Norman Geisler An extensive independent investigation has exonerated Dr. Ergun Caner of all the false charges made against him by extreme Muslims and others and has been retained as a Professor at Liberty University. In spite of a few misstatements (which we all make and he has corrected), nothing has diminished his testimony and orthodoxy as one of the great Christian voices of our time. I totally support him.

A news article in the Lynchburg News and Advance, quotes apologist and vocal Caner critic James White: "Simply removing him as dean and allowing him to continue teaching the same subjects he was teaching before really isn’t going to lead to a conclusion of the controversy." The university's statement “raises all sorts of questions about what did [Caner] apologize for," White said. "The students ... deserve an open response."

After a thorough and exhaustive review of Dr. Ergun Caner’s public statements, 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 suggest 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 university 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.

Liberty University announced today that Ergun Caner will no longer be dean of the university’s Baptist Theological Seminary.
After an investigation conducted by four members of Liberty’s Board of Trustees, the university said it found that Caner has made “factual statements that are self-contradictory” concerning “dates, names and places of residence.“ The statements included his description of being raised as a Muslim in Turkey, when documents indicate he moved to the United States at the age of 4.
His contract as dean of the seminary expires on June 30 and will not be renewed, according to a statement from LU.
Caner will continue to serve on the seminary’s faculty, as a professor.

ERGUN CANER GUILTY: REMOVED AS DEAN FROM SEMINARY

Within the first 20 minutes of class Ergun is chatting about the accusations against him, but made it clear that he isn't worrying about the issue or looking in to it...yet...well never mind. If you're interested I have 7 minutes of his innocence recorded on my cell.

We also discussed the various approaches to apologetics. I do not agree with the presuppositional view. This approach is often known as the Limited Atonement approach. Believes that Christ only died for the elect, and that only the elect can understand the evidence. They must first agree on certain presuppositions before the Gospel can be effectively presented.

Time Left Until Harold Camping Backpedals

This post is intended to be a reference point for those seeking information regarding Harold Camping, Family Radio, and the predictions of the end of the world on May 21, 2011 and the destruction of the Earth on October 21, 2011. While not intended to be an unbiased resource list, we recommend readers/listeners do so with discernment, Alpha and Omega Ministries is not responsible for the material on outside links. I'll try to keep this resource list updated as we draw closer to May, 2011.

In 1958, a Christian Reformed Church member and construction company owner, Harold Camping, invested in a series of radio stations, eventually becoming the president of what was to become Family Radio. For many years Family Radio provided a distinctively Reformed Christian message to the world. Even as late as 2002, Family Radio was still broadcasting sermons from the likes of R.C. Sproul and James M. Boice.

In 1988, Camping and his family left the Christian Reformed Church, joining a local fellowship in Alameda. By 1992 Camping was teaching that Christ would probably return in 1994. He then set to work writing his book 1994(?) in which he predicted the return of Christ in 1994 and declaring that true Christians must leave their churches. Like many cults before, when Camping's date passed without Christ's visible return, Camping, now 88, decided that 1994 was the when the "latter rain" pouring of the Spirit took place. Camping claims that the "great tribulation" began in 1988.

Several years ago we had learned that the silence in Heaven for about half an hour referred to the 2,300 days that were the first part of the 23-year (exactly 8,400 days) Great Tribulation period. This period began on May 21, 1988. - "No Man Knows the Day or Hour?", Family Radio

What does Harold Camping Teach?

Within the recent past, Camping has declared May 21, 2011 to be the date of the rapture, with Oct 21, 2011 the date of Christ's return and the destruction of the Earth. Camping claims that all churches are evil and that anyone attending a church when the rapture comes is damned and without hope.

The time line of Camping's eschatology as explained by Dr. David R. Reagan:

1. The Church Age ended on May 21, 1988 and the Tribulation began that day.
2. Between May 21, 1988 and September 6, 1994, the first six years of the Tribulation, almost no one was saved.


3. On September 6, 1994, God began to pour out His Spirit. This will result in a great end time harvest of souls during the last years of the Tribulation.


4. Since the Tribulation will last 8,400 days or 23 years, dating from May 21, 1988, the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011.


5. Those left behind will be judged by Jesus for a period of five months, until October 21, 2011, at which time the world will come to an end.

Harold Camping: The Madness of Date-Setting, Dr. David R. Reagan, http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_cults16.php

The Great Debate Series

Location:

Friday June 18th

Saturday June 19th

Saturday June 19th

Sunday June 20th

Sunday June 20th

Monday June 21st

Muslim Debaters

Christian Debaters

Debate Moderators

Debate Organizer

"He's also unafraid to talk about the toll his evangelical beliefs have taken on his personal life. Camping has seven children and grandchildren into the double digits, yet only his daughter Susan, who works as his executive secretary, shares his take on the Bible. 'She's the only one who's with me on this,' he told me."

Back in 1994, Harold Camping's predictions regarding the end of the world did not come true. The world continued on. He has new predictions that the rapture will occur on May 21, 2011, with world continuing for another 153 days from then. One of his predictions, as you will see in the clip, is that there will be a massive earthquake that is large enough to open all of the graves of, in essence, everyone who has ever been buried. I hope that those who have been following Camping's teaching will realize on May 22, 2011, that this was a serious mistake.Mr. Camping's method of Biblical interpretation is flawed. Rather than using the grammatical-historical method of exegesis, Mr. Camping applies a highly arbitrary method of trying "decode" a "hidden meaning" in the text of Scripture. The arbitrary method permitted him to predict late 1994, and now permits him to predict May 21, 2011. If that date fails, it will permit him to pick a new date, and again and again.What's more, folks should be aware that Camping is running his organization this way: "we make decisions as if the end could be quite far away ... contracts are negotiated as if the future was altogether indefinite ... " (source - Time Has an End). May I strongly urge those who have gone along with Mr. Camping's teachings to please at least imitate this aspect of Camping's organizations. Continue to make plans for the future beyond May 21, 2011. When the earthquake does not arrive, find a Bible-believing church near you and join yourself to that fellowship.

I asked the women I talked to as part of my research, "Do you think that she's more important than God?" and they say, "Oh, no." But if you say to them, "When you pray, whom do you pray to?" they say, "Guadalupe, Mary." I say, "Why would you go to her with things that you would not go to God with?" "Because she's a woman, she understands."

I'll tell you this story. I was with a Spanish priest, and he was showing me around the basilica and there was this old man on the side. The priest said, "Hombre, what are you doing here?" And the old man said, I want to pray to the Lady." The priest replied, "Well, I don't see you praying." And the old man admitted, "Oh, Father, I don't know how to pray." So Father said, "OK, here's a prayer book." The old man said, "I don't know how to read," and then the priest starts yelling at him, "Well, what are you doing here?" And the old man said, "You know, it's just enough for me to look in her face."

I was able to surrender, to say to Guadalupe, "You more than anyone know what it is that I need or want. Just give me the strength to be open to that."

Many critics regard Caner to be just an opportunist who has sowed tension between the world's two largest faiths.

""He's done enormous harm … To listen to someone like Caner, you'd think house meetings to decide what to blow up next are daily fare for all Muslims,"" said Charles Kimball, director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Analysts say that Caner's climb to fame, however, illustrates how important Muslim conversion stories are among American Christian communities today.

It also brings back to mind the longstanding fascination of the American society -- dating back to the colonial period -- with tales of Muslims converting to Christianity.

Exodus 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

• 2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
  
  
• Jeremiah 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

• Psalm 25:15-18
  Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.
  
  
• Psalm 85:1-4 (To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.)
  LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin. Selah. Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease.

Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Knowing that they were training for such missions, these soldiers trained every day for the most intense warfare. Committed & hungry---they understand a simple yet profound principle: to be truly prepared, you cannot take shortcuts. They study under instructors who have learned from conflict and battle. For them, it is not enough to know theory and conjecture. They train for the real struggle....Why? Because in real life ministry, there are no shortcuts.

He debated Michael Moore in a nationally syndicated column entitled “Hatriotism.”

Apparently James White Arabic teacher (whom we do not know the name of or qualifications of) was teaching us Surah Al Fatiha.

The man made a huge blunder on this surah. He says bismillah ir rahman ir raheem, ar rahman ar raheem, ....

ummm where is the Al hamdulillahi rabil 'alameen?

Please see here: http://transliteration.org/quran/WebSite_CD/MixYuwsuf/Fram2E.htm

If a teacher of Arabic can make such mistakes this is all the amunition that Caner and his supporters need.

Now I know you may not care for me or my theology as a Muslim, but I do believe that you are stand up man.

I don't really care for White but I believe I can count on you since you have taken White to task for his inconsistent views on baby baptism. Good on you!

I'm sending the same information to Debbie Kaufman, Peter Lumpkins, Tim Guthrie, Hussein Wario etc.

I hope that when we do whistle blowing that it whistle works just as well on Calvinist as it does on Arminians.

So I'm just going to have to ask Ergun Caner directly via Twitter: where are all these debates from forty states and eleven countries? What are the names of these leaders in Islam you have debated? How can the rest of us learn from your debates if we can't find them? Inquiring minds want to know.

So why should anyone care about this? Well, let me tell you why I care. I labor in this field. I invest my life in apologetics, and I am working very hard to be a good student of Islam, and a good representative of the Christian faith to Muslims. So I have to be consistent. If there is someone running about the apologetic landscape making claims about his activities that simply do not stand scrutiny, then someone needs to speak up about it. The things that Ergun Caner says in his interviews and videos are often intended to create outrage. Speaking of "towel heads" and using the other kind of mocking language he does is hardly helpful. But here's the simple conclusion of it all: I have no reason to believe Ergun Caner has ever engaged in a formal, meaningful debate with any leading Islamic apologists, and I'll be perfectly honest with you: I hope he doesn't. I do not believe it would be beneficial. But at least I can look a Muslim in the eye and honestly say, "I have called for Dr. Caner to be open and above board about his actual history in debating your representatives, and he has flatly turned my requests for information on that topic down. I do not believe anyone should claim to have done such things when they cannot back up their claims, or when they have to so alter the meanings of words that every conversation they have ever had on a plane somewhere becomes a debate."

So, for all those who think that I'm a terrible, horrible, mean, nasty man for daring to challenge Ergun Caner to back up his own PR, you go right ahead and think that way. I happen to believe that it is far more important to be transparently honest in seeking to give a sound, consistent reason for the hope that is within us to the Muslim people than it is to cover over a professing Christian's as yet unsubstantiated claims.

It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than... the Hebrew Bible of Palestinian Judaism... It always included, though varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocryphal or deutero-canonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was not the original Hebrew version, but the Greek translation known as the Septuagint... In the first centuries at any rate the Church seems to have accepted all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and treated them without question as Scripture.

One of the reasons Roman Catholics argue for a broader canon is that the oldest extant manuscripts of the Septuagint do contain a number of Apocryphal books. These manuscripts are: Vaticanus (early 4th century), Sinaiticus (early 4th century), and Alexandrinus (early 5th century). The Apocryphal books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith and Tobit are included in all three, but there are also differences. Vaticanus does not include any of the Maccabean books, while Sinaiticus includes 1 and 4 Maccabees and Alexandrinus includes 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees and a work known as the Psalms of Solomon. If inclusion of a book in the manuscript proves its canonicity, as Roman Catholics assert, then 3 and 4 Maccabees were canonical. However, we know with certainty that this was not the case. It is also true that the Septuagint included a number of appendices to the canonical Old Testament books such as Esther, 1 Esdras, the additions to Daniel (Song of the Three Children, Bel and the Dragon and Susanna), and the additions to Jeremiah (Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy). But as Henry Swete points out, none of these books, or the rest of the Apocrypha, were part of the Hebrew canon:

The MSS. and many of the lists of the Greek Old Testament include certain books which find no place in the Hebrew Canon. The number of these books varies, but the fullest collections contain the following: I Esdras, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, i.-iv. Maccabees. We may add the Psalms of Solomon, a book which was sometimes included in MSS. of Salomonic books, or, in complete Bibles, at the end of the Canon.

The biggest problem with the theory of the Alexandrian canon is that there are no lists or collections one can look to in order to see what books comprised it. Pfeiffer himself acknowledged that no one knows what the canon of the Alexandrian and other Diaspora Jews was before the LXX was condemned in Palestine, ca. 130 CE. Long ago E. Reuss concluded that we know nothing about the LXX before the time when the church made extensive use of it. That includes the condition of the text and its form as well as its extent. Another problem with the Alexandrian canon theory is that it has not been shown conclusively that the Alexandrian Jews or the other Jews of the Dispersion were any more likely to adopt other writings as sacred scriptures than were the Jews Palestine in the two centuries BCE and the first century CE. Further, there is no evidence as yet that shows the existence of a different canon of scriptures in Alexandria than in Palestine from the second century BCE to the second century CE. Since the communications between Jerusalem and Alexandria were considered quite good during the first century BCE and CE, it is not certain that either the notion or extent of divine scripture would be strikingly different between the two locations during the period before 70 CE. Although the Jews of the Dispersion were more affected by Hellenism than were the Jews of Palestine, there is little evidence to show that this influence also affected their notion of scripture or the boundaries of their scriptures.

• Malachi 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
  
  
• James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

• Psalm 9:7 But the LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment.
  
  
• Psalm 72:17 His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.
  
  
• Psalm 102:12 But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
  
  
• Psalm 145:13 Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.

• Psalm 89:4 Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.
  
  
• Psalm 89:29 His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.
  
  
• Psalm 89:36 His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me.

• Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

• 2 Samuel 7:12-13
  And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever.
  
  
• 1 Chronicles 17:11-12
  And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired that thou must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever.

• Isaiah 9:7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

• Lamentations 5:19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.
  
  
• Psalm 45:6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.

• Hebrews 1:12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

• Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

The heightened interest in Islam has drawn each of the Caner brothers into additional debate settings at mosques and universities, speaking in English, French, and Arabic with Muslim scholars. And they have been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, Moody Broadcasting Network, Salem Radio Network, and USA Radio. Talk show invitations have come from Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Marlon Maddux, and Zola Levitt.

It is better to go to a house of mourning
Than to go to a house of feasting,
Because that is the end of every man,
And the living takes it to heart.
(Ecclesiastes 7:2)