggesting that they must have been doing something to deserve being arrested since other Christian ministries were at the festival sharing their faith without getting into trouble, please be responsible and inform yourself of all the relevant facts first. The other Christians were not assaulted by security or taken into police custody because they remained at their designated booths and tables, enjoying their freedom of speech where the city and federal court limited it to. That is the very nature of the fight that pastor George Saieg and the Acts 17 Apologetics team are engaged in, with the help of legal representation from the Thomas More Law Center; they are refusing to sit quietly while their rights and freedoms are stripped away by city and state officials, even if their fellow brothers are content to do so. The other Christians at the festival did not get into trouble because they were willing to play by the rules. But then some Christians, such as George Saieg, Nabeel Qureshi, and David Wood, refuse to abide by rules that violate the fundamental rights and freedoms that millions of Americans have shed blood to secure over the last two centuries. Those who played possum will in the end thank those who didn’t.

On a very loosely related note, did you know that Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad was recently appointed to serve on the Homeland Security Advisory Council? Yeah, me neither. I just discovered that interesting bit of news this afternoon, thanks to the staff writer Sean Delaney of the Press & Guide newspaper in Dearborn (“Chief Haddad on national security board,” 3 May 2010). According to statements from Haddad, the city and its police department have established “several similar advisory committees to facilitate communication between different cultural and religious groups, as well as various groups and organizations throughout the city.” And he goes on to say, “We are engaging the community in a way that’s never been done before.” He’s got that right.

What I found deeply troubling, in light of the recent events in Dearborn, was Haddad’s closing comment. After describing it as an honor and privilege to serve on such a board in Washington, he described the task as “extremely important and a high degree of responsibility because we have to come up with a program that serves the country as well as the City of Dearborn” (emphasis mine). Right, and Americans want what Dearborn and its police are doing with facilitating “communication between different cultural and religious groups” to have an influence on how Homeland Security is advised.

That dragon better wake up soon.

The story of the Acts 17 Apologetics team, Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood (including Negeen and Paul Rezkalla), being arrested at the 2010 Arab Festival this weekend in Dearborn, Michigan, is exploding not only across the blogosphere but is also getting picked up by other media sources, such as news programs and radio talk shows. With that sort of exposure you just know it is going to elicit responses from their critics. It is for this reason that everyone, Nabeel and David especially, can appreciate the value of their having filmed the experience.

For example, someone named Nick—over at Tom Gilson’s Thinking Christian—thought that the opinion of “Spiffy the Basset” had some credibility. Spiffy let loose with some very strong words attacking the character of Nabeel and David, calling them liars and claiming that they were “showboating” and “trying to cause a scene,” suggesting that they were “trying to get arrested” (which is not only fallacious but Gilson had already obviated this sort of response within his article itself). So herein lies the value of video footage: the scathing opinion of Spiffy can be compared against starkly unbiased video evidence, averting the tedium of this person’s word against that person’s. (Provided that the footage on their cameras is not coincidentally damaged or deleted while in possession of the Dearborn Police Department.) Just as the footage of their experience last year proved the lies and physical assaults of the security guards, so too will video evidence prove more reliable than the vituperative attacks of their critics this year. Clearly that is one of the very reasons they brought video cameras with them and had them rolling the entire time. So go ahead and toss in your lot with the unscrupulous and illegitimately personal attacks of Spiffy, Nick. The more reserved and responsible of us will toss in our lot with the unbiased view of the camera, and the testimony of Nabeel and David who make their statements knowing very well what the footage on the cameras will expose.

On a related note and something I found quite remarkable? There was supposed to be a second formal debate between Dr. James White, from Alpha & Omega Ministries, and Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Awal, from the Zaitun Dawah Institute, this evening at the Center for Religious Debate in Romulus, MI (info)—but it got cancelled, and I doubt you could ever guess why. Evidently the mosque that was hosting Sheikh Awal demanded that he pull out of that debate because of David Wood’s arrest Friday evening! If you’re struggling to grasp the connection between these two things, you are not alone. It is difficult to say what the connection could be, other than they are both apologists and participants in The Great Debate Series over last weekend. But even if we assumed that David Wood did something highly illegal, what has that to do with Dr. White? Why is that mosque equating the two men? As Dr. White noted,

I pointed out to Sheikh Awal that Sheikh Zakir Naik has been banned from the UK for saying that all Muslims need to be terrorists. So, should I hold him accountable for everything Zakir Naik says or does? If not, why not?

With consideration to how often American Muslims object to “being lumped together with others unfairly,” it was a very curious choice that mosque made, predicated on such a dubious connection.