Re-Writing History - Attempts to Get Rid of the Truth on the Ergun Caner Wikipedia Biography Page

Currently there is an "edit war" taking place on the Ergun Caner Wikipedia page.

A person editing as "dseppling" is trying to clean up the Ergun Caner biography, while another editor "MosesModel" is trying to expand it to include the important events of the past couple of years leading to Caner's departure at Liberty University.

Currently Wikipedia has frozen the Ergun Caner Wikipedia bio page with the latest MosesModel version, until at least July 31, 2011. I do not know how these editing disputes are ultimately resolved, so what ultimately comes of this remains to be seen.

Click here to go to the Ergun Caner Wikipedia page. In the upper right hand corner, you will see a hyperlink for "View History" and you will be able to see a blow by blow edit list, with time and date stamps of the edits made to the Caner biography.

What are the paragraphs that seem to be in dispute? Here are the ones that have been wiped by the "dseppling" editor:

".....He ignited controversy largely due to the criticism and scrutiny of "an unusual alliance of Muslim and Christian bloggers"[6] which found errors of various kinds in Caner's lectures and books, even in his biography;[10] though he had claimed to have been raised as a teenager in Turkey to become a Muslim extremist and only immigrated to the US in 1978. It was during these years that he claimed to have attended a Muslim extremist training center in Beirut. However, court records show that he had actually emigrated to the United States in 1969 at age 3.[6]

"On April 25, 2005, he conducted two training sessions for the United States Marines in New River, North Carolina. During these sessions he was introduced as having moved to the United States from Turkey at the age of 14. He claimed that he did not know anything about America until he came to the country at age 14. He told the marines that he did not learn English until after age 14. He said he watched American television in Turkey, but he had to watch it with Turkish captions.[15] He claimed that he had been educated (before coming to America) in madrassas in both Instanbul, Turky and Cairo, Egypt.[16] The unedited videos of these sessions were obtained by a Freedom of Information Request in August, 2010.[17]

"Moreover, in a statement released on his own website and reproduced by the Southern Baptist Convention, Caner admitted, in February 2010, that he had actually been born in Sweden, and that possible errors in his "pronunciation of Arabic" as he's from a Turkish background and other matters were not intended to mislead but were bound to happen in two decades of ministry and hundreds of sermons.[18] The Associated Baptist Press reported in May 2010 that Liberty University backed Caner after having investigated the allegations of untruths,[19] but a few days later the university announced that it would continue investigating.[20] "Because of "factual statements that are self-contradictory", he was forced to step down from his position as dean in June 2010, though he was retained as a professor.[6]"

"September 24, 2010, Ergun Caner was the keynote speaker for the Twin City’s 12th Annual Community Prayer Breakfast in Bristol, VA. When interviewed about the controversy, the chairman of the local prayer breakfast committee said that members were aware of the controversy, but the invitation had been issued before the controversy became apparent. He also noted that the Community Prayer Breakfast does not delve into the backgrounds of their motivation/inspiration speakers. [21] At the meeting, Caner claimed that he and his brother saw the controversy coming for years. The bloggers were simply "frustrated people in their basements.” He claimed that it would take more than edited videos to take him down. All of his false statements could be explained by the fact that he has more than 200 hours of combined sermons which would yield random misstatements.[22]"

Nothing false in those paragraphs. If you go to the webpage you can follow the citations to their sources, and see that the above are all properly sourced.

So why is a "dseppling" trying to wipe these off? Who is "dseppling", anyways?

It could be anybody, but there is a David Eppling who hails from Jacksonville, Florida, who is currently on staff at the Liberty University School of Law. He was brought in to be Caner's "Chief of Staff" at Liberty Theological Seminary. Prior to that he was a middle school dean in Jacksonville. David Eppling's brother, Chris Eppling, was the former high school pastor at FBC Jacksonville, before leaving last year to work for Emir Caner at Truett McConnell as the Vice President of Student Services and Athletic Director.

The first edit made by "dseppling" contains a statement that he is the "Executive Vice President of Ergun Caner Ministries".

So someone tells Brookwood Church they can't podcast Caner's sermons he preached at their church this month. Then a "dseppling" who says he is the EVP of Ergun Caner Ministries tries to wipe the Caner Wikipedia page free of any references to Caner's deceptions.

What is next?