Again and again I am attacked because it is said that the use of a pseudonym shows that I am a deceitful person and therefore a false prophet.
A little research on this subject, however, shows a very different result:
In the chapter titled “A Great Religious Awakening” in “The Great Controversy” we find praise for a man who, like me, used a “code name,” but that did not make him a “false prophet”:
In South America, in the midst of barbarism and priest-craft, Lacunza, a Spaniard and a Jesuit, found his way to the Scriptures and thus received the truth of Christ’s speedy return. Impelled to give the warning, yet desiring to escape the censures of Rome, he published his views under the assumed name of “Rabbi Ben-Ezra,” representing himself as a converted Jew. Lacunza lived in the eighteenth century, but it was about 1825 that his book, having found its way to London, was translated into the English language. Its publication served to deepen the interest already awakening in England in the subject of the second advent. {GC 363.1}
Ellen G. White wrote a whole chapter (Chapter 12 - The French Reformation) in “The Great Controversy” about John Calvin, the great reformer, who also used several pseudonyms:
Calvin fled first to Angoulême to his former classmate Louis du Tillet, who had become a priest and prebendary at the city’s cathedral, and hid himself under the pseudonym “Charles d’Espeville”. In April 1534 he went briefly to his hometown of Noyon, and officially returned his sinecures. From there he went to the small court of Margaret of Navarre at Nerac. Here, other reformative thinking individuals had meanwhile found refuge, so Gérard Roussel and the humanist and Luther expert Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (alias “Faber Stapulensis”), translator of the Latin Bible (Vulgate) into French and formerly the center of a Reformation-minded circle in Paris. (Wikipedia) [translated]
For John Calvin, the followers of the Reformation are the defenders of the true church. Since the French king in France persecuted and executed the “Luthériens”, as the Protestants were called in France at this time, Calvin fled early 1535 to Protestant Basel. Here he lived quietly in exile in Switzerland. Under the code name Martinus Lucanius he devoted himself entirely to the study of theological writings. (Deutschlandfunk.de, Fearing God and Education by the Church) [translated]
And now an amazing fact especially for the German critics and defamers: Martin Luther himself translated the Bible into German under a pseudonym:
Exile in the Wartburg
The ruler of Luther’s country, Frederick the Wise, impeded the execution of the imperial ban by letting Luther get kidnapped in a mock attack, bringing him to safety on the Wartburg. Under the code name “Junker Jörg”, Luther there translated the New Testament into German in 13 weeks (language of the Bohemian-Saxon State Chancellery). The translation of the Bible, which - in this case is rightly regarded as the birth of a unified German language, was a cultural feat of which the intellectual and historical significance cannot be overestimated. Using the newly invented printing press, the Bible was quickly circulated and turned into a real “book for all homes”. It was followed by the Old Testament in 1534. He also wrote pamphlets against the monastic vows, which led to the abandonment of a number of monasteries. (Kathpedia, Martin Luther) [translated]
Therefore, the use of pseudonyms has nothing to do with a deceitful character or a sign of a false prophet, but with common sense and legitimate self-protection in times of persecution.
And one more clarification:
John = Johannes = my real middle name
Scotram = Schottenhammel = my real birth name, which was later changed by my stepfather to his last name with perjury about ten months after I was born. My stepfather lied knowingly, by masquerading as my biological father for over 40 years. Just before the name “Scotram” was used, this lie was exposed by a legal DNA test.
So, if I don’t do anything else with the use of a pseudonym, like other honorable reformers, then how do we understand this kind of rabble-rousing propaganda that is written against me? Of course, if you can’t bring anything but hot air against the message (see letter from Gerhard Pfandl as BRI representative), and the shot only scores a goal for the opponent, then you can only resort to attacking the character of the messenger. But it goes even further...
In the last letters which are circulating in the church, now my passport name is also exposed. This was done against my express will that I wrote in my author profile and in some articles, so that my family and I would not be exposed to physical attacks or persecution on my farm in Paraguay. My former “brethren” like Gerhard Pfandl and District Pastor Harald Wöhner knowingly uncovered my “little protection” that I asked for and have declared “open season” on me. Since the message is an inconvenient truth for them, they hope that soon, other “brethren” will be found among the Jesuits or Adventists (which are actually the same thing) that would not only shut my mouth but shut my eyes and bury me six feet under. What a dirty fight is now raging around those who are to carry the truth to the world! And “educated” theologians do not even know that God wrote in the Bible: “Thou shalt not kill!”
Slander, exclusion, and speech bans are now the daily agenda of the Adventist Church, whose door of grace as an organization is completely closed. Following Hugo Gambetta in the U.S., now Walter Veith has been especially attacked in Germany. Amazing Discoveries is under heavy fire for the supposed anti-Semitic charges against Walter Veith and it should not be long until these brethren are finally personally experiencing that the fifth seal has started to repeat. Will they then still remain blind to the message which the voice of God announces from Orion and that Jesus Himself wrote again in the Jewish feast days, and knowingly bring the entire universe and God Himself into danger? Or will they wake up now and be among those who have already received the Spirit in the latter rain?
We who stand for the truth have no fear of physical or psychological persecution by the minions of Satan; no, we glory in it like the apostle Paul, knowing that we can do all things through the power of Jesus, who will accompany us to the end. May the persecutors tremble in expectation before the judgment of the living. But you who have not yet bowed the knee to Baal, watch out, lest they take away your eternal life, ensnaring you with their web of lies!
