walter Veith flat earth and matthew korpman

 I try so hard not to get involved with the stupidity that has become Adventist Today but it is so hard to leave it alone. But they have sunk to a new low. They have become the sponsor of a new YouTube video series. Here is what they say on Atoday website:

“Walter Veith is many things… but a “Flat Earther” isn’t one of the descriptions we usually associate with the controversial professor. Watch Bible scholar Matthew Korpman react to Veith’s refusal to call the earth round!

PS: Adventist Today is excited to be sponsoring Matthew’s latest YouTube videos. His stuff is thoughtful, informative and funny. We love it!”

This video is called “Walter Veith & the Flat Earth? Bible Scholar Reacts

I was unable to see in the description any evidence that Matthew Korpman is a Yale-trained Bible scholar, but I can say that he is talented at obfuscation. Instead of allowing Walter Veith to explain himself, he interrupts the video to make Matthew Korpman declarations as if they somehow are what Walter Veith is saying. A really poor method of communications, a simple technique to distort people’s opinions though, or to make fairly out-of-context statements by breaking up the statements to appear different than they were actually stated.

In This case, Matthew is attempting to take Walter Veith to task for not answering a question the way Matthew wants the question answered. Something many of us would like to do to other people but we know that is not how the world works. The one asked the question is the one that answers it and to be objective the listener then deals with what the answer actually was rather than complain about it not being answered the way you wanted to answer it.

Walter Veith opens himself open to this a lot of times because he is a long-winded person and thinks that he can take an opportunity to guide the listener into something else Veith wants to talk about. Which is actually the case in this video.

At about the 54 minute mark of the video Veith is asked the question about the flat vs. round earth and he precedes to give a couple of Ellen White quotes. That sets off Matthew, but amazingly enough, Matthew then says nothing about what the quotes actually say. Veith uses 3 or 4 maybe but the first one is all you need.

“Any kind of a theory or hobby that Satan can lead the minds of men to dwell upon he will draw their attention to so that they shall not be engaged in giving the solemn message for this time. Do not, my brother, become entangled with ideas that have no connection with the work for this time. It is better to be teaching the truth as it is in Jesus. Better to be seeking for true godliness, heart holiness, freedom from all selfishness, freedom from all envies and jealousies. It is better to pray and humble the soul before God and let the world, round or flat, be just as God has made it. Try most earnestly, by faithful continuance in well-doing, to seek for a clear title in the inheritance in the earth made new. Better lead the flock of God to drink at the higher streams, better by precept and example seek God while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. There is a revival needed in the church. When the teachers are drinking fresh draughts from the well of Bethlehem, then they can lead the people to the living stream. My soul is weighed down with the burden of the condition of things in New York. May the Lord raise up helpers, men whom He can teach, humble men whom He can lead to bear a clear, sharp testimony in faith.” Letter 43, 1887

I don’t really care that Matthew does not like Veith’s answer but you get no reason for not liking his answer if you ignore the Ellen White quotes he references.

Think about it, if you are being asked in 2020 by someone “is the earth round or is it flat”? You know immediately if someone asks that question they have a hobby horse of a theory that the world is flat. If those folks could be talked out of it, you would think that it would have easily have been done by now. Though with that particular question round does not even help as it could be flat and round as in a disk.

If Matthew had listened to the previous answer which was all about Ellen White as a prophet and would there or could there be another, a perceptive person could see that Veith answered the flat earth question after that to help enforce the wisdom of Ellen White as a telescope to the Bible. I am not here to support Ellen White or Walter Veith but to vilify the very dishonorable method of media manipulation that is used to entertain by presenting half-truths in a format that makes people think they have been given real information. Most people who read AToday sadly don’t pay enough attention to know they are being manipulated with false information Because after all these are good Christians they would not lie to us! Yes, even Christians lie and distort and the only protection is to question everything.

 Update: 2-4-2022

I posted a comment to the youtube page listed above stating that without using any of the information from the Ellen White quote you did not show the reason for Veith's answer and a link to my review above of his video. I checked this morning and my comment was deleted. Truth or conversation even is clearly not something that Matthew Korpman wants.

 

 

Did Walter Veith set 2027 date for Jesus coming?

I am just so annoyed at the writing at Adventist Today. It seems to have just degenerated into a bunch of nonsequiturs. Take for instance this from just today. Our Conspiracists, and Why We Love Them

Loren Seibold writes:

But Veith and his friend found a much larger discrepancy, one that allowed them to move the date up to 2027—still in the future, which means they can fundraise on it for a good seven more years.Again, I confess my limited ability to understand either their mathematics or their paranoid meanderings. Yet you would be astonished by the number of people who defended this presentation to me, who told me that Veith hadn’t given a date for Jesus’ return because he said he hadn’t given a date for Jesus’ return, even as they were telling me the date he’d given for Jesus’ return. That’s an impressive feat of mental engineering, and I thank Walt for showing how it’s done. 

Now I am no fan of Walter Veith but this is just pathetic. Notice first there is no indication of where we find Veith's supposed time setting. I will give you the source below. Seibold in this article does not argue with anything that Veith has said. His entire argument is with some anonymous person who tells Seibold that Veith did not in fact set any date. This is not how intelligent people discuss things. You deal with what someone actually said not what some unidentified person told you about someone else. 

If you really want to know how people get into conspiracy theories it is because they believe something despite the evidence. They want to believe it so they believe it and they arrange information to try to support their conclusion. All the mental engineering done in the above quote was performed by Seibold. The reader has no way of knowing what the anonymous person said, there is no quote to what the anonymous person said concerning date setting. The only attribution was that the anonymous person said there was no date setting! This is Adventist Today in summary, logic has been thrown out the window! 

The Seventh-day Adventist' Church Northern Conference of South Africa put out a  Memorandum of understanding on Walter Veith's statement.

They state:

PERCEIVED SETTING OF DATES: While we acknowledge that prof. Walter Veith holds that he did not set a date, by mentioning the year 2027 or earlier/later, as a possible date on different occasions, he complicates his position. (For more detail see footnote); i 

After careful study of the writings of Ellen G. White, the Bible, and the material presented by prof. Veith, the Theological Review Committee (TRC) of the Northern Conference has come to the conclusion that the main problem in the presentation is the issue of perceived date setting for the second coming of Christ. 

Their footnote states:

i Statements like the following do not help the argument that he has not set a date “If 2027 is the end of the six-thousand-year period of warring against God, then this would exclude the time of preparation required after the wicked are raised. Is it possible that time could be cut off from the six thousand years before 2027? If so, then Christ must come sometime before 2027 to allow this?” (1 Hour, 41 minutes and 18 seconds into the Lecture). Acknowledgment is however also given to prof Veith’s statement: “The Lord can add to that time, the Lord delays His coming, the Lord can take away from that time. I don’t know. I’m not making the time. I’m saying that the time is short” (1:53:21-1:53:51). 

 Prof Veith bases his statements on the following quotes “But the day and the hour of His coming Christ has not revealed. He stated plainly to His disciples that He Himself could not make known the day or the hour of His second appearing. Had He been at liberty to reveal this, why need He have exhorted them to maintain an attitude of constant expectancy? There are those who claim to know the very day and hour of our Lord’s appearing. Very earnest are they in mapping out the future. But the Lord has warned them off the ground they occupy. The exact time of the second coming of the Son of man is God’s mystery.” (DA 632.4) and “On Jordan’s banks the voice from heaven, attended by the manifestation from the excellent glory, proclaimed Christ to be the Son of the Eternal. Satan was to personally encounter the Head of the kingdom which he came to overthrow. If he failed he knew that he was lost. Therefore the power of his temptations was in accordance with the greatness of the object which he would lose or gain. For four thousand years, ever since the declaration was made to Adam that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, he had been planning his manner of attack” (CON 78.2)

Here is the video link, start a little before the 1-hour 41-minute mark, if you watch from there until the end you see he clearly multiple times says he is not setting a date and repeats multiple times that he does not know. His whole premise is flawed on numerous levels but that is not my concern here. Attempting to interpret Ellen White in a timeline like people try to interpret the Bible books of Daniel and Revelation as a timeline will not work any better than all the other failed timelines.

My question is how it can even be "perceived" he either said it or he did not, if someone says they don't know and they say they are not setting a date what is the perception based upon. Apparently, it is based upon third party opinions of the matter...hearsay. no one in this attempt at defamation is looking particularly good. But I would say that the Seventh-day Adventist' Church Northern Conference of South Africa is appearing way better than Adventist Today.

We are at a time when logic certainly has failed for many people. 

The Death of Adventist Media

Not long ago a couple of alternative Adventist media publications announced that Walter Veith was being accused of Antisemitism. No source of the accusation was given and no context of the actual statements were given just a couple of words.

Here is how Spectrum reported the accusation:

Because it is not clear who complained, Walter Veith has falsely lashed out at Spectrum and another independent Adventist magazine in Germany, EANN, edited by the former Euro-Africa Division communication director. EANN published an article, "Veith's dangerous game with the Jewish question - a disturbing fact-check" on Veith's talk titled "King of the North-Part 2." In it Veith, a noted conspiracy theorist, mixed interpretations of the Bible with theories about Jesuit and Masonic roles in the Holocaust, offensive language about "little yellow cloth" and "herding" of Jews and a positive citation of Benjamin Freedman, a "professional antisemite" according to the Anti-Defemation League.

Here is the original statement and first accusation of the Antisemitism from EANN (Independent Journal of Religion, Church and Society) as translated from German by Google translator:

Reason is the opinion of the lecture "king of the north", Part 2, by Dr. Walter Veith, an Adventist from South Africa, on 20 October 2012 in Nuremberg held and was also webcast. "In it, he defended the thesis that Freemasons and Jesuits had used the Nazi era, the Jews finally get to Palestine to Christianity get distracted from the real biblical statements and misled," said the statement. Embedded in this "conspiracy theory" approach using the speaker terms, such as "Verherdung" of the Jews in the sense of cooperation and bustle. He also plays down the Star of David as a "yellow handkerchief". "We believe that such designations antisemitic discriminatory and get a criminal trivializing the Nazi reign of terror, very close."

That either of this two publications ran with this story shows just how journalistic inept Adventist media has become, there is definitely a story here but they are not reporting it. I would go so far as to say it is inept on both the right and the left leaving us with no viable source of Adventist news. The EANN report lists a couple of words and the subjective view of the writer that the word are somehow Antisemitism. In fact the EANN article does not even list an author. Apparently the rumors were enough to get an official banishment for Veith in Germany. Where apparently rumors are enough for the church to condemn whether or not the government finds anything out in their investigation. But “herding” and “yellow handkerchief” in regards to historical actions of the Nazi's is enough to be accused by fellow Adventists of being anti-Semitic.

I have little agreement with Walter Veith on probably any of his beliefs. But that does not give anyone cause to report such completely subjective personal views as if they were facts. That this is what has become of the Adventist media is in my view one of the reasons that the church is so fractured. People have no objective source of information about the happenings in their own church. This story has been ongoing for about a month now and it has never even been mentioned by Adventist News Network (ANN). No mention of Veith's ban from German Adventist churches either.

What this means is that Adventism has no reliable source of church related news. What news we do get is often biased and poorly reported like that from EANN and Spectrum and Adventist Today.

Veith denies the charge saying in part:

Dear Brethren in Germany

I wish to briefly respond to the allegations of anti Semitism during my recent visit to Germany.

Let me assure you brethren that I am not by any stretch of the imagination an Anti Semite. Indeed, any form of racism is abhorrent to me and having grown up in South Africa I have firsthand experience regarding this issue and have been an ardent campaigner against racist injustice all my life. Also, as South African, I was probably not attuned to the hypersensitivity of the current German nation regarding the injustices perpetrated on the Jews by the N a z i regime and my comments have thus been misinterpreted. As you well know, German is not my first language and I believe that some of the supposed statements regarding belittling remarks such as “gelbes Tuechlein” stem from my linguistic inadequacy in this department and certainly not from malicious intent as some hope to surmise. Moreover, the treatment the Jews received in Germany and for that matter from many other nations as well can only be described as diabolical and there was certainly historic ‘herding’ involved to the shame of all who practiced it. Moreover, ‘herding’ is the modus operandi of Christ’s adversary, who is herding the whole world into a collective mindset which will result in the final persecution of God’s antitypical Israel. This is not a conspiracy theory but a prophetic reality and the Spirit of Prophecy warns that if we associate with those who war against Christ we will soon come to see matters in the same light as they and lose our discernment. I plead with you dear brethren to note the serious times we are living in and heed the warnings that God has so graciously given us through the Spirit of Prophecy.

Adventism has long had a conspiracy theorist mindset, it is no wonder that Veith has the same and he defends himself by the selection of quotes from Ellen White. As most SDA traditionalist do. His defense is damaged by the victimization he sees as his lot, though in this case he is being victimized by rumor and poor reporting and likely even false reporting. I say false because when you really have a case you are able to give the context and the statements. When a report does not have those then they likely have no facts either. There are actually politically liberal websites that exist by taking quotes out of context and editing things to make them appear quite different from the reality and these sites are often read by those in charge of Spectrum at least. It is often noticeable in their articles as well.

We are in the information age but sadly we are finding that information is so often twisted and biased and so contrary to the facts that people don't know what to believe and far too often make poor assumptions about what to believe. Choosing sides instead of acting upon facts to make informed decisions.

I do doubt that my little article with a plea to actual reason and facts will do much good. As propaganda has taken the place of knowledge. But I will put it forward and next week demonstrate how propaganda is often pretended to be present truth. We as a church are not really growing in knowledge and reason and that is why I don't think there is much future in the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Update: 12-22-12-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just today I see over on the Spectrum Website more journalistic malpractice. They complain about a Ugandan SDA leader. They begin with the following:

..."As is part of the church's offical statement and was also happening behind the scenes, there were attempts to discredit the New Vision report. The church states: 

Recent comments in the Ugandan newspaper New Vision attributed to the head of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in East-Central Africa do not convey an accurate representation of his intentions or the voted position of the church regarding homosexuality. . .

The newspaper reports suggest that Pastor Blasius Ruguri fully supports the proposed legislation before the Ugandan Parliament that may include incarcerating and even executing people for same sex intimate contact.

In response to those reports, pastor Ruguri today said, "It is unfortunate that the media took the liberty to extend my statements to suggest what I did not say or imply. I have never seen that bill. Mine was a general statement to disapprove of homosexual practice and behavior.

Ruguri might want to work on his communication skills since he appears to have misled another reporter for a different newpaper on the same day. (This has not been reported until now.) ..."

 

Yet in fact there is no anti-homosexual bill written yet as the Huffington Post reports: 

Parliamentarian David Bahati said the bill, which is expected to be voted on next month, had "moved away from the death penalty after considering all the issues that have been raised."
"There is no death penalty," he told The Associated Press.
Bahati said the bill now focuses on protecting children from gay pornography, banning gay marriage, counseling gays, as well as punishing those who promote gay culture. Jail terms are prescribed for various offenses, he said, offering no details. The most recent version of the bill hasn't been publicly released.
In 2009, when Bahati first introduced the bill, he charged that homosexuals threatened family values in Uganda and that gays from the West were recruiting poor Ugandan children into gay lifestyles with promises of money and a better life. He said a tough new law was needed because a colonial-era law against sodomy was not strong enough.
The bill, popular among many in Uganda but condemned abroad, has been under scrutiny by a committee whose members now say they are ready to put it forward for a vote. One of the members, Krispus Ayena, said Friday that some parliamentarians spoke strongly against certain provisions in the bill as well as the death penalty itself.
"There was a dissenting voice in the committee," Ayena said. "They argued very forcefully that we should not do a thing like that: to regulate what goes on in bedrooms. First of all, is it practicable to regulate that? And there are those who say this is very oppressive."
The bill's original wording proposed the death penalty for cases where HIV-infected homosexuals had sex, where gay people had sex with minors or the disabled, and where gays were discovered having sex for the second time. Bahati said at the time that these offenses amounted to what he called "aggravated homosexuality."

Then you read the comments and you see how people fall into line not knowing any facts because the original article did not give a balanced view but assumed the lying of the Adventist official. It is sad that such political agenda's can so distort actual news reporting. But it is goes on constantly. Just know you can't trust these people...and that is the saddest part as if there is anyone you should be able to trust it is a Christian. My advice to these organizations: deal in facts and then in a separate article deal with you interpretation of the facts. Don't merge them together.