Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:06 Hey, welcome out to the gray SOPs podcast, Brian Phillips here. So I went to Lake Geneva yesterday and I sat with Dr. Ryan benchwarmer with expedition 44, pastor Steve castle and pastor Bob Linquist. We're all great friends. And we're on the same journey together. We are a band of brothers, the four of us together. We sat down and we went through five recordings of Ravi Zacharias, who was an international apologist apologetics for God. And he, he had a powerful message, but yet his inner world was massively corrupt and ultimately ended in a terrible sex scandal. So we're looking at his mistakes really as men of God, not to pick on them or to try to act like we're better, but really just pulling out like, Hey, where were the red flags? What are the safeguards that we can have in place of our life? Whether we run a ministry in our family, our backyard, or even something international or national. So I hope you enjoy these next four to five podcast. I'm using this same recording here as an introduction to all of them. So what you'll hear next is, uh, what we recorded. We'll just jump right into it. God bless you. Remember to live upright, uh, share our podcast and the culture that we're creating with your friends. It actually is working in a powerful way. Maybe one day, we'll get into some testimonies and share some of that, but we love you. We're here to empower and equip. You enjoy
Speaker 1 00:01:48 Expedition 44 here with some of my best friends in life. We got Bob Brian and Steve they're local pastors, and I invited them out here because we have something in common that we are all blood covenant brothers, but even more in common than that is that we're really into raw, authentic ministry. And specifically, in some cases men's ministry. And we're going to talk about the Ravi Zacharias incident. And you've probably, if you're tuning in, if you search this and found it on YouTube or looking at the podcast, you probably know a lot about it. I think the average person has kind of read articles, watched YouTube films. And they're kind of aware of all of this specific issues and we're not really going to rehash every one of those issues. Quite frankly, this has really been, uh, a turnoff to me within Christianity because I watched a couple of guys kind of go through this, just sobbing.
Speaker 1 00:02:44 Like, couldn't keep it together at the remorse of the Christian, you know, community, you're going through this. And I've watched other people like, you know, pastors throwing darts, you know, kind of like under the bus at the church and you know, everything else. And we don't want to take part in any of that stuff. But what we want to do today is talk about a lot of the issues that surround Ravi Zacharias in his ministry and relate it back to you and me as normal people. But also talk about people like pastors, whether they're, you know, mega church multi-millionaire pastors or the small church with the congregation of,
Speaker 2 00:03:24 Yeah. One of the things that was on my heart when we were getting into this, was that, um, what does Robbie have to do with you? You know, some random dude that did some stuff. I mean, he, his whole ministry was apologetics, which the average Christian out there, they don't even have a clue what that even means. Am I making an apology to people like, and so his entire ministry was on this apologetics thing. And he was in this super elite intellectual club of Christianity that a lot of people are just like whatever. And so what I wanted to do was to drill this down to you, Joe average guy, Joe average gal out there that, you know, homemaker mom, what does this have to do with you? Uh, factory dad or the guy that goes don't, don't work at the office every day. What is it?
Speaker 2 00:04:10 What is, what, is there any application whatsoever in your life as it relates to how you can live either successfully or is there indicators in your life that potentially is putting you on a destructive path? That's going to make you fall as well. So we want to use this information to bring protections, to bring up potential places for you to go inward and assess your own spiritual contexts and see if there's things you can do to make adjustments for your safety, or to see if there's things that are going on in your life right now that might be red flags or signs to you, your spouse, people in your life that you need to make some adjustments. So that really screams that word that everybody hates submission. Yeah. Countability, accountability
Speaker 1 00:04:56 With everyone in your life. Yeah. But certainly, and specifically people that you can count on that you can be open and transparent and vulnerable with that will come alongside you, not in condemnation and guilt, but in a loving manner to hold you up, hold your arms up, stand with you, declare correct those actions in your life and bring them back to a kingdom principle. Yes. Right, right. That's what irritates me is I see in the body like, like Ryan just mentioned, you know, there's a whole bunch of pastors flinging arrows that Ravi, well, really, that's not the issue. I got it. The brother fell. He had some issues. Got it. Let's talk about how we help each other. Not be in that same position. Yeah. Great point. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:39 Yeah. And their Christian Christian culture. It's really easy to, for me, it's been a, it's been tough for many years, but you watch some of these pastors they're throwing arrows and maybe see what comes out of their lives because it's really easy to throw stones. When I heard about Robbie, cause I always appreciated Rodney and his ministry and I still will, you know, I'll appreciate the, that God had on his life to speak and communicate the gospel in a powerful way in a, to a generation that needed to hear it kind of the way he said it. But when you go into his, in his personal life, when I heard the news, it was kind of, it was like a mini nine 11 in my life. You know, it was like, you kind of remember a little bit of like hearing that you're shocked, you're disappointed.
Speaker 0 00:06:14 But the first thing I felt was just my own life. I was like, well, how, how is your life doing? You know, that was the first thing I did is I internalized like, man, dude, you're, you know, I'm going, I'm trying to reach a nation. I'm trying to champion men. I'm trying to do a lot of the same types of things in a different way, different application. But how is my life? You know, I started looking, I just looked inside is I don't care about throwing arrows at the guy. You know, I've been, you know, if sin disqualifies me from ministry, then I quit now, you know, like I quit now. I can't make it this way. So, you know, my whole thing is like, this is a sign of, uh, of an aching culture, moral decline. And I I've said this for a long time.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 It's not even my own idea, but you know, the cultures problems started in the church, you know, the, the church water down the gospel and all this stuff. Anyway. So we're, we're now left with the aftermath of dealing with, how do we put this back together and how do we actually swing this back in the right direction for the next couple of decades? You know, this isn't an overnight fix. It's not a fit. You know, you're not going to post something on Facebook and fix this through a social media. Band-aid tell me how the heck do we actually fix society? You know, pornography is, was off the charts. I mean just, yeah. I mean, how do we fix, uh, anyway,
Speaker 2 00:07:15 We're going to use this platform as we want a history book, we're going to go through it. And we're going to say what happened, Robbie? And we're going to do a series of different talks, kind of looking at the issues of what we can learn as men that are set apart to do God's will and how we can look at this and say, let's, let's protect our brothers. Let's protect each other. Let's hold each other high into what God is calling us into another level of accountability to be living as light bearers before him. Yeah. One thing I want to, uh, I want to make really clear at the onset, which specifically in this introduction to the series that we're getting into is that this is absolutely godly. That what we're doing. And I know that there's a bunch of people out there. They're like, Oh my God, don't talk about other people.
Speaker 2 00:08:03 Yeah, you can't judge, are you guys talking about another preacher? Okay. This is second Timothy chapter four. This is Romans chapter 16. This is half the songs. This is multiple chapters in first and second Samuel about David and Solomon. This is the entire book of judges it's over and over and over the point is, is we are not trying to blast Robbie and say that he's just, you know, he was Satan incarnate. The point is, is that we're taking failures and, and problems that exist that are absolutely public now. Yeah, absolutely. Public. This is, this is David. This is, this is so important that David is literally one of the central figures and all of scripture. And yet he was one of the most in this section of his life was one of the most detestable and, and moral people in all of scripture. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:08:59 Wrong. In fact, the scriptures even say that, uh, we, that when God would come to these, these Kings that would come after David, he says, I want you to measure your life. I basically want you to measure your life by the, by the standard of the kingdom of David, except for the whole Bathsheba thing. And that literally is in the scriptures where God says, except for the vast Shiva thing where God is, if anybody is letting someone sin out of the bag, it's God, God wrote the scriptures. God sent Samuel. So it wouldn't happen. God sent Nathan. So it would be right. I mean, it was, there was a lot of things that God wanted to do to protect David from the situation. But when David got into this situation, God used that situation made it super public, put it in a Bible that's for, we've got writings that are 4,500 years old that God gave us and said, Hey, let me tell you about David. Here's good, David, here's super bad. David, don't be like bad. David, be like good David. But he, God, didn't shy away from the conversation. God didn't even shy away from the details, gave us the raw dirty details about what happened. And it's absolutely godly for us to sit here and use the examples that was in Robbie's life to make personal applications in all of our lives. Yup. Yup.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 One of the issues that's going to come out that we're going to address in all of these films. Each one of these is how do you get to this point? You know, a lot of us, all of us struggle with something, you know, we've all got those things that peak out every day, hopefully you're in repentance over those things you're working on, on you're, you're taking positive strides in your relationship with God to reconcile those both with God and with man. But how do you, how does this happen? How do you all of a sudden have somebody on the pinnacle of this and the Bible describes it with words like this lovers of self boastful, arrogant, revilers disobedient, ungrateful unholy, haters of good malicious gossips and you know, everything else in you, you see a person who is supposed to be in the limelight of Christianity and they meet a lot of these descriptions. That's hard for Christians to come to terms with is how does that happen? And it shouldn't happen.
Speaker 2 00:11:13 Right? So, uh, the, obviously the whole context here is that we want to take some things, pull out of the Robbie's story in the same way the scriptures pull out of like a David story or a Solomon story and pull those out and say, how is this clickable exactly in your, you, yeah, every single, uh, every single watcher, every single listener there is application to your life that you are going to be presented with by the Holy spirit. And what are you going to do about it? Are you going to same, same? Are you going to keep going? You're not that bad things. Aren't that bad. I'm still hanging on or are you going to say, Hey, you know what?
Speaker 1 00:11:54 This is, uh, as terrible as it is that a major name and Christianity fell, it would be even more terrible for me to know about it. Find out what was going on in his life and then also make a similar fall. So, but th that's a really valid point for real, but we all have those places. We're all on a journey, moving from glory to glory, deeper in faith, right? So we can take these exact situations, whether it's scripturally or one of our brothers that just walked out of a spot like that and say, Oh, I don't want to get into that pride. I want to stay open and transparent with those I walk with that's the spin. That's the, that's the task. I believe to bring this to light in a scriptural biblical way that has application in all of our lives.
Speaker 0 00:12:41 Yeah. I know for me, when I think about the story and the pain that it brings my personal life and just the world that we live in, there's a trap. There's a pressure in our culture of bigger, bad, or better, you know, go out. You know, it's all about being famous and viral. And in all this stuff, there's such a pressure for that stuff that we miss, the larger goals that God's not, he's really not working us into people who are famous. He's working us into a people who are faithful. And so the brotherhood here is about my walk with God, maturing in a faithful way. That's all that matters to God. God could care less. If this video hits 500,000 views, he could care less. If, you know, if I make a statement, I mean, he can use us in those ways, but his main goal in our lives is that actually we're faithful unto death for him, that his name would be glorified, right.
Speaker 0 00:13:26 No matter what happens our lives. Right. And so when Paul says he preached the gospel, but then make sure you're, you're living the message that you're preaching. That's where that accountability comes in. That's where, you know, we're going to kind of look at some of the breakdown of Robby's life. Just as an example. I mean, thank God for David, because if it wasn't for David, if God would have made some pristine person, like the goal that, you know, nothing that the average guy can identify with, you know, maybe ivory tower guys can identify with, but the average dude, that's a man's man out there. You know, David's a great guy to look at as an example. And, and so, uh, so that's my heart in this journey.
Speaker 1 00:13:57 You take that and you we've talked about David A. Little bit. I'm sure we're going to talk about a more here, but you take that in a lot of times, people say, well, how bad is our culture? You know, you hear, are we in the, in times, you know, where do we line up with Sodom and Gomorrah or the Canaanites or, you know, things like that. And I, I always find it interesting that you have this life of David, which was a lot of, uh, Holy train wreck. I don't know how to say that anywhere else. You know, the, the guy with, you know, the archetype heart from God, but also the archetype heart for sin at the same time. And it's the same person that we get. And then afterward God is going to decide to give his son Solomon the most wisdom of anybody after he looked at his father's life.
Speaker 1 00:14:37 And what does he say? You just go through the Proverbs and you know, these are the headings in here, enticements of sinners, pursuit of wisdom, being security, rewards of wisdom, father's instruction, counseling, pitfalls of immorality. We might spend some time on that one today, the harlots condemnation of wisdom, wisdoms invitation contrast in the wicked and the upgrade. This one's really good. This is Proverbs 11, which really hits us on the head where there is no guidance, the people fall, but in the abundance of counselors, there is victory. Amen. That's huge. And that's really what we're going to use. This history lesson, looking at Robbie and insane. How can we apply this to, what's been given to us in the Bible in step four, to live as men of Valor.
