I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand the test of scrutiny. As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people in the right direction.

As of today's date, which is February 26, 2021, I have 22 recorded episodes, which means at the rate I'm going now, I could release new episodes without creating more into 2022. Once I realized that, I sort of pulled the brakes a little bit since I needed a break from podcasting anyway, specifically the script writing portion.

I bring that up because you might start to see bonus episodes here and there, which is what this is, and they're bonus episodes for the reasons I just explained. But what I wanted to do with these bonus episodes, and some of these bonus episodes I'm going to call side notes, is to address events that are a little bit more current.

I want to apologize for the audio quality. I don't have the capability to have good audio quality when it comes to having more than one person on a mic because of hardware reasons, but if we end up doing more of these, perhaps that might change. What you're going to hear is an informal discussion I have with Pastor Peter, Pastor Peter Kim, about the whole Ravi Zacharias scandal.

We don't cover every single aspect of it, but some good portions of it and some of the broader questions that people seem to have. Have a listen and enjoy. Marine Community Church, I am here once again with Pastor Peter. I dragged him here. I thought it might be helpful if we did one of those recorded informal discussion times like we did with the one concerning politics right before the election.

That was when John Piper, if you recall, John Piper came out with a blog and then Wayne Grudem came out with a blog, and then several people reached out to different people in leadership. So we just thought it might be a good idea just to have an extended conversation recorded and then share it with the church.

This is one of those times again, except the subject matter is now involving Ravi Zacharias. Several people, just like the last time, have reached out to different people in leadership, have asked us what we thought. So we thought, in the same vein of thinking, we thought it might be helpful if we just again have an informal conversation that's recorded to provide some insight for anyone that would be confused, anyone who wants to put together the pieces, so to speak, because he was somewhat of a prominent figure within Christendom.

I know many of you might not know who Ravi Zacharias is. I'll spend a little bit of time just building up what we're going to talk about. Ravi Zacharias was a prominent Christian apologist. You can think of a modern day C.S. Lewis. His ministry had become international. They had headquarters in various countries and apologists based in those headquarters.

They were receiving, I think, in millions in terms of donations. Up until recently, they had another main office in the U.K. specifically devoted to a school for apologetics called the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics. Ravi Zacharias himself lectured in various college campuses, including the Ivy League campuses during forums called the Veritas Forum.

He would come and he would defend the Christian faith. These schools included Harvard and Yale. He's written numerous books, tons of lectures. I've read the vast majority of his books. I've listened to the vast majority of his lectures. They're like hybrid sermons, lectures. He's spoken at megachurches throughout his entire career.

He also notably in 2000 spoke at the Mormon Tabernacle. Many people will say they came to faith because of him. He made Christianity understandable in ways that very few people could. At his funeral, you had people like Tim Tebow and Mike Pence eulogizing him. You even had Kayleigh McEnany say kind words about him.

He was known as the quintessential gentleman when it came to debating. He was extremely bright, but he was extremely kind as well. He was the guy that everyone pointed to show you that Christianity is not just for fools. It's for smart people as well. You can be smart and you could also be a Christian.

People would point to him. He made Christianity make sense in a world where you had a vast marketplace of ideas. A couple years before his death, there were some things that were being talked about him. There were some lawsuits that raised some eyebrows. A couple years ago, a person by the name of Lorian Thompson alleged certain behavior.

It was settled with an NDA, so nobody really knew the details. After his funeral, victims began to come forward one after another. What's interesting is, initially, because it was after his death and he's not allowed to defend himself, it could easily be interpreted as picking on someone after they're dead.

But enough people came forward where it warranted an investigation. RZIM, to their credit, contracted an independent agency. That independent agency looked into the matter. That investigation, they released preliminary findings a little bit before Christmas. The preliminary findings were not good. They were not good at all. The preliminary findings alleged that Ravi Zacharias did indeed engage in inappropriate behavior, that he had owned various massage parlors, which was known by many people, maybe not to the public, but to many people within his circle.

The preliminary findings had indicated that it was certain that Ravi Zacharias was guilty of many of the things that the victims were saying. A final report came out. I think many people were perhaps holding out hope that the preliminary report was incorrect, but the final report came out not too long ago.

It was actually worse. It was much worse than what the preliminary report said. So I'll just kind of read off just a glimpse of the final report. The final report stated that Ravi Zacharias was guilty of sexual abuse on many occasions in different places over a period of many years.

These involve not only women in the U.S., but also in Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, and almost certainly other places. The agency, Martin Miller, did not particularly investigate Asian and what he did on these trips, but he especially used those who worked in massage parlors, even importing them from overseas and seeking more than a massage.

In one example, he offered to take a masseuse to travel overseas with him. He used RZIM ministry funds to fund his abuse. He will give masseurs large gifts or pay them financially. Or received monthly supports from RZIM's charity for the poor for a lengthy period of time. He used the gospel and Christian language to gain the confidence of his victims.

Listen to this paragraph. This witness told us that their relationship began as a normal massage therapist-client relationship, and she came to think of him as a father figure. He elicited information about her faith and her financial situation. She reported that after he arranged for the ministry to provide her with financial support, he required sex from her.

According to this witness, Mr. Zacharias used religious expressions to gain compliance as she was raised to be a person of faith. She reported that he made her pray with him to thank God for the opportunity they both received. She said he called her his reward for living a life of service to God, and he referenced the godly men in the Bible with more than one wife.

She said he warned her not to ever speak out against him, or she would be responsible for the millions of souls whose salvation would be lost if his reputation was damaged. And I can go on just a little bit more. Ravi owned at least two apartments in Bangkok. On one occasion, he spent 256 days in one of those apartments and charged IZIM for rent.

Also, Ravi Zacharias is on record saying that he's never done anything appropriate in his 45 years of marriage to his wife. He said this, "In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in inappropriate behavior of any kind." Just weeks after, this is the Lorian Thompson case, the case I referred to earlier about the non-disclosure agreement, the NDA.

Just weeks after the Thompson case, he was engaging with similar behavior with a Malaysian masseuse. Now, Ravi Zacharias also carried with him, it was well known that he carried with him several phones, several phones with him so that on these different phones, they would not be connected to the Wi-Fi.

On these phones were found pictures. We're talking hundreds of pictures, hundreds of pictures of different women on his phones. So it's not just a testimony of different women in different regions of the world as if that weren't enough because the details were eerily similar, but they found pictures of hundreds of women on these phones and the digital corroboration, the physical evidence is insurmountable.

If you want to read the report for yourself, there's a 12-page report that you can find. To RZIM's credit, they contracted this agency to do the investigation, they released the findings publicly, and they have repudiated Ravi Zacharias' conduct. We don't know anything outside of that with respect to how many people knew or didn't know or things like that, but this is, in a nutshell, what we know.

So Pastor Peter is here with me, I'm going to ask Pastor Peter an open-ended question. Pastor Peter, what are we to make of all this? What are we to make of all this? Well, you know, when I first heard the news of Ravi Zacharias, I think it was about five or six ago when the founding pastor of Willow Creek, Bill Hybels, was also accused of sexual misconduct and Ravi Zacharias' name actually came up during that time and because he didn't really get much press because of the non-disclosure agreement and then all the press went to Bill Hybel, and when I found out a few months later that Ravi Zacharias' case was just closed because of the non-disclosure agreement, I thought that was a very strange way to finish something like that, especially when his primary objective in life is to glorify God and to leave it as a question mark like that.

So I knew something fishy was already going on behind the scenes, it just didn't get the press so when all these facts did finally come out, yeah, I wasn't necessarily shocked by it and this is not the first time I've experienced somebody that was celebrated as a Christian, you know, apologist that fell, you know, and obviously there's tons of people that we could name but people that I've followed and known and heard and respected from a distance, I would say he's probably maybe about fifth or sixth person that I've seen in the last 37, 38 years that I've been a Christian and so to me it's not a shock, you know, but it always tells me, you know, like the way that people come into ministry and once they come in especially somebody who's as influential as he is, to not have that kind of accountability and again it's hard for me to believe that people around him didn't know what was going on especially knowing just how elaborate this was and how long it's been, somebody somewhere swept this under the rug.

So it wasn't just him that was doing this, somebody justified it, you know, he was surrounded by people who saw the impact that he was having and justified all his other behavior because of it, you know, and so when the Bible says the elder needs to be above reproach, you know, as much of a good thing that he did when he was alive, the damage that he has done is far greater than the good that he has done because of this and yeah, so, you know, I grieve over the impact that this is having on so many Christians but hopefully that at the least that people will come away from this realizing that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, there's no man who is above accountability.

Yeah, you know, Pastor Peter, you raise an interesting point when we talk about the qualification of an elder, you know, we look back at Ravi Zacharias' ministry and it wasn't done through a local church, it was, his ministry was done via corporation, you know, he was the CEO, he was the one in charge and it wasn't, you know, the system that was in place that RZIM used wasn't the makeup that's given to us in the scriptures.

In the scriptures, a church is led by elders and there's trust there between the elders and the congregation but the elders keep one another accountable and they're also accountable to the congregation as well but there are layers of accountability in place where in the case of Ravi Zacharias, I mean, he's walking around with multiple phones, you know, women are, I mean, I understand that he has a bad back but this woman, this masseuse is following him around the globe, it's strange but do you think that contributed in any way, Pastor Peter?

>> Yeah, and I think God's wisdom, he did establish a local church, there's qualifications for elders, for deacons, he says to not to entertain a charge against an elder unless there's two or three witnesses so it doesn't say not to charge an elder but to do it very seriously and because the consequence of an elder who was living in sin because it's going to damage the whole church.

But to be fair, most of the people that I know who have fallen were local church pastors who embezzled money, who had affairs with their secretaries and so definitely the local church if practiced biblically is meant to have accountability. We have plurality of elders, we have discipline that we're supposed to carry out, not to bring charges flippantly but if there is a serious charge, to take it seriously and to take it to the church but the problem right now is that the church itself, not just locally but globally is not healthy.

I think we've given to the goal of what we think is successful is if it grows, if many people get baptized then we're being successful so whatever means that we've used, whoever is being used for that end is excusable because we're seeing fruit but in the end ultimately what God calls us to do is to be faithful to what he teaches and so true fruit is going to always come from abiding in Christ and to abide in Christ obviously we have to abide by his word and so we can't just look at the end goal and to justify the means.

The means have to also be glorifying to God and I think all these things that we're seeing, it doesn't mean that if you follow what the Bible says it guarantees that we're not going to fall in sin but definitely when we don't follow it, it gives room for this type of stuff to happen and to sweep it under the rug so it's not just one.

There had to have been through 30-40 years of this man's ministry and we don't know how long this has been going on but there had to have been dozens and dozens of people who justified his behavior that allowed him to be able to go this far in his sin.

Yeah and humanly speaking I can't help but think if there were some brave souls who were part of his inner circle assuming he had an inner circle that saw this but it's quite probable that there was so whoever those hypothetical people are, if they had spoken truth in his life and if they had stuck by it, there are reports that someone brought it up to him but it looks like they were silenced but instead of just kind of being silenced like that, if they had maybe just pried a little more, I can't help but wonder if this could have been stemmed a lot earlier on but at the same time, if somebody wants to do something, it's ultimately not the fault of someone outside of us.

You know what is interesting to me about this situation is that he almost seemed like he knew that this was going to be exposed after he died because he made no effort to cover this up. He only covered it up while he was alive so he's not a dummy.

He knew once he died what was on his computer on his phone was going to get exposed that all those people who made allegations, the hotels, the masseuse, that all of that was going to come out which makes me think that he wasn't a believer, that he said all of these things but he was not afraid of the consequence after he dies because an unbeliever will think well after I'm dead, I'm not here so it doesn't matter.

He's not thinking about the afterlife. He's not thinking about the consequence afterwards. So you know, I know many men who have fallen and have repented, whether the repentance is sincere or not, but his behavior is particularly grievous because everything that I've heard and read, it sounds like the mentality of an unbeliever.

And so for him to have the kind of impact that he had as an unbeliever in and of itself is something that we need to kind of take a step back and look at. What caused this man to be effective? What was his message? Why were so many people duped by this man, right?

I mean, God could use donkeys to speak truth so it doesn't mean that there wasn't any truth coming out of this man but how did that many people not recognize that this man may not have been a Christian? Yeah I mean, you know, we had to take stock, you know.

I mentioned early on that I read a vast majority of his books and a vast majority of his lectures and I remember when this news came out and just kind of as an experiment, I listened to one of his older lectures and I listened to it with different ears, you know, just completely different ears now that I know him, you know.

And I think, you know, looking back in my mind, I just viewed him as an apologist, you know, not as a, not necessarily as someone I'm going to receive biblical truth from. Not that he didn't, not that that wasn't present at all but that wasn't, to me I didn't see him as that goal but the problem is, but the problem is this, right?

Truth is truth, you know, truth is truth, period, you know. And so these questions of like, what did he actually say? What did he actually believe? These are fair questions that need to be answered, you know. And I know for myself, I've given seekers in the past, I've given some seekers some of his books like, "Hey, you know, what book would you recommend if I want to find out more about Jesus?" And to one particular person, I gave them Jesus Among Other Gods.

Now as I'm sitting here right now, I do wish I didn't do that, of course, you know. But it's reinforcing just, in my mind, the necessity of core truths that we need to absolutely fight for and no matter how eloquent you are or how smart you are, nobody is above that.

Clearly not even Ravi Zacharias, you know. So Pastor Peter, I want to ask you, for going forward, going forward, I don't think we say, "Well, you know, I don't know this guy personally so I'm not gonna listen to him. I don't know, you know, I don't know Steve Lawson personally.

I don't know what's going on in his life so I'm not gonna listen to him." Because you and I would agree, in theory, someone even as solid as Steve Lawson, we don't know their life so in theory, they could be someone else. I don't think he is. Obviously, I'm not saying that.

But that could be true, you know, in a hypothetical vacuum. You know, we don't know anybody, right? And then the other layer to that is we can look at each other. I don't know you. Are you telling me the truth and start, you know, having this, like, you know, in the spirit of being discerning, kind of take it too far, you know?

So what are your thoughts on that, Pastor Peter? You know, I think Jonathan Edwards in his book, Religious Affection, you know, he basically writes like half of the book is about, you know, fake affection. Like you can go to church and be fake. You can be a leader and be fake.

You can be knowledgeable and be fake. You can bear fruit, at least seemingly, and be fake. And so he basically tears down everything that we would measure as, like, that's a godly man. That's a man who's a Christian. And then the second part of it, he builds up and says, well, this is what true affection looks like.

And the reason why he wrote that book is because the Great Awakening was happening and there was a lot of charismatic things that were happening. And so you had one group saying that that was all from God. And then you had another group saying, like, that's all from the devil.

That's not from God. And that's why he was sifting through to just biblically. So he goes after passage, after passage, after passage. And one thing that really stood out to me in his main point in his second part of the book is the primary and the most important evidence of genuine faith is his true affection for Christ.

And that's why he, like his, the evidence that his eyes were open to God's glory was his affection, right? And so he starts to break down that, what does that affection look like, right? In worship. What does that affection look like in preaching? What does that affection look like in life, in evangelism?

And so he kind of deconstructs and then rebuilds up. But like I said, the primary thing that really struck me was, you know, it's so simple that the Bible says, you know, the greatest thing that God desires is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

With apologetics, the emphasis is on the mind. You know, with charismatics, the emphasis is on your emotions, you know. With the discipleship movement, the emphasis is on your will and discipline. But there's a reason why I think all of that is covered because true affection requires all of it.

You never detach your emotion, you never detach your mind, you never detach your will. Like when there is genuine love for Christ, you see the evidence of that in all aspects of your life, not just one aspect. And so, but at the core of that is not how smart somebody is, how disciplined somebody is, or how passionate somebody is, but how is the affection for Christ evidenced in his passion?

How is the affection for Christ evidenced in his discipline and his study in theology? And so it doesn't mean, so we're never going to be perfect in our discernment, you know, because only God will know truly what's in man's heart. If before this happened, if anybody asked us, like, "Oh, we're questioning Ravi Zacharias," how many people would have questioned him?

Zero. Only it's because all this has been laid out, right? But I'm always weary when I think of people who are up on the stage, you know, and God is obviously using them for a purpose, but there's always an alternate motive when somebody is celebrated in public, like whether they become wealthy because they wrote a book, or they're treated, and people line up just to be near this person.

And so they're human. So whenever someone is celebrated by earthly standards, you know that they're struggling internally, even if they are a genuine believer, genuinely being used by God, they're struggling with that desire to touch some of that glory. There's a reason why Christ put a thorn on Apostle Paul's side, and he said the only reason why he did it is to keep him humble because God was using him, you know.

And so for me as a pastor, I'm always weary of that because, you know, the more "success" that I or our church experiences, there's always that temptation to be proud and to think that, you know, what we're doing is right. God is using us, and then once that pride gets in, that's the beginning of the unraveling of everything else, you know.

And so I don't think we have ultimately the true discernment to be able to say, you know, with absolute certainty, "This man is somebody that we trust. This man isn't somebody that we don't trust." I think as a general rule, we always believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And the same pride you struggle with, He struggles with. Same temptation you struggle with, He struggles with, you know. So to be discerning in the way that we are looking for the affection for Christ, does He have me to love Christ, right? And if He does, great, you know.

And to me personally, Rabbi Zacharias was not, I wasn't never like a, I had nothing against him, but I just didn't have that kind of affinity to him. So it didn't affect me that much. And I've had enough people when I was younger that I really looked up to fall, where I'm kind of, you know, like, not only can they fall, I can fall.

So if I know that I can fall, I'm not going to be shocked that they fall, you know. But like you said, the truth is the truth. It doesn't diminish the Word of God at all. If anything, to me, it brings my attention back to God's Word, right? Where I truly get fed is not through the presentation, but the content, right?

Even if it comes through a man like Rabbi Zacharias. I can read, I can still read his books. I can still be blessed by certain things that he said, you know, even if it did come through a man like him. Yeah, you know, it's, you know, I'm reminded when you say that, Pastor Peter, I'm reminded of James chapter one, you know, where, you know, when we think about wisdom, we think about getting wisdom.

Sometimes our inclination is to just build principles, okay, I learned this. So I'm going to make up this principle and abide by this principle forever. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't be reflective or introspective, or I'm not saying that the building of principles is bad, but primarily, wisdom comes from God.

Wisdom comes from God. It's not, the application of truth isn't static. His mercies are new every morning. As we seek him, he will give us wisdom. And we never reach a point where we say to ourselves, oh, I have all the wisdom I need. James chapter one doesn't apply to me anymore.

No one gets into that category anymore, you know, and so, yeah, Pastor Peter, you know, we're not going to start, you know, this witch hunt discernment ministry. We're not going to do that. Neither are we going to be naive as to think that some people are superhuman. All men have, all men of sin all fall short of the glory of God.

And so we kind of live in biblical truth. And we seek a person, you know, we seek a person, right? So, you know, Pastor Peter, I want to ask you, so for a lot of people, they, or, you know, some group of people maybe, you know, have his books, you know, they profited from his lectures.

What will be your advice? Should we burn his books? You know, should we not listen to it or what, you know, should we get rid of anything associated with him? I see arguments both ways, but if you can kind of just shed some light on that. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to give like a universal advice saying that this is what every person should do.

But I could, you know, I'll tell you what I would do. I wouldn't recommend his books because there are many other books that I think could do the job that he's done. I personally don't have a problem reading it because I can detach what I'm reading from the person who wrote it.

You know, there's a lot of good books that people fell away in their faith at the latter part of their life. And if we were to go back and discern and to trash everything, you know, there's a lot of books that really wouldn't stand the test of time. But personally, if you're able to do that, and I know a lot of people that did because what he did was so disturbing that they can't detach that as they're reading his stuff.

And you're perfectly within your rights to say, I'm not going to read it because it bothers me. But for whatever reason, I could detach that emotional part with what he said. So if I can, if I can be blessed by what he said, right, because what he said isn't his knowledge.

What he's saying is wisdom ultimately come from God. So even if a secular, a secular scientist, you know, tells me something about the universe and even though he's an adulterer and he's as immoral as you can get, you know, that causes me to see the glory of God, even if it came through the study of that man who hates God, you know.

So I kind of take it like that. I don't think we need to collect all his books and burn it. But I would be very cautious and wise in the way that I recommend it to people. Yeah, no, that, I mean, that's good. I mean, you know, Einstein wasn't a Christian, but I think everyone accepts his general theory, his theory of general relativity.

And certainly when you study the theory of general relativity, it expands and, you know, puts me in a state of awe at how God created the universe. You know, Pastor Peter, so I don't want to make this too long, but what would you say are things that we can learn from the life of, I mean, you've already alluded to it, but you know, if someone, you know, someone's in college, it doesn't have to be college, but you know, someone comes up to you, looked up to Ravi Zacharias, you know, he's, he or she is just completely heartbroken.

And that makes that person introspective because that person understands it could be any one of us. What would you say to that person? You know, it's understandable, you know, but you know, what's interesting to me is when Apostle Paul went to Berea, he said that the Bereans were more noble character, noble minded because they questioned him and they tested him by scripture.

So you would think humanly speaking, it's like, what, why you question me? And then Thessalonians, they said, you know, when I spoke the word, you listen to it as if it was the word of God, which it was. But he says that the Bereans were even more noble than them because they were questioned.

And I think going forward, everybody, like nothing should be above the word of God, you know, and I'm not saying that we should have a critical spirit, you know, but we need to be familiar with the word of God enough that when we sense the wolf, right, that you don't have to go and ask, is he a wolf?

You know what I mean? Like know the truth well enough that when something is off, right, that you can test it through the word of God. So that's one. Secondly, the emotional damage that that does, if it's damaging to the point where you don't trust anybody, and maybe even God, that's something that we have to take a step back and say, maybe your confidence was placed in the wrong place to begin with.

And God may be using this to reveal to you that your confidence ultimately wasn't God himself, right? So when his supposed messenger that you realize is, you know, like what's exposed now and that destroys your faith, that means your faith was resting upon man and not God, right? So that's the second thing.

But for those people who are genuinely hurt, their faith is not shaken, but genuinely hurt by that. That's natural, right? To go from that to say, I trust no man, that's also a mistake because the Bible says to submit, to submit to elders, you know, to respect and honor, and God establishes leaders and elders for a reason, right?

But to say, go from that to so therefore I don't ever trust the church, you know, I love God but I don't love people, you know, that's also a rebellious heart, right? Because God tells us to love, God tells us to submit, God tells us to honor and build.

But that requires maturity, you know, it's just like when you first started dating somebody or getting married and you have this ideal vision of what you think your wife is going to be like, and then inevitably you get out of your honeymoon and you see reality of the selfishness and sinfulness in yourself and in your wife.

And when the building happens is when you see the reality of who you are, you accept them and love them anyway, and you speak truth and love, cover over some sins, and you endure with one another, and you love despite the things that you see, and eventually a great marriage is built on true foundation, right?

In the same way, like, you know, when we're young we have a tendency to idolize and put people on pedestal, and then when they get knocked off the pedestal, like, you don't want to honor anybody, you don't want to follow anybody, that's also a mistake. That's just like saying, because you came out of your honeymoon, I want a divorce, right?

That's an unhealthy way to deal with the situation. I think the hurt and pain should lead us to find refuge in Christ, and then love everybody as if you're loving a sinner who's been forgiven. No matter who you respect, there are also sinners who've been forgiven. Then we could build a healthy church, that you don't expect perfection from your leaders.

You expect mistakes, but you can cover over that, right, and still honor them. How do you honor somebody that you know are not perfect? That's also part of maturity. Just like we learn to respect our parents, you know, you go through a rebellion when you start to see imperfections in your teenage years, but eventually you grow up and you see them as human beings, but you learn to honor flawed human beings, and that's what causes you to mature.

So I think that's the same, in the same way, right, like to not to be discerning, you know, question and know the Word of God, but at the same time know that mankind, even if they are good men of God, they're flawed, right, and to learn to focus on Christ.

Yeah, that's good, Pastor Peter, you know, I mean, I go back to what you said, you know, early on in this response, but is that the Word of God is sufficient, and we need to know the Word of God, because we can handle things in one swing or a completely different swing when the Bible is teaching us to handle it in a completely different aspect than what we're normally inclined to do, whether it's left or right, the Bible's telling us to go straight in the middle, you know, and you can't follow what you don't know, and if you don't know the Word of God, then we're lost.

Yeah, I mean, you're in a completely dark room with no light without the Word of God, and you know, we saw this with CRT, we saw this with just what's going on in the world with social justice, we're divided, but the Word of God is not ambiguous, the Word of God is clear, and the more we attach ourselves to the Word of God, the clearer this world is going to be, so yeah, thank you for that, Pastor Peter, did you want to say something?

Yeah, I mean, because you brought up what's going on, I mean, think about where we're at right now. You have one group of Christians saying that if you don't march with the Black Lives Matter, you don't love Jesus, right, and if you don't fight against that, you don't love Jesus.

If you are a Democrat, you don't love Jesus. If you aren't a Republican, you don't love Jesus. If you don't wear a mask, you don't love Jesus. If you wear a mask, it's because you don't love Jesus. I mean, you have these voices, right, now, are there some truth to everything that they're saying, of course, there's some truth, right, but we have, especially right now, we're living in a generation where people are so convicted, one way or the other, right, and maybe some of that is true, maybe some of that is wrong, but we're not going to find truth ourselves, just because, you know, I'm balanced, I'm smarter than those guys, you know, I'm more moral, that's not the plumb line that God gave us to be able to see if our life is level, you know, the only plumb line that we have to be able to measure if something that seems to be right, maybe crooked, is God's Word, so, you know, right now, like, it seems right in every direction, to the left or to the right, to wear the mask, don't wear the mask, get the vaccine, don't get the vaccine, and everybody, and even the so-called professionals, pastors, celebrity pastors, are saying polar opposite things, saying that if you really love Jesus, if you really did, you would do this, right, so, if we don't have the plumb line to measure with, you're going to end up doing basically who you like, I like this pastor, so I'm going to trust what he says, you know, I tend to lean this way, so I'm going to lean toward that way, which is how bad doctrine and bad life and corruption to the church comes in, so if there's any time where we needed to stick to the Word of God, it's now, right, because that's the only plumb line that measures if something is not level, because we can't, clearly, we can't tell with our own eyes.

Yeah, yeah, in times of peace, you know, the necessity to be in the Word isn't as apparent as it is in times of confusion, in times of confusion, you realize, man, I don't know how to interpret, I don't know what's going on, I don't know who to believe, and it kind of reveals, maybe we had more trust in men than we ought to have, you know, and the thing is, even if you land on the correct position, whatever that might be, if you don't take the proper vehicle there, you know, it doesn't really mean much, because you still have faith in men, you just happen to be fortunate, you know, and that doesn't really do anyone much good, so the primacy of every believer being in the Word of God is so apparent now and so central, you know, yeah, yeah, so, you know, we can talk more, we can talk about James Coates, we can talk about so many other things, but I'm looking at the time here, and it's already 42 minutes, so we'll end here, Pastor Peter, do you want to pray for us?

Sure. Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you for this ministry, and we pray, Father, that our discussion would just help us to gain wisdom, whatever that was said that may cause confusion, I pray, Lord, that you would help to filter that out for the listeners, and even in the things that we've said, I pray, Father God, that our listeners would listen with a lens of your Word, and help us truly be Bereans, Lord God, who test all things according to what you have said, that Christ would be at the center, Christ would be the head of our church, and I thank you, Father, for Elder James, and I pray that you would bless this ministry, and just asking, Lord God, that you would give him wisdom, and that this ministry would flourish, Lord God, that we may be blessed as a church as well.

I pray for the believers, Lord, who have been deeply affected by Rav Zechariah's sin, Lord, we don't know where he will be in eternity, but we know, Lord God, that you are gracious and loving, I pray for those who have been affected, whether it is in our church or all around the world, that this would not be a reason, Lord God, to abandon their faith, but only to strengthen it further, and not to put their confidence in men, but in you, in your Word alone, so we pray, Father God, that true fruit, genuine fruit, pruning, Lord God, would come out of this situation, ultimately for the greater good of your glory, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

As Pastor Peter has just prayed, our hope is that this would bring clarity, and not more confusion, but in the case anything we said does raise another question, well, you know where we go to church. Thanks for making it to the end, I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it.

To Him be honor, glory, and eternal dominion. James Honlow (upbeat music) (upbeat music)