Jason Smathers has produced more official, legal documentation relating to the many mythological claims made by Ergun Caner over the past nine years. The key fact established beyond question here? The exact date when the Caner family arrived in the United States from Sweden: September 13, 1969. Relevance? Ergun Caner was born November 3, 1966. That means Ergun Caner was two years, ten months, and ten days old when he came to these shores. Unless we are to believe that the Caners took so many trips to Turkey with young Ergun that he never went to school in Ohio, it is obvious, beyond all question, that Ergun learned English in the Ohio school system, even participating in school plays in high school (as documented from the relevant yearbooks). So remember this as you listen to the many sermons Ergun Caner has preached in which he narrates his coming here in 1979, from Turkey, where he lived “most of his life,” and how he wore Muslim garb and did not know anything about Christians (because there are so few in Turkey) and how he spoke broken English as he spoke to the Baptist pastor who led him to faith in Christ. And then compare the reality seen in the legal documentation, and consider the ramifications of the actions not only of Ergun Caner, but now of those who are enabling him to avoid confession and repentance.
Think as well on the impact on the gospel of joining such self-promotional myth-making to the telling of a conversion story, and how this must sound to Muslims who now know the truth (and see Caner refusing to be open and honest). What of the Christians who knew Ergun as a young boy in elementary school in Ohio? Surely some of his teachers were Christians. What must they think? What about those who knew him then? Or his fellow high school classmates? What kind of testimony is it that you can rise to the heights Caner rose to on such a foundation of myth-making?
And what about the folks who have signed up to attend the Veritas Seminary apologetics conferences beginning next weekend? Will they hear from the speakers about the need for truthfulness, honesty, and integrity in handling the Word of God, history, and argumentation? Will any of them ask Ergun Caner how he can exhort us to be truthful witnesses for Christ when he is refusing to speak openly and honestly to the mountain of legal documentation, video recordings, and audio recordings, that document his dishonesty while standing before the people of God? Will Norman Geisler be asked to quote Hadith 2425 and explain its relevance to the Qur’an, as we have challenged him to (as a glowing example of the illogical nature of his attempted defenses of Ergun Caner’s errors)? Only time will tell.
