Ravi Zacharias: The Man Who Answered Life’s Deepest Questions Leaves Us Wondering... - Part 2

Ravi Zacharias, the man who answered life's deepest questions, leaves us wondering about the biggest one. Today is part two of two of this topic right here on the Christian Reel of Your Radio program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, thank you for joining us in this part two of our topic series on the fall of Ravi Zacharias. Now, the word sordid, which is defined as morally ignoble or dirty, is a tragic but appropriate way to describe the story of Ravi Zacharias, one of the world's most well-known evangelical leaders and influencers. Zacharias founded and presided over a large ministry bearing his own name with upwards of $25 million in annual revenue that was devoted to apologetics or defending the Christian faith. He authored over 30 books and was the keynote speaker at major events all over the world, including many non-Christian venues as well in higher education and in government.

Now, when Zacharias died last year of cancer at the age of 70, people mourned all over the world. But in the subsequent months, when allegations of widespread sexual impropriety and even criminality surfaced, which were confirmed by an independent investigation by the ministry itself, mourning turned to shock and disgust. Now, last week in part one, we discussed Ravi Zacharias's extensive background leading up to the allegations. I think it's important to understand about who he is and how he came to be the person that was so well known in Christian apologetics. This week in part two, we're going to discuss how could this happen to such a prominent Christian teacher.

Now, if you missed the program last week, here's just a very quick review. We first answered the question, should we even be discussing this? And the answer is yes, I believe. The Bible details sin, even great sin, of many of its characters. There is the example of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, getting drunk and impregnating his daughters. And a couple of sharp listeners pointed out the fact that I mentioned that was Noah who did that. Noah did get drunk, and it was his sons who saw his nakedness, but it was Lot who got drunk and impregnated his own daughter.

So I want to make sure I made that correction. The example of David, King David, a man after God's own heart, committing adultery and murder of Bathsheba's husband, Peter's betrayal of Christ. So you look at Scripture, and Scripture doesn't hide the great sins of some of its great leaders, and you wonder why. Well, because I think they're supposed to be examples for us. When we hear about them, they hear about their stories, we should fear that if some of the great characters of Scripture fell, well, there's that possibility within us as well. So Christians often look the other way on these kinds of things.

I don't think that's a good way to handle these kinds of things. I think we need, number one, need to discuss these things with humility. 1 Corinthians 10 says, Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. So we need to know as we discuss this that don't sit here in judgment and, oh, I would never do something like that, or I'm beyond that.

No, let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. We also need to discuss this to increase our own fear of God. That fear is something that is commanded, actually, so much in Scripture. Just one passage here, I mentioned several last week, Proverbs 16, 6, By the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil.

In other words, if you have a great reverence and awe and a literal fear of offending God and the resulting consequence, that will help keep you away from sin. I think another thing why it's helpful to discuss is that we need to know how to overcome these kinds of temptation. It says in 1 Corinthians 10 that there's no temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man. This isn't out there. Ravi Zacharias isn't the only one that's some unusual or unique temptation to him.

No, this is common to man, and then the hope comes, the promise comes, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. And we'll get into that passage a little later in the program today to find out what that means. Just to further review a little more from last week, who is Ravi Zacharias?

In case you're tuning in this week and didn't hear last week's program, who is this man? Well, he was born in India in 1946. He professed to come to saving faith in Christ at age 17. From that point on, he devoted his life to speaking for Christ. He became an internationally known speaker on Christianity. He founded RZIM, which is the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

When you think of the name Ravi Zacharias, you're talking about one of the top 10 or 15 most well-known evangelicals in the world. And then we closed last week saying that he died of cancer in May 2020. He had a really difficult form of cancer that took his life quickly. He was from Atlanta, where his ministry was located, and it was really big news when he got cancer and died so shortly thereafter. But then after his death, things began to surface about Ravi Zacharias that all of a sudden changed the complete perspective and perception of him.

This is from Wikipedia. A Canadian woman named Laurie Ann Thompson and her husband, they sent a demand letter to Zacharias requiring him to pay $5 million in exchange for them refraining from filing a lawsuit that would have accused Zacharias of impropriety involving an exchange of text messages between Laurie Ann Thompson and Zacharias. She had texted nude photos of herself to Zacharias. There was a settlement, apparently. It was settled in November 2017. Zacharias denied being wrongfully involved with her.

He said he'd been absolutely faithful to his own wife, that he failed to exercise wise caution and to protect himself from even the appearance of impropriety. So there was that in the background, and that raised some eyebrows at the particular time, but it seemed to be someone who was trying to extort Ravi Zacharias and get money out of them based on some false allegation. Well, it turned out not to be false. It turned out to be true.

That was the first tremor back in 2017 of what turned out to be a terrible earthquake as the end of the year came in 2020. Then this investigation came out just earlier this month. So in light of all this, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries hired an investigative firm named Miller & Martin. They just recently released a 12-page report on their investigation of Ravi Zacharias. You can read this online. It's pretty widely available. Now, in that report, there is much not to be read on Christian Radio.

So I'm just going to give a sampling today in the program. They're all going to be direct quotes from the report. This is public information. Again, this is not hearsay.

This is a widespread, deep investigation they did of all these allegations that came in against Ravi Zacharias. And frankly, it's quite painful to read. It's sickening to read, actually.

It's shocking to read. But again, ignoring it or looking away is not what the Bible does in instances like this. There is the passage of Scripture. It's a shame to speak about those things done by them in secret. So in light of that, and in light of the fact that the Bible does describe some of the sin of its prominent characters, I'll try to be as explicit as the Bible is in situations like this.

No more explicit, but no less explicit as well. But just to briefly summarize the report, there is a combination of consensual, coercive, and criminal, yes, criminal sexual activity by Ravi Zacharias. And I believe that if he were alive today, he would likely be arrested and prosecuted for the widespread nature of his, I guess you could only call it predatory sexual behavior. The report says, we reviewed Mr. Zacharias's electronic devices and found evidence of text and email-based relationships with women who were not his wife, as well as over 200 selfie-style photographs of women. So women took selfies of themselves and were sending them to Ravi Zacharias.

There were over 200 massage therapist contacts in Mr. Zacharias's phones, including many from overseas. Five therapists reported that he touched or rubbed them inappropriately. Again, I'm keeping out some of the more graphic revelations in this report. Only one of the witnesses we interviewed, this is from the report, said that Mr. Zacharias engaged in sexual intercourse. This witness reported details of many encounters over a period of years that she described as rape.

There's the criminal aspect of this. She reported that after he arranged for the ministry to provide her with financial support, he required sex from her. According to this witness, Mr. Zacharias used religious expressions to gain compliance as she was raised to be a person of faith. She reported that he made her pray with him to thank God for the, quote, opportunity they both received. She said he called her his, quote, reward for living a life of service to God, and he referenced the, quote, godly men in the Bible with more than one wife.

She said he warned her not to ever speak out against him or she would be responsible for the, quote, millions of souls whose salvation would be lost if his reputation was damaged, unquote. The report goes on to say the four phones that Mr. Zacharias used and that RZIM provided to us for this investigation also provided significant, compelling evidence. For example, in the notes application, Mr. Zacharias kept translations of certain words and phrases in Thai and in Mandarin, because he used to go to the Southeast Asia quite a bit. The Thai phrases included, quote, I miss you so much. I want to see your face. Again, I'm leaving out a lot here.

I'd like to have a beautiful memory with you. Skipping much further down here. In addition to communications, Mr. Zacharias's phones contained over 200 photographs of women much younger than him, including six of Laurie Ann Thompson. She was the Canadian woman where the first allegations surfaced several years ago. And dozens of photographs he took of himself.

Again, skipping down a little more here. In addition to finding alone time when he traveled with others, Mr. Zacharias traveled alone to Bangkok and other parts of Southeast Asia for substantial periods of time. RZIM staff described these trips as, quote, writing trips where he would work on his latest book.

On such trips, he would stay for days and sometimes weeks alone. According to a text message to a Thai masseuse in February 2016, he spent his days writing and his nights receiving massage, quote, treatments. Several RZIM staff reported to us his shifting narrative. OK, this is where they started to confront him on that questions about what he was doing as emails and other relevant facts were publicly leaked and he was forced to explain them.

Rather than fostering an environment of truth seeking and transparency, here's the cover up and the deceit. Mr. Zacharias was strident and inflammatory. He described his critics as nasty people and, quote, lunatics who were engaging in, quote, satanic type slander and falsehood. Two high level staff from RZIM approached him directly asking for the phone records since he claimed they would prove exculpatory. Both of these staff members told us Mr. Zacharias responded to this request with rage and threatened to resign from the organization. So it's very clear from this report and there's a little more to go here that there were people inside RZIM, even high level people that were approaching Ravi Zacharias about these allegations and they weren't getting straight answers. They were getting a lot of angry retort to questions about what was going on. Several RZIM staff reported to us that they were concerned about Mr. Zacharias's traveling with a personal masseuse, not because they feared actual impropriety, but because they feared the appearance of impropriety.

Well, good for them for thinking that. Finally, Wikipedia concludes the board of RZIM stated it was shocked and grieved by Ravi's actions. After this report came out and apologized to his victims here to this quote, words cannot come close to expressing the sorrow that we feel for what you have been through or the gratitude we feel for the bravery with which you have responded. So what can one say to all that? And there's more. There's much more that I didn't even read. Ravi Zacharias, the famed Christian apologist, was an unrepentant adulterer and deceiver in thought and deed.

Now, I know that's hard to sink in to really comprehend, to process, if you're like me and heard him on the radio and heard him speak and knew about his books and so forth. But there's no other conclusion that can be made than that. He harmed these women's lives.

I know some of them may have been consensual, but some was clearly coercive and some was potentially criminal as well. He harmed their lives. He harmed, obviously, his wife. You can't even imagine what she must be going through, their children. His ministry, of course, is in complete shambles, likely going to be disbanded probably in some ways.

Who knows what's going to happen there? And Christians themselves, people who followed Ravi Zacharias, learned from him, obviously are completely, probably many of them, just disillusioned about, who is this man that I was following? He was living a double life, a secret life. I mean, he shamed and disqualified himself. But the greatest offense above all these things, of whom he harmed, more even than the women and his own wife and family and the ministry and Christians who listened to him, the greatest offense that any of us can do is to bring shame to the name of Jesus Christ or to God himself. You recall what the prophet Nathan said to King David when he confronted him after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Bathsheba's husband Uriah. He said this line, which should be emblazoned across our mind when we're tempted to sin, he said to David, you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. That's from 2 Samuel chapter 12, and it's absolutely the case. When we sin, we give occasion to non-believers or the enemies of the cross to blaspheme the name of Christ.

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Now, back to today's program with host, David Wheaton. So one question that immediately comes to mind is, how could this happen? Someone who is so prominent, someone who is studying the word of God and speaking about Christianity by day, and then by night he's sinning or acting in abject rebellion, and then the cover-up afterwards, the deceiving and the rationalizing about it.

How can that be? Well, the answer to that comes directly from Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Who can understand it? I heard someone say one time, the human mind can rationalize any sin, and that's absolutely the truth. And so you look at this and you realize how wicked and how sinful our human hearts can be and are. There's been so many examples of these kinds of things in the past, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised when it happens, but I think we always are to a certain standpoint, especially when it's from a highly respected Christian leader. Think about the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Hager. Remember, he had to resign years ago after a sexual scandal. Or Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University resigned or was let go, I think it was, not too long ago after some sexual impropriety from him or his wife or something there. Carl Lentz, the pastor of Hillsong in New York, recently was let go after committing adultery. Another one that you may have not heard of, a man, Art Azurdia. I remember he was a speaker at the Shepherd's Conference that I attend most every year, and I had heard him speak that year, and he's an excellent preacher. But within a few months after the conference, all of a sudden it came out that he was involved in an adulterous relationship, and it's just a shock. Now, there will be more in the future.

This isn't going to be the last, and Ravi Zacharias isn't going to be the last name on the list. But the question goes back to, how can a respected Christian leader be studying the word, preaching about the faith publicly, and then be hypocritically living in denial of it privately? I think that's the hard thing to understand. The sexual drive is one of the most powerful human desires. God gives us the sexual drive to be used in ways that honor Him, whether it's the intimacy and unity of the marital relationship for procreation, having children, advancing the continuing of the human race. So, sex is a beautiful gift when used as God intends it to be used and as He commands it to be used.

This is not a dirty thing, but it becomes dirty, becomes perverse, when it's used in a way that God never intended and doesn't command it to be used. You read in 1 John chapter 2, where it gives these categories, kind of the big three of temptations that we face. It says, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And I've always wondered about those three big categories, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, and what temptations or what sins do they refer to? The lust of the flesh seems to me to be temptations to please our physical appetites, and that's where the sexual drive would come in.

Or even to please our bodies with gluttony or food or so forth. There's a fleshly lust to please our physical appetites. The lust of the eyes, there's the temptation to please what we desire in life. Not so much our physical appetites, but things we desire, like gaining possessions, materialism, money, greed, those types of things is the lust of the eyes. We see things and we want those things.

And then the third category is the boastful pride of life. And I think this is the category of temptations that has to deal with gaining power or attaining position in life, or pride about who I am and where I am. Those kind of encapsulate some of the major temptations that all that is in the world, as it says in 1 John 2. Now, we expect non-believers to follow after those lusts, right? They don't have the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is given to believers at the moment of justification to help us live out the Christian life in a way pleasing to God. So we don't expect non-believers to act or to live like believers because they don't have the power inside to do so.

That's the only reason a believer can live a life honoring to God is because they have the Holy Spirit of God living within them. But when Ravi Zacharias or any Christian lives in a sinful way, a shockingly sinful way, the conclusion the world makes is that following God doesn't change you on the inside. It's just a way you're trying to live on the outside. It doesn't change the way you actually live your life. It doesn't give you victory over temptation. You're no different. You're just a hypocrite.

So why would I become a Christian? It's obvious that Ravi Zacharias lost the battle of this sexual temptation in his mind a long time ago. And that's where the battle needs to be won. When it's lost in the mind, in the thoughts, sin eventually will come out. You can't cap sin. You can't be festering lust inside your mind and not overcoming it, not repenting of it and having mastery over it. Before too long, it's going to come out in a sinful action. It says this in James 1 verse 13, Let no one say, When he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. And here's the key verse 14, But each one, each one of us is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Verse 16, it closes by saying, Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.

That's from James. Sin is conceived in our mind, and then it gives birth. Sin is birthed in our actions. And when we continue habitually in sin, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived.

It's a great way that passage ends. Don't be deceived, my beloved brethren. In other words, don't be deceived by this sequence of what starts in your mind. It becomes an action, which becomes a habit, which leads to spiritual death.

Don't be deceived by your own weakness. And I read that and I think I remember very well my own sin, my own life, back before I came to saving faith in Christ when I was 24 years old. I was a professing Christian growing up. But I remember very well in my late teens and early 20s, a time in my life when I was professing to be a follower of Christ, but dishonoring God in the way I was living my life.

And I look back at that time and shudder. And I shudder, and also in thankfulness, how God led me to repentance and see my need to be right with Him, to see my sin for what it was, offense against Him, and then lead me to saving faith in Christ as, not just my Savior, but to commit to follow Him as Lord. And then He gave me the Holy Spirit and began to help me overcome the things in my life that I previously couldn't overcome. And in the process of doing that, He increased my fear of Him, my reverence for Him, my love for Him, so that when we're tempted, we think in terms of not how can I get away with this, or how can I please myself and get away with this, but that, boy, how could I do this great evil and sin against God?

Okay, so we'll go from the how could this happen question to really the biggest question here that maybe is an unknowable question, but the fact that we even have to ask it is extremely troubling. The question is this, is this man, Ravi Zacharias, who spoke about God, eloquently about God, was he actually right with God? Was he actually born again? And the question is not how could a Christian sin, all Christians sin, but Christians, according to Scripture, don't practice sin without repentance. It's not a habitual characteristic of their life. They may sin, they may sin for a time, but then they come to confess and repent of it when they realize they've sinned against God.

And that's the question here. Was he actually saved? Because it appears that he was practicing sin. Now Ravi Zacharias understood the gospel. I want to play another soundbite here where he talks about that our greatest need in life is for forgiveness. That is really the heart of the gospel, that we're sinners, and we, our greatest need is forgiveness from the God who created us. That will be our just judge someday, and that forgiveness can only be given through the person and the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

Here's Ravi Zacharias. The heart of the Christian message is this unique thing we call forgiveness. At the heart of the message is this unique thing we call forgiveness. I dare you to look at any other worldview.

I don't even need to name them. Look at any pantheistic worldview. Look at any other monotheistic worldview. And you will find out one way or the other, you are weighed in the balances. And as one of them will say, your righteous deeds have to outweigh your unrighteous deeds. Or in the pantheistic worldview, it is karma.

You pay, you pay, you pay, one way or the other, you pay. The Christian faith is unique in giving you the joy and the beauty of forgiveness at one of the most exorbitant prices ever. The very Son of God says, I forgive you. I forgive you.

You remember the famed Jim Baker, who was at the helm of PTL years ago and that empire fell so sadly. It was about six in the morning when I heard the news in the 80s and I was heading out to play a game of racquetball when I turned it on and heard that news. I pulled up on the side of the road. I said, this is going to change the landscape for evangelicalism for sure.

And it did. Forgiveness is a huge burden falling off your shoulders like pilgrim comes to the hill and the first angel of dawn says, Thy sins be forgiven thee and the backpack of burden of sin falls off, pilgrim. Again, that's Ravi Zacharias and that is literally haunting to listen to and knowing what his life turned out to be. And I just pray before he met God after his death that he had repented of the grievous sin that he had been conducting in his life. But you can see from that soundbite there that he understood the gospel. He understood that all the religions are all about working to attain forgiveness from a God. And whereas true biblical Christianity is not our own work but the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, putting our faith in his work on the cross and not our own works.

So he understood that. So how does someone who understands the gospel and professes to believe in Christ, was he actually right with God? And I don't think we can know the answer to that for sure because we can't know what he's believing in his heart for sure. But the Bible does say clearly that those who practice sin unrepentantly will not inherit the kingdom of God. Perhaps the scariest passage in all of scripture, Matthew 7, part of the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus, he says this, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But he who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven, will enter. Verse 22. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles. Verse 23. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

So apparently, according to Jesus, we can call him Lord, we can prophesy in his name, we can cast out demons in his name, perform many miracles, all these great things we think we're doing. And then when we stand before him, he can say to us, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. So it's the practicing, the unrepentant practicing of sin, lawlessness, that is the differentiation.

So that's why we have to even ask this question. A man who speaks about God, Ravi Zacharias, was he actually right with God because there's no report or no evidence that there was ever any repentance. He was practicing, this was a pattern of his life for year after year after year, with no end point of saying, you know what, I got to come clean on this before God and men. Galatians 5 says the same thing, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh sets his desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.

For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. There's a battle going on inside of the believer. There's the Holy Spirit, and there's our flesh, that part of us that never gets redeemed. It's part of our dying fleshly body that has sinful desires. There's a battle there. He says this, now the deeds of the flesh are evident. This is what the flesh wants to do. Immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, all four of those deal with sexual sins.

Sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. So it's a long list of sins, of which I forewarn you, Paul writes, just as I have forewarned you that those who, here's this word again, practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And I, for one, know what that word practice means. I used to be a tennis player who would, quote, practice all the time. It's something that you do as a pattern of your life, day after day after day.

It's not something that you kind of do in a one-off time. It's something that is a pattern of your life. And Ravi Zacharias, according to this investigation, was a practicing adulterer, a fornicator. And there's no report that he ever repented, even on his deathbed. So to answer this most difficult question, only God knows his heart. Those he harmed can trust in the justice of God. God justly deals with each of us for our sin. But those people he harmed, these women and other people who are offended by what he did, they can't use Ravi Zacharias as an excuse.

Like, oh, there's too many hypocrites in the church. They can't blame him for not receiving the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation by God through his son, Jesus Christ. They also need to be reconciled to God.

Yes, they were hurt deeply, and we can understand and empathize with that. They too, as we hope Ravi Zacharias may have before he died, came to repent of his practicing of sin. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. David Wheaton here, host of The Christian Worldview. For over 15 years, our mission has been to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We pursue that mission on air through radio programs, in person hosting events, and online through audio, video, and print resources. We are an all-volunteer ministry, but have monthly operating expenses, the most significant being the cost of air time on the station, website, or app on which you hear the radio program. We are looking for monthly partners so that each station or website is supported by its own listeners.

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Bite-sized highlights are great for those who don't have time to listen to the full 54-minute broadcast. Short takes can be heard at our website, podcast feed, and our social media pages on Facebook and YouTube. For more updates, program previews, and resources, be sure to sign up for our free weekly email by visiting thechristianworldview.org or calling 1-888-646-2233. That's 1-888-646-2233 or visiting thechristianworldview.org. Thanks for joining us on The Christian Worldview. Just a reminder that today's program and past programs are archived at our website, thechristianworldview.org. Short takes are also available and be sure to share with others. Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton.

Okay, so the next question is, what should happen now? Should Ravi Zacharias International Ministries be disbanded and folded? Should his books and messages be removed? Is that part of cancel culture? Is the truth that he spoke actually not the truth?

Well, to answer that one quickly, of course not. Truth is never dependent on the person speaking it. The truth is always dependent on the God who establishes his truth. So even though he spoke lots of truth, that doesn't mean it wasn't truth.

It just means he wasn't living that truth. Now, James White, who is a Christian apologist actually himself, he is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, he wrote a Facebook post in response to what happened with Ravi Zacharias, and he really brings out some good points. One of them has to do with what should happen to the ministry itself.

He said, I will be blunt here, RZIM does not need to be hiring consultants and embarking on an apology tour. Legacy ministry requires a legacy, and Zacharias' legacy is now something you do not want perpetuated. I believe they need to distribute their resources to other ministries, close the doors, and turn off the lights. When I have young men come to me asking how to, quote, get into apologetics, I throw as much cold water on them as I can. I always tell them they must see their work as apologetics as part of the ministry of the church. They must be churchmen, balanced and rooted. I could name right now a dozen apologists who might darken the door of the same church once a month at best. Such should not be the case, and the Zacharias situation explains why.

I think it's a very well-spoken point by James White. We'll talk a little bit more about being under the authority of a local church in just a second. Again, we've used the example of King David in the Bible. He sinned. Well, his book of Psalms, many of the Psalms that he wrote are still in the Bible. Same with King Solomon. Many of his Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Song of Solomon were written by King Solomon, and both of them had sexual sin in their life.

As a matter of fact, Solomon ended his life very, very badly. He was the wisest man who ever lived, the Bible says, and by the end of his wife, many foreign women— he had, what was it, a thousand wives, 700 wives and 300 concubines or something— turned his heart away from the Lord, and yet what they wrote is still in Scripture. This is a disqualifying sin for a Christian teacher or pastor, which is really the position. Even though he was an official pastor, he was a Christian teacher. 1 Timothy 3 says, It is a trustworthy statement if any man aspires to the office of an overseer or an elder or teacher. It is a fine work he desires to do.

Verse 2, an overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine, pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. And this situation with Zacharias fails on many of the levels there. This is disqualifying for someone like this to remain in ministry, and the legacy after he's gone, I think, should be discontinued. I mean, imagine someone reading one of Ravi Zacharias' books now about God or some philosophical question or the gospel itself, and then finding out that he was in fact a sexual predator, which is what the investigation found out. I mean, the response of that person would be, You mean I can believe this, what he's writing, but then live a completely different way as he was?

I agree with James White. If I were a bookstore or a radio station, I would not feature his content purely simply for just the confusing nature of it that might disillusion someone who reads it and finds out that he was completely living a life in opposition of what he taught. The final thing we're going to discuss today about this situation, and we're going to leave the story of Joseph and how to overcome sexual temptation for next week, is this. There are many things to learn in summary from this situation of Ravi Zacharias. Number one, our hearts are sinful and wicked, and if they're not restrained by God and His word and the Holy Spirit, we can be immersed in ministry and also be immersed in sin. That's how duplicitous our hearts can be. That's one big thing we can learn.

Another thing we can learn is how a lack of accountability fosters this kind of sexual sin. James White had written about, he wasn't probably part of a local church that he knew about at least, he writes, Apologists have a tendency, a fatal tendency in my observation, they are not churchmen by and large. They are often on the fringes, often away from the fellowship, often aloof. I have no idea what church Ravi Zacharias was a member of, or if he even held membership formally anywhere.

I don't know that either. But reading the report showed me that he was very rarely in whatever fellowship that would have been. Who were his elders? Who had oversight, not of some huge empire of finances and organizations, but of his teaching and preaching? Or did he quote preach at all in a proper sense of a balanced, regular scripture based ministry?

I don't see how he could do that when spending literally months alone overseas. That's from James White. And so this is a textbook example of disregarding what the Bible says about a man in ministry. He wasn't under the authority that at least we know of, of a local church. He wasn't in fellowship in a local church, as far as we know. Every Christian needs to be under the authority of a sound, local, biblical church. God has established that authority for our protection and our benefit. And that's so typical in the case of people who travel to speak all over the world.

They're Christians speaking on Christianity, but they're not part of or under the authority of a local church. He was gone all the time, speaking all over the world with little accountability when he was doing so. He was spending time alone from his wife and his family on these long trips. He was putting himself in tempting situations, and you add all that together, and frankly, none of this is very surprising that it happened because you can't break these laws of God. Put yourself in tempting situations, you're going to get burned. So that's one of the big lessons. Here's another lesson. This one comes from Ray Comfort, the president of Living Waters Ministry, who is a well-known evangelist.

The lesson is this. Preach Jesus Christ far more than apologetics. He wrote a column after the fall of Ravi Zacharias, where he said his fall was painful because his name was synonymous with integrity. He was the gentleman's gentleman, the proud mountain of intellectualism, to which we pointed as evidence that Christianity isn't just for the fool on a hill. Yet at the same time, his eloquence concerned me.

I often express that concern in a self-deprecating way by saying that I listened to him in awe, but will come away not having a clue what he had just said. The big lesson we should all take away from this tragic situation with Ravi is to listen to our apologists and ask, are they preaching sin, righteousness, and judgment? Are their hearers being impressed with eloquence, or have they been awakened to their terrible danger? Do they tremble, as did Felix after hearing Paul preach in Acts 24? Intellectual preaching produces intellectual converts who name the name of Christ but are strangers to the new birth. Each of us should be asking if we were talked into our faith or if we had an encounter with the living God.

If we came through the door of argument, then all it will take is a better argument to cause us to leave by another door. Take to heart Paul's warning about such so-called conversions in 1 Corinthians 2. And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And my speech and my teaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Ray Comfort goes on to say, As a ministry we believe in the use of apologetics as is commanded in 1 Peter 3.15, always being ready to give a defense to everyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you. But, he goes on to say, We have a problem when we elevate apologetics above the gospel and never preach the actual good news of salvation. Paul reminds us that it is the gospel, not apologetics, that is the power of God unto salvation. So what he's saying is, it's not that apologetics is wrong or unimportant, but what is most important for someone to be reconciled to God is not believing apologetic arguments about reasons for Christianity, but that they must believe in the person and the work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. That is the only way someone can be saved, and it's a good reminder by Ray Comfort.

Here's another lesson. If you are enslaved to sin, repent of it now to God and to others of those you are sinning against. I know that's hard to do, but it's better to get right with God and others now than face God on Judgment Day later. The fear of standing before God and having given account of our life and being a professing follower of his, but all this practicing of sin, that should put fear in us from when we face the first temptation to go down that particular dark road.

Another lesson we can take away from this is that this can happen to anyone, but there's a big but here. But it's not random, like we have absolutely no control, like someone comes up behind us and pushes us off a cliff, and I had no control, I was just standing there. Now back to that verse that we read earlier in the program from 1 Corinthians 10, No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, so we all get tempted, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also so that you will be able to endure it. So we're not just random, bad luck that we go down these sinful roads. Temptations we face are common, and God is faithful. He doesn't let us get tempted beyond what we're able to bear. He'll provide a way of escape so that we'll be able to endure it. In other words, when we sin, we are purposely driving past the off-ramps of the freeway to sin that God is providing. We're just driving right past him.

He's providing these off-ramps, and we just go barreling down the road. We can overcome temptation. God is providing ways of escape, but we need to take those avenues of escape that God is offering to us. You think back to the story of Cain, the son of Adam and Eve back in Genesis 4. Cain had killed his brother Abel. Cain had brought his own sacrifice, the sacrifice that he thought would be good to sacrifice to God, and he was jealous and angry at his brother who brought the sacrifice that God commanded. And God told Cain, when he confronted him, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. In other words, sin can be mastered.

It can be overcome. And that's where the life of Joseph comes in, because the life of Joseph in Scripture— there's lots of principles in Scripture, commands, flea, morality, all those things, we'll get into that—but the life of Joseph is the personalized illustration of how to face sexual temptation and how to overcome it. And that's what we're going to get into next week on the program.

It's not going to be a part three in Ravi Zacharias. It's going to be a program on one of the biggest temptations and the biggest ways that so many Christians are getting embroiled and enslaved to sin and start practicing it. Whether it's sexual immorality, whether it's pornography, whether it's lust in the mind, so many different ramifications and ways it is manifested. And so next week I hope you'll tune into that program because it's a super important thing for us to understand how to overcome sexual temptation. If you missed any of the program today, you can always go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, to hear the program again. We thank you for listening, because we do live, obviously, in a very challenging world in which there is much temptation to sin. And we do not want to end up our life living in a way that's dishonoring to God and has hurt other people through our sin. So there is one thing, Christian, we can always trust in and count on. The Bible says, Jesus Christ and His Word, they are the same yesterday, today, and forever. When we rely on Him and His Word and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can, with God's strength, overcome temptation.

And we will take those ways of escape that God provides. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. 1-888-646-2233 The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported ministry and furnished by the Overcomer Foundation, a nonprofit organization. You can find out more, order resources, make a donation, become a monthly partner, and contact us by visiting thechristianworldview.org, calling toll-free, 1-888-646-2233, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.