[Vision2020] Ah Lord, with trembling I confess

[Captain Kirker]

Visionheads:

 

Continuing with our thread devoted to exposing the Wolfman’s hypocrisy, I would like to review my previous posts to keep this in context. In 1991 the Wolfman wrote an essay condemning the well-known evangelist John Wesley for a number of sins, and in 2001 he republished it as an appendix to a book that is required reading in his Greyfriars Hall ministerial program. We have already observed that the Wolfman posthumously disqualified Wesley from serving in the Christian ministry because of his plagiarism and his sloppy academics; and we have noted with excruciating detail how the Wolfman has done the exact same thing that he nailed Wesley for, i.e., plagiarism and sloppy academics.

 

Now I want to observe a third category of sin that the Wolfman condemned in John Wesley, and once again observe how he shares Wesley’s guilt in this matter. Today we shall consider slander. However, before I proceed, let me make two comments.

 

First, by this point in his essay, the Wolfman felt comfortable enough with his indictment of Wesley that he no longer argued against him as a minister. No, he began arguing against his reputed place in Church history. And second, in his analysis, the Wolfman conflated misrepresentation, libel, and (perhaps) forgery with slander; while these four may overlap, they are not necessarily synonymous.

 

In “Wrestling With Wesley,” the Wolfman wrote:

“In 1769, a young man named Augustus Toplady (“Rock of Ages”) published a book entitled The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted. . . . In a polemical response, John Wesley took the liberty of abridging the book down to tract size, to which he attached the following ending:

“‘The sum of all is this: One in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The elect shall be saved, do what they will; the reprobate will be damned, do what they can. Reader believe this, or be damned. Witness my hand,

“A.......T.......’

“The problem was that Augustus Toplady (‘A.T.’) had written no such thing. In this paragraph, Wesley was not only guilty of a grossly inaccurate summary of Toplady’s thinking, he attempted to represent that inaccurate summary as Toplady’s own words. This is evident through the mis­leading and slanderous use of ‘witness my hand.’” (Wolfman, Greyfriars Covenant: Essays on Evangelism & Apologetics [Moscow, ID: Greyfriars Hall Press, 2001] 172, 173)

Let there be no illusion: John Wesley could have graduated with honors from the Dan Rather School of Documentation. When in doubt, just make it up. But the important point is that, in an effort to smear Toplady, Wesley fabricated a document out of thin air and attached Toplady’s name to it, representing that he wrote it.

 

Jumping ahead to 2003, last year the members of Christ Church learned that in 1993 the Kirk elders tried to remove the Wolfman from the ministry, and instead of admitting the truth, the Wolfman manufactured a letter dated December 17, 1993, exonerating himself of wrongdoing, and he affirmed that the church elders signed this letter when in fact it bore no signatures at all. Moreover, the Wolfman published this bald-faced lie—both the contents of the letter and the names of those whom he said signed it—on the worldwide web. And true to form, the Wolfman kept it on the web even after he privately admitted its fraudulency. The Wolfman did the very same thing to one of his fellow ministers that Wesley did to Toplady by forging his name to a bogus document.

 

Commenting on Wesley’s fraud, the Wolfman wrote:

“But how are these events interpreted? . . . Perhaps, and I speak with some hesitancy, he spoke this way about Wesley because Wesley was not honest. The hesitancy comes from the knowledge that those who raise questions such as this do so at their own peril. If a man calls popular and universal judgments into question, he had bet­ter be prepared for the reaction. And part of the preparation consists in knowing that whether you have proven your case has nothing at all to do with the anticipated reaction. The saintliness of someone like John Wesley is not something many Christians are prepared to question. But per­haps is it necessary to rethink some of our assumptions, i.e. perhaps John Wesley was not quite the saint he is portrayed to be in popular evangelical histories of that era. . . . This is a plea against distortions of history. . . In this case, I believe there has been a whitewash of history, and I believe the interests of truth demand that we all quit playing!
  the
 game.” (Ibid., 174, 175)

 

Memo to the Wolfman:

I speak not with hesitancy. You have not been honest. The interest of truth requires that you quit playing games. Admit it. You whitewashed history. Your dirty hands forged a letter to make yourself appear righteous, and you got caught. Confess your sin. Make restitution. Resign from the ministry at once, so that you may sing:

 

Ah Lord, with trembling I confess,
A gracious soul may fall from grace;
The salt may lose its seasoning power,
And never, never, find it more.

 

Lest that my fearful case should be,
Each moment knit my soul to thee;
And lead me to the mount above,
Through the low vale of humble love.

		
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