Peter Ruckman, the notorious King James Only advocate, is a blasphemer.

Why do I say this?  I have never read a book by Peter Ruckman from cover to cover.  I tried reading one years ago but it was too vitriolic for me; I felt defiled reading it, so I stopped.  Now recently I had the privilege of debating evangelical apologist James White on the topic of whether the King James Version and the Textus Receptus are superior to the Legacy Standard Bible and the Textus Rejectus. In James White’s King James Only Controversy he painted the moderate mainstream of KJV-Onlyism with such astonishing inaccuracy.  James White makes arguments such as (speaking about the translation Lucifer for Satan in Isaiah 14:12): “The term Lucifer, which came into the biblical tradition through the translation of Jerome’s Vulgate, has become … entrenched … [y]et a person who stops for a moment of calm reflection might ask, ‘Why should I believe Jerome was inspired to insert this term at this point? Do I have a good reason for believing this?’”^[1]  Dr. White argues:  “Anyone who believes the TR to be infallible must believe that Erasmus, and the other men who later edited the same text in their own editions (Stephanus and Beza), were somehow ‘inspired.’”^[2]  Of course, White provides no sources at all for any King James Only advocate who has ever claimed that Jerome, Stephanus, Beza, or Erasmus were inspired, since no such sources exist. As I pointed out in the debate, Dr. White makes bonkers claims like that KJV-only people think Abraham and Moses actually spoke English (again, of course, totally without any documentation of such people even existing).

Thus, James White’s astonishing inaccuracies made me wonder if he is even representing Peter Ruckman accurately. I have no sympathy for Peter Ruckman’s peculiar doctrines—as the godly, non-nutty, serious thinker and KJV Only advocate David Cloud has explained in his good book What About Ruckman?, Peter Ruckman is a heretic.  I am 100% opposed to Ruckman’s heretical, gospel-corrupting teaching that salvation was by works in the Old Testament and will be by works in the Millennium.  It makes me wonder if Ruckman was truly converted, or if he was an example of what was often warned about in the First Great Awakening by George Whitfield and others, namely, “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry.”  I am 100% opposed to Ruckman’s disgraceful lifestyle that led him to be disqualified to pastor.  I am 100% opposed to his ungodly language, to his wicked racism, to his wacky conspiracy theories, and to his unbiblical extremism on the English of the KJV.  At the same time, however opposed I am to him, as a Christian I am still duty-bound to attempt to represent his position accurately.  The way Dr. White badly misrepresented the large moderate majority of KJV-Onlyism made me wonder if James also misrepresented Dr. Ruckman.

As a result, I acquired a copy of Ruckman’s response to James White’s King James Only Controversy, a book called The Scholarship Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Professional Liars? (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2000).  The title page claims: “This book exposes the most cockeyed piece of amateur scholarship that ever came out of Howash University.”  Based on the title, it was already evident that I would be in for a quite painful and dreary time going through the book, but God is a God of truth, and nobody, not even Peter Ruckman, should be misrepresented by a Christian.  Christians must be truthful like their God, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2).

While Christians should not misrepresent anyone, I found it hard to cut through the slander and hyperbole and bloviations in Ruckman’s book as I attempted to  get to something substantial.  Ruckman can say things such as:  “Irenaeus quotes the AV one time and the NASV one time. … Eusebius (later) quotes the King James Bible four times and the NASV once” (pg. 117).  Peter Ruckman has an earned Ph. D. from Bob Jones University.  He knows that the NASV and the KJV/AV did not exist when Irenaeus and Eusebius lived.  He knows that the English language did not yet exist.  (I wonder if James White’s completely undocumented affirmation in his King James Only Controversy—which he also declined to prove any support for at all in our debate—that some KJV-only advocates believe that Abraham and Moses spoke English derives from a misunderstanding some Nestle-Aland advocate had with a Ruckmanite who followed his leader in making outlandish verbal statements, and those outlandish verbal statements became, in James White’s mind, a real group of people who actually thought that the Old Testament prophets spoke English, although he has no evidence such a group ever existed, somewhat comparable to Ruckman saying that Irenaeus and Eusebius quoted the Authorized Version and the New American Standard Version.)  Of course, at this point I am speculating on something that I should not have to speculate upon, since James White has had decades to provide real documentation of these KJV-only groups who allegedly think English was the language spoken in ancient Israel, but he has not done so.

I did discover something that made me wonder if the statement White quotes about Ruckman and advanced revelation in English were similar exaggerations. Note the following from Ruckman’s book, on the first two pages:

“Scholarship Onlyism” is much easier to de­fine than the mysterious “King James Onlyism.” For example, while “using” (a standard Alexan­drian cliche) the Authorized Version (1611), I recommend Tyndale’s version (1534), The Great Bible (1539), The Geneva Bible (1560), Valera’s Span­ish version (1596), Martin Luther’s German ver­sion (1534), and a number of others. Here at Pensa­cola Bible Institute, our students “use” (the old Alexandrian cliche) from twenty-eight to thirty- two English versions, including the RV, RSV, NRSV, ASV, NASV, Today’s English Version [TEV], New English Bible [NEB], New World Translation, [NWT], NIV, and NKJV. Our brand of “King James Onlyism” is not the kind that it is reported to be. We believe that the Authorized Version of the En­glish Protestant Reformation is the “Scriptures” in English, and as such, it is inerrant until the alleged “errors” in it have been proved “beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt” to be errors. Until such a time, we assume that it is a perfect translation. No sane person, who was not criminally minded, would take any other position. In a court of law, the “ac­cused” is “innocent until proven guilty” (i.e., O. J. Simpson) … Since not one apostate Fundamentalist (or Conservative) in one hundred and fifty years has yet been able to prove one error in the Book we hold in our hands (which happens to be written in the universal language of the end time), we assume it is the last Bible God intends to give mankind be­fore the Second Advent. God has graciously pre­served its authority and infallibility in spite of “godly, qualified, recognized scholars” in the Laod­icean period of apostasy (1900-1990), so we con­sider it to be the final authority in “all matters of faith and practice.” We go a little beyond this, and believe it to be the final authority in all matters of Scholarship. That is what “bugs the tar” (Koine, American) and “beats the fire” (Koine, American) out of the Scholarship Only advocates who are in love with their own intellects.[3]

Notice that Ruckman himself “recommends” Bibles other than the KJV, such as the Tyndale, Geneva, and Textus Receptus based foreign language Bibles.  At least in this quotation, he does not say God re-inspired the Bible in 1611, but he says that the translation should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, as is proper in a court of law.  That is a much more moderate position than James White attributes to him.

So is it possible that the extreme statements James White quotes on pg. 27 of The King James Only Controversy are hyperbole on Ruckman’s part?  (Ruckman has plenty of hyperbole—even in the quotation above, I cut out a weird statement he made about David Koresh.)  I cannot prove that James White was deliberately misrepresenting Ruckman—Ruckman’s style is too bizarre for one to easily determine what he actually means (another of many, many reasons why I cannot and do not recommend that you read any of his books).  However, from this statement we can see that if one wishes to prove that Ruckman actually believes something it is important to be very careful, as he not only makes large numbers of uncharitable and nutty attacks on others, but many hyperbolic statements.

Unfortunately, as years ago I was not able to finish a Ruckman book because it was bursting with carnality, so this time I was not able to finish Ruckman’s critique of James White’s King James Only Controversy because it was not just carnal, but blasphemous.  On page 81 Ruckman takes God’s name in vain, reprinting the common curse phrase “Oh my G—” in his book.  A search of its electronic text uncovers that Ruckman blasphemes again on page 269, 308, 312, 452 & 460.  He could do so elsewhere as well, but those statements are enough, and I am not excited about searching for and discovering blasphemy.  The Bible says: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person.” (Psalm 101:3-4).  If we were living in the Old Testament theocracy, Peter Ruckman would be stoned to death for blasphemy.  We are not in the Old Testament theocracy, but His blasphemous language is still disgusting, abominable, and wicked in the sight of the holy God.  That someone who claimed to be a Christian preacher would write such wickedness is even more disgusting.  Ruckman was a “Baptist” the way Judas or Diotrephes or Jezebel was a Baptist.  He would be subject to church discipline if he snuck in unawares and became a member of our church.

So did James White misrepresent Peter Ruckman?  White’s representation of the non-wacko large majority of KJV-onlyism was far from accurate, so I wondered if he even got Ruckman right.  From what I read of Ruckman’s book before Ruckman started to blaspheme, I thought it was possible that James White did not even get Ruckman right, although with Ruckman’s pages bursting with carnality and total weirdness I could see why getting Ruckman wrong would be easy to do.  I am unable to determine definitively one way or the other whether James White was accurate on Peter Ruckman’s position (or if Ruckman himself was even consistent in explaining himself) since I am not going to read a book by someone who breaks the Third Commandment while claiming to be a Baptist preacher.  That is disgusting to me, and ineffably more disgusting to the holy, holy, holy God.  Ruckman’s critique of James White’s book deserves to go in the trash, where its filthy language belongs.

I do not recommend James White’s King James Only Controversy because it does not base itself on God’s revealed promises of preservation and because of its many inaccuracies.  I do not recommend Peter Ruckman’s critique of James White’s King James Only Controvesy because it is not only weird and carnal, but repeatedly blasphemous.  Certainly for a new Christian, and possibly for a mature one, the recycle bin could well be the best place for both volumes.

–TDR

^[1] James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2009), 180–181.

^[2] James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2009), 96.

[3]           Peter Ruckman, The Scholarship Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Professional Liars? (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2000), 1-2.