"I don't know if his wives were even faithful"
Doesn't really matter. Perhaps you can claim him to be Bible scholar but he he fails the pastor test on the basis of have a number of wives greater than 1.
I thought we settled this. Yes it does. If you isolate pastors from the Biblical grounds for divorce, you
must argue in defense of the notion that every pastor in history past, present, and future who has a wife who cheated on them must be forced to stay with that wife for the rest of his life.
You cannot avoid this if you take your position. I disagree. I believe whoever it is, pastor or non-pastor, if they have a wife who cheats on them they are allowed to divorce her.
Also, the verse says he must be "the husband of one wife". He was. He was not married to 2 wives at a time, he was married to 1
and then (you don't know for certain, it's not really your business)
if his wife either cheated
or lost her faith, that is grounds to let her depart or divorce her biblically.
Then, (you don't know for certain, it's not really your business)
if his wife failed faithful, he
afterward became the husband of one wife with his next wife. And repeat a final time.
Ruckman was never the husband of more than one wife at a time, neither the does Bible specify 1 wife TOTAL to conclude a man cannot be remarried after divorcing an unfaithful wife.
You are wrong, and the longer you avoid the above 2 arguments, the more it proves it. Study logic.
1. Racist views
2. Admitted to be abusive to his wife (maybe he's not the innocent victim he's made out to be in his divorces?)
3. Taught speculation as Biblical truth
4. Crazy views of KJV being more inspired than the original manuscripts
Let me be unbiased and extremely generous to you all-or-nothing, black-and-white, us-versus-everyone-who-looks-slightly-different critics (unlike some amateurs in this forum are). First of all, I'm not a Ruckmanite. I simply use sound logic and reasoning in cohesion with a complete understanding of the various doctrinal camps to place Ruckman on a
fair scale
doctrinally (King David committed adultery and murdered the woman's husband, I'm sure you've read his Psalms and call them scripture:
doctrine > a man's sinful old man). Even if we give you all 4 of these points (and some of them are too generalized to be accurate) it wouldn't change the fact that Ruckman was right on incredibly important things that had a major impact on what I believe is the final leg of Dispensationalism: UGC.
Ruckman took a balanced view in between Mid-Acts Dispensationalists (often referred to as "Hypers") and Classical Dispensationalists. In UGC's view, he was correct in identifying Tribulational application for the book of Hebrews in particular, which is something we do believe Classical Dispens got wrong: even the most highly regarded Classic Dispen Seminary in the world: Dallas Theological Seminary (the late Dr. Ryrie) has 4 different interpretations of difficult passages in Hebrews because they did not rightly divide it like Ruckman. Hypers
overdivided entire books in the General Epistle line outside the Pauline Epistles away from the church, some of them even dividing Paul's prison epistles.
And in case you didn't know: Mid-Acts guys believe in faith-works for the Tribulation as well. Stam, Bullinger, etc. etc. Herp derp. Anyone who attributes this to Ruckman is an unlearned amateur. UGC actually takes the most balanced AND accurate position that is in between Classic Dispens and Ruckman Dispens (so even further back toward Classical in the other direction from Hyper, while still understanding Hypers and especially Ruckman were not wrong on EVERYTHING; there's a saying: when two intelligent people disagree, the answer can sometimes be found somewhere in the middle: in this case it happened to be true).
UGC will be revealing Complete Dispensationalism soon: we believe Ruckman and Mid-Acts were partially right and partially wrong in their
definition of faith-works for the Trib.
