Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 352 | Trump Impeachment, Abortion in Argentina & Ravi Zacharias

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to impeach Donald Trump a second time. Why are legislators doing this, and what does it mean for the future of political discourse? Also, we discuss the abortion legislation that was recently passed in Argentina, which allows abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. And, we address the allegations surrounding Ravi Zacharias. What does it mean for the multitude of people whose beliefs he helped shape? Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs have the perfect subscription box for both boys, and girls. Visit https://www.annieskitclubs.com/allie & save 75% off your first shipment. SimpliSafe: right now, listeners get a FREE home security camera when you purchase a SimpliSafe system at https://simplisafe.com/allie. You'll also get a 60-day risk-free trial, so there's nothing to lose. -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Man, I don't know if this has felt like a long week for you. It has been a long week for me. Every day starting on Monday felt like it was the next day. And that's the worst. It's always great when it's like it's, you feel like it's Thursday, but actually it's Friday. That has not been this week for me at all. And it hasn't been a bad week. It's been a very good week. I've gotten to talk about a lot of important stuff to you guys. But it's just, it's just felt like it's been an entire year. This year already has felt like it is an entire year. There has been so much that has been happening. I was texting with someone earlier saying what I want to talk to this particular guest about.

And I was listing all the things that have happened over the past two weeks. I'm like, if I had read a text like this a year ago, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I got to brace myself. We have been through a lot just in 2021 alone. And we're going to talk about some of that stuff today. we're going to talk about Trump impeachment, what happened in the House, what's going to happen in the Senate. I'm going to try to explain that as best as I can to you guys whether or not that is something that should actually happen. Then we're going to finally talk about this Argentina abortion measure that was passed in the reaction there.

And then we are also finally going to talk about the Ravi Zacharias allegation. So this is something that has been developing for a long time. it was news a couple weeks ago, and I just haven't been able to talk about it because of all the political madness that's been going on. But that is what we are going to get into today. So let's go ahead and start with this Trump impeachment and talk about what's happening there. So House Democrats and 10 Republicans in the House voted to impeach Trump for a second time. The only president in our country's history to be impeached twice. We 90 kids, 90s kids, by the way, have gone. so many historical moments. I don't know if you guys have noticed this. I actually remember. I remember

being at church with my grandmother on a Wednesday night. Those of you who are Southern Baptist know that you go to church on Wednesday, you go to church on Sunday morning, you go to church Sunday night. Well, this was Wednesday night. And I remember one of my grandmother's friends. This was right after 9-11 saying, wow, you guys in your generation have been through so much. If only she knew how much we would go through. Because the first real, like, historical event that I remember going through was the Bush Gore election. I was in second grade and my mom, let me stay up late and she just told me that George Bush won so I would go to bed. And little did I know that lasted a very long time. And then 9-11 happened a couple years later. And then the past couple decades of our

lives have all also been crazy. And now here we are again seeing another historical event, the only president ever to be impeached twice. final vote in the House was 232 to 197. Now he's not being removed and we don't know if this process is going to actually achieve any kind of removal. The Senate is not going to start the impeachment trial until after Biden is inaugurated next week. They're in recess. They don't come back until January 19th. The House Republicans who decided not to impeach Donald Trump, Trump made statements and one of them was Chip Roy. He said, according to NBC news, that the president of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct,

pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the Constitution. Dan Crenshaw also came out with this statement and I'm paraphrasing saying, look, I don't agree with what Donald Trump said. I think the entire situation was bad. He riled people up. And he, definitely encouraged, even if implicitly, what happened at the Capitol. But whether or not he actually incited some kind of insurrection, he just thinks that that is a very hard legal standard to meet. And that the particular articles of impeachment that were filed would have bad implications instead of bad precedent for both parties in the future. And here is Chip Roy kind of explaining that reasoning as well as his own reasoning for not voting for impeachment.

Unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues drafted articles that I believe are flawed and unsupportable. Focusing on the legal terms of incitement and insurrection. Danger for open speech and debate in this body and for the republic is high. If the House approves, the articles is written. The language will be used to target members of this body under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It will be used to suggest that any statements, we may. make are subject to review by our colleagues and send us down the perilous path of cleansing political speech in the public square. So the fear is that Democrats are going to use these particular

articles of impeachment to silence their political opponents, which is something that we don't want. We don't want that for either side. Now, what does all of this mean? I think that probably some people truly just think that it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to make sure that Trump actually has consequences for his words and consequences for his actions. I think there are Democrats who want to silence their political opponents too, and they want to, what they would say, hold accountable their Republican counterparts in Congress by holding them liable if they vote no on these articles of impeachment. So I do think that it's a lot of politics. It's a lot of virtue signaling that is going on. What are the actual implications and consequences for Donald Trump?

if he is impeached, well, it's kind of, it's kind of gray. We kind of don't know because if he isn't actually removed or if he is kind of retroactively impeached after Biden is inaugurated and he's not removed some of these presidential privileges like the Secret Service and things like that might stay intact, whether or not he can run for office again is also up in the air. I know that's something that a lot of Democrats, if not all Democrats and a lot of Republicans want to ensure cannot happen, but it's actually kind of hard to know what the real repercussions of impeaching him at this point will do. There are a lot of Republicans that are saying,

look, this is not the way to healing. Like, this is not the way to unity. There's no point in impeaching and removing the guy when he's already going to be out of office. Is there really a point in spitting in his eye and the millions of Americans who voted for him? I think they're a Republicans also who think that it's necessary that he needs to pay for his actions and all of that. And so it's certainly, it's certainly a debate that's going on and we'll see what happens over the weekend as Mitch McConnell is making these decisions. We'll see what happens next week. This is going to be yet another contentious couple of weeks.

Like if we thought that we were going into 2021 and we were going to see normalcy, that's just not going to be the case. I keep telling, I keep saying things like, oh, when things slow down, I'll talk about this, or when things slow down, I'll do this. The fact of the matter is, is that we've been going 100 miles per hour, at least since last year. Like, if you remember this time last year, we were worried about going to war with Iran. We were worried about North Korea having nukes.

And now we're all just like dying to go back to that time. Can we just worry about war with Iran when things were just normal and calm? The coronavirus happened in our world was thrown for a loop. The George Floyd happened. and then the subsequent riots happened, then the election happened, and it's just been nonstop. There's been so much for us to process. And I'm thankful for you guys that I've been able to process some of this with you, but I know that it feels, I know it feels overwhelming.

I know it feels like you are on this, you are on this fast-paced train and you want to get off and none of us have the option to do that. I understand. And I'm going to end with some encouragement in this episode in the midst of all of that because I know a lot of us are looking for respite. We're looking for rest. We're just looking for things to slow down and to go back to normal. And I just have no promise or guarantee of that. And I actually don't think that the Lord does that the Lord does either.

So it's best for us to just be encouraged and equipped in the midst of all of this. So inauguration is going to happen. next week. Here is Trump explicitly saying, please do not be violent. I want to be very clear. I unequivocally condemned the violence that we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement. I'm really glad that. I'm glad that he said that. I'm sure that someone told him, hey, President Trump, you need to say this. and I'm sure he also means it. I don't think that he actually wanted violence to occur last week.

He didn't explicitly ask for violence, but he also didn't make any effort to quell violence. He could have much more quickly come out and said, hey, we don't want any violence. He could have made that very clear in his rallying speech. He obviously has First Amendment rights to say what he wants to say. But realizing the political moment that he was in when he was conducting that rally at the time that Congress was supposed to be verifying the votes, realizing the tension in the air, realizing the attitudes of a lot of people who are there, he could have done a lot to calm people down and to make sure that things did not escalate.

And he just didn't do that. It was, in my opinion, it was irresponsible and it was reckless as the president of the United States. Now, to someone like Representative Crenshaw's point, proving legally that he actually incited violence, that he actually invoked some kind of interaction, is very difficult without getting on this slippery slope of saying, well, what actually does incite violence? When the standard gets too loose or when the bar gets too low, then we start censoring all kinds of speech. And some people might say, okay, no, this is just a special case.

This is just President Trump. And this is not going to create some kind of slippery slope. But this is actually a trend that I am seeing from some people on the left, basically saying that anything that they disagree with is inside. violence, it's inciting domestic terrorism. I can think of two examples off the top of my head. I did a tweet thread. I think last week saying, look, Christians, there are peaceful ways to influence the spheres that you occupy that I think a lot of Christians are too scared to. I actually think it takes a lot more courage to stand up to your school board, for example, or to speak to your pastor about the bad theology that may be coming from the pulpit or to talk to your friends about

some issues that you think that they aren't correct on or that they don't see the whole picture on to stand up to the people in your life in a kind and respectful and intelligible way that says, okay, this is wrong. This particular kind of employee training is wrong. This kind of curriculum is wrong to stand up to your professor and say, what's your teaching is actually wrong or I have different perspective. That takes more courage than something silly and cavemanish. like storming the capital. And I did a thread basically saying, seek to peacefully but confidently influence every sphere that you occupy. Christians can't just see science and medicine and academia and all forms of education and all of our jobs as these secular endeavors in which our worldview

is not, or to which our worldview is not invited. Everyone has a worldview and is passionate. as secularists, they're pushing their worldview in laws, in their workplaces, in schools, in universities, Christians should be able to peacefully and rhetorically and confidently do that as well. So that's all I said that probably seems completely harmless to a lot of you guys. And someone quote tweeted me and says, this is what inspires domestic terrorism. Really? This is what inspires domestic terrorism, me saying that Christians, you should be speaking up for your values just as passionately as progressive speak up for their values. And so you see ridiculousness like that.

And then Lila Rose, who started a live action, a pro-life organization, she tweeted that abortion is violence, which it is. I mean, that's an objective fact. Whether or not you think abortion is bad, the fact that it is a violent act ending the life of a baby isn't something that is even arguable. That's what it is. And then Dr. Leah Torres, she's an OBGYN. She's also an abortion provider.

We've talked about her on this podcast. She has egregiously tweeted in the past that, you know, babies that she aborts can't cry. She makes sure that they cut the cords. That's what she said. We don't know if they're talking about vocal cords or what she's talking about so that they can't scream if they're even developed enough to have a lyrics. That is something that she tweeted. Well, in response to Lila Rose saying the unobjection fact that abortion is violence. She said, this is wrong. This is domestic terrorism.

So we're seeing these insane charges now where it's not just Trump that is getting this accusation. It's people of all conservative stripes. Anyone who disagrees with mainstream Democrats, even if we're saying that, which is true, even if we're just using opinions, now it's called inciting violence. Now it's called domestic terrorism. You see how that's a problem. Depending on who wields the cultural power of the moment, the people who are on the other side of that sword, on the other side of that charge of, quote, inciting violence, they are the ones that are going to be censored. Unless someone is actually inciting violence, they're actually calling for it. They're explicitly calling for it. And not just they're passionate about what they're talking about or they're talking about issues in a way that is very stirring and is very motivating, but they're actually inciting violence. unless they're doing that, we should be very careful about what we label as incitement or what we

label as invoking some kind of insurrection. We have to be very specific with our language so that things like domestic terrorism aren't minimized. Like how disrespectful is that, by the way, to call something like saying abortion is violence domestic terrorism when they're real victims of domestic terrorism that exists. Like, ooh, you got a tweet that you don't like because it offended you about the reality of the profession that you hold. Come on. Come on. Like, Americans are so privileged. Like, we have so many luxuries and so many freedoms that we think anything that offends us is actual violence. And this is not new, by the way. I mean, you have people like Ben Shapiro trying to speak at universities and the people who are protesting him,

violently protesting him at these college campuses saying that words are violence. Why have we created young people to be so fragile? Why? Now, I'm not saying, again, that what Donald Trump said was right. I have made very clear that I think that he was reckless. I think that he was irresponsible in the things that he said. The question is, the question is, what actually is inciting violence? We need to be very clear about that. We can condemn someone's language. We can disagree with someone's rhetoric or disagree with someone's argument without going to those links. You have to see, you have to see how that sets a precedent that could hurt people across the ideological spectrum. All right. That's it on impeachment and Trump. Now we are going to get into Argentina and their abortion

legislation and the celebration that occurred there after that. All right. Finally getting into Argentina legislation, Argentina senators voted 3829 to pass a bill that would legalize abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. And so compared to the United States, that is still very early on, for certain reasons, you can get an abortion in America through all nine months. it's really 10 months of pregnancy through all 40 plus weeks of pregnancy. For certain reasons, constitutionally, legally in America, you can get an abortion at any stage.

Other countries are much more humane than the United States. We have some of the most lax abortion laws in the world. We're right next to China and North Korea. Great company, right? So Argentina has been what progressives would call slow on what they would call abortion rights. and they are just now passing legislation that legalizes abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. So the 14th week of pregnancy is right after the start of the second trimester. And if you don't know, that baby looks fully developed.

It just needs time and nourishment to grow. But this is not just a clump of cells. This is not just a blob. You go in your eight-week appointment. That's the first appointment. and you see a little jelly bean looking baby and you see the beating heart. And then by the time you get to 10 and a half weeks, by the time you get to 11 weeks, 12 weeks, at that 12 week appointment, you're just stunned by what you see on the ultrasound.

I mean, you see a fully formed baby. You see head, you see where the teeth are going to be. You see arms and legs and fingers and toes and the lungs and the heart. And you're seeing a fully formed little baby kick around in your room. So when you hear 14 weeks that sounds early, but sure looking at a fully formed very small, but fully formed baby who really just needs time and nourishment to develop. And so even though this is a lot earlier than when America allows abortions, just remember, we're just as much talking about a baby at 14 weeks as we are at 28 weeks or 40 weeks.

previously before this legislation in Argentina, abortions were only legal in cases of rape or when the mother's health was at risk. Argentina is the first Latin American country to pass legislation like this. If you're wondering why it is, why is it so different than the United States? These are very Catholic countries. Even the governments here are very Catholic. Catholics are for the most part very against abortion. Pro-abortion activists are hopeful that this is going to lead to similar bills being passed in other nearby countries. The Catholic Church officially opposed the bill. Pope Francis, who hails from Argentina, this is according to the Daily Wire, wrote that the issue of abortion is not primarily a religious matter, but a matter of human ethics. Now, that's some bad

theology, but I'll keep going. Proceeding any religious confession, he added, and it's good for us to ask two questions. Is it fair to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to resolve a problem. Now, I completely, I agree with their conclusion. And we do argue that, of course, you don't have to be a religious to be pro-life, that you can try to make the secular argument that this is a human ethics issue. But to say, from a Catholic perspective, from a Christian perspective, that it's not primarily a religious matter, but a matter of human ethics. Well, ethics are downstream from religion. They always are. Like, you can hold Christian ethics without saying that you believe in God or without saying that you hold to the Bible.

But that doesn't change what is actually upstream from your ethics. So if you oppose murder, you hold to a biblical value. If you oppose theft, whether or not you're a Christian, you hold to a biblical value. So for Pope Francis, for the Catholic Church to say this is not primarily a religious matter, well, that's not exactly right. It is also a human ethics matter. That is true. And people of all faiths should oppose it.

But the reason why Christians oppose it is because human beings are made in the image of God, because we're knit together in our mother's womb. Because we believe that babies at the earliest stage of pregnancy are image bearers. And therefore, they matter. Argentina's center left, President Alberto Fernandez supported the bill. but it was mainly able to be passed by massive grassroots support from the Green Wave women's movement. You have to give credit to the left. They are very good at grassroots. They're very good at what someone like AOC would call organizing.

They're very good at getting down on the ground and talking to people about the issues in a way that I just don't think people on the right are. It doesn't mean that we're not doing anything. Obviously, I think the pro-life movement in this country is very strong. does a lot of amazing work in helping moms and children and helping get information and education about out about this issue. But honestly, those on the left, that's kind of what their specialty is, is getting on the ground and talking to people about this and jining up support for their issues. And I mean, that's fair game. Conservatives should be doing the same exact thing. Now, I want to show you after this legislation passed in Argentina, what the celebrations

looked like among feminists. This is a montage of some of those celebratory events. So if you are listening to this and you weren't able to see, there are people crying, there are people hugging one another, they're screaming, they're jumping up and down. They are super excited about this. And as someone who is pro-life, is someone who is a Christian who is devastated by the reality of abortion, devastated by what it is. I mean, it's literally the murder of a baby, whether or not you're for it. That's what it is. It ends a baby's life, an unsuspecting human being who is taking solace in comfort and refuge in his or her mother's womb is ripped apart violently.

often painfully, is either poisoned by a pill, is either dismembered by forcips. Sometimes they're sucked out with tubes. Depending on how far along, you insert a needle into the mother's womb, either into the amniotic fluid, which surrounds the baby or directly into the baby's heart that causes what they call forced cardiac arrest, which ensures what they call fetal demise. That's the reality of what abortion is. abortion isn't accomplished through fairy dust. Like abortion isn't just accomplished in this easy and smooth way when people say that we should

provide safe abortion. There's no such thing as a safe abortion. You're killing an unsuspecting, innocent when we're talking about legality, an innocent human being, a vulnerable human being, a defenseless human being who can do nothing to defend itself. That's what we're talking about these people celebrating, these people jumping up and down about. And there's some people who excuse it on the left, who even identify as Christians here, who say, well, you know, it's really just about bodily autonomy. It's just about women's rights. We shouldn't worry about the legality of it. We should just worry about making abortion unthinkable.

I say no. I say it's both and. If you really think as a Christian that that child inside the womb matters, that it has purpose, that God made that child, that God knit that child together in its mother's womb, the least that you should be advocating for. is the legal protection of that baby. You should be fighting like heck to also protect the lives of women to provide for them. You should be using your time and your resources and your energy to help women who are in need, to help women who are in crisis, to provide for families absolutely. That doesn't necessarily mean supporting every ineffective government program, as Democrats would like us to believe, but using your own time and resources to help those women. But you should also, at the bare minimum,

you should also support the legal protection of image bearers to fenseless babies inside the womb. And the fact that these women, just like people here, are jumping up and down and yelling in celebration for what is violence against babies inside the womb, it just shows what godlessness does. It creates hearts of stone and brains of mush. That's what I see when I look at things like that. I see hearts of stone and brains of mush, that it's deranged, that it's depraved, that it is against any logic whatsoever. And I want to, I want to read you. You guys know about, you guys know about Romans 1. I'm sure that you have read it. And it reminds me looking at all of that, of Romans 1, and then I think it's Ephesians 4. I'll have to pull that up after this.

but this is Romans 1 28 through 32. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanders, haters of God. Insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

A lot of people have been saying for the past several years that, oh, we're in Romans 1. Well, the existence of Romans 1 or the reality of Romans 1 in the world has existed for a long time. Obviously, it existed when Paul was writing Romans. Now, I want to read you a little bit of Ephesians 4 as well. This is also something that we see depicted in a celebration of the ending of life like this. This is Ephesians 4. We'll do 18 through 24. Actually, I'll do 17 through 24.

Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles. He's talking about in this context, non-Christians do. And the futility of their minds, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit

of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. And really, we could read that whole chapter. But that is the dichotomy. That is the difference. It's the old way and the new way. And all of us, when we watch a video like that in our heart's break and we can think about also Ephesians too, that all of us, all of us were dead in our sin at one point. And we had to be made alive in Christ that God had to give us a new self. He had to change our hearts. He had to soften our hearts. So we pray. for those people. We pray for those who are in darkness. We pray for those who have calloused hearts, hearts of stone and brains of mush that Jesus can change those people. He can change all of us.

If he can change you and me, then he can change anyone. It is the gospel that changes hearts. It's therefore the gospel that changes culture. And it's a Christ-centered culture that can change laws that can change things like heartless abortion laws. And so that should be our focus. Yes, taking care of those in need so that they feel that abortion is unnecessary, but also spreading the gospel and sharing the love of Christ. So hearts changed. So we're no longer celebrating that which is evil. So that culture is no longer calling evil good and good evil. All right. I want to talk to you about one more thing quickly, and that is the Ravi Zacharias allegations and what we should make of all of that. All right. Let's talk about Ravi Zacharias. So some of you have no idea

because I posted about this on Instagram, and I got some messages from you guys saying, what are you talking about Ravi Zacharias allegations? I have no idea. I have no idea what you're talking about. Well, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, this is according to Christianity Today, notified staff, donors, and supporters on Wednesday. This is a couple weeks ago that there is convincing incredible evidence that Ravi Zacharias engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years.

It's a preliminary report from the law firm hired by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries confirms reports from Christianity Today from World Magazine, a blogger Steve Bauman, that international apologist Ravi Zacharias, who died earlier this year. This was written last year. So who died in 2020, sexually abused numerous women. You guys might remember these allegations came out. I don't know if it was the summer of 2020, but it was around then. it was actually right after he died and it was kind of, okay, these sound credible, but we don't

actually know if it's true. And the reason why they sounded credible is because these were women who worked with him, who we knew actually did know him. And there were several women and not just women that worked with him, but women who had met him over the years confirmed this kind of predatory behavior. And that's why there was some credibility to this. And so their ministry, Ravi Zacharias's ministry, they hired a law firm to investigate to see if this is really true. And what they came away with was that, yeah, this actually probably is true. After talking to the accusers, after looking at the allegations that have been made, this seems like it is in fact what happened.

Christianity today goes on to say the final report is forthcoming. And RZIM has committed to releasing it to the public. The investigators at the law firm Miller and Martin have told the board, however, that many victims have spoken candidly and with great detail confirming the allegations of massage therapists who worked in two Atlanta spas that Zacharias partially owned. The team has uncovered other misconduct as well. The investigation is ongoing and the investigators are continuing to pursue leads. The allegations made by some of these women who worked in the salons that Zacharias partially owned was basically that they, that he press, them to touch him. And even if it wasn't an actual threat of violence or anything, they felt that they had to do what he said because he was in a position of power, not just as this

universally known apologist, but also as their boss, as the owner of the company that they worked for. Sarah Davis, RZIM, CEO and Ravi Zacharias's daughter says this, we know this news will send all of us and thousands of others into grief, confusion, disillusionment, and anger. We know that you will have many questions, as we all do as well. Davis also wrote that we grieve profoundly for those who have suffered from Ravi's sexual misconduct and asked staff and supporters to pray for them. RZIM initially denied the allegations, or leasing a statement that said the family and ministry teammates of Ravi Zacharias did not believe them to be true because they did not in any way

comport with the man we knew for decades. A number of RZIM teammates objected to the state. and said they did believe the woman making the allegations. So when the allegations originally came out, some team members said, yeah, I can actually see this happening. And then other team members of RZIM said, no, I can't. And so that's why they hired the law firm to investigate. And then the report has said, yeah, that this probably happened. And so this is very difficult news for a lot of people who really admired him, who felt like they kind of built their faith. Yes, of course, with the Holy Spirit. and upon the word of God, but also upon Ravi Zacharias's works. I know that I have been,

that a lot of his apologetic work has helped me and my own faith kind of answer really tough questions. Like, why does God let bad things happen? How do we put our faith in our apologetics against the faith and apologetics of other faiths? How do we have these kind of productive debates and discussions and dialogue? And he was really an example for so many Christians and all of that. He was one of the great defenders of the faith. And yet we hear that he was a different person in private than he was in public. What are we supposed to make of that? Does that mean that nothing he preached was true? Does that mean that we throw out all of his books? Does that mean that we can't give any credibility to anything that he said? I do want to read you, Philippians.

Let's see. I'll start with, so I'll start with verse 17 and then I'll just go to verse 18. But Paul is talking about in Philippians. He's talking about some people who preach the gospel under a false pretense or they preach the gospel from selfish ambition. They're just trying to gain themselves some kind of reputation or they're looking for fame or they're looking for power. And the question that is posed in the midst of what Paul is saying is, okay, well, what do we do with the that they're preaching because they're still preaching truth. Do we just throw it out? Do we discount it? Here's how Paul answers that. The former claim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me and my imprisonment. And so he's also, that's, we won't even get into the whole context of that because it's not applicable to what we're talking about right now, but he is talking about how their motives are selfish. Their motives are not good. Their motives are actually vindictive in the midst of, in the midst of preaching the gospel. He says, what then? only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that,

I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Christ, Jesus, this will turn out for my deliverance. And he goes on. But he's saying, look, no matter how Christ is proclaimed, if Christ is proclaimed, God is going to use that to bring people to himself. And so if something that Ravi Zacharias holds up in light of scripture, if he preached the gospel and someone preached to the gospel or someone believed the gospel because of that, that belief is it false. It's not based on a false premise because it's based on the gospel that there was an imperfect, a very imperfect, even abusive vessel that preached that gospel. But your faith doesn't become false or your faith doesn't become

hollow just because Ravi Zacharias helped you believe in that faith because the faith that you have is Christ's and he is trustworthy. He is faithful. He is the foundation of your faith, not Ravi Zacharias. I don't know how this could happen. Like I don't know how someone could play such a sincere role out front and get thousands of people to fall for the characterization of himself that he made. And then to be a completely different person behind the scenes. I don't know how you keep something like that up your entire life. I don't understand it. And I don't know why God allows something like that to happen. I don't know. What I do know, that even though Ravi Zacharias was acting in a way that was evil, maybe he repented before he died, I hope that that was the case.

Even though Ravi Zacharias was doing something that was evil, that God still used the truth of what he and his ministry proclaimed to bring people to him and that the faith that you have that may or may not have been helped by Ravi Zacharias's work is based on Christ in his trustworthiness and his sincerity and his purity and his truth and not Ravi Zacharias the vessel. So I think that's the lesson that we need to take from that. We also just need to be praying for our ministers of the gospel. We need to be praying for these apologists that if they are living a double life, that that would be exposed before they die, that we would be able to know that, that we would be able to, detect these false teachers who are living this kind of dishonest lifestyle. We need to pray for

integrity from our leaders. We need to pray for protection, spiritual protection and physical protection for these people that we know that Satan is after in so many ways. We need to pray as if engaged in spiritual warfare on behalf of the people who are leading our churches and leading these ministries. Because Satan is going to want to use this to do discount the faith of many people and to cast many people into doubt and despair. And we have to pray also for those people that the Holy Spirit would comfort them, would remind them of what is true and the everlasting goodness and faithfulness of the God who saved them.

Ravi Zacharias did not save you. Christ did. He is trustworthy. He is faithful. You can take him at his word. All right. That's all I have for today. I will see you guys back here next week.

Have a great weekend. Thank you.