So I'm coming off a debate on TeamPyro blog where bunch of my comments are being deleted to effectively shift what I'm saying. That is to say that Dan Phillips is deliberately misrepresenting me, lying in other words.Now he is a well respected guy, and he was cavalier about it so I assume he does this sort of nonsense on a regular basis. What's interesting is not the dishonesty, but the pattern I've seen on these blogs. I have to wonder why is it that so many conservative Protestants do not consider dishonesty to be sinful in practice? This approach of casual misrepresenting what the other side has to say is considered perfectly acceptable on most conservative Christian blogs. I was just yesterday reading a review of the Voice translation which was quite good, but there was an underlying untruthfulness throughout the review. I've posted many times on the issues with the ESV supporters lying about the TNIV.
The patriarchy people have certainly done it as documented a zillion times here. Of course the various Christian cults do it. You don't see this among liberal Christians or atheists, they are generally upset if they have misrepresented someone's view, and quick to correct. You see it much more rarely among Catholics. I don't have a good theory as to why this is. So I'll open the floor up. What is your feeling about Christians blogs and integrity? Do think it is lower for conservative protestants? Is so any idea why this is? Does it come from Calvin's influence?
17 comments:
He can't delete your comments here. Why don't you set the record straight and explain what you're really saying, instead of just accusing someone else of dishonesty?
Besides, if you hold to postmodern relativism (as you indicated at TeamPyro), then there's no such thing as "misrepresenting" or "untruthfulness." But since you seem to value those things, clearly you do think there's such a thing as objective meaning and truth.
When you say something as silly as "all comments are meaningless," it's impossible for someone to misrepresent you, because you have yourself affirmed that your comments don't have any meaning. At the most, they are simply addressing your comments as they interpret them.
It can be rough when someone takes your words and applies them to your words.
Well first off I'm interested in a more general conversation of why this kind of behavior is considered acceptable among conservative Christians. Whether Dan Phillips is lying about an anonymous blogger or not is really not a terribly important topic. Why conservative Christianity has built a culture of mistruth is.
But since you have the context I'll give you some examples of deleted posts.
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The original conclusion read:
See how ineffectual it is going to be? I think the case is proven.
Your apologetic approach of just assuming empiricism (Berkley, Hume, Locke) didn't work there. You ran into the same problem they did. And I didn't even get out of the 18th century.
Postmodernism even in its popular form is a lot more sophisticated than that.
____
To NoLongerBlind I said (him in bold me in italic):
I'm not so sure that CD-Host is disagreeing with the intent on this post; instead, is he perhaps disagreeing with the suggested manner of dealing with the hypothetical situation, playing "Devil's Advocate" so-to-speak.....?
Thank you, you get it. Address the issue within the framework. Attack the framework and you get sucked right down the rabbit hole of relativism. Assuming the other person, doesn't really mean what they are saying isn't likely to be successful
Etc....
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And I never ever ever advocated deliberate misrepresentation. I never advocated that words were meaningless to listeners, that was Dan putting words in my mouth and then not letting me respond. I certainly never advocated censorship. He wasn't applying my words to my words. Frankly, I have a valid Matt 18 complaint.
I dunno, maybe it was because you were a little too philosophical...
Anyway, I gotta call you on liberal Christians not wanting to misrepresent people. Don't get me wrong, I love Shane Claiborne, Donald Miller etc as Brothers, but they don't seem to mind skewering many of their more conservative brethren in their books.
Having said that, I do think that many blogs on the conservative side DO slander and malign people.It's called the Human Condition, we want to be right. Pyro has done it once or twice, but to be fair, you weren't really giving a response. If I know the guys at Pyro, you can't go down a rabbit trail of philosophy and emerge unbanned.
That being said, I'm sorry you were banned.
God Bless.
Joshua --
I got banned on top of being slandered! Wow! Didn't know that. Figured it was topic specific. So what's the length of the ban, like lifetime ban for not thinking postmodernism isn't simply stupid. I'm not even sure what to say that, it so alien to the way I think. Thank you, for letting me know.
but to be fair, you weren't really giving a response
Actually I was, I clarified multiple times and Dan deleted these clarifications. That's why I'm giving this as an example of deliberate misrepresentation. This isn't accidental.
_____
Now onto the meat.
Shane Claiborne, Donald Miller etc as Brothers, but they don't seem to mind skewering many of their more conservative brethren in their books.
So you don't see a pattern here. Lets work with those examples:
Do you mean they deliberately misrepresent conservative Christians position or they are highly critical of them? Can you give me an example of them doing this to work with?
"Do you mean they deliberately misrepresent conservative Christians position"
This one. they frequently complain that the conservative evangelicals have got the Gospel wrong, when they are tho ones turning it into a social program, which is just as wrong.
I'll try to get some specifics soon. :)
Now, that being said, I do think many CONSERVATIVES get the Gospel wrong. When Spurgeon said, "Calvinism is the gospel." I cringed. Too often our side places tradition on a pedastal instead of Christ, and too often the liberal side places passion on a pedastal.
Both sides are to blame in my opinion.
God bless.
Joshua --
I'm not sure if I would say that's misrepresentation as much as disagreement about the nature of the gospel.
If you say "liberals places passion on a pedastal." that's a fair criticism. If you say "liberals believe in polytheism" that's misrepresentation.
Or to use your other example, if I say "Spurgeon believed Calvanism was the gospel", that's a true statement. If I say "Luther believed Calvanism is the gospel" that's a false statement. It doesn't make any difference whether Calvanism is or is not the gospel.
So what I would be looking for a is a liberal saying
X believes Y when they know that to be false, that is they know that X in fact believes Y' not Y.
"I'm not sure if I would say that's misrepresentation as much as disagreement about the nature of the gospel."
Point taken. One thought comes to mind of Brian McLaren acusing conservatives of turning Christianity into a consumeristic fad.
Now if he had used the Word of Faith movement, I'd say sure, that's accurate. But he lumps conservatives together, even when so many reformed christians share his criticisms.
In short, both sides are going to misrepresent each other, why? simply because we have the freedom to do so. It's very synonmous of Corinth and Rome during Paul's day.
God bless!
Just ran into another example this morning.
Alpha and Omega ministries, an apologetic ministry has a clip with a long rant about how "the left" is unwilling to engage in debate and can only shout down their opponents. In this they make a lot of strong claims regarding Sean Penn's views for example that he is only opposed to Christian fundamentalism and has no problems with it from Islam, Judaism... which strikes me as unlikely and certainly lacks any kinds of evidence.
Now you would think after this strong defense of free speech that comments would not be disabled but
youtube version and directly on blog. To compound this Sean Penn's blog has an open comment policy.
Really, I didn't see any comment spaces on Penn's Blog.
I do see a bit of what you are saying though....In any case, disabling comments is NOT the same thing as misrepresenting someone, indeed, it actually may keep it from happening....
God bless.
I'm not sure what to say on the comments issue, it is linked on the main page. If you click on any article it is at the bottom:
Mountain of Snakes 172 comments
Tonights Debate Loser: You and Me 318 comments
Country First (or, How The Media Loves A Lipsticked Rumsfeld) 535 comments
etc....
And I agree that disabling comments is not the same thing as misrepresenting. One of James White's claims is that Sean Penn isn't willing to debate and just uses coercion while he is willing to discuss issues. So there was some irony in terms of who allows comments.
As far as misrepresenting Penn I'd say the comments on fundamentalist Islam, Judaism and Hinduism would be examples. I see no evidence that Penn is not genuinely pro gay rights, rather than pursuing some sort of secret anti-Christian agenda (you have to listen to the video on White's site for this to make sense). And in terms of being unwilling to criticize Islamic fundamentalism, that is simply false, "However, when the supposed purpose of a 10,000-person rally is in the prayer and scruples of Islam, I can say that as an American (a half Jew, by the way), the chant demeans both intent and any religion that aspires to a core of love and reduces it to a cheap political threat of violence" (from SFGate
SEAN PENN IN IRAN). Now I don't think James White knew his claim about Penn was false, but I'm pretty sure he had no evidence it was true.
My point was here is a guy James White, who is again saying rather strong things. With no evidence for these claims, and quite a bit of counter evidence. He runs an apologetics blog, I would think his credibility needs to be very high for that job. So I would think on stupid stuff he'd provide a half dozen sources and stay away from easily falsifiable claims. I've notified him that he's mentioned. I'll see if he posts a retraction.
Not a big deal, but just another right wing Calvinist conservative Christian, essentially the same kind of thing that happened yesterday with me. But this combination of censorship + dishonesty and why it is considered acceptable by conservative Calvinists is worth discussion. The White thing I just happened to notice the very next day from when i started this thread.
Interesting. I got pretty frantic when John Hobbins said that I was pro abortion on demand and a bunch of other things that are completely untrue. When I got upset at this on his blog he banned me from it completely.
I have dropped out of the bibliosphere because of his ongoing pattern of saying things about me that are not true.
Conservatives do not have the corner on being dishonest.
I also had to leave Jim Packer's church because of his public stance on the TNIV which he does not pretend is true in private. He just joined the boycott because he felt that the TNIV, although accurate was in response to a cultural demand for equality for women.
Frankly I have found that the church is so rife with corruption that my entire viewpoint has shifted.
Sue --
Wow, wonderful to see you back! Given the content of your post, let me just say for what it is worth, you are in my opinion one of the smartest people on the blogsphere out there. There are very few bloggers who I think would beat me in a debate hands down and you are one of them. Also from what I've read of your stuff you have tremendous integrity. Better Bibles has been much poorer for your absence.
OK now I don't know the story with John Hobbins. So if you don't mind me asking questions...
1) I thought Hobbins was an reformed evangelical? That he was ordained a Waldensians pastor (hence reformed). Now I know he serves United Methodist, and I don't now that works.
2) I googled up his abortion on demand thread. That seemed to come out of nowhere, and it appears he retracted it. Were there other incidents?
3) Where did the ban happen? I know about the quitting thread since it generated hits (again a huge loss IMHO though I understand your reasons).
Can you elaborate?
4) Would you object to me notifying him of this discussion? I like to make it a policy when people are discussed here to let them know. I'll promise to moderate, I have pretty no strong no personal attack rules. I have to, all sorts of people who have quit churches debating current members on various threads. But OTOH I will break this policy so as not to further exacerbate the situation if you would prefer.
_____
As for Packer and the TNIV/ESV controversy. I don't know him personally, like you do, but it wouldn't shock me if the ESV authors know they are pulling a con. I can't see how they couldn't know that; at the end of the day the ESV is just the RSV with a few minor changes repacked as a revolutionary translation involving the very height of biblical scholarship. But again Packer is an evangelical.
Anyway did you find the corruption to not just be conservative? That's what I've been noticing since I've lately been on Catholic and Mormon blogs. They seem to really want to make sure their accusations against living people are accurate, this seems to me to be specific to this particular subgroup. Have you seen the same thing or are you disagreeing?
Wow, thanks for linking to that stuff. Painful to reread though - very painful.
John also commented that I had "diminished Monica." This was in reference to the fact that I left a violent situation and when John told me that Augustine's mother Monica had not left a violent husband, I noted that A wrote that his mother had not actually suffered physical violence.
In a series of nonsensical comments, John attempted to make it appear that I had misquoted Augustine's Confessions, or perhaps was deceived because I had not cited Augustine in Italian.
However, the gist seemed to be that by leaving violence and commenting that Monica did not suffer violence I had "diminished her." I took the whole thing to mean that enduring violence is better than escaping it. I felt completely disrespected since it is very difficult to be open and honest and admit that I lived with violence for a significant period of time. I felt publicly belittled.
He also remarked that I had said some things about Sarah Sumner's book but later admitted that I had not said it but someone else had. This was after I begged him to cite me if he wanted to refer to me. He simply would not cite me when criticizing me.
More seriously I had remarked in a private email to him,
"My parents were in a traditional marriage. It was longlasting and committed and a real model. My mother said the traditional vows but she did not live by them. My parents had a non hierarchic traditional marriage..."
Clearly I was referring to the fact that my father did not ask my mother to obey him but in all other resepcts their marriage was traditional.
This is what he then wrote on complegalitarian in response. It has since been removed,
"If I remember correctly, you saw this in your own non-egal upbringing, but in a one-sided way, with your mother only exercising authority on behalf of, or almost. It is better when it works both ways, with men exercising life-enhancing authority as well."
The implication is that my mother had authority and my father did not, which was completely untrue.
He harassed me to differentiate myself from Simone de Beauvoir and most recently on his blog he wrote about how he was not allowed to discuss exegesis on complegalitarian as he was trained. This was not true.
He also wrote,
"If I remember correctly, you wish to see traditional and neo-traditional forms of Judaism and Christianity outlawed insofar as they do not subscribe to the principle of functional equality of the genders."
The only thing I have ever said is that I believe that the vow to obey should be made illegal. I have not commented on the right of a woman to be ordained in terms of rights or whatever. I have hardly ever mentionted this in fact. I want basic human rights for women, something I was deprived of.
(In fact, just the other day a blog said that a woman must submit to her husband in terms of how many children to have, how to raise the children and in any decision on medical treatment. I think this is illegal and endangers the life of a child needlessly.)
But no, I don't care about many other things. Just basic human rights for a woman to be the mother of her children.
Its a hodgepodge, and of course you can notify John of this conversation. He knows that he has said all these things, he admits it but he claims that he is basing all his comments on his faulty memory of things that I said. I don't know why he would treat me this way, and not actually cite me.
It is similar to how he said that John Gottman says that men need respect and women need love. Gottman, to my knowledge, said no such thing and John cannot provide any citation to back up his claim.
Frankly John's insistence that men need respect and women need love creates a lifeless desert for the single woman. He then insists over and over that I should read that dreadful disrespectful book by the Eggrichs because it is so popular. I regard the Christian manhood material as denumanizing as any popular material like Playboy. I feel dirtied by the whole exchange.
I am tired of trying to bring the truth to people's attention.
John has blocked my IP address so I can't comment on his blog. I was profoundly disturbed by how he also spoke to my former cobloggers.
I am honestly not sure that John is capable of addressing what he has done to me. This has come up on three other blogs so far, and he rambles that he always thought that he was accurately summarizing my views.
I have been deeply hurt by this whole thing.
The other complication is that John has private email from me from earlier on revealing some of the humiating violence that I suffered. I have to say that I have learned a very bitter lesson.
I could write more about the ESV etc but later. Many people refuse to understand that it was a deliberate response to the TNIV and contains certain translations on purpose to remove women from the pulpit, which is what happened in Packer's church. He was not the minister, however, just the one who exerted influence from a more remote position.
I don't know if conservative Christians are more dishonest than any other kind of Christian. I really don't know.
[Speaking of the d-word, I just saw the following on the web! Jeremy]
PRETRIB RAPTURE DISHONESTY
by Dave MacPherson
When I began my research in 1970 into the exact beginnings of the pretribulation rapture belief still held by many evangelicals, I assumed that the rapture debate involved only "godly scholars with honest differences." The paper you are now reading reveals why I gave up that assumption many years ago. With this introduction-of-sorts in mind, let's take a long look at the pervasive dishonesty throughout the history of the 179-year-old pretrib rapture theory:
Mid-1820's - German scholar Max Weremchuk's work "John Nelson Darby" (1992) included what Benjamin Newton revealed about John Darby in the mid-1820's during his pre-Brethren days as an Anglican clergyman:
"J. N. Darby was a very subtle man. He had been a lawyer, or at least educated for the law. Once he wanted his Archbishop to pursue a certain course, when he (J.N.D.) was a curate in his diocese. He wrote a letter, therefore, saying he had been educated for the law, knew what the legal course would properly be; and then having written that clearly, he mystified the remainder of the letter both in word and in handwriting, and ended up by saying: You see, my Lord, such being the legal aspect of the case it would unquestionably be the best course for you to pursue, etc. And the Archbishop couldn't make out the legal part, but rested on Darby's word and did as he advised. Darby afterwards laughed over it, and indeed he showed a copy of the letter to Tregelles. This is not mentioned in the Archbishop's biography, but in it is the fact that he spoke of Darby as 'the most subtle man in my diocese.'"
This reminds me of an 1834 letter by Darby which spoke of the "Lord's coming." Darby added, concerning this coming, that "the thoughts are new" and that during any teaching of it "it would not be well to have it so clear." Darby's deviousness here was his usage of a centuries-old term - "Lord's coming" - to cover up his desire to sneak the new pretrib idea into existing posttrib groups in very low-profile ways!
1830 - In the spring of 1830 a young Scottish lassie, Margaret Macdonald, came up with the novel notion of a catching up [rapture] of Spirit-filled "church" members before Antichrist's "trial" [tribulation] of non-Spirit-filled "church" members - the first instance I've found of clear "pretrib" teaching (which was part of a partial rapture scheme). In Sep. 1830 "The Morning Watch" (a journal produced by London preacher Edward Irving and his "Irvingite" followers, some of whom had visited Margaret a few weeks earlier) began repeating her original thoughts and even her wording but gave her no credit - the first plagiarism I've found in pretrib history. Darby was still defending posttrib in Dec. 1830.
Pretrib promoters have long known the significance of her main point: a rapture of "church" members BEFORE the revealing of Antichrist. Which is why John Walvoord quoted nothing in her revelation, why Thomas Ice habitually skips over her main point but quotes lines BEFORE and AFTER it, and why Hal Lindsey muddies up her main point so he can (falsely) assert that she was NOT a pretribber! (Google "X-Raying Margaret" for info about her.)
NOTE: The development of the 1800's is thoroughly documented in my book "The Rapture Plot." You'll learn that Darby wasn't original on any chief aspect of dispensationalism (but plagiarized the Irvingites); that pretrib was initially based on only OT and NT symbols and not clear Scripture; that the symbols included the Jewish feasts, the two witnesses, and the man child - symbols adopted by Darby during most of his career; that Darby's later reminiscences exaggerated his earliest pretrib development, and that today's defenders such as Thomas Ice have further overstated what Darby overstated; that Irvingism didn't need later reminiscences to "clarify" its own early pretrib development; that ancient hymns and even the writings of the Reformers were subtly revised to make it appear they had taught pretrib; and that after Darby's death a clever revisionist quietly made many changes in early Irvingite and Brethren documents in order to steal credit for pretrib away from the Irvingites (and their female inspiration!) and give it dishonestly to Darby! (Before continuing, Google the "Powered by Christ Ministries" site and read "America's Pretrib Rapture Traffickers" - a sample of the current exciting internetism!)
1920 - Charles Trumbull's book "The Life Story of C. I. Scofield" told only the dispensationally-correct side of his life. Two recent books, Joseph Canfield's "The Incredible Scofield and His Book" (1988) and David Lutzweiler's "DispenSinsationalism: C. I. Scofield's Life and Errors" (2006), reveal the other side including his being jailed as a forger, dishonestly giving himself a non-conferred "D.D." etc. etc.!
1967 - Brethren scholar Harold Rowdon's "The Origins of the Brethren" quoted Darby associate Lord Congleton who was "disgusted with...the falseness" of Darby's accounts of things. Rowdon also quoted historian William Neatby who said that others felt that "the time-honoured method of single combat" was as good as anything "to elicit the truth" from Darby. (In other words, knock it out of him!)
1972 - Tim LaHaye's "The Beginning of the End" (1972) plagiarized Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970).
1976 - Charles Ryrie"s "The Living End" (1976) plagiarized Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970) and "There's A New World Coming" (1973).
1976 - After John Walvoord's "The Blessed Hope and the Tribulation" (1976) brutally twisted Robert Gundry's "The Church and the Tribulation" (1973), Gundry composed and circulated a 35-page open letter to Walvoord which repeatedly charged the Dallas Seminary president with "misrepresentation," "misrepresentations" (and variations)!
1981 - "The Fundamentalist Phenomenon" (1981) by Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, and Ed Hindson heavily plagiarized George Dollar's 1973 book "A History of Fundamentalism in America."
1984 - After a prof at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Florida told me that the No. 2 man at the AG world headquarters in Missouri - Joseph Flower - had the label of posttrib, my wife and I had two hour-long chats with him. He verified what I had been told. But we were dumbstruck when he told us that although AG ministers are required to promote pretrib, privately they can believe any other rapture view! Flower said that his father, an AG co-founder, was also posttrib. We also learned while in Springfield that when the AG's were organized in 1914, the initial group was divided between posttribs and pretribs - but that the pretribs shouted louder which resulted in that denomination officially adopting pretrib! (For details on this and other pretrib double-mindedness, Google "Pretrib Hypocrisy.")
1989 - Since 1989 Thomas Ice has referred to the "Mac-theory" (his reference to my research), giving the impression there's no solid evidence that Macdonald was the real pretrib originator. But Ice carefully conceals the fact that no eminent church historian of the 1800's - whether Plymouth Brethren or Irvingite - credited Darby with pretrib. Instead, they uniformly credited leading Irvingite sources, all of which upheld the Scottish lassie's contribution! Moreover, I'm hardly the only modern scholar seeing significance in Irvingism's territory. Others in recent years who have noted it, but who haven't mined it as deeply as I have, include Fuller, Ladd, Bass, Rowdon, Sandeen, and Gundry.
1989 - Greg Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry produced evidence in 1989 that Lindsey's book "The Road to Holocaust" (1989) plagiarized "Dominion Theology" (1988) by H. Wayne House and Thomas Ice.
1990 - David Jeremiah's and C. C. Carlson's "Escape the Coming Night" (1990) massively plagiarized Lindsey's 1973 book "There's A New World Coming." (For more info, type in "Thieves' Marketing" on MSN or Google.)
1991 - Paul Lee Tan's "A Pictorial Guide to Bible Prophecy" (1991) plagiarized large amounts of Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970).
1991 - Militant Darby defender R. A. Huebner claimed in 1991 to have found new evidence that Darby was pretrib as early as 1827 - three years before Macdonald. Halfway through his book Huebner suddenly admitted that his evidence could refer to something completely un-rapturesque. Even though Thomas Ice admitted to me that he knew that Huebner had "blown" his so-called evidence, prevaricator Ice continues to tell the world that Huebner has "positive evidence" that Darby was pretrib in 1827! Ice also conceals the fact that Darby, in his own 1827 paper, was looking for only "the restitution of all things" and "the times of refreshing" (Acts 3:19,21) - which Scofield doesn't see fulfilled until AFTER a future tribulation!
1992 - Tim LaHaye's "No Fear of the Storm" (1992) plagiarized Walvoord's "The Blessed Hope and the Tribulation" (1976).
1992 - This was when the Los Angeles Times revealed that "The Magog Factor" (1992) by Hal Lindsey and Chuck Missler was a monstrous plagiarism of Prof. Edwin Yamauchi's scholarly 1982 work "Foes from the Northern Frontier." Four months after this exposure, Lindsey and Missler stated they had stopped publishing and promoting their book. But in 1996 Dr. Yamauchi learned that the dishonest duo had issued a 1995 book called "The Magog Invasion" which still had a substantial amount of the same plagiarism! (If Lindsey and Missler ever need hernia operations, I predict that the doctors will tell them not to lift anything for a long time!)
1994 - In 1996 it was revealed that Lindsey's "Planet Earth - 2000 A.D. (1994) had an embarrassing amount of plagiarism of a Texe Marrs book titled "Mystery Mark of the New Age" (1988).
1995 - My book "The Rapture Plot" reveals the dishonesty in Darby's reprinted works. It's often hard to tell who wrote the footnotes and when. It's easy to believe that the notes, and also unsigned phrases inside brackets within the text, were a devious attempt by someone (Darby? his editor?) to portray a Darby far more developed in pretrib thinking than he actually had been at the time. I found that some of the "additives" had been taken from Darby's much later works, when he was more developed, and placed next to or inside his earliest works! One footnote by Darby's editor, attached to Darby's 1830 paper, actually stated that "it was not worth while either suppressing or changing" anything in this work! If his editor wasn't open to such dishonesty, how can we explain such a statement?
Post-1995 - Thomas Ice's article "Inventor of False Pre-Trib Rapture History" states that my book "The Rapture Plot" is "only one of the latest in a series of revisions of his original discourse...." And David Reagan in his article "The Origin of the Concept of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture" repeats Ice's falsehood by claiming that I have republished my first book "over the years under several different titles."
Although my book repeats a bit of the Macdonald origin of pretrib (for new readers), all of my books are packed with new material not found in my other works. For some clarification, "The Incredible Cover-Up" has photos of pertinent places in Ireland, Scotland, and England not found in my later books plus several chapters dealing with theological arguments; "The Great Rapture Hoax" quotes scholars throughout the Church Age, covers Scofield's hidden side, a section on Powerscourt, the 1980 election, the Jupiter Effect, Gundry's change, and more theological arguments; "The Rapture Plot" reveals for the first time the Great Evangelical Revisionism/Robbery and includes appendices on miscopying, plagiarism, etc.; and "The Three R's" shows hypocritical evangelicals employing occultic beliefs they say they have long opposed!
So Thomas Ice etc. are twisting truth when they claim I am only a revisionist. Do they really think that my publishers DON'T know what I've previously written?
Re arguments, Google "Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts" and also obtain "The End Times Passover" and "Why Christians Will Suffer 'Great Tribulation' " (AuthorHouse, 2006) by media personality Joe Ortiz.
1997 - For years Harvest House Publishers has owned and been republishing Lindsey's book "There's A New World Coming." During the same time Lindsey has been peddling his reportedly "new" book "Apocalyse Code" (1997), much of which is word-for-word the same as the Harvest House book - and there's no notice of "simultaneous publishing" in either book! Talk about pretrib greed!
1997 - This is the year I discovered that more than 50 pages of Dallas Seminary professor Merrill Unger's book "Beyond the Crystal Ball" (Moody Press, 1973) constituted a colossal plagiarism of Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970). After Lindsey's book came out, Unger had complained that Lindsey's book had plagiarized his classroom lecture notes. It was evident that Unger felt that he too should cash in on his own lectures! (The detailed account of this Dallas Seminary dishonesty is revealed in my 1998 book "The Three R's.")
1998 - Tim LaHaye's "Understanding the Last Days" (1998) plagiarized Lindsey's "There's A New World Coming" (1973).
1999 - More than 200 pages (out of 396 pages) in Lindsey's 1999 book "Vanished Into Thin Air" are virtually carbon copies of pages in his 1983 book "The Rapture" - with no "updated" or "revised" notice included! Lindsey has done the same nervy thing with several of his books, something that has allowed him to live in million-dollar-plus homes and drive cars like Ferraris! (See my Google articles "Deceiving and Being Deceived" and "Thieves' Marketing" for further evidence of this notably pretrib vice.)
2000 - A Jack Van Impe article "The Moment After" (2000) plagiarized Grant Jeffrey's book "Final Warning" (1995).
2001 - Since 2001 my web article "Walvoord's Posttrib 'Varieties' - Plus" has been exposing his devious muddying up of posttrib waters. In some of his books he invented four "distinct" and "contradictory" posttrib divisions, claiming that they are either "classic" or "semiclassic" or "futurist" or "dispensational" - distinctions that disappear when analyzed! His "futurist" group holds to a literal future tribulation and a literal millennium but doesn't embrace "any day" imminency. But his "dispensational" group has the same non-imminency! Moreover, tribulational futurism is found in every group except the first one, and he somehow admitted that a literal millennium is in all four groups! On the other hand, it's the pretribs who consistently disagree with each other over their chief points and subpoints - but somehow end up agreeing that there will be a pretrib rapture! (See my chapter "A House Divided" in my book "The Incredible Cover-Up.")
2001 - Since my "Deceiving and Being Deceived" web item which exposed the claims for Pseudo-Ephraem" and "Morgan Edwards" as teachers of pretrib, there has been a piranha-like frenzy on the part of pretrib bodyguards and their duped groupies to "discover" almost anything before 1830 walking upright on two legs that seemed to have at least a remote hint of pretrib! (An exemplary poster boy for such pretrib practice is Grant Jeffrey. To get your money's worth, Google "Wily Jeffrey.")
FINALLY: Don't take my word for any of the above. Read my 300-page book "The Rapture Plot" which has a jillion more documented details on the long-hidden but now-revealed history of the dishonest, 179-year-old, fringe-British-invented, American-merchandised-until-the-real-bad-stuff-happens pretribulation rapture fad. If this book of mine doesn't "move" you, I will personally refund what you paid for it!
I am certainly not endorsing the false gospel of this legalist Paul D. But I thought you might want this for your files.
http://paulspassingthoughts.com/2012/06/06/with-permission-the-david-c-bennett-abwe-expose/
Mark --
Yeah that does seem to be a related blog to this one. Thanks for the link.
http://baptisttaliban.blogspot.com/2012/08/some-very-disturbing-though-not-so.html?spref=fb
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