I want to say a word to my Second Pres. family after the disturbing release of the report on Ravi Zacharias’s Ministry, by his ministry, confirming the allegations of sexual assault that he committed against those in his ministry, and in his business.
Because Ravi ministered here a few years ago and made a positive impact on our church—and a number of us have followed him with admiration—I thought it was important for us to have a family chat to encourage you with some ideas from scripture as you process this really disastrous news about his secret life.
I want to speak first of all to those women as well as men and children who have experienced sexual assault and sexual abuse.
These kinds of revelations are always triggering and disturbing and traumatizing; they open up for you fresh wounds. And then when they are revealed about someone who was in authority within the Christian world—especially a minister—then it's particularly painful for you, and I want to validate that.
I want to say I understand that and yet I want you to know that Jesus, your Good Shepherd, will never disappoint you in that way. Jesus will never abuse you. Jesus sees and feels the agony of your pain as one who himself experienced humiliation on the cross—sexual humiliation as his clothes were stripped from him.
I also want to remind you that God is just and God has said that at the great day He will judge, He will expose, and He will right every wrong—including those wrongs committed by the sexually immoral. And that day of reckoning is coming.
I want to encourage you as much as I can that this is a small testimony of God's justice—He sees your pain. These complaints that had been made by people along the way have finally been heard. There are people within the Christian world who take those accusations seriously get to the bottom of it and the truth has been revealed.
Second thing I want to say is to those who feel foolish.
I'm one of them. I loved to listen to Ravi Zacharias. He gave keen insights for me into the nature of truth in God’s Word and how that truth is superior to the lies of men.
When somebody who spoke true things like that turns out to be a farce and a lie in his life, we’re tempted to think: Can I trust anything that that I ever learned? Did any of those good things that happened to me, are they true? I want to assure you from God's word, again in Philippians 1 when Paul says some people preach the gospel out of selfish ambition and some are false preachers, some preach in order to hurt me he said, but at the end of the day the gospel is being preached. Christ is proclaimed and in that I rejoice.
Whatever truth you and I heard from Ravi Zacharias's lips was truth of God's word. And wherever we saw more of Jesus and became more like Him, that really did happen. And not even the lie of his life can change that. So, whatever you've seen of Jesus—cling to that. Whatever insights you've gained into God's Word and has grown you up to be more like Jesus, then you can at least rejoice that God is sovereign. God is so sovereign and cares so much for you that He was able to do good things to you and for you even through someone who did such wickedness.
The final thing I want to say is to those who are disillusioned.
And I confess, I get disillusioned. It takes me awhile to get my bearings and to have something to say after this kind of revelation. These kinds of revelations remind me when the Bible says that Jesus put His hope in no man because He knew what was in the heart of every man. This should humble us to realize I have in my heart the seeds of every sin and there's no way I can keep from going that same direction if You don't take care of me. Lord Jesus, lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil—that should be our constant prayer.
It also should warn us not to put our hope in people. Our hope can only be in Christ. If we find ourselves hanging on the words of every person and following that person, we should be concerned. But if we hear someone who points us to Christ and after listening to them we love Jesus more, we can say, “OK that's someone's someone I can listen to!”
And then I would say this: A long time ago, I was meeting with a wise man. I was on a board, and we had been duped by some Christian charlatan who had taken a lot of money from our organization, and a lot of other Christian organizations, and he was posing as a Christian. And maybe he was a Christian, but he was scandalous.
I said, “Dr. Chunning, I am so disillusioned; I don't know what to do.” He said, “I'm disappointed, too, but I'm not going to let this cause me to quit trusting.” You know we can't quit trusting. We gotta trust people.
We gotta trust our leaders—but not implicitly. And we should only trust leaders who have strong structures of accountability around them. Strong board members who would dare to get in their face and say, “This is not right, you're not going to do that!” People who are rooted and grounded in a local church and in submission to leaders in a local church, even if they're Christian celebrities.
Look at those you are following and ask: Do they have people on their boards; do they have people on their staff; do they have people in the diaconate or the eldership of their churches who are so secure in Christ and so well grounded in the gospel they could stand up to a powerful personality and say, “What you're doing is not right.” Or ask the hard questions—What are you doing with your time? Where are you? How are you keeping yourselves pure?
Ultimately our trust for any person is only relative, our absolute and implicit trust is in the God of grace, who through the Lord Jesus Christ will never disappoint us.