So sad and sickening

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ReformedWretch

ReformedWretch

Puritan Board Doctor
Look at this nonsense! This is what happens when you just download a sermon.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMdnMfM6d8]YouTube - Plagiarism Squared[/ame]
 
Plagiarism? Nah, it is the just the Holy Spirit speaking truth to two different men.

At least that is what 'Dad' Hagin said when confronted with his often word for word plagiarism of E.W. Kenyon.
 
I wonder if these two guys have heard of the internet and that there are a whole lot people that use it.
 
From "Toplady and his Ministry" by Ryle

An anecdote related by Toplady himself deserves repetition, as a curious illustration of the habits of clergymen at the time when he was ordained, and his superiority to the habits of his contemporaries. He says: "I was buying some books in the spring of 1762, a month or two before I was ordained, from a very respectable London bookseller. After the business was over, he took me to the furthest end of his long shop, and said in a low voice, 'Sir, you will soon be ordained, and I suppose you have not laid in a very great stock of sermons. I can supply you with as many sets as you please, all original, very excellent ones, and they will come for a trifle.' My answer was: "I certainly shall never be a customer to you in that way; for I am of the opinion that the man who cannot, or will not make his own sermons, is quite unfit to wear the gown. How could you think of my buying ready-made sermons? I would much sooner buy ready-made clothes." His answer shocked me. 'Nay, young gentleman, do not be surprised at my offering you ready-made sermons, for I assure you I have sold ready-made sermons to many a bishop in my time.' My reply was: 'My good sir, if you have any concern for the credit of the Church of England, never tell that news to anybody else hence- forward for ever."
Click to expand...
 
Well, it wasn't just that they copied sermons. Each one apparently passed it off as his own personal experience.
 
Many good volumes (and maybe some not so good) on preaching will contain an anecdote regarding the stealing of sermons. W.E. Sangster wrote the following:

"Plagiarism is a nasty sin. It would be nasty in anybody, but it is doubly nasty in a preacher. What kind of ethical sensitivity has a man who takes somebody else's work and passes it off as his own? From a man set apart to divie the word of truth it is dishonorable indeed.

The heartiness of our condemnation makes it necessary, however, to be plain what we mean by "plagiarism." A man is clearly no plagiarist (literally, abductor, kidnapper) who takes a sermon and tells his congregation from whose volume he has taken it. No congregation of author would resent that on rare occasions, especially if the sermon expounded some difficult theme, and the preacher felt unequal to the subject himself. Nor is a man a plagiarist who seeks stimulation for his mind from the work of other men. In that sense of the word Shakespeare would be a plagiarist. So many of his stories are borrowed; the lustrous garments are all his own. To cut a piece of cloth off another man's roll is not, I think, a sin in literature of [sic] homiletics, but to steal the suit that he has made and parade it as one's own is plain theft. The robber might as well have put his hand in our pocket and taken our purse.

Years ago I was on holiday at Tighnabruaich in the lovely Kyles of Bute. I went to worship on the Sunday evening and sat under the ministrations of a visiting preacher. When he announced his text, I was arrested at once, having preached on the same text myself two or three weeks before. I was still more arrested when he began with a flat contradiction of the text -- as I began myself. Word for word my sermon came out out -- just as it had appeared in a verbatim report from a religious journal which had published it without permission. The central illustration was a personal experience of mine. He gave it as his own. My children sitting beside me in the pew remembered the sermon and looked at me in astonishment. I blushed for the cloth. If I had been preaching in the pulpit a week later and had repeated my sermon, I should have been suspected of plagiarism.

But that salutary experience taught me something else. Nobody can steal like that and really make it his own. The whole thing lacked a certain conviction. It wasn't his! The experience he was describing had not been beaten out in his own life, and he said things I had learned in sorrow as though he was mildly inquiring of someone's cold in the head. On his lips that message did not do the work it was made to do. He was not behind it. If there were no ethics involved in plagiarism, it would still be a thing to avoid. One secret of power in preaching is to know the truth of what you are saying and believe it utterly. There are senses in which everyone can say with Paul, "my gospel," for there is something of himself in every message the preacher honestly prepares. You are false, and you feel false, when you steal another man's message and offer it as your own."

W.E Sangster, The Craft of Sermon Construction, pp. 199-201​
 
I'm no preacher but, this is elementary stuff. I was taught of the evils of plagiarism in primary school. And I went to "gubment" schools.
 
Fourscore and seven years ago . . .

No . . . I mean . . .

Friends, Romans, lend me your ears . . .

No . . . I mean . . .

We have nothing to fear but fear itself . . .

No . . . I mean . . .

Ask not what your country can do for you . . .

No . . . I mean . . .

God is good . . . all the time. All the time . . . God is good.

With 14 gazillion preachers all buying Rick Warren sermons every week, I'm just surprised that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. I agree that the problem is passing off a personal anecdote as one's own life experience.

It is a little pedantic, however, to try to "footnote" a sermon, particularly when you use lots of source material. I have generally introduced someone else's life experience by saying, "John Piper tells the story . . .," "this week I was listening to John MacArthur . . .," or "I love the way R.C. Sproul puts this truth when he said . . ."
 
Plagiarism is lying--a violation of the 9th commandment. However, these clowns were not content with borrowing inappropriately (without giving due credit), but actually deliberately passing off the content as if it happened to themselves.
 
It's not clear to me which one was the plagiarist.

The second/better looking guy was Craig Groeschel (pastor of Life Church), by the way. No idea who the first one was.
 
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