Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Ergun Caner - Ohio Free Will Baptists - Men's Retreat Early 2007

A number of recordings of Ergun Caner have been removed the Internet, including four or so from an early 2007 Men's Retreat of the Ohio Free Will Baptists, featuring Ergun Caner.  An amalgamation of several clips from these messages is apparently preserved over at FBC Jax Watchdogs (link) and is also discussed at A Squirrel in Babylon (link).  The amalgamation is only about 7 minutes long.

The first part begins in the middle of a sentence and continues until about 2:25:
... until I came to this country, I saw through television. It was whatever the Turkish government allowed into the country that passed through the censors, and secondly it was what was basically free, or didn't have to be translated. And so we got a lot of sports. And we got a lot of shows that would be almost self explanatory. And that actually became this big window into America for me. For instance, 'Andy Griffith' was a show that we would get. I didn't understand it, but I thought all of America was sort of like Mayberry, and, it's true, I thought all of America was like Mayberry. It was in black and white and they sent it for free, and so I thought, and I moved to New York. And its not a real good comparison there.
The second thing was American baseball. And, the, Cubs, WGN, would send Cubs games. And I learned American baseball by watching, they didn't have to translate it, you just - you watch the game. You would hear, apparently it turned out to be Harry Carey in the background, and that's how I thought Americans talked, but that was, that was, you didn't have to translate it.
The third thing that I got, which is a little embarrassing, but it's true, was out of Atlanta, Georgia - and in Instanbul it played every two weeks for two hours, we would get a tape, of - and I guess it was a tape, they'd put it on, Turkish television, there on Biruki, which was the station. Georgia Championship 'Wrastlin'. And nobody ever told me that it was fake, you understand. So you will hear me constantly throw out references to things from my youth, because I thought Americans were the toughest people on the planet. Y'all got hit in the head with shoes and boots and chains, and I thought Rick Flair was the governor, and, Dusty Rhoads was the mayor and so that was my upbringing.
I think Caner definitely did watch wrestling growing up, but he grew up in America, not Istanbul.  He moved when he was a toddler, not a teenager.

The next part begins around 2:25 and continues to about 2:45:
Turkish, twenty-one generations Turk, came to America in my young teens. Moved from Brooklyn, NY, to Marion, OH, from Marion, OH, to Columbus, OH, Whitehall, from Whitehall to Gehanna, OH.
As mentioned above, he moved to America as a toddler.

The next segment is part of Caner's typical story about his in-laws not being thrilled about him dating his now-wife, with assorted ethnic slurs and stereotypes. (2:45-3:15)

The following segment is him saying that if he could get a PhD then anyone could. (3:15-3:33)  Some people have pointed out that technically he got a different doctorate, not a PhD.

The next part begins around 3:33 and continues to about 4:23:
I was devout. We dressed differently, we spoke differently, we acted differently, and I drove up that highway to go to the Mosque in Toledo every Sunday. I played soccer in Marion and in Galleon, as a Muslim. And we came to this country and came to this state to build mosques here. We were quote-un-quote missionaries to you. We came in '78 when Ayatollah Khomeni said "We will not stop 'till America is an Islamic nation." And now my people come here - the olive skinned come here four times faster than any other people group except for the Mexicans, and we're not in the back of Chevys. 
The photographic evidence suggests he dressed like normal Americans.  Also, he came in the late 60's not the late 70's.

The next part begins around 4:23 and continues to about 4:45:
I was 30 before I got married. Some of y'all waited a while too, didn't you.  But in my culture you are sworn off at 5, and you are married at 9 or 13. I wasn't in any rush. Turkish women got better mustaches than Turkish men.
By the way, this is not true of any of the Turkish women I've known.  Turkish culture has (in the past) included arranged marriages, but Caner wasn't raised in Turkey.

The next segment is him talking about how as a younger single preacher ("finally, the churches that would call me as pastor, were the ones who would put up with my bad accent, and loved me in spite of me"), old women tried to fix him up with their unattractive granddaughters. (4:45-6:05)  If they didn't care for his accent, it was because he was a Yankee.

The final segment is about him joking about "women behind the pulpit" and the reason for them being there is to vacuum, and how this will shut up the people demanding women pastors. (6:05-7:01)

Update: MP3s for this have been posted and described as Caner1 - Caner2 - Caner3 - Caner4)

Caner1:

0:00 "The definition of a fraud is somebody who looks like something, but is actually something else."

Indeed.

0:45 "Turkish, twenty-one generations Turk, came to America in my young teens. Moved from Brooklyn, NY, to Marion, OH, from Marion, OH, to Columbus, OH, Whitehall, from Whitehall to Gehanna, OH."

Discussed above.

2:00 "My full name is Ergun Michael Mehmet Gioviani Caner."

No, it's Ergun Michael Caner.

2:25 "Her father - this is not a joke, this is the truth, anybody from North Carolina will know this city - her father is from Possum Kill, NC, right near Smithfield."

It's not a place on Google maps in North Carolina.

6:10 "I've had the honor of having 14 books written."

13:25 "'But Paul, being grieved' - There's one language translation in the Latin, that uses a great word here - 'annoyus' for the word 'grieved' What's that sound like? Y'all ever been annoyed on your way to church?"

It's a mystery where he came up with this, as the Vulgate has "dolens" not "annoyous."  In fact, the root for "annoy" is French, which may be related to the Latin term, "inodiare."

20:20 "I have only been a Christian, and thus a Baptist, since I was 18."

By the time he was 18, he was apparently already at a Bible college.

21:00 "I'm not a smart man. If I got a PhD anyone can get one."

Discussed above.

32:25 "I had to learn the language on Broad St. in Columbus, Ohio. You can learn the language."

His grandmother never learned the language, according to his reports.  But maybe that's because she came as an adult, not as a toddler, like he did.

32:40 "I moved to this country. Come join in our reindeer games, but I learned English."

Same note as above.

40:30 "I lived in this state, until I was almost 18 years old, and hated you and thought that you hated me. I wasn't just any old Muslim, I was devout."

40:45 "We dressed differently, we spoke differently, we acted differently, I drove up that highway to go to the Mosque in Toledo every Sunday. I played soccer in Marion and in Galleon, as a Muslim. And we came to this country and came to this state to build mosques here. We were quote-un-quote missionaries to you. We came in '78 when Ayatollah Khomeni said "We will not stop 'till America is an Islamic nation." And now my people come here - the olive skinned come here four times faster than any other people group except for the Mexicans, and we're not in the back of Chevys."

Discussed above.

41:45 "And anything I knew about you, I only learned from the imam or in my mosque - the mosque in Toledo - the mosque in Monclova - the mosque up in Cleveland - the mosque on Broad St. that my father built - as a muezzin."

His father didn't build that mosque and calling him a "muezzin" -- well, he clearly wasn't vocationally a muezzin.

42:05 "Abinadab, Salat, Zakat, Swan, Haj, all of the five pillars."

The first pillar is the Shahada - not "Abinadab" whatever that is.

44:20 "For three years - y'all hear me - he was a high school buddy."

We hear this "three years" a lot, and it fits with his "going into our senior year" comment below, but not with the 1982 date he has other times said, or the 1981 date implied in his book.

44:30 "How many of us knock on a door. We're getting ready to give them the Roman road, we're going to walk them down the four spiritual laws, we knock on the door - or the Calvinists - they knock on the door and ask the two questions, knock, knock, knock 'You elect? No? Alright, see you!'"

That's not what Calvinists say.

45:15 "I don't roller skate. There's not a lot of roller skating going on in the sand."

Considering Caner grew up in Ohio, not Iraq, the sand reference is quite misleading.

45:50 "For three years, I dressed differently, I would take my prayer rug and roll it out in the high school bathrooms."

a) The photos we've seen have shown him dressed more or less like all his peers when he was with his peers.

46:35 "I got a B.A., an M.A., an M.Div., a Th.M., a D.Min., and a Ph.D. and guess what - God ain't impressed."

He didn't earn a Ph.D.

46:55 "Finally, I decided - going into our senior year - I'll show him."

Discussed above.

49:10 "Jerry said, 'here he is,' like you gotta point out the boy in a dress, right?"

Discussed above.

52:45 "November the 4th, 1982, I go home, I tell my father, I say 'Baba, I'm saved' and it was the last day I saw my dad."

I'm not sure why he called his father "Baba."  As for the 1982 date, it's inconsistent with the "three years" and "going into my senior year" comments, since he graduated in 1984.

55:15 "I've written fourteen books."

It would be interesting to see that list of titles.

56:40 "I was 30 before I got married. Some of y'all waited a while too, didn't you.  But in my culture you are sworn off at 5, and you are married at 9 or 13. I wasn't in any rush. Turkish women got better mustaches than Turkish men."

Discussed above.

57:15 "finally, the churches that would call me as pastor, were the ones who would put up with my bad accent, and loved me in spite of me"

Discussed above.

Caner2:

0:00 "... until I came to this country, I saw through television. It was whatever the Turkish government allowed into the country that passed through the censors, and secondly it was what was basically free, or didn't have to be translated. And so we got a lot of sports. And we got a lot of shows that would be almost self explanatory. And that actually became this big window into America for me. For instance, 'Andy Griffith' was a show that we would get. I didn't understand it, but I thought all of America was sort of like Mayberry, and, it's true, I thought all of America was like Mayberry. It was in black and white and they sent it for free, and so I thought, and I moved to New York. And its not a real good comparison there.
The second thing was American baseball. And, the, Cubs, WGN, would send Cubs games. And I learned American baseball by watching, they didn't have to translate it, you just - you watch the game. You would hear, apparently it turned out to be Harry Carey in the background, and that's how I thought Americans talked, but that was, that was, you didn't have to translate it.
The third thing that I got, which is a little embarrassing, but it's true, was out of Atlanta, Georgia - and in Instanbul it played every two weeks for two hours, we would get a tape, of - and I guess it was a tape, they'd put it on, Turkish television, there on Biruki, which was the station. Georgia Championship 'Wrastlin'. And nobody ever told me that it was fake, you understand. So you will hear me constantly throw out references to things from my youth, because I thought Americans were the toughest people on the planet. Y'all got hit in the head with shoes and boots and chains, and I thought Rick Flair was the governor, and, Dusty Rhoads was the mayor and so that was my upbringing."

Discussed above.

3:15 "Stelzer Road Church is still there, it has a new name now."

Really?  Looks like it has the same name to me.

3:25 "I got to see Jerry Tackett for the first time in 20 years, just a couple years ago, and he's just a preacher boy."

I thought he was a teacher?

5:10 "When we finally settled in, we moved to a little place called Whitehall, OH, and then we moved from Whitehall to Gehanna."

What happened to Brooklyn, Marion, and Columbus? (see Caner1 message)

14:00 (This is where he makes the women preacher joke, discussed above.)

15:45 (This is where he sings the KJVO Bible song, claiming that Clarence Miller taught it to him.  The crowd cheers with amens for it.)

16:50 "I had the honor of being in London, England, debating, and in Glasgow, Scotland"

It would be lovely if there were any evidence of this.

21:20 "In my family, my father had many wives - my father had many half-brothers and sis-- I have many half-brothers and sisters."

His father had two wives, one after the other.  He has two half-sisters, but that's apparently it.

35:35 "I'm a member of Thomas Road Baptist Church that has 28,000 members, quote-un-quote, the CIA couldn't find half of them. I've learned its harder to get a church to move than it is to get somebody off a membership rolls."

That's probably not exactly right, but it's one of the more candid statements I've heard from him.

36:50 "We begin facing, I don't know East, which way is East?"

They pray towards Mecca, which is mostly East, but not exactly East, from Ohio.

37:40 "Do you know what he's doing? He's repeating the first six verses of the Koran, over and over and over. A Muslim repeats the first chapter of the Koran, the first six verses, over and over and over."

The first Surah has seven verses, not six verses.

38:05 "If you fall down and break your leg, my father said, you get up and say 'inshallah'- God willed it."

No, you might say something, but inshallah is a forward-looking statement like "Lord willing."

Caner3:

12:20 "I told her, I said, 'In Turkey, you have Persian, Arab, and Anatolian, I'm Anatolian. In the Anatolian world, the man is not in the birth room, the man is in another room."

And Swedish ...

29:35 "I spank my boys. Why? 'Cause my mama did it to me, my grandmama did it to me, I pass it on to them, I hope they pass it on to their kids."

It is interesting that Caner does not mention his father.  This seems unusually candid.

Caner4:

2:40 "The Muslims hunt me down. More often than not--- I'm not talkin' 'bout them hunting me down to try to kill me, they just try to shout me down. And so I spend most of my time in secular audiences. I have two rules when I go to a college - I go to any school, I don't care where it is - I prefer to go to state schools, community colleges and universities, because that's where the Muslims are teaching. Now I'm telling you this, because this is one of my deepest passions. We got it somehow wrong in the last 80 years. The way we think of it, as Christians, is we think well, man, if I'm really good at what I do, I'll get a church to call me, and if I'm really good at that, then I'll get to a bigger church and then a bigger church, and if I'm really good I'll end up in a denominational job, and then if I'm really good I can end up in a Bible college, and then maybe even be in a seminary."

a) Has this Muslim shout down happened even once?  I can't find any evidence corroborating this claim.
b) It is sad that Caner sees the gospel ministry as a stepping stone to bigger and better jobs.

4:10 "Because the really good guys end up in college and seminary, the guys who can't get those jobs end up teaching in community colleges and such if they can find a job at all.  Schools that look for diversity want to hire somebody who's got a name that seems unpronounceable. They end up being the only voice for faith reason to kids in the state schools and the state university."

There are Christian professors in state universities, and they are good in their fields.

4:50 "If you ever hear that I leave Liberty University, it's not going to be to go to a seminary. As a matter of fact I fought becoming the president of Liberty Seminary in the first right, until Dr. Fallwell explained to me I could keep doing what I do.  If you ever hear that I leave Liberty University, it's going to be to go to some tiny community college, some state university. Put me on the floor as the only Christian teaching in that department. Surround me with leftists and liberals and lesbians and losers and put me around those people so I can be the only candle in the midst of the darkness."

a) It sure didn't turn out that way.  He went to Arlington Baptist College and now he's at Brewton-Parker College, while apparently continuing his connection with Veritas Evangelical Seminary.

5:50 "I'm going to one of our sister - our brethren schools. Northwest Baptist Seminary is a regular Baptist seminary out in Tacoma, Washington, but it will be for the purpose of debating a Hindu, specifically he is a Shaivite, and debating a Christian professor who doesn't believe much who's published "The Sister Faiths," a book that has to do with all religions being basically the same.

a) I can't find any record of any debate by Caner at Northwest Baptist Seminary.
b) I can't find any book called "The Sisters Faiths," but Martin A. Cohen wrote "Two Sister Faiths: Introduction to a Typological Approach to Early Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity."  But Cohen is a Rabbi, not a Christian professor.

8:05 "I have in my contract for every debate, two rules. Number one, no money. So, if you've got a community college you want me to come to and you know - we gonna set up a debate - you find somebody that'll debate me, I don't want a cent. And I don't want that guy making a cent, because what do they say about us, they always say, 'well, you're always after money, you're always after money.' Well that way, I can look 'em in the eye and say, 'Look, just pay my plane ticket and put me in a room.' The second thing is, no charge. That is, everything - you go into iTunes, all you gotta do is download it. It's free. And some of the things you can get is I preach at campus church, every Wednesday night on Liberty mountain. And its not just for Liberty University students.  We have 5000 kids that come, every Wednesday nights. And they are Liberty kids, but they are also kids from Randolph-Macon - it's an all-girls school. And you'll know 'em because these girls look like they can whoop you. They are - they wear the triangle - they're the lesbians and they all sit together, but they come because we respect them enough - I'm not going to point them out, but I'm not going to back up one lick. I'm never gonna say 'well, that's a lifestyle choice,' I'm ona say 'it's sin before a righteous God,' but I'm also going to turn to the kids and say, 'But all y'all who are playing around by going to second base and thinking you're getting around God's rule, you're messing up too.'"

a) Where are any of these supposed debates.  If there were contracts signed, someone should have copies of them.

b) We've gone to iTunes and seen what was there - there weren't debates.

c) Caner is referring to what is now Randolph College, formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College, in Lynchburg, VA.  Interestingly enough, they changed their name July 1, 2007, and began admitting men.

d) I would encourage anyone to listen to those campus church messages on iTunes and see if you ever once hear him addressing sexual sin.

10:00 "So y'all can go get those things. You can download those. Now, let me just tell you ahead of time that the music is not southern gospel, it's industrial goth."

I'm sure it wasn't southern gospel music, but come on - "industrial goth" isn't really a specific musical genre, and I doubt they were playing Marilyn Manson (which is kind of goth/industrial rock) or the like.

11:30 "The problem with Southern Baptists is this: they are so reserved, they don't know the difference between dignity and death."

And now he's the president of a Southern Baptist seminary.

-TurretinFan

1 comment:

BibleWheel said...

The full audio files of Caner's lies at the Ohio Free Will Baptist "church" are available for download in my article Free Will Baptists Hid Evidence of Caner's Lies. There are links to all four "sermons" he gave.