Thread by @tyfgibson

A few thoughts on the Ravi Zacharias scandal:

1/7 One of the repeated warnings of the Bible is that bad men will use the good news of Christ as a means of preying upon vulnerable people. They are called “wolves in sheep’s clothing." #RaviZacharias

2/7 Jesus is so attractive & the gospel is so powerful, it is inevitable that predators & shysters will harness His beauty & potency for their evil aims. They are frauds. He is not. The disguise they wear is effective precisely because of the truth it represents. #RaviZacharias

3/7 I’ve actually known two very successful evangelist who said privately that they were atheists, but that preaching was a great way to win trust and make money. They didn’t believe a word they were preaching, and yet what they were preaching was the truth. #RaviZacharias

4/7 If we reduce the gospel to a set of propositional facts and apologetic arguments, then anyone with any motive can master the information and put on a performance to gather an audience and cash in. #RaviZacharias

5/7 The weakest form of gospel witness is an orator on a stage, and it is easy to fake. Literally anybody with a good brain-mouth connection can pull it off, no matter what their motive happens to be. It is an acting career. #RaviZacharias

6/7 The strongest gospel witness is a loving family and a loving local church, in which there is transparency, accountability, and a constant redemptive process of truth-telling and grace. That is far more powerful than preaching, and it is a lot harder to fake. #RaviZacharias

7/7 And when the primary witness to the gospel is a loving community of truth-telling, grace-giving people, if the man with the mic turns out to be a predator or a shyster, nobody's faith need be devastated, because it was never about the man on the stage anyway. #RaviZacharias