Peter Ruckman

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Peter Sturges Ruckman (born November 19, 1921), is an independent Baptist minister, teacher, writer, and founder of Pensacola Bible Institute, an unaccredited school in Pensacola, Florida, not to be confused with Pensacola Christian College. He is best known for his assertion that the King James Version constitutes "advanced revelation" and is the preserved word of God for English speakers.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Ruckman is a son of Colonel John Hamilton Ruckman (1888-1966) and a grandson of General John Wilson Ruckman. Ruckman was reared in Topeka, Kansas, attended Kansas State University, and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama. Ruckman married Janie Bess May of Sawyerville, Alabama, and they had five children together.[2]

Ruckman entered the U.S. Army in 1944 and became second lieutenant, although he never saw action. At the end of World War II, he volunteered to serve with the occupation forces in Japan and while there studied Zen Buddhism. Ruckman had paranormal experiences during this period, including (in his words) "the experience of nirvana, which the Zen call samadhi, the dislocation of the spirit from the body....Looking at my moral life following that experience, and my desire at times to commit suicide, I realize I had produced a passive state that was an entrance for spirits." Ruckman returned to the United States "uneasy, unsettled, full of demons." Drinking heavily, he became a disc jockey during the day and a drummer in a dance band at night. Sometimes verging on suicide, he began to hear voices; he also considered joining the Roman Catholic Church. After briefly meeting an evangelist and testifying to a conversion experience, Ruckman attended Bob Jones University, where he received a master's degree and Ph.D. in religion. [3] (Ruckman later called BJU "the World's Most Unusual Hell Hole.")[4] In 1959, after several separations, Ruckman's first marriage was dissolved. Ruckman has since been divorced again and married a third time.[5]

Ruckman is the pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Pensacola, and his writings and recorded sermons are published by his own Bible Baptist Bookstore.[6] Like his father, Peter Ruckman early demonstrated artistic talent, and he often illustrated his sermons in chalk and pastels while preaching.[7]

Ruckman holds to many unusual notions. For instance, he believes in UFOs and in blue aliens with blue blood, black aliens with green blood, and gray aliens with clear blood. [8]Further, he believes that the CIA has implanted brain transmitters in children, old people, and African-Americans and that the agency operates underground alien breeding facilities. [9] In 1997, Ruckman claimed that Attorney General Janet Reno had drawn up a list with his name on it and prophesied that the "Government Mafia" would make a hit on him during "the next two or three years."[10]

[edit] King James Version-Only Proponent

Ruckman insists that the King James Version of the Bible, the "Authorized Version" ("KJV" or "A.V."), provides "advanced revelation" in English beyond that discernible in the underlying Textus Receptus Greek text. Arguing that the KJV is more authoritative for English speakers than the Greek and Hebrew texts, he believes the KJV represents the final authority for modern disputes about the content and meaning of the original manuscripts. For instance, in his Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence, Ruckman says, "Mistakes in the A.V. 1611 are advanced revelation!" Likewise, he advises where "the perverse Greek reads one way and the A.V. reads the other, rest assured that God will judge you at the Judgment on what you know. Since you don't know the Greek (and those who knew it, altered it to suit themselves), you better go by the A.V. 1611 text."[11]

[edit] Creed of the Alexandrian Cult

Ruckman refers to his opponents as members of what he terms the "Alexandrian Cult". He has written a nine-point "creed of the Alexandrian Cult" which outlines their views as he sees them. This is published by Ruckman in every issue of the publication Bible Believer's Bulletin. The "Creed" begins innocuously enough by stating "There is no final absolute authority but God." However, it soon castigates those who believe that only the "original manuscripts" were God-inspired by stating "There was a series of writings one time which, if they had been all put into a book as soon as they were written the first time, would have constituted an infallible and final authority by which to judge truth and error. However, this series of writings was lost." So, says Ruckman, his opponents believe, "since there is no absolute and final authority that anyone can read, teach, preach, or handle, the whole thing is a matter of 'preference'. You may prefer what you prefer, and we will prefer what we prefer. Let us live in peace, and if we cannot agree on anything or everything, let us all agree on one thing: There is no final, absolute written authority of God anywhere on this earth."

[edit] Opponents of Ruckman

In his book, The King James Only Controversy, James R. White, argues that to call Ruckman "outspoken is to engage in an exercise in understatement. Caustic is too mild a term; bombastic is a little more accurate.…There is no doubt that Peter S. Ruckman is brilliant, in a strange sort of way. His mental powers are plainly demonstrated in his books, though most people do not bother to read far enough to recognize this due to the constant stream of invective that is to be found on nearly every page. And yet his cocky confidence attracts many people to his viewpoint."[12] One Ruckman letter to an opponent begins, "Dear Scumbucket."[13] The website of Ruckman's press notes that although some have called his writings "mean spirited," "we refer to them as 'Truth With An Attitude.'"[14] Ruckman sometimes stoops to vulgarity in his name-calling. For instance, he once called the New American Standard Version of the Bible "more of the same old godless, depraved crap"[15]and a rival KJV-Only supporter, a "puffed up conceited ass."[16]

KJV-Only supporters are often called "Ruckmanites," and those who take more moderate KJV-Only positions frequently criticize Ruckman because "his writings are so acerbic, so offensive and mean-spirited that the entire movement has become identified with his kind of confrontational attitude."[17] Many supporters of the KJV-Only position do not endorse Ruckman's position that the English KJV is superior to existing Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Not surprisingly, Ruckman's position on the authority of the KJV is strongly opposed by many supporters of biblical inerrancy, including signers of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

[edit] Pensacola Bible Institute

Ruckman founded Pensacola Bible Institute (PBI) in 1965, in part, because of his disagreements with other institutions in regard to Biblical translations. Pensacola Bible Institute is not accredited by any agency recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or the United States Department of Education.[18] It does not accept government funding nor participate in the student loan program. The school has no website.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Peter Ruckman, The Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence (Pensacola: Pensacola Bible Press, 1990), 126; the website of David Cloud, another KJV-Only proponent, says that "For good or for bad, Peter Ruckman’s name is intertwined with the defense of the King James Bible. Personally, I think it is bad," because to some of his followers, "if a man does not believe about the KJV exactly what Ruckman believes and does not accept the KJV as 'advanced revelation' that can correct even the Greek and Hebrew from which it was translated and as the apex of Bible infallibility," he is “not a true Bible believer.” Furthermore, Cloud regards Ruckman a hindrance to the KJV-only position because of his "strange ideas, his multiple divorces, his angry spirit, his arrogance, his Alexandrian cult mentality, his extremism regarding the KJV being advanced revelation, and his bizarre private doctrines" that tend "to cause men to reject the entire issue."
  2. ^ Website of P. S. Ruckman, Jr. Ruckman, Jr., a political scientist, provides full biographies of his grandfather and great-grandfather but comparatively little information about his father except for a photograph of the rakish young man.
  3. ^ Peter Ruckman, Dr. Ruckman's Testimony (audiotape), Bible Baptist Bookstore, n.d., quoted in R. L. Hymers,Jr., The Ruckman Conspiracy (Collingswood, N. J.: The Bible for Today, 1989), 3-4, 19.
  4. ^ The Separatist (December 1984), 11.
  5. ^ By his own admission, Ruckman's earlier family life was turbulent: "I have had two wives desert me after fifteen years of marriage....I have been in court custody cases where seven children's futures were held in the balance; in situations where Gospel articles were being torn out of typewriters, Biblical artwork torn off the easels, women trying to throw themselves out of cars at fifty m.p.h., mailing wedding rings back in the middle of revival services, cutting their wrists, threatening to leave if I did not give my church to their kinfolk; deacons threatening to burn down my house and beat me up; children in split custody between two domiciles two hundred miles apart, and knock-down, drag-out arguments in the home sometimes running as long as three days." Peter Ruckman, The Last Grenade (Pensacola: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1990), 339.
  6. ^ The bookstore also sells coffee mugs featuring Ruckman's photograph and artwork. Bible Baptist Bookstore
  7. ^ "John Hamilton Ruckman," at P. S. Ruckman, Jr. website.
  8. ^ Peter Ruckman, Black is Beautiful (Pensacola: Bible Believers Press, 1995), 85-86, 244, 310-11.
  9. ^ Peter Ruckman, Black is Beautiful (Pensacola: Bible Believers Press, 1995), 243, 256. According to Ruckman the CIA flies space ships developed from technology garnered from aliens after they were permitted to kidnap and eat children. (291, 295-97).
  10. ^ Bob L. Ross quoting from Bible Believers Bulletin, May 1997.
  11. ^ Peter Ruckman, The Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence (Pensacola: Pensacola Bible Press, 1990), 126, 138.
  12. ^ James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1995), 109. His invective has often been ad hominem. One of Ruckman's targets has been Stewart Custer, emeritus chair of the Bible department at BJU: "By far the most shameful and shocking thing about Stewart's work is not his lying (we would expect that) and his stupidity (we take that for granted, but we will document it for the reader ); the most shocking thing was the performance of Robert Sumner (Sword of the Lord) and Bob Jones, Jr. (BJU) in actually seriously recommending" his work. Peter S. Ruckman, Custer's Last Stand (Pensacola: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1981), iii.
  13. ^ Bible Believers Bulletin (October 1992), 11.
  14. ^ Bible Baptist Bookstore
  15. ^ Peter Ruckman, Satan's Masterpiece: the New ASV (Pensacola: Pensacola Baptist Bookstore, 1972), 67.
  16. ^ WayofLife.org
  17. ^ White, 109.
  18. ^ Council for Higher Education Accreditation

[edit] Further Reading

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