Ravi Zacharias - "What Ravi did and Where Where Do We Go From Here"

[Awoken]

Wow. This message just resonated in all the right ways regarding the Ravi Zacharias scandal. I personally am not/was not a Ravi follower (too busy following WL back then, of course), but I also think this whole thing absolutely applies to Lee's ministry and cover-up involving his son's impropriety (and who knows what else), which should be publicized.

I especially just want to share the part of this message that starts at around the 1 hour and 34 minute mark, where Mr. Winger points out, for all the people who believed in Jesus because of Ravi Zacharias's preaching or because of Ravi's words, that there were people who believed legitimately in the gospel, had demons cast out, and/or were baptized by Judas Iscariot. Wow. Can you imagine the conflict those people went through after finding out what kind of "spiritual father" they had? Yet I love the way he presents this - it wasn't the person who preached the facts, but the facts of the gospel, the truth, that saved them, as it was with anyone who was saved because of someone like Ravi (or WL).

(View video below or click this link to go to YouTube.)

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I AGREE

Here is the full report: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/r...estigation.pdf

{Rather than fostering an environment of truth-seeking and transparency, Mr. Zacharias was strident and inflammatory. He described his critics as “nasty people” and “lunatics” who were engaging in “‘satanic-type’ slander and falsehood.” Some RZIM staff told us that he expressed frustration with having to issue an apology at all. He was able to convince many that not only was he innocent, he was the victim of malicious “evil.”}

....Hmm, sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

{Rather than fostering an environment of truth-seeking and transparency, Mr. Zacharias was strident and inflammatory. He described his critics as “nasty people” and “lunatics” who were engaging in “‘satanic-type’ slander and falsehood.” Some RZIM staff told us that he expressed frustration with having to issue an apology at all. He was able to convince many that not only was he innocent, he was the victim of malicious “evil.”}

....Hmm, sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?

Very familiar. In the case of Mr Zacharias, the fact that he set up as co-owner of a day spa with imported workers is bad enough. Whether or not he engaged in sexual trafficking is almost beside the point. As with Witness Lee, dunning the local churches for money for his for-profit business. That Daystar went belly-up and much of money disappeared - "my personal business", he told Sal Benoit - is almost incidental. How much money disappeared, and where... the fact that nobody can know is damning enough.

In both cases, the appearance of evil is more than sufficient, as it is. How much fire is behind the billowing clouds of smoke? How many corpses behind the stench?

And both have their implacable, stalwart defenders: "Who are you to judge? We're all short of God's glory". Are you kidding me?? When did I set up training centres round the globe? Give me a break! How obtuse do you think we are, here?

These men set themselves up as leaders. They did their utmost to convince us that it was so... God's humble bond-slave and all that. Rubbish.

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ~James 3:1 (ESV)

[Trapped]

Awoken, thanks for posting this. I had forgotten Mike Winger was going to put something out and I'm in the middle of watching it right now.

Would that I could round up all the co-workers and elders in the Lord's recovery and make them sit in a room and watch this stuff.

aron, I, too, have been utterly disgusted as well as very depressed at the sheer volume of comments I've seen on social media that say things like:

-I, for one, will not be throwing the first stone
-who among us is without sin?
-we must forgive him
-how tormented he must have felt!
-I still love and respect him for his work
-David sinned terribly and was still a man after God's own heart
-judge not!
-we are in no position to judge. God is the only judge.

....and on and on and on...

My stomach turns just writing those things, because it tells me that even the larger Christian community, unbelievably, has the same mindset as the local church does toward sin and predatory sexual abuse, and knows just enough of scripture to be about as dangerous in the church as I can think of, but not enough to make the church in general a remotely safe place.

And that is something that's going to take me a while to stop being affected by. I'm bothered that people aren't as bothered as they should be.

For the DCP men (I won't call you brothers) who monitor this site - watch the video that Awoken posted. Read the letter that RZIM put out. See, maybe for the first time in your life, the Biblical response to darkness and evil in the church. Know that the sin and abuse and evil that you have hidden and covered and slandered victims of will not remain hidden forever, and you will be utterly without excuse unless you turn your course and take steps to repent and to bring the truth to light.

[aron]

I watched well-known evangelical Christians as they eulogized at his funeral, including NFL player Tim Tebow and VP Mike Pence. My first thought was, "We made this man in our image." We projected what we wanted [needed] him to be so that through him we could find what we thought we wanted ourselves to be. He was, and remains, at least somewhat our creation, representing in our minds a reflection of where we felt we were going. That's what leaders do, you know: they lead. In my case, I saw an erudite and confident person, and thought that I saw myself in a distant mirror. Witness Lee did it to me, and then Ravi Zacharias, but I let them, I did it to myself. And both times my delusion was exposed, and I must now repent.

And then I thought that RZ was so charming, both in the contemporary sense but also the original sense of sorcery, of deceitful and manipulative spirits. He, Nee, and Lee were charismatic, projecting themselves (and their needs) onto us, and we took it and reflected back. I got charmed, and now I repent. The first words of both Jesus and John the Baptist, coming up out of the wilderness, were "repent". Amen, Lord.

And then I thought that the whole apparati of these 'ministers' - the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries [RZIM] and Living Stream Ministry [LSM] dba Local Church/Lord's Recovery - were just tools for them to play out their pathologies. RZ had shell companies to make payments to his massage therapists, and cover his multiple Bangkok apartments, and WL had Philip Lee as "the Office" and Timothy Lee's importing ventures, and Daystar and the rest of it. The "church" was merely a construct for the predator. (Even today, I believe the "church" is making payments to WL's family.)

And I wondered, would any of those somber, well-dressed folk in their pious reflections of sorrow and gratitude for RZ pause, had they known he owned massage parlours in strip malls in the Atlanta suburbs? How many did know, and kept up the charade, because it was easier to deny what lay behind the facts than to face it? And then I realized that all the charm, all the intelligence, all the passion are nothing, because Satan is more charming, clever, and driven than we are. We really need God's mercy. I need God's mercy. Lord Jesus have mercy.

Originally Posted by Unreg

It was a relief in the small sense that the puzzle finally got solved and yielded a coherent picture. But it was devastating at the same time -- my faith got rocked and my Christian life got shipwrecked by the disappointment. Blindness is not always willful, and the more painful the picture, the more innate subconscious defense mechanisms there are to prevent you from seeing it.

[Awoken]

It definitely goes to show you that we are the biggest threat to ourselves. We love propping up men and putting our trust in them even when we don't know we're doing it. It's what the Israelites did with Saul/David (give us a king, we want a king!). And a lot of these big leaders maybe did receive something from God they were meant to invest in others, not in their own image/power, and... what happened? Maybe they should have been praying more prayers like "God, keep me humble and focused on the few that you really put around me, and save me from drawing crowds and focusing on that". Maybe they should have been putting more of those big ministry bucks into non-personal causes... giving to the poor, making sure their own slice of the pie stayed small. Or maybe they should have just backed away from all the success out of godly fear. Somebody else (I can't recall who, but I read it and appreciated it, sorry for my bad memory) posted on here not long ago about some pastors who shared that the three big threats to men of God are always money, pride, and sex. That hasn't changed much (at all) over the centuries.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Awoken

So OSAS, don't know, Lordship Salvation, don't know... I think those are both just selective doctrines that focus on specific verses of the Bible and leave out others. Better to just be a Bible-believing Christian and walk in the fear (and love) of God, as we are encouraged by John, the Lord Himself, and many others...

Yes, overstressing any aspect of Scripture - either salvation by faith or reward by works (which works aren't replacing faith but are demonstrations thereof [cf Ja 2:14-26]) isn't profitable.

But I wanted to come back to another point, because our focus isn't on WL, WN, or RZ, who are now gone, but about we who remain. Why do we gather around some people, lift them up unduly, ignore warning signs?

Mike Pence: "In Ravi Zacharias, God gave us the greatest Christian apologist of this century." One should probably never say this of anyone, just like we shouldn't say "Witness Lee is MOTA" - no believer should be held as uniquely superior. But my question is, Why do we do this? I want to expose such enabling errors.

My answer is, identity: we identify ourselves with what we perceive as greatness, what we aspire to. I felt that associating myself with the ministry of Witness Lee and Watchman Nee I was on "the express elevator to the top", as I put it in my youthful mind. I was no longer "just a Christian" but now "a Christian associated with the ministry of WL and WN", which I felt was vastly superior. So by my identification and association, my portion supposedly increased.

Originally Posted by aron

I watched well-known evangelical Christians as they eulogized at his funeral, including NFL player Tim Tebow and VP Mike Pence. My first thought was, "We made this man in our image." We projected what we wanted [needed] him to be so that through him we could find what we thought we wanted ourselves to be. He was, and remains, at least somewhat our creation, representing in our minds a reflection of where we felt we were going.

And if RZ got Tim Tebow to publicly identify and associate himself with RZIM, then donations would go up, as a new demographic would tune in through TT. If I go to Charity Navigator, they list income: FY 2013 at $18 million; FY 2014 at $22 million; FY 2015 at $25 million. It seems that RZIM profited through the association with folks like TT and MP.

That's the outer ring, the dupes. Then there's the inner ring, who profit directly by pushing RZ as "minister of the age", or "The greatest apologist on earth" or whatever. On the same Charity Navigator page, under "Salary of key persons", I see daughter "Sarah [Zacharias] Davis" as "Director" getting $208,000.00. Do you think she wants the truth? I doubt it. Think of all the padded expenses were added to that $208,000.00 annual salary. She had a strong incentive to promote RZ. Then, other daughter Naomi runs "Wellspring", a "humanitarian" arm of RZIM. Then wife Margie and son Nathan had paid "staff positions" of salary/benefits unknown. There were literally dozens I'm sure whose well-being was directly tied to promoting and preserving an image, and how much that image corresponded to reality, was secondary.

And I believe the same kind of dynamic existed at LSM. A host of well-meaning and ignorant dupes, then as you enter the inner ring, a group whose consciences have been altered by increasingly dependent and compromised relations with the source of corruption. They (board of directors etc) are supposed to be safeguards of the public trust, but are instead chief enablers of the abuse.