Max Lucado’s Apology for Having Spoken the Truth, Ravi Zacharias Scandal, & Yes, Mildred, He’s a...

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday and here we are. It's a little dangerous when I actually put out what we're going to talk about because then I sort of have to do it. I didn't used to do that and I may rethink doing that in the future, actually.

But I was out on a short run today. I would rather have done a long run, but I'm going to tell you something. You younger guys enjoy your youth. I am discovering that as I am knocking on the door of 60, which Riche Pierre, the Frenchman of Prescott on the other side of the glass, babbling away in French in a cowboy hat, will tell you because he's considerably older than I am.

And hence I'm drawing much, much wisdom from his having experienced these things for decades. But as you get older, trying to be an athlete is basically pain management. PRs used to mean personal records.

Now it means primarily recovered. Whatever injury you just happen to experience and half the time you don't even know why. That's where I've been. I coughed today while walking. It's like, oh, this is so much fun.

Anyways, enjoy your youth. But I did manage a short run and I was listening to something that I want to start off with because I was already thinking about the program today and about the Lucado apology together with Chris Hansen.

Is that the guy on Bachelor Bachelorette? I mean, he's been doing it for like 15 years at least, maybe longer. Frenchmen are supposed to know these things. He sees it and he's going, I have no idea. I'm not going to admit anything here.

No way. Anyway, Drew Brees last summer, it's almost like there is a specific template. It's like a statement that you have to sign about how you've hurt people's feelings and you didn't know and you're so stupid because you're a white privilege and so on and so forth.

They all say the same thing. But I was already thinking about that and the other things we could talk about in the program. So this morning, I mentioned him in my sermon Sunday night, so I just might as well just dive in the deep, deep end of the pool and just, well, of course, we've been doing the sweater vest dialogues for a year, so it's hardly an issue.

But I was listening to BlogMA blog. I have the Canon app on my phone. Someday there's going to be an Alpha and Omega app someday, maybe. Harrison, hey, my wife is listening live. And you know what's wild?

Is that came through on my watch. I'm thinking about future debates. This is a possibility. Oh, yes. What? How many people in the NSA also read that? It's not the NSA I'm worried about. It's the CCP that I'm worried about.

What's the difference? That's exactly right. You are right. So Chris Harrison is the poor fellow who, by the way, what he did is he dared to call out cancel culture and, of course, got canceled for calling out cancel cultures.

How it works in our day today. Once again, the hypocrisy is purposeful. It's not these people just don't know what they're doing. It is very much intentional, at least on the part of the elites. Certainly, a lot of the younger people they've never been taught how to think critically.

They have been taught what to think, not how to think. Certainly their hypocrisy is just all they know. That's the only thing their worldview can produce. But the reasons for that go to the elites. Anyways, I was listening to a blog in my blog, which is Doug Wilson's blog.

What he does is he will record what he writes. It appears in writing first and then appears in audio format with Doug reading it, which I always find somewhat humorous because then he can put his own inflections on his own words, shall we say.

He was talking about the whole issue. It's titled John Piper and the Fire in the Attic, is what this particular one was about. He had talked a little bit about the empathy test, the empathy issue. There's a Man Rampant program featuring Joe Rigney that I know Summer got in all sorts of trouble for mentioning.

If you want to offend the newest voters, the young people are going, yeah, I don't know. The large majority of people seem to feel that by empathizing with someone, by allowing their emotions to determine your emotions, that you are loving.

In fact, all definitions of being loving, including in the Christian church now, have something to do with this idea of empathy and entering into other people's emotions. Of course, the scriptures never tell us to do that.

We're to bear one another's burdens and we're to weep with those who weep. But you don't do that by turning your emotions over to somebody else. You help someone else with your strength in their weakness.

You do not give up your strength to become weak like they are weak. That's what the body is about. When there's someone else in the body who's stronger than you, then you draw strength from them. You don't insist that they drop down to your level.

That's one of the big problems today on many levels. He was talking about that and he was talking about how this entire woke mess is based upon just fundamental alterations of the categories of epistemology and what is maturity and what is love.

Once you inject the woke mess into evangelical theology, to use a movie example, how's that? Y 'all impressed? Okay, the movie's over 10 years old, but I'm doing the best I can. Spoiler alert, remember at the end of iRobot where Sonny has gotten the nanites and so the cop gets down there and jams the nanites into the computer brain and kills the bad computer that's running all the robots and all the little red lights go off and stuff like that.

Injecting woke categories into biblical theology is like taking those nanites and boom and the result is brain death. That's what you've got because all the categories get changed, everything gets inverted, and the stuff we're seeing today just flows directly from all that.

Then came this section and I listened to it twice and obviously grabbed the written format. Let's listen to what Doug says here. In the meantime, coming back to yours truly, I anticipate that I will be getting whiter by the day.

This is because I'm engaged in ongoing controversy with woke evangelicals and the woke evangelical tries to steer whatever church or movement he is in by means of his or her hurt feelings. So far lots of people are letting them.

The short form is this, you are in deep sin because I am sad and the sadder I get, the worse you must be. And so it is that the sadder these people will get, the whiter I will get and because they have embraced a gospel that forgives nothing, cleanses nothing, and restores nothing, things look to be really sad.

There you go. Once the controlling epistemology is no longer epistemic but emotional, once the driving issue... and woke preacher clips on Twitter and I think over on Gab, and Gab is picking up by the way guys, it really is.

You have to follow enough people, but I've followed enough people and it's starting to be like Twitter. What? Yeah, we've got our own account. I gabbed that. I put that out there and said, hey, give us a follow and stuff like that.

What? Okay. Yeah. Well, no one knew about that anyways. So anyway, that totally blew where I was going there. So here we are and people's emotions are what we are supposed to be. I was talking about woke preacher clips.

When you listen to these formerly orthodox preachers who have now succumbed to the guilt, they have become convinced I had conversation with, and then name your intersectional group, with my black brothers, with my South Sea Islander brothers, with my Asian brothers, with my transgender brothers, with my homosexual brothers, with whatever.

I had conversation and discovered that my words have brought pain to others. So I must repent, and I will repent again next week, and I will repent again the next week after that. As far as I know, I'm just now going to be in a constant state of penance, because there's no forgiveness in any of this, anywhere, anyways, but I'm now embracing it because I just feel terrible that I made someone feel sad.

This is now the ultimate cultural heresy, is to make someone feel sad. Of course, at the same time, you then think back on how many times you have heard people say, well, I read in the Bible that it said such and so, and man, I would never worship a god like that.

That makes me feel terrible. Well, okay. There you go. There was a day when we would have turned around and said, well, that's because what the Bible is saying is true, and you need to repent and change your mind.

Repentance, not a big thing today. I think that may be the one word in all of scripture that has just become the least popular thing possible, or it's been redefined. Everything's been redefined. Repentance is now embracing someone else's emotional state as determinative of truth.

That's what repentance is. Well, that's not what repentance is biblically, and so once again, we have a problem here. So, short form, you are in deep sin because I am sad, and the sadder I get, the worse you must be.

That really explains what happened when we look at the Max Lucado situation. You probably read about it. The National Cathedral, which is no longer the National Cathedral. It's not the People's Church or anything like that.

It's just a dead monument to formal religion in Washington, D .C., but Max Lucado was asked to speak there, and immediately, cancel culture came after him. Why? Because long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, Max Lucado, almost 17 years ago, preached a sermon, wrote an article.

It's an article that was then purged from the internet just recently, probably within the past few weeks, and I thanked the gentleman. I threw out a tweet and said, hey, net geeks, I had found it on archive .org, but it was one of those things where it was broken up into sections, and it just looked to me like only the first section had been saved, and then section two I couldn't get to, section three I couldn't get to, so I threw out a help.

I need a net geek, and it probably didn't take an hour until a net geek who follows me said, here's the file, and had it all for me. Thank you very, very much. But this was from 2004, and look, today, basically, the mindset in our society is, if it's prior to 2014, if it's prior to Ferguson, it might as well be prior to the Civil War.

It might as well be, you know, there's slaverships coming into every port. Maybe we can just go back to the Vikings are doing the Blood Eagle in small towns all over the place. I mean, there's no civilization before 2014.

So this is 2004, so this is like ancient history. If you read, it starts off on May 17th, 2004, the state of Massachusetts recognized a thousand same-sex weddings. A cultural bomb exploded. This week, senators will vote on the Marriage Act, a constitutional amendment that defines and protects one man, one woman in marriage.

What does the Bible have to say about this? What does God have to say about gay marriage? I can't think of a more timely topic. This is what Max Lucado is apologizing for, okay? He is apologizing for saying the recent move toward legalization of homosexual marriage leaves many people searching for answers.

On one hand, they see no problem with the idea. They have homosexual relatives or friends. They watch Will and Grace or Ellen DeGeneres on television. They look at such people and think, what's wrong?

Why would same-sex marriage be an issue? Yet at the same time, unrest rumbles within. How will homosexuality impact our culture? What about the spread of disease? If gay lifestyle and gay marriage is endorsed, what follows?

Polygamy? Legalized incest? If we can't draw a line, will lines be drawn at all? Many wrestle with such questions. Those of a Judeo-Christian background ask a more fundamental question. What does God say about gay marriage?

For the God-fearer, God's voice trumps all polls, politicians, studies, and sitcoms. So it is to this question we turn our attention this morning. Dividing the three sub-questions will offer a helpful outline.

The sub-questions were, what does God say about marriage, where he affirms primarily a biblical concept of marriage and that it was established by God? What does God say about gays? He talks about some of the key texts while trying to be as friendly, maybe would be the term, I don't know, as possible.

But he says, from start to finish, scripture categorically condemns same-sex intimacy. Why? Some answers found our concluding point. What does God say about gay marriage? And he says legalization of gay marriages will erode the traditional family.

Legalized gay marriage will lead to legalized polygamy and other deviations, which by the way, he was right. The highest reason gay marriage simply is, God does. And God does because he loves us. Marriage restores us to our Adamic state.

Where does that leave the church? Compassion. Yes, homosexual activity angers God, but who among us has not angered God? It wasn't homosexuality that caused Jesus to cleanse the temple. It was self-righteousness and greed.

Two sins that dog all of us, but there let there be no gay bashing among God's people, no arrogant parading of signs. There is no justification for jokes. Do we mock the alcoholic or shun the gossiper?

Let's show the same grace to the brother or sister who struggles with sexual sin. I would say, by the way, I stopped there. That's fine. That's wonderful. But again, where is the R word? It's repentant homosexuals.

That's the issue all the way through. Then he quotes 1 Corinthians 6 .9. He says, ex-gays worshipped in this church. Notice it's ex-gays. So, in other words, there has been repentance that has been brought about.

So, I urge you to elevate marriage, honor God's plan for the home by nurturing your own. Also, prayers and prayers for our national leaders, especially pray and thank God for those who are taking the lead and taking the heat on the Federal Marriage Act.

I urge you to contact your senators and representatives. Think this one through carefully. We cannot budge. Too much is at stake. 2004. Purged from the internet. Purged from the internet. It is gone. It has been erased.

Instead, February 11, 2021. Max Licato to the Washington National Cathedral. Dear Cathedral community, it was a high honor to serve as your guest preacher on February 7, 2021. It has come my understanding that my presence, excuse me, my presence in the Cathedral is a cause of consternation for many of your members.

I was invited to Washington National Cathedral to preach on the topic of the Holy Spirit. My desire was to highlight the power of the Spirit to bring comfort in this chaotic time. However, instead of that sermon, many only heard my words from many years ago.

2004, I preached a sermon on the topic of same-sex marriage. I now see that in that sermon, I was disrespectful. I was hurtful. I wounded people in ways that were devastating. I should have done better.

It grieves me that my words have hurt or been used to hurt the LGBTQ community. I apologize to you and I ask forgiveness of Christ. Faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality, but we agree that God's holy word must never be used as a weapon to wound others.

To be clear, I believe in the traditional biblical understanding of marriage, but I also believe in a God of unbounded grace and love. LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love.

They are beloved children of God because they are made in the image and likeness of God. Over centuries, the church has harmed LGBTQ people and their families, just as the church has harmed people on issues of race, gender, divorce, addiction, and so many other things.

We must do better and serve and love one another. I share the cathedral's commitment to building bridges and learning how to listen. To really listen to those with whom we disagree. That work is difficult, it's hard, it's messy, and it can be uncomfortable, but we need it now more than ever.

Respectfully, Max Licato. So, once again, we now have a sound biblical statement from 2004. Only 17 years. 17 years is a very short, short period of time. I know for younger people that sounds like a long time, 17 years is a tiny, miniscule amount of time.

And in 17 years, you can go from saying what he said, which included at the end, we cannot budge, too much is at stake, to I must ask forgiveness of you, and I ask forgiveness of Christ. It is important for us to recognize why so many have done this, and why so many more will do this in the future.

Someone like Licato has always been focused upon speaking graciously. Grace and speaking graciously are beautiful things. But they become nothing but sticky sentimentality when they're removed from gracious truth.

Truth vitalizes grace. It makes it powerful. It makes it real. If you want to be gracious to someone, you direct them to that which is true, because since they are made in the image of God, when the Spirit of God begins to work in their heart and their mind, they will long for truth.

So the most gracious thing you can do is direct someone to truth, to exalt truth. Now, what is said in this apology is reprehensible. It is reprehensible. It's shameful for any minister of the gospel to have said 17 years ago what was said biblically, that God condemns homosexual sexual activity.

He does. That is the biblical truth. That is unquestionable. That God defines marriage, and that to rebel against God's ordinance is to sign the papers of one's soul over the culture of death. Culture of death.

We tend to think the culture of death is only about either abortion or euthanasia. It's much more than that. I've pointed out many times on this program that the entire LGBTQ revolution is intimately connected with the culture of death.

When you convince a 13-year-old girl to mutilate her body so she will never be able to have children, she will never be able to hold a child to her breast, and yes, that's called breastfeeding. I don't care what idiotic hospital thinks it should be called chest feeding.

It's beautiful, and it's natural, and it's right, and it is to deny that young woman of a beautiful part of her life. That's culture of death. That's culture of death. It's all connected together. It's all a part of rebellion against God's ways.

It's all Christ says he's the life, and secular totalitarianism offers nothing but death. It's just the polar opposite. This is what we're up against, and to properly identify these things 17 years ago, but now to bow, and scrape, and grovel at the power of the mob in rebellion against Christ as a minister of Christ is absolutely reprehensible.

You say, well, you don't know what kind of pressure he was under. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. You better believe I know exactly what pressure he was under. Some of us just don't even want to enter into those places anymore.

I know what pressure he was under, and I simply say to you that when the mob comes to you and says, deny what Christ taught that from the beginning he made them male and female, you only have one choice.

It's called martyrdom. You can't go, well, I'm so sorry I hurt you. You don't have the right to say that. You have an audience of one. The only thought across your mind should be, did I honor or dishonor the truth of Christ 17 years ago, and am I dishonoring or honoring the truth of Christ now by groveling in front of the rebellious mob that demands my head because I dared follow Christ 17 years ago and said so?

Not the first. Not going to be the last. He's not going to be the last. But notice the centrality of the emotional life of individuals. I was disrespectful. How? Oh, you can't respect Christ. You can't respect his truth.

You have to be respectful toward those who are rebelling against Christ. Oh, I was hurtful. I was hurtful. Could we stop just for a second? Just for a second. How many of Jesus's parables were absolutely hurtful?

I mean, the Jewish leaders knew that he was telling stories about them, right? They were hurt. Their feelings were hurt. And Jesus still told the parables because there's something more important than hurt feelings.

There are a number of things more important than hurt feelings. Every society that's ever become a great society knew that. We've lost that, which is why our society in its current form is doomed. It's simply doomed.

This kind of childish pandering, complaining, give me a safe space, no society run by people like that is going to last more than a few years. There are plenty of societies waiting to come in and the adults will take over.

No two ways about it. But think about all the things that Jesus said and did that absolutely fail the standard that Max Lucado has now embraced. I mean, wow, the offense. I'm not even talking about Matthew 23.

I mean, that's the pinnacle of insult and condemnation and judgment. But, you know, the parables like, you know, bring these people in front of me and kill them for their unfaithfulness. Hmm. Yeah, that's I was hurtful.

I wounded people in ways that were devastating. Again, this sounds exactly like what Chris Harrison said. This sounds exactly like what Drew Brees said. It's like it is a template that it's just, you know, the woke people carry it around their phone, says here, accept this file, put your name in it, say it.

That's how it works. That's how it works. It grieves me that my words have hurt or been used to hurt the LGBTQ community. Do I have to say this again? Yes, I do. There is no such thing. Oh, as a political block, as a as a as a unidentifiable entity to slander people, sure.

But on any logical foundation, especially once you put the T in there, you just blew the whole thing up because there is no L or G or B if T is true. OK, there can be no G if there are not men. There can be no L if there are no women.

There cannot be not certainly B requires both. So that can't be there. So it's an incoherent collection of sexual perversion and deviancy. Just thrown together in a mishmash that that you now cannot offend.

But to say I apologize to you, that's bad enough. I apologize to you for having spoken the truth to you. If he had said I was wrong about those biblical passages, I was wrong about marriage. If he had said that, at least we have something to deal with.

He said none of that because he goes on to say, well, I still still sort of believe in the traditional view of marriage. Can you accept me? No, they won't. Even that will be used against you. Haven't you figured that part out yet?

There's no satisfying this mob. But I apologize to you and I ask forgiveness of Christ. I ask forgiveness of Christ for having spoken his truth. Unbelievable. Absolutely, positively unbelievable. This is what comes when you give in.

You collapse to our modern age. I guess you raised that for a purpose. I did. Once you're done, you need to hear this because you you don't know about this. I didn't know about... I can hear you. I saw you mention Max this morning, but I didn't really know any of this.

You know, doing other things, right? You start going through it and I realize, oh my goodness, you know, we've been going through some of our older recordings, trying to make sure that we have track of everything in order and finding what media may have been missed along the way.

And I found a tub of DVDs and CDs this morning and Jan and I are going through them and I pull out, I kid you not, from 2004, a conference that you did back in Long Island. And you know what the topic was?

Gay marriage. And my first thought was, this is not on the web. We must get this on Sermon Audio as soon as possible. You know why I thought that? Because it was the right thing to do. People need to hear this.

They need to hear this message. They needed to hear what Max said in 2004, too. They need to hear it today more than ever. Not him capitulating and surrendering. Or apologizing. Or apologizing. But that's surrender.

I mean, good night. Oh, it was surrender. Yeah. Total capitulation. So it's an interesting juxtaposition there. Find something from 2004, get it out there. And they're scrubbing the net. They're trying to get rid of it.

They're trying to get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Well, so I, obviously, as with our next topic, there may be people that God used Max Likado at some point in their life. And you're looking at this and you're just going, how can this?

But that's not what you said before. I forget the first program where I used the phraseology of tsunami of apostasy. But I've used it many, many times. And I don't care who you think is just all that and a bag of chips.

Your faith cannot be based upon some name, some person, some preacher. God can use a crooked stick to draw a straight line. And you can discover as you mature in the faith that some of your earlier heroes in the faith didn't have it all figured out.

And maybe they will do things that just leave you going, what? You will not be held accountable for them. You're only held accountable for yourself. Your roots must go deep. And the tree with the deep roots is unmovable.

For every one of us, those roots cannot be dependent upon some big name or even unknown name, but still someone outside of yourself. Those roots have to be deep in the soil of God's truth. That's where God has planted you.

That's what you need to be working on right there. So you don't have this kind of thing happen to yourself. So there you go. All right. I'm hesitant now a little bit to address the Ravi Zachariah situation, primarily because I was sent right before the program, right before the program, I was sent some comments, I guess, from Facebook, from family members, Zachariah's family members, pushing back on RZIM and how RZIM has handled the situation, the production of the report that came out last week, who was interviewed for that, sources of information, and things like that.

Now, I looked over what was sent. They weren't really in order, so it was a little bit hard to follow, but I looked over it and I didn't see any counter-argumentation against really the testimony that had been given from the various women and the issues that were raised by, well, the report itself.

And if you're not familiar with all this, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna have to assume that most people in this program are well aware of the fact that Ravi Zacharias of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries passed away last May.

And just to summarize a few things, for a number of years I had been aware of some websites and some people out there, because they like to make me aware of these things, they'll hijack threads on other topics and do stuff like that.

And so you don't always know, but I knew that there were questions. I think it was 2017, the sexting thing came out in regards to one woman and pictures, and that was vociferously denied. And then the other thing that I knew was boiling more and more, which has not been a part of this discussion at all, had to do with Ravi's degrees and what he claimed about them, where he claimed to have gotten degrees or where he claimed to have taught.

And there were people raising a bunch of questions saying, but he didn't, he doesn't have the background that he has claimed that he has. And so I knew about that stuff. I knew about that stuff a couple years ago.

And some of them I'd say, well, why didn't you dig into that? Because that's not what I do. Well, you did with Ergon Kanner. Well, that's because he was claiming to do what I actually do by name with the people I actually debate.

So that was something I had to do. I didn't want to, but had to. And that one was easy. I mean, let's just be honest. That was a real obvious one. As I've said before, I've never met Ravi Zacharias, never communicated with Ravi Zacharias.

I was the beneficiary of some funding in 2006 and 2007 to learn Arabic from a, just moving the neck. I thought you were going, huh? Oh yeah. 2006, 2007, there was a group that was funded by or partially funded, at least partially funded by RZIM that was helping people in doing studies on the subject of Islam.

And I was given funding and that's how I paid my Arabic tutor. And that's when I studied Arabic. I think it was, might've been through 2008. I don't remember, but I just knew that there was some connection to RZIM somewhere back in the back, but never, never been there.

I met, I think one guy that was sort of high up in RZIM at one point, at some conference someplace. And of course, Nabil Qureshi ended up working for Ravi Zacharias Ministries, I think right up to his point of his death.

So, but I didn't know the people, there was no way I could have in any way, have talked to anybody, even if I had had specific concerns. And I admitted in an article, or at least in a response online, sometime in the past week, I think if you added up everything that I've listened to, grand total, I'd never read a Ravi Zacharias book.

I may have listened to a grand total of four hours because there have been times I have critically interacted with stuff that Ravi Zacharias said about Roman Catholicism. He spoke at that thing at the Mormon Tabernacle with Richard Mao.

And at that point I had said, well, at least he spoke the truth. I'm uncomfortable with the context in which that was done. And some of the things were said, but it's a whole lot better than Mao's disaster.

So we had interacted at some point with stuff that he had said here on the program, but I had no contact with, would not have been able to get in contact with Ravi Zacharias, even if I had tried, just didn't have that kind of a connection.

And I just get the feeling most reformed people don't. I mean, I guess he did speak at the Ligonier Conference. I've seen a lot of people saying, you know, looking back, that was weird. That just didn't fit in with everybody else.

And it was strange. I mean, I don't know. I can't comment on any of that. In a very brief period, I think on Saturday morning, I wrote a little article that I posted on a couple of sites, Gab Facebook, it was primarily Facebook, cross-posted a Gab and tweet, Twitter and stuff.

And I covered what I was not hearing from almost anybody else, because now everybody's had a comment. Ray Comfort had put something out. I listened to Ray Comfort's comments and I linked to that when I wrote my article, because he had touched on, I think, a key important aspect of all of this.

And then Todd Friel, I listened to Todd Friel's comments this morning on the subject. And David has put a article of YouTube out on the subject and everybody's got their take. Everybody has got their take and everybody's seeing this lesson or that lesson and all the rest of this stuff.

But what I emphasized in my article, a lot of people picked it up and I was thankful for that, even though it really wasn't meant to be a freestanding article. What I basically said was I saw no evidence that Ravi Zacharias was a churchman.

He held ordination in a rather diffuse denomination. Was it Alliance Christian Missionaries, something like that? Christian missionaries, something along those lines, yeah. But to my knowledge, was not called as an elder in a church, did not function in that way, did not have regular teaching responsibility.

And given what the report said, and I'm going on the basis of the report. Now, look, and I can see how this is a possibility. If RZIM is taking this opportunity to remake itself into a social justice warrior movement, then that raises all sorts of questions.

And I don't know. If the report, which seems to be fairly, well, okay, the report's done by an outside group, obviously, who shouldn't have any horse in the race, in essence. But the information that was provided to them was primarily provided them by RZIM.

And what I read in the family statements was there was stuff that wasn't provided to them. So maybe there'll be some pushback and something in the future. I don't know. But the things that were said that seemed to be factually documented regarding months overseas alone in Southeast Asia.

And then the other thing, which I've mentioned to a bunch of folks, the ability to spend money, funds with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to pay for a massage therapist's training.

This has something to do with the I buy a Kindle book on Amazon to convert to MP3, to listen to, to ride, to do a program on the dividing line. And I'll eventually get something from Rich that says, what was that for?

And it was $9 .99, not $40 ,000. The first thing I said was, look, I'm sorry. You can't spend that kind of money and people don't know what's happening. There are bean counters. They may be quiet people who never say a word to anybody, but they're there.

Somebody knew something was going on. Somebody knew those funds were being used for something and they were having to put vague, strange explanations in the comment box. Basically, somebody knew something was going on.

And of course, you've got the, well, he was put up on a pedestal and he was just so much smarter than everybody else and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And hey, if that happened, well, that's on RZIM.

That's on the people there. But you see, if you're in the church, that's where that's supposed to be kept from happening. And I know, believe me, I know there are pastors who create churches just for themselves.

And those are normally disasters waiting to happen, right? You get these mega personality cults. And when that pastor falls, as frequently happens, dies, happens too, apostatizes, whatever. These huge empires just collapse and take a lot of people with them.

But what's supposed to happen, since there is no office of apologist, is there is supposed to be some type of accountability and some kind of balance. Some kind of balance. And if you're actually a minister and you're supposed to be speaking and teaching, then I've said from the beginning that apologists, how many times have I said this?

Apologists have no place outside the church. Being gone from a fellowship for months at a time, these apologists that every week they're at some other place other than the place where people know them, it's not difficult to fool people when you're traveling.

You can put on the right clothes, use the right talk. Easy. Easy to do. You can't do that amongst people that you live amongst, that they know you, they see you, they observe you. And so my article anyways was saying, this is where the problem is.

There's no church accountability, there's no fellow elders, there's no... And you might say, well, come on, would anyone really hold you accountable? Yeah. If I went Ravi on somebody, my fellow elders, well, one of them, two of them, well, all three of them are taller than I am, and one of them by a long shot, I wouldn't know.

Luke would turn me into a pretzel and wouldn't hesitate to do so. But there didn't seem to be any of that accountability in that context. And many apologetics ministries chafe at the idea, chafe at the idea that they should be under the care of elders.

Because let's just be honest, many apologists consider themselves quite superior to those elders. Those elders don't know about apologetics what I do. Right? It's true. That's just the way it is. So I wrote the article and what it says about the church and things like that, stand by that.

But as we go forward from here, I will be very, very interested at what happens if there is any pushback, if there is any modification of the report. I mean, the report talks about pictures, dates, going back in the I think three different phones, maybe four, forget how many there were.

I mean, that's pretty hard documentation because the phones were in the possession of the family. I would struggle a little bit with post-mortem condemnation if there was no chain of custody. And if there is a possibility that these phones could have been tampered with so as to create but since it was combined with testimony and things like that, I mean, there are issues here.

There are evidentiary issues. There's no question about that. But if the report is true, then one thing that crossed my mind as I read it was that it indicated that there were continuing inappropriate pictures and texts being exchanged within a few months of the man's death.