Paul Cohen – After the Path of Truth

In May 2017, Victor Hafichuk (who established and runs the Path of Truth online Ministries website and community) gave his long-term 2IC, Paul Cohen the boot/chop. In this post I analyse the position that Paul will be in having serious egg on face and essentially needing to rebuild his reputation. It’s a common position that fallen spiritual leaders find themselves in and while I have to guess at some of the specifics in Paul’s case, the principles are clear and important.

So what happened?

Basically, Paul got a little too cocky and his boss called him out on it. Things like this always have two sides to them – Putting it crudely, Victor is one to control and Paul lacks humility, although he did stand by his ‘partner in crime’ for many years. Victor has disciplined Paul physically in the past (somewhat unusual for an adult on adult except in the bedroom, I would say!) but Paul’s sexual and amorous indiscretions; bad attitudes towards his leader and probably a few money things too are no doubt all intertwined with the cess-pit of interpersonal relationships, something that Victor Hafichuk has always struggled with.

The bottom line is that Paul was found out by people who gossiped back to Victor and then he saw red giving Paul the chop – and doing it in public. A lot of Victor’s anger will probably be as a result of his blaming himself for not knowing what was happening under his nose and I’ve previously shared at how hurt the Path of Truth leader is as a result of the breach of trust. Betrayal of any sort though stinks and the grief will take a long time to heal. Nobody, least of all Paul or Victor can get over this sort of thing in the click of your fingers. Even if one party, or even both parties does the right thing and they kiss and make up, the resentments and mistrust will always be there lurking in the background.

Sure the air will be a little clearer now with less corruption possible with less people involved but this will have huge ramifications for both men and all involved in the ministry.

Paul Cohen

Paul is a Jew. I’ve never really bothered to mention it much, as to me it’s unimportant who somebody is – Jew, Pygmy, Maori or Pakeha it matters not to me – except in understanding the key issue in my scrap with him. My exposure of his hypocrisy and failure of logic started with the matter of validating the Six Million figure in the so-called Holocaust. This is an ultra touchy subject to the Jews of course and Paul was no exception, raising the issue of “rampant anti-Semitism” when all I wanted to do was see his validation of the unproven and unprovable Six Million figure. To me when you say that the Six Million figure is proven by totally figures A+B+C and then suddenly the proof changes to D+E+F but the Six Million still remains, this is a failure in logic and one of the sure signs of a porky being told.

As a general rule, Jews don’t see things like that with an open mind like I have so things deteriorated pretty quickly between us. He (and later Victor) responded defensively and I carried the cross of logic and fact into a fiery end of relationship event best described by the PoT telling me to go to Hell! It seems like now it’s Paul’s turn to cop the “Go to Hell” treatment from Victor.

Paul is and always has been a gifted man with words. He has a high intellect and prodigious work output. His loss to PoT will decimate Victor’s ministry but Paul has an even more serious problem if Victor has chopped him off. What to do now? What to say now? He’s found out to be a fraud so how can he ever stand up as anyone with credibility again?

All those who knew him for one thing, supposedly a strong good man and righteous in the PoT camp, Jesus on his side and all that, will now know him for another less noble conduct and that shame will cut his future words down to size.

This then is the very nature of Paul’s failing. He is not in the poo because he failed his boss . . . he has egg on face because he set himself up for a fall – judging others, which is the heart of my blogging and analysis of the Path of Truth pain-machine. Paul Cohen was not entirely wrong in what he said to others over the years, but he DID puff himself up with delusions of grandeur. Being right was not his problem . . . it was that he rubbed others noses in it in the process of dealing to others.

Of all the people in the Path of Truth operations over the years, it is Paul whom I can ping as having the most caustic, aggressive and condescending approach to others. The way I look at it, it’s as if God has just let Paul make a fool of himself letting him ride along merrily until – poof, it’s all out in the open, and the nasty man is exposed and [probably] falls.

I can tell you that there will be a lot of people who will enjoy the spectacle too. Paul too will know that there are many who will savour news of his fall from grace. It will hurt!

My Advice

Paul is not likely to want to listen to me – after all he’s the one who has cast me off in a hissy-fit of venom but I think he should, for the seeds of his downfall are clear in my past expose of his conduct. Indeed such a bust-up and revelation could even have been expected/predicted.

Let’s just recap, leaving Victor’s contribution out of it for the moment, what happened between Paul and me as just one of the hundreds if not thousands of others whom Paul has engaged with.

1. I sought validation of the Six Million figure that Paul Cohen had used in an article.
2. Paul got all huffetty and flew off the deep end and attacked me. His response was illogical, emotional, extremely judgmental and to impartial observers he made a right royal fool of himself ignoring pure logic.
3. I have continued blogging to this effect without pause or change.
4. Now Paul has gotten fired and his hypocrisy is revealed – all the while he was talking the talk but he wasn’t walking the walk.

I take serious issue with those who write Path of Truth off carte blanche as a cult and a non-Christian ministry and the reason for this is that while Victor and Paul are hugely problematical in how they express their teachings (they can be grossly vicious and ultra-judgmental in their condemnation of others) their ministry is essentially a theological one. They hold to strong theological positions I think best summarised as an eclectic collection of fringe theologies and they present it very well.

Christians are all too ready and willing to write others off who don’t concur with every little nuance of faith. Chief among these is the Catholic/Protestant divide and then within each divide there are many more theological disagreements. Theology was NEVER the central message of Christ. Relationship was. Building relationship with others and restoring it with the Creator due to the events of the Fall.

Oh, oh, oh if only Paul and Victor could see the supreme importance of taking their teaching to the people through building relationship, rather than hammering them with theology, things would have been so very different for them!

Introspection

Paul will have some good times now for some serious navel gazing. He will be finding that despite the depression of being exposed as a hypocrite and the public humiliation of what has happened to him, that indeed the Lord still loves Him and that little things like being right all the time, and having to sort others out every minute of the day are less important than actually loving people and not judging them. Should he grow through this grieving process, mature and learn, then he could actually make a real difference in the world.

Oh and while he is doing the introspection thing he should spend a little time researching the Holocaust thing. He’ll get a bit of a surprise if he does and it won’t go down very well with his relatives but the truth is the truth. Hopefully he does some basic research and realises how much he’s been had by some of his own people over the years.

I’m not really interested in what he did or didn’t do to p*ss Victor off. I’m not really that bothered even by what he’s said to so many people over the years. His historical arrogance and nastiness can be water under the bridge if he does the right thing moving forward. I hope he does and that he learns what many others have had to – that there is Life after Path of Truth.

Here is an email or Testimony that I’d want to see from him one day if he did work through the whole thing to maturity.

Dennis, you were right and I’ve been able to learn from the whole Path of Truth thing. The way that you treat people is just as important as what you say, perhaps even more important. When I was with Victor, we hit the truth thing so hard that we missed the love thing. I didn’t like it when he hauled me over the coals but it was the best thing for us all and I’ve gotten over it. I still think that theology is important, but Jesus showed us that there’s more to life than just being right, didn’t he?

I always thought that you were up-yourself and that you had a bad attitude over the Holocaust, but when I humbled myself, sat down, did the research and looked at it all objectively, you’re right. There are real questions aren’t there?

And if he wanted to slip a little thank you in there for not kicking him when he was down, or for standing up to him when he was in full flight, then that would be honourable too!

And now?

When people are nasty to you, it’s very easy to respond in like kind. Paul Cohen is far from perfect and like all who have fallen probably deserves all that is coming to him. The natural reaction is to argue; to defend; to attack those who cause us pain. I hope that Paul will learn from this experience and tone down his aggression towards those whom he encounters in the future.

I conclude with a word to those whom Paul has hurt over the years. There are many of you. With his shaming and demise the heat is now on you. What will you do in response to his rejection by his leader? Now it’s your turn to deal with the problem constructively. Will you turn the other cheek or put the boot in?

Thanks for swinging by today – a challenging subject and a tricky post to write! Hope you enjoyed it.