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.)
This is a little too ironic to not share. Over at pastor Tim Guthrie’s blog, 
