Books, king james version, Preachers

Book Review (With Extra Commentary on a Variety of Things

125 Comments

Here a man gives a vigorous and detailed review of a book that changed his life: The Full Cup, the autobiography of Peter Ruckman. On a side note, I don’t know who designed the cover but it’s about as creepy as I would expect a book by Ruckman to be.

I was interested by the reviewer’s claim that the King James Bible is the “#1 book on Planet Earth.” I wonder if he knows that the majority of people on the planet don’t speak English.

125 thoughts on “Book Review (With Extra Commentary on a Variety of Things”

    1. “They don’t make men like Peter Ruckman any more.”
      Dear Lord, let it be so.

    1. Not surprising.
      Why list the KJV separately from the Bible?

      That would be like putting each edition of “Ulysses” on the list separately.

      1. Yes, but Ruckman believes the KJV is better than the original manuscripts. Yet this list clearly acknowledges the originals and snubs the KJV.

  3. Didn’t have to open his mouth, the background showed he wasn’t worth listening to.

    Then he got to Ayn Rand………

  5. At least he called a (fictional) priest a “man of God.” Nine minutes in and he has yet to discuss anything actually in the book.

  6. Ok how can this guy talk about being a Christian when he talks about being a fan of the books of Ayn Rand who was an atheist and wrote a book called “The Virtue Of Selfishness” and who once said in an interview that the weak do not deserve love. Yeah real Christ like there buddy.The sign behind him should tell you all you need to know about this Loony.

    1. While I agree with you on the selfishness thing, I do think that Christians should be able to read the writings of those who disagree with them.

      1. Sorry, I probably didn’t explain myself well.

        When someone promotes a book that makes an argument that is itself troubling, then yes, that’s an issue. However, the fact that the author isn’t a christian shouldn’t be an issue. I think that people should be able to read the works of those they disagree with. They will many times find some aspects that challenge them or encourage them even if they disagree with the main point the author is trying to get across. They certainly shouldn’t be allergic to any differing view point. If we only read the works of those we agree with, we won’t grow or learn. Does that make sense?

        1. It took an agnostic Jew to straighten out my pro-life pro-war cognitive dissonance. I thank God for using Murray Rothbard.

        2. I don’t care that Ayn Rand was an atheist.
          What I object to about her books is that they show the emotional and intellectual maturity of a 12-year-old.

        3. Tiarali–the problem with Rand is that so many on the far right claim Christianity and also promote her ideology. They aren’t just reading to broaden their horizons. You can’t promote the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Ayn Rand at the same time yet people like Paul Ryan are claiming they can.

        4. Listen folks, when I brought up that Ayn Rand was an atheist I wasn’t implying that Christians shouldn’t read atheist or non-Christian authors. I just mentioned that to add to the ridiculousness of this guy in the video who is acting like a uber Christian yet one of his favorite writers promotes being selfish and didn’t even believe in his god. Nothing more. I believe in reading everything, I have Nietzsche right beside my bible and my favorite writer is Charles Bukowski. So please don’t mistake what said as me implying Christians shouldn’t read non-Christian writers and philosophers. I just mentioned her being an atheist as a side note to this guy who claims to be a Christian but one of his heroes was a selfish asshole who didn’t even believe in his god. Nothing more.

    2. I’m a Christian and agree with some of the writings of Ayn Rand. I see the beliefs of Ayn Rand on altruism/egoism as perfectly in line with Edwardsian Calvinism. I wouldn’t endorse Ayn Rand as a person, nor would I endorse all of her ideology, but her beliefs on the will are excellent. Now, the video maker’s presentation of Ayn Rand? Not so much.

    1. Nathan, I think you’re right–he does seem to say “cry baby boner.” What the hell? Maybe Boner (or Bohner or some variation) is his last name. Or maybe his nickname. Surely that must be it. Mustn’t it?

        1. That’s true. But the Speaker pronounces his name Bayner–maybe just to preclude any unfortunate and unsettling word combinations. 😳 I have heard him called Boner, and have heard that he cries a lot, but was unaware that Cry Baby Boner was a thing. I simply MUST get up to speed politically!

        2. John Boehner does pronounce his surname “Bay-ner,” but in either English or German (he’s of German descent), there’s no way to read those letters that way. It should be “Boner.”

          He reminds me Hyancinth Bucket (“It’s pronounced bookay”), and of the family named “Outhouse” who insisted on pronouncing it “Oh THOOZ ee.”

        3. Actually, the French pronouciation of Bucket would be Boo-kay. How you get Oh-thoo-zay from Outhouse, though, I have no idea.

        4. Beth, I’m guessing you are unfamiliar with the TV series, “Keeping Up Appearances.” It’s British, about a social-climbing woman who marries a man named Bucket (pronounced “bucket”). That name is too low-brow for her, so she insists on pronouncing it “Bouquet.”

          It’s a great show. I highly recommend it. Each episode is formulaic, based on a series of running gags that somehow retain their ability to amuze and amaze.

        5. Beth is not completely off base about the series as there is an episode where Hyacinth claims that Richard’s family origins are Norman and the name is French. He, of course, indicates that that is not so and is thoroughly ignored as usual.

        6. WHO claims?

          Ah, yes. Hyacinth. The social climber. She’s a piece of work.

          The actress truly is a wonderful talent. She sings, she dances, she drives Richard out of his everloving mind…

  8. So what’s the story with Ruckman’s marriages and how in the world does fund talons justify 3!!

    1. OMG looked up Ruckman on wikipedia to see what was said about that, and found quotes by him. My goodness what a horrible racist he is.

      1. I read the same quotes. That is a stunning amount of hatred!

        But what do you expect from someone whose personal beliefs include these:

        “He believes in Unidentified Flying Objects and aliens, specifically blue aliens with blue blood, black aliens with green blood, and gray aliens with clear blood.[21] Ruckman believes the Central Intelligence Agency has implanted brain transmitters in children, old people, and African-Americans and that the agency operates underground alien breeding facilities.[22]” (from Wikipedia)

        1. My IFB churches weren’t into Ruckman, so I don’t know much about him.

          From the bits & pieces I’ve gleaned, it sounds like this guy was a certifiable strait-jacket & padded cell whack job. And people were all, “Ooh, prophet of God!” Really?

          I find the complete lack of discernment in Ruckman’s followers even more frightening than Ruckman’s appalling views. 😮

        2. Is a whack-job. Not was. As far as I know, Peter Ruckman is still alive. He’ll be 92 in November.

          Dubious as I am about the man’s supposed god-like powers, so far there’s no proof he isn’t immortal. 😕

        3. Dear BibleLover:

          ‘…Central Intelligence Agency has implanted brain transmitters in children…’

          They don’t. But they may be listening to your phone calls.

          Christian Socialist

        4. Yikes, BG! I left the hyphen out of my description of Ruckman. There is indeed a difference between a whack job & a whack-job. 😳

        5. Oh criminy, Christian Socialist, the CIA does NOT listen in to phone calls!

          ……the NSA, on the other hand….

  10. 10 1/2 minutes in, and around the 5 minute mark you really start to realize that reading has not served this guy well at all.

    Turns out a good impulse can really send your life down some bizarre rabbit holes it would seem.

    I particularly enjoyed that he’s aware of the criticism that Ruckman is a known racist, and doesn’t bother to address the clear racism, just tries to brush it aside.

  11. Those Satan-loving democrats, ruining our country and groping on our wimens at the airports. Stealing our wealth and giving it to the slackers. Stealing our freedoms. Those democrats are nothing but filthy liars and thieves . . . Say, I wonder if they’re the ones that done gone and stole the Apocrypha from the original KJV.

    Nice book review, fella. May I suggest leaving aside Rand and Ruckman and spending more time with Dostoyevsky? Father Zossima has much to teach you.

        2. Big Gary, we may, and probably do, differ in opinion on many crucial points. But since you say “Coke” to generically refer to any carbonated beverage, you are a True Man of God, and we can enjoy sweet fellowship together. I hate to admit it, but I think I had to wipe away a tear. Cry Baby Boner!

  12. Listened to the first 3 minutes — he hasn’t said anything other than complain and whine!

    1. Oh, it gets better. He bitches a while longer, then goes all ga-ga over Ruckman. After a few minutes of that, the chicken timer goes off and he abruptly gets up and walks off. It’s a very engaging 14 minutes, I think. I am enriched and ennobled by watching it until the end. Definitely makes me want to get the book!

        1. Now I want to get one!
          That chicken comes off as having more sense than this rambler. 😀

        3. I shouldn’t have given the ending away–now there’s no reason for you to watch the whole thing. At any rate, it’s never good manners to touch your chicken in public.

        4. Oh, I’ll still watch the whole thing tonight with my husband — he’ll get a kick out of the magical chicken!

        5. Dear Dragonwing14:

          Isn’t it obvious?

          The chicken receives messages from the spirit world.
          Our friend here touches the chicken.
          The chicken channels spirit messages to our friend.
          Our friend tells us what the chicken says it heard.

          Christian Socialist

          PS: Mr. Ruckman swears that the chicken’s messages are finger-lickin’ good.

        6. Ahhh! So instead of staring into a globe, we are supposed to stare at and rub the chicken! 😆

  13. Tiarali, I was just trying to point out something about this guy who claims to be a Christian and yet one of his heroes is Ayn Rand. As a Christian myself I read many authors who were atheist, I mean I have Nietzsche right next to the bible on my shelf. I was just trying to point out the irony of this uber fundi King James only Baptist loving Ayn Rand. Nothing more.

    1. It’s not unusual at all. A lot of current and former fundies are Randite and Paulistinian.

  14. This guy gives conservatives (like myself) a bad name. This video inadvertently reinforces the modern stereotypes of the liberal as an egg-headed academia and the conservative as a back-water doofus. Where have you gone William F Buckley?

    2. Dear Bro Bluto:

      When Wm. Buckley died, my socialist friends agreed that the US had lost its last, true conservative.

      Christian Socialist

      1. William F. Buckley was never half as smart as he thought he was, but he was a genius compared to this pundit.

      3. your friends were wrong. He was a Trotskyite. Giant government war machine or giant government social spending; it’s all giant government. Convinced government could do it all, he just wanted it to kill foreign people.

        1. I can’t call Buckley any flavor of Trotskyite, even if I bought the rest of your polemic. The guiding principle of Trotskyism was, AFAICT, continual revolution in view of Universal Socialism. He repudiated the Third International because of its pro-Soviet leanings. By your measure, he’d be more of a Stalinist – assuming that the short-term end of national strengthening was all he was interested in.
          And CS’s friends didn’t call him a libertarian, but a conservative.

        4. It’s hard to imagine the kind of bizarre world one would have to exist in to believe that William F Buckley was a Trotskyite.

        7. Dear Elijah Craig:

          You wrote: ‘Just hang around Libertarians for a while.’

          I reply: I am keeping my big, fat, ugly, stupid mouth SHUT!

          Christian Socialist

    3. You think you’re embarrassed?
      Try being a Texan, and having guys like Bro. Rudy here saying this kind of stuff in front of a huge Texas flag.

      1. Dear Big Gary:

        To say nothing of a US citizen seeing Old Glory beside a request to see the black guy’s birth certificate. And they wonder why the world thinks we’re idiots … EGAD!

        Christian Socialist … returns to gnawing rocks.

  15. Yes, that book cover is super-creepy. Isn’t Ruckman the guy who does those strange chalk drawings? Is the cover art one of Ruckman’s works?

    (When you look up “The Full Cup” title on Amazon.com, a bunch of ads for “full cup bras” pop up. Tee hee)

  16. It is interesting that he claims that it is the number 1 book on planet Earth. I’d say you have to ask Ruckman himself to find out the number 1 book in space 😉

  17. I find it interesting how he needed to justify talking and liking this book in light of the KJV. That should be a wake up call right there. If you need to proclaim your love for the KJV is over another book then you might be in a cult.

    go ask Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses—hmmm, Jeremiah 29 tells us to pray for the welfare of the nation–the pagan nation you are living in. Live your faith out but work and pray for the health of the nation you are in exile in….and if we add to that I Peter 3–give an account for you hope gently—for all the love of Scripture–they really are ignorant of Scripture.

    And then with Ayn Rand–there are so many Christians who are embracing her principles and values. Is this a symptom of the conversion mentality? You accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and then all of your personal values Christ agrees with and you don’t have to change your thinking at all.
    How do the Ayn Rand followers justify having unChristlike values of Rand?

    1. Depends on what you mean by “follower”. If you are talking about those who call themselves Objectivists or were in her inner circle while she infested this planet then you aren’t talking about people who profess Christ.
      If you are talking about people who believe she had a good angle on economics and human action, then it isn’t hard at all to profess Christ. All truth is God’s truth and where she is right, it doesn’t contradict God. As far as her glorification of selfishness, I don’t think she meant it quite like we think of it. She was referring to the fact that it is impossible to do anything that [ex ante] leaves you in a less beneficial position. For example, she meant that when you give money to the poor, you may be sacrificing money but you only do it because you value the psychological well-being you derive to be more valuable (to you)than the money you gave. You may realize that you got played by a fake homeless man or realize that you gave him the $20 for groceries instead of the $5 you intended to give him, but at the time of the act, you predicted you would get more value than you assigned to the money.
      I am not a Randian by the way.

      1. That’s actually not all Ayn Rand meant by selfishness. She said, repeatedly, that it is wrong to help weaker (as she put it) people.

        1. I don’t recall her ever saying it that bluntly.

          I think _Atlas Shrugged_ definitely makes John Galt into a Christ figure and the dollar into a holy symbol.

        3. That play is really good.
          It’s officially satirs, but from everything I’ve heard and read about Ayn Rand and her acolytes, and the films I’ve seen of her in person, that’s exactly how they acted.

        4. Rand gets far too much credit from some people. She really had few or no original ideas. Her philosophy is an un-nuanced version of Social Darwinism blended with Nietcheanism by someone who didn’t understand Nietsche very well and wrote badly.

          And yes, she did say in so many words that it is wrong (in a moral sense) to help the needy. I’m not providing any direct quotes here because that would involve re-reading some of her work, which would be considerably less fun than having root canal work done.

        5. EC – she did say it that bluntly, in an interview which I have read but do not recall. That being said, I usually do not base my evaluation of someone on a single media presentation. I think if that were her angle we would have heard more of it.

  19. There isn’t much more that can be said about Peter Ruckman. He is a cult leader. I knew a missionary to West Germany who had every single one of Ruckman’s commentaries in his library.

    What does German sound like in 18th century English?

    “You know…” “Yea…” Take a nice slow breath, man!

  20. Doesn’t the merciful priest in Les Mis do the exact opposite of what the just venerated Ayn Rand would suggest?

  21. From the comments, I’m gonna take a wild stab in the dark & guess watching this creepy, brainwashed dude for 15 minutes isn’t worth my time.

    Maybe I’ll find some slow motion footage of a train wreck, instead.

    2. I suspect that whatever they were, they currently are part of fundy fantasies everywhere, beyond the ability of human capacity to describe.

  23. This guy doesn’t believe in preservation of the saints but he also doesn’t believe in faith + works. Isn’t works how he would say you stay saved?

    1. Was wondering the same thing. I imagine he lost money due to bad timing or choices on his part. Surely, he wouldn’t be railing the system if he had invested successfully.

    2. Also, he should realize that contributing to a 401K is not “saving”, it is “investing”, which carries known risks. If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t complain when it doesn’t work out well.

  25. There is hope for this man– even he admits that Peter Ruckman is not worth a 6 hour one way trip to listen to. 😆

    1. He also admits, if you listen carefully, that Ruckman is (a) crazy, and (b) wrong on many key issues.

      1. Yes–and he gives his full and undying support for a 52 minute sermon he has never listened to. I think the best description of this fellow’s views would be “ill-formed.” Or half-baked. Maybe his hatband is too tight. (That reminds me of a saying my Papaw used to say: Tighter than Dick’s hatband. Somehow this seems appropriate.)

  26. Hmmph. Not really a book review…

    Summary:
    Ruckman’s great!
    Ruckman’s great!
    He’s wrong theologically, but that’s OK
    Ruckman’s great!
    Saving is bad
    Ruckman’s great!
    He’s been married three times, but that’s OK
    Ruckman’s great!
    I cried.
    Ruckman’s great!

    Nothing about the book; I was hoping that there would be something.

  29. I’ve read the book. It’s interesting. You can learn a lot of background about the early days of the Horton’s ministry in Pensacola, the Pyle brothers, Brent Lane Baptist, and the ties to Bob Jones. Granted it’s all from his point of view but it’s interesting.

    I honestly believe he understands textual issues far better than any other Fundamentalist. It’s just that he’s verbally abusive and committed to the idea that the 1611 is divinely inspired, partly for psychological reasons (probably a desire for certainty).

    1. And there’s always the motivating factor that you’ve built your career around a lie, there’s not a whole lot of options of backing out if and when you realize it’s a lie.

  30. The Full Cup (Amazon)

    Customers viewing this page may be interested in these sponsored links:

    Full Cup Sexy & Comfortable Bras Your Style, Your Size. Shop Today!

    1. Hey, thanks! It’s hard to find full cup bras that are both sexy AND comfortable.

  32. “His integrity is off the charts.”

    Where can I find me one of these so-called integrity charts?

  33. I can’t believe he actually read any of these other books…that’s against the fundy code. Can’t read anything that’s not approved by the “managawd”! Does he even know what he’s saying? Ugh…my ears are bleeding and this is one more example of what I left the IFB movement. My family and I have never been happier! (And I’m amazed at how many people I know personally are featured on here!)

  34. Peter Ruckman inspires the speaker to go work out. A fundy preacher inspiring physical fitness. It is novel, you have to admit that.

  35. I went to college with a fellow whose last name was Aenis. Although he declared up and down it was pronounced, “Ehnus,” we didn’t care…all the guys called him, “Anus,” and even quit using his first name!

  36. As for Ruckman…
    You should look into his views on abortion. He believes that, though a fetus is animate, it is not a “living soul.” His proof text is Genesis 2:7 KJV

    And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

  37. Ruckman is also an ultra-dispensationalist.
    He believes there have been multiple salvation plans throughout history (almost all of which include “works for salvation”). The only era that doesn’t require works or martyrdom for salvation is the current “Age of Grace.”
    He believes Peter was not preaching NT christianity in Acts 2, but a mixture of judaism and christianity.
    He believes that the teachings of Jesus are not for the “Church Age” but are to be followed to a T during the Millennial Reign of Christ to ensure one’s acceptance into the eternal kingdom.
    I could go on and on with his weird teachings and some if the even weirder teachings of his Bible institute graduates, but I think anyone can draw a clear picture from this and other posts.
    Oh yeah, and he does believe in aliens, but they are either demons in bodily form or the offspring of demons and humans.
    He believes that when the rapture occurs, every believer will leave behind a puddle of flesh and blood, because Jesus said, “Flesh and blood shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Comments are closed.