Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 352 ｜ Trump Impeachment, Abortion in Argentina & Ravi Zacharias

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Man, I don't know if this has felt like a

00:00:14.400 long week for you. It has been a long week for me. Every day starting on Monday felt

00:00:20.740 like it was the next day and that's the worst. It's always great when you feel like it's

00:00:26.620 Thursday, but actually it's Friday. That has not been this week for me at all. And it hasn't been

00:00:30.420 a bad week. It's been a very good week. I've gotten to talk about a lot of important stuff to

00:00:34.880 you guys, but it's just felt like it's been an entire year. This year already has felt like it

00:00:42.400 is an entire year. There's been so much that has been happening. I was texting with someone

00:00:47.080 earlier saying what I want to talk to this particular guest about and I was listing all

00:00:52.640 the things that have happened over the past two weeks. I'm like, if I had read a text like this

00:00:56.980 a year ago, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I got to brace myself. We have been through a lot

00:01:03.680 just in 2021 alone. And we're going to talk about some of that stuff today. We're going to talk about

00:01:09.380 Trump impeachment, what happened in the House, what's going to happen in the Senate. I'm going

00:01:12.800 to try to explain that as best as I can to you guys, whether or not that is something that should

00:01:17.900 actually happen. Then we're going to finally talk about this Argentina abortion measure that was

00:01:25.860 passed and the reaction there. And then we are also finally going to talk about the Ravi Zacharias

00:01:31.780 allegation. So this is something that has been developing for a long time. It was news a couple

00:01:36.840 weeks ago, and I just haven't been able to talk about it because of all the political madness that's

00:01:42.400 been going on. But that is what we are going to get into today. So let's go ahead and start with

00:01:49.700 this Trump impeachment and talk about what's happening there. So House Democrats and 10

00:01:54.580 Republicans in the House voted to impeach Trump for a second time. The only president in our country's

00:02:00.480 history to be impeached twice. We 90s kids, by the way, have gone through so many historical moments.

00:02:08.060 I don't know if you guys have noticed this. I actually remember. I remember being at

00:02:12.300 church with my grandmother on a Wednesday night. Those of you who are Southern Baptists know that

00:02:16.980 you go to church on Wednesday, you go to church on Sunday morning, you go to church Sunday night.

00:02:19.920 Well, this was Wednesday night. And I remember one of my grandmother's friends, this was right after

00:02:23.980 9-11, saying, wow, you guys in your generation have been through so much. If only she knew

00:02:30.400 how much we would go through. Because the first real historical event that I remember going through

00:02:35.840 was the Bush-Gore election. I was in second grade and my mom let me stay up late. And she just told

00:02:43.780 me that George Bush won. So I would go to bed. And little did I know that lasted a very long time.

00:02:50.240 And then 9-11 happened a couple of years later. And then the past couple of decades of our lives have

00:02:56.380 all also been crazy. And now here we are again, seeing another historical event, the only president

00:03:02.300 ever to be impeached twice. The final vote in the House was 232-197. Now he's not being removed. And

00:03:12.060 we don't know if this process is going to actually achieve any kind of removal. The Senate is not

00:03:20.500 going to start the impeachment trial until after Biden is inaugurated. Next week, they're in recess.

00:03:26.820 They don't come back until January 19th. The House Republicans who decided not to impeach Donald

00:03:35.180 Trump have made statements. And one of them was Chip Roy. He said, according to NBC News,

00:03:42.820 that the president of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly,

00:03:47.260 in my opinion, impeachable conduct, pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the

00:03:52.540 Constitution. Dan Crenshaw also came out with a statement. And I'm paraphrasing, saying, look,

00:03:58.580 I don't agree with what Donald Trump said. I think the entire situation was bad. He riled people up.

00:04:04.420 And he definitely encouraged, even if implicitly, what happened at the Capitol. But whether or not he

00:04:12.860 actually incited some kind of insurrection, he just thinks that that is a very hard legal standard to meet.

00:04:19.800 And that the particular articles of impeachment that were filed would have bad implications instead

00:04:27.540 of bad precedent for both parties in the future. And here is Chip Roy kind of explaining that

00:04:33.580 reasoning, as well as his own reasoning for not voting for impeachment.

00:04:40.000 Unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues drafted articles that I believe are flawed and unsupportable,

00:04:45.440 focusing on the legal terms of incitement and insurrection. Danger for open speech and debate

00:04:50.880 in this body and for the republic is high. If the House approves, the articles is written.

00:04:56.140 The language will be used to target members of this body under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

00:05:00.240 It will be used to suggest that any statements we make are subject to review by our colleagues

00:05:04.080 and send us down the perilous path of cleansing political speech in the public square.

00:05:08.380 So the fear is that Democrats are going to use these particular articles of impeachment

00:05:12.800 to silence their political opponents, which is something that we don't want. We don't want that

00:05:18.540 for either side. Now, what does all of this mean? I think that probably some people truly just think

00:05:25.380 that it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to make sure that Trump actually has consequences

00:05:30.080 for his words and consequences for his actions. I think there are Democrats who want to silence

00:05:36.560 their political opponents, too, and they want to, what they would say, hold accountable their

00:05:42.020 Republican counterparts in Congress by holding them liable if they vote no on these articles of

00:05:49.480 impeachment. So I do think that it's a lot of politics. It's a lot of virtue signaling that is

00:05:54.640 going on. What are the actual implications and consequences for Donald Trump if he is impeached?

00:06:01.040 Well, it's kind of gray. We kind of don't know because if he isn't actually removed or if he

00:06:08.880 is kind of retroactively impeached after Biden is inaugurated and he's not removed, some of these

00:06:16.160 presidential privileges like the Secret Service and things like that might stay intact. Whether or not

00:06:21.540 he can run for office again is also up in the air. I know that's something that a lot of Democrats,

00:06:26.980 if not all Democrats and a lot of Republicans want to ensure cannot happen. But it's actually

00:06:32.920 kind of hard to know what the real repercussions of impeaching him at this point will do. There are

00:06:39.960 a lot of Republicans that are saying, look, this is not the way to healing. This is not the way to

00:06:44.860 unity. There's no point in impeaching and removing the guy when he's already going to be out of office.

00:06:51.440 Is there really a point in spitting in his eye and the millions of Americans who voted for him?

00:06:57.420 I think there are Republicans also who think that it's necessary that he needs to pay for his actions

00:07:03.360 and all of that. And so it's certainly it's certainly a debate that's going on and we'll see

00:07:09.860 what happens over the weekend as Mitch McConnell is making these decisions. We'll see what happens next

00:07:15.540 week. This is going to be yet another contentious couple of weeks. Like if we thought that we were

00:07:23.480 going into 2021 and we were going to see normalcy, that's just not going to be the case. I keep

00:07:28.720 telling I keep saying things like, oh, when things slow down, I'll talk about this. Or when things

00:07:32.720 slow down, I'll do this. The fact of the matter is, is that we've been going 100 miles per hour,

00:07:37.260 at least since last year. Like if you remember this time last year, we were worried about going to war

00:07:42.380 with Iran. We were worried about North Korea having nukes. And now we're all just like dying

00:07:47.300 to go back to that time. Can we just worry about war with Iran when things were just normal and calm?

00:07:52.800 Then coronavirus happened and our world was thrown for a loop. The George Floyd happened and then the

00:07:59.320 subsequent riots happened. Then the election happened and it's just been nonstop. There's been so much for

00:08:07.020 us to process. And I'm thankful for you guys that I've been able to process some of this with you. But I know

00:08:14.040 that it feels, I know it feels overwhelming. I know it feels like you are on this, you are on this fast

00:08:22.740 paced train and you want to get off and none of us have the option to do that. I understand. And I'm going to end

00:08:28.380 with some encouragement in this episode. In the midst of all of that, because I know a lot of us are looking

00:08:35.900 for respite. We're looking for rest. We're just looking for things to slow down and to go back

00:08:41.300 to normal. And I just have no promise or guarantee of that. And I actually don't think that the Lord

00:08:47.380 does either. So it's best for us to just be encouraged and equipped in the midst of all of

00:08:53.520 this. So inauguration is going to happen next week. Here is Trump explicitly saying, please do not

00:09:03.120 be violent. I want to be very clear. I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week.

00:09:13.160 Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement.

00:09:19.480 I'm really glad that I'm glad that he said that. I'm sure that someone told him, hey, President Trump,

00:09:24.900 you need to say this. And I'm sure he also means it. I don't think that he actually wanted violence to

00:09:30.140 occur last week. He didn't explicitly ask for violence, but he also didn't make any effort to

00:09:34.580 quell violence. He could have much more quickly come out and said, hey, we don't want any violence.

00:09:40.800 He could have made that very clear in his rallying speech. He obviously has First Amendment rights to

00:09:46.300 say what he wants to say. But realizing the political moment that he was in when he was conducting that

00:09:52.100 rally at the time that Congress was supposed to be verifying the votes, realizing the tension in the air,

00:09:57.420 realizing the attitudes of a lot of people who were there, he could have done a lot to calm people down

00:10:03.260 and to make sure that things did not escalate. And he just didn't do that. It was, in my opinion,

00:10:09.220 it was irresponsible and it was reckless as the President of the United States. Now, to someone like

00:10:14.360 Representative Crenshaw's point, proving legally that he actually incited violence, that he actually

00:10:20.740 invoked some kind of insurrection, is very difficult without getting on this slippery slope of saying, well,

00:10:26.480 what actually does incite violence? When the standard gets too loose or when the bar gets too

00:10:33.620 low, then we start censoring all kinds of speech. And some people might say, okay, no, this is just

00:10:39.200 a special case. This is just President Trump. And this is not going to create some kind of slippery

00:10:45.760 slope. But this is actually a trend that I am seeing from some people on the left, basically saying that

00:10:50.520 anything that they disagree with, is inciting violence, it's inciting domestic terrorism. I can

00:10:56.500 think of two examples off the top of my head. I did a tweet thread, I think last week, saying, look,

00:11:02.360 Christians, there are peaceful ways to influence the spheres that you occupy that I think a lot of

00:11:09.000 Christians are too scared to. I actually think it takes a lot more courage to stand up to your school

00:11:15.180 board, for example, or to speak to your pastor about the bad theology that may be coming from the

00:11:20.920 pulpit, or to talk to your friends about some issues that you think that they aren't correct on,

00:11:26.420 or that they don't see the whole picture on, to stand up to the people in your life in a kind and

00:11:32.280 respectful and intelligible way that says, okay, this is wrong. This particular kind of employee

00:11:39.000 training is wrong. This kind of curriculum is wrong. To stand up to your professor and say,

00:11:43.900 what's your teaching is actually wrong, or I have different perspective, that takes more courage

00:11:49.440 than something silly and caveman-ish like storming the Capitol. And I did a thread basically saying,

00:11:58.460 seek to peacefully but confidently influence every sphere that you occupy. Christians can't just see

00:12:06.500 science and medicine and academia and all forms of education and all of our jobs as

00:12:13.820 these secular endeavors to which our worldview is not invited. Everyone has a worldview. And as

00:12:23.180 passionately as secularists are pushing their worldview in laws, in their workplaces, in schools,

00:12:29.940 in universities, Christians should be able to peacefully and rhetorically and confidently do

00:12:35.420 that as well. So that's all I said that probably seems completely harmless to a lot of you guys.

00:12:40.820 And someone quote tweeted me and says, this is what inspires domestic terrorism. Really? This is what

00:12:47.780 inspires domestic terrorism? Me saying that Christians, you should be speaking up for your

00:12:52.700 values just as passionately as progressives speak up for their values? And so you see ridiculousness like

00:12:59.800 that. And then Lila Rose, who started Live Action, a pro-life organization, she tweeted that abortion is

00:13:07.780 violence, which it is. I mean, that's an objective fact. Whether or not you think abortion is bad,

00:13:15.800 the fact that it is a violent act ending the life of a baby isn't something that is even arguable. That's

00:13:21.580 what it is. And then Dr. Lila Torres, she's an OBGYN. She's also an abortion provider. We've talked about

00:13:27.560 her on this podcast. She has egregiously tweeted in the past that, you know, babies that she aborts can't

00:13:35.440 cry. She makes sure that they cut the cords. That's what she said. We don't know if they're

00:13:40.860 talking about vocal cords or what she's talking about so that they can't scream if they're even

00:13:45.380 developed enough to have a lyrics. That is something that she tweeted. Well, in response to Lila Rose

00:13:50.420 saying the unobjectionable fact that abortion is violence, she said, this is wrong. This is domestic

00:13:57.380 terrorism. So we're seeing these insane charges now where it's not just Trump that is getting this

00:14:03.880 accusation. It's people of all conservative stripes. Anyone who disagrees with mainstream Democrats,

00:14:11.360 even if we're saying that, which is true, even if we're just using opinions, now it's called

00:14:15.860 inciting violence. Now it's called domestic terrorism. You see how that's a problem? Depending

00:14:22.820 on who wields the cultural power of the moment, the people who are on the other side of that sword,

00:14:28.720 on the other side of that charge of, quote, inciting violence, they are the ones that are

00:14:34.860 going to be censored. Unless someone is actually inciting violence, they're actually calling for

00:14:39.700 it. They're explicitly calling for it. And not just they're passionate about what they're talking

00:14:45.860 about or they're talking about issues in a way that is very stirring and is very motivating,

00:14:50.380 but they're actually inciting violence. Unless they're doing that, we should be very careful

00:14:55.480 about what we label as incitement or what we label as invoking some kind of insurrection.

00:15:02.640 We have to be very specific with our language so that things like domestic terrorism aren't

00:15:10.260 minimized. Like how disrespectful is that, by the way, to call something like saying abortion is

00:15:17.160 violence, domestic terrorism, when there are real victims of domestic terrorism that exist. Like,

00:15:22.840 ooh, you got a tweet that you don't like because it offended you about the reality of the profession

00:15:27.620 that you hold? Come on. Come on. Like Americans are so privileged. Like we have so many luxuries and

00:15:35.140 so many freedoms that we think anything that offends us is actual violence. And this is not new,

00:15:42.160 by the way. I mean, you have people like Ben Shapiro trying to speak at universities and the people

00:15:47.620 who are protesting him violently protesting him at these college campuses saying that words are

00:15:53.320 violence. Why have we created young people to be so fragile? Why? Now, I'm not saying, again,

00:16:02.540 that what Donald Trump said was right. I have made very clear that I think that he was reckless. I think

00:16:08.660 that he was irresponsible in the things that he said. The question is, the question is, what actually

00:16:14.780 is inciting violence? We need to be very clear about that. We can condemn someone's language. We

00:16:19.860 can disagree with someone's rhetoric or disagree with someone's argument without going to those

00:16:25.840 links. You have to see how that sets a precedent that could hurt people across the ideological

00:16:32.040 spectrum. All right. That's it on impeachment and Trump. Now we are going to get into Argentina and

00:16:42.780 their abortion legislation and the celebration that occurred there after that.

00:16:51.700 All right. Finally, getting into Argentina legislation. Argentina senators voted 38-29 to pass a bill that

00:17:00.980 would legalize abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. And so compared to the United States,

00:17:07.560 that is still very early on. For certain reasons, you can get an abortion in America through all nine

00:17:15.380 months. It's really 10 months of pregnancy through all 40 plus weeks of pregnancy. For certain reasons,

00:17:22.060 constitutionally, legally in America, you can get an abortion at any stage. Other countries are much

00:17:29.160 more humane than the United States. We have some of the most lax abortion laws in the world. We're right

00:17:35.060 next to China and North Korea. Great company, right? So Argentina has been what progressives would call

00:17:41.400 slow on what they would call abortion rights. And they are just now passing legislation that

00:17:47.420 legalizes abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. So the 14th week of pregnancy is right

00:17:53.340 after the start of the second trimester. And if you if you don't know, that baby looks fully

00:18:02.800 developed. It just needs time and nourishment to grow. But this is not just a clump of cells. This

00:18:09.260 is not just a blob. You go in your eight week appointment, that's the first appointment and you

00:18:14.080 see a little jelly bean looking baby and you see the beating heart. And then by the time you get to

00:18:20.260 10 and a half weeks, by the time you get to 11 weeks, 12 weeks at that 12 week appointment,

00:18:25.160 you're just stunned by what you see on the ultrasound. I mean, you see a fully formed baby,

00:18:30.620 you see head, you see the where the teeth are going to be, you see arms and legs and fingers

00:18:35.820 and toes and the lungs and the heart, and you're seeing a fully formed little baby kick around in

00:18:40.960 your womb. So when you hear 14 weeks, that sounds early, but you're looking at a fully formed,

00:18:45.880 very small, but fully formed baby who really just needs time and nourishment to develop. And so even

00:18:53.420 though this is a lot earlier than when America allows abortions, just remember, we're just as

00:19:02.000 much talking about a baby at 14 weeks as we are at 28 weeks or 40 weeks. Previously, before this

00:19:08.940 legislation in Argentina, abortions were only legal in cases of rape or when the mother's health

00:19:14.440 was at risk. Argentina is the first Latin American country to pass legislation like this. If you're

00:19:19.900 wondering why it is, why is it so different than the United States? These are very Catholic countries.

00:19:25.640 Even the governments here are very Catholic. Catholics are, for the most part, very against

00:19:30.780 abortion. Pro-abortion activists are hopeful that this is going to lead to similar bills being passed

00:19:36.420 in other nearby countries. The Catholic Church officially opposed the bill. Pope Francis, who hails

00:19:42.520 from Argentina, this is according to the Daily Wire, wrote that the issue of abortion is not primarily a

00:19:47.560 religious matter, but a matter of human ethics. Now, that's some bad theology, but I'll keep going.

00:19:54.440 Proceeding to any religious confession, he added, and it's good for us to ask two questions.

00:20:00.440 Is it fair to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to resolve

00:20:06.660 a problem? Now, I completely, I agree with their conclusion. And we do argue that, of course,

00:20:13.360 you don't have to be religious to be pro-life, that you can try to make the secular argument that this

00:20:18.480 is a human ethics issue. But to say, from a Catholic perspective, from a Christian perspective,

00:20:24.500 that it's not primarily a religious matter, but a matter of human ethics. Well, ethics are downstream

00:20:30.080 from religion. They always are. Like, you can hold Christian ethics without saying that you believe in God or

00:20:37.360 without saying that you hold to the Bible, but that doesn't change what is actually upstream from

00:20:43.640 your ethics. So if you oppose murder, you hold to a biblical value. If you oppose theft, whether or not

00:20:50.460 you're a Christian, you hold to a biblical value. So for Pope Francis, for the Catholic Church to say

00:20:56.300 this is not primarily a religious matter, well, that's not exactly right. It is also a human ethics

00:21:04.060 matter. That is true. And people of all faiths should oppose it. But the reason why Christians

00:21:09.980 oppose it is because human beings are made in the image of God, because we're knit together in our

00:21:13.760 mother's womb, because we believe that babies at the earliest stage of pregnancy are image bearers,

00:21:21.220 and therefore they matter. Argentina's center-left President Alberto Fernandez supported the bill,

00:21:28.100 but it was mainly able to be passed by massive grassroots support from the Green Wave women's

00:21:34.680 movement. You have to give credit to the left. They are very good at grassroots. They're very

00:21:41.180 good at what someone like AOC would call organizing. They're very good at getting down on the ground and

00:21:46.340 talking to people about the issues in a way that I just don't think people on the right are. It doesn't

00:21:51.440 mean that we're not doing anything. Obviously, I think the pro-life movement in this country is very

00:21:55.400 strong, does a lot of amazing work in helping moms and children and helping get information and

00:22:01.840 education out about this issue. But honestly, those on the left, that's kind of what their specialty is,

00:22:11.760 is getting on the ground and talking to people about this and ginning up support for their issues.

00:22:17.980 And I mean, that's fair game. Conservatives should be doing the same exact thing. Now, I want to show you

00:22:23.940 after this legislation passed in Argentina, what the celebrations looked like among feminists. This

00:22:32.440 is a montage of some of those celebratory events.

00:22:53.940 So if you are listening to this and you weren't able to see, there are people crying, there are people

00:23:20.620 hugging one another, they're screaming, they're jumping up and down. They are super excited about

00:23:27.340 this. And as someone who is pro-life, as someone who is a Christian who is devastated by the reality

00:23:33.800 of abortion, devastated by what it is, I mean, it's literally the murder of a baby. Whether or not you're

00:23:41.120 for it, that's what it is. It ends a baby's life, an unsuspecting human being who is taking solace and

00:23:49.220 comfort and refuge in his or her mother's womb is ripped apart violently, often painfully, is either

00:23:57.720 poisoned by a pill, is either dismembered by forceps. Sometimes they're sucked out with tubes. Depending on

00:24:03.820 how far along you insert a needle into the mother's womb, either into the amniotic fluid, which surrounds

00:24:13.700 the baby or directly into the baby's heart, that causes what they call forced cardiac arrest, which

00:24:19.920 ensures what they call fetal demise. That's the reality of what abortion is. Abortion isn't accomplished

00:24:25.540 through fairy dust. Abortion isn't just accomplished in this easy and smooth way. When people say

00:24:30.320 that we should provide safe abortions, there's no such thing as a safe abortion. You're killing

00:24:36.220 an unsuspecting, innocent, when we're talking about legality, an innocent human being, a vulnerable

00:24:44.060 human being, a defenseless human being who can do nothing to defend itself. That's what we're talking

00:24:50.820 about, these people celebrating, these people jumping up and down about. And there's some people who excuse

00:24:56.520 it on the left who even identify as Christians here who say, well, you know, it's really just

00:25:00.600 about bodily autonomy. It's just about women's rights. We shouldn't worry about the legality

00:25:05.000 of it. We should just worry about making abortion unthinkable. I say no. I say it's both. And if you

00:25:10.760 really think, as a Christian, that that child inside the womb matters, that it has purpose, that God made

00:25:18.080 that child, that God knit that child together in its mother's womb, the least that you should be

00:25:23.280 advocating for, is the legal protection of that baby. You should be fighting like heck to also

00:25:29.780 protect the lives of women, to provide for them. You should be using your time and your resources

00:25:35.400 and your energy to help women who are in need, to help women who are in crisis, to provide for

00:25:41.340 families. Absolutely. That doesn't necessarily mean supporting every ineffective government program,

00:25:46.460 as Democrats would like us to believe, but using your own time and resources to help those women.

00:25:51.360 But you should also, at the bare minimum, you should also support the legal protection

00:25:57.860 of image bearers, defenseless babies inside the womb. And the fact that these women, just like

00:26:03.420 people here, are jumping up and down and yelling in celebration for what is violence against babies

00:26:12.820 inside the womb, it just shows what godlessness does. It creates hearts of stone and brains of mush.

00:26:19.240 That's what I see when I look at things like that. I see hearts of stone and brains of mush,

00:26:24.520 that it's deranged, that it's depraved, that it is against any logic whatsoever.

00:26:30.220 And I want to read you. You guys know about Romans 1. I'm sure that you have read it.

00:26:39.740 And it reminds me, looking at all of that, of Romans 1, and then I think it's Ephesians 4. I'll

00:26:47.020 have to pull that up after this. But this is Romans 1, 28 through 32. And since they did not

00:26:51.940 see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

00:26:58.020 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy,

00:27:03.760 murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent,

00:27:10.380 haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

00:27:18.220 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

00:27:22.760 they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. A lot of people have been saying

00:27:29.040 for the past several years that, oh, we're in Romans 1. Well, the existence of Romans 1 or

00:27:35.420 the reality of Romans 1 in the world has existed for a long time. Obviously, it existed when Paul

00:27:42.480 was writing Romans. Now, I want to read you a little bit of Ephesians 4 as well. This is also something

00:27:51.100 that we see depicted in the celebration of the ending of life like this. This is Ephesians 4.

00:27:57.420 We'll do 18 through 24. Actually, I'll do 17 through 24.

00:28:02.660 Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles. He's talking

00:28:07.500 about in this context, non-Christians do. In the futility of their minds, they are darkened in

00:28:12.680 their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to

00:28:17.320 their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to

00:28:23.200 practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ.

00:28:27.420 Assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus,

00:28:31.100 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through

00:28:35.380 deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created

00:28:39.840 after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. And really, we could read that whole

00:28:44.700 chapter. But that is the dichotomy. That is the difference. It's the old way and the new way.

00:28:50.920 And all of us, when we watch a video like that and our hearts break, and we can think about also

00:28:59.440 Ephesians 2, that all of us, all of us were dead in our sin at one point, and we had to be made alive

00:29:06.980 in Christ. That God had to give us a new self. He had to change our hearts. He had to soften our hearts.

00:29:11.660 So we pray for those people. We pray for those who are in darkness. We pray for those who have calloused

00:29:17.020 hearts, hearts of stone and brains of mush, that Jesus can change those people. He can change all

00:29:21.000 of us. If He can change you and me, then He can change anyone. And it is the gospel that changes

00:29:25.600 hearts. It's therefore the gospel that changes culture. And it's a Christ-centered culture that

00:29:30.300 can change laws, that can change things like heartless abortion laws. And so that should be

00:29:35.600 our focus. Yes, taking care of those in need so that they feel that abortion is unnecessary, but also

00:29:41.700 spreading the gospel and sharing the love of Christ. So hearts change. So we're no longer

00:29:46.340 celebrating that which is evil. So that culture is no longer calling evil good and good evil.

00:29:55.180 All right. I want to talk to you about one more thing quickly, and that is the Ravi Zacharias

00:29:59.680 allegations and what we should make of all of that.

00:30:07.260 All right. Let's talk about Ravi Zacharias. So some of you have no idea because I posted about

00:30:12.900 this on Instagram, and I got some messages from you guys saying, what are you talking about,

00:30:16.460 Ravi Zacharias allegations? I have no idea. I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:30:22.600 Well, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, this is according to Christianity Today, notified staff

00:30:29.000 donors and supporters on Wednesday, this is a couple of weeks ago, that there is convincing

00:30:33.300 and credible evidence that Ravi Zacharias engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years.

00:30:40.440 A preliminary report from the law firm hired by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries confirms

00:30:46.360 reports from Christianity Today, from World Magazine, a blogger, Steve Bauman, that international

00:30:53.680 apologist Ravi Zacharias, who died earlier this year, this was written last year, so who died in 2020,

00:30:59.680 sexually abused numerous women. You guys might remember these allegations came out.

00:31:04.740 I don't know if it was the summer of 2020, but it was around then. It was actually right after he died,

00:31:11.660 and it was kind of, okay, these sound credible, but we don't actually know if it's true. And the reason

00:31:16.400 why they sounded credible is because these were women who worked with him, who we knew actually did

00:31:21.220 know him. And there were several women, and not just women that worked with him, but women who had met

00:31:26.960 him over the years confirmed this kind of predatory behavior. And that's why there was some credibility

00:31:33.840 to this. And so their ministry, Ravi Zacharias' ministry, they hired a law firm to investigate,

00:31:41.420 to see if this is really true. And what they came away with was that, yeah, this actually probably is

00:31:47.920 true. After talking to the accusers, after looking at the allegations that have been made, this seems

00:31:53.420 this seems like it is, in fact, what happened. Christianity Today goes on to say,

00:31:59.960 the final report is forthcoming, and RZIM has committed to releasing it to the public.

00:32:05.420 The investigators at the law firm Miller & Martin have told the board, however, that many victims

00:32:10.200 have spoken candidly and with great detail, confirming the allegations of massage therapists

00:32:14.500 who worked in two Atlanta spas that Zacharias partially owned. The team has uncovered other

00:32:20.500 misconduct as well. The investigation is ongoing, and the investigators are continuing to pursue

00:32:25.720 leads. The allegations made by some of these women who worked in the salons that Zacharias partially

00:32:32.460 owned was basically that he pressured them to touch him. And even if it wasn't an actual threat of

00:32:40.860 violence or anything, they felt that they had to do what he said because he was in a position

00:32:46.160 of power, not just as this universally known apologist, but also as their boss, as the owner

00:32:54.400 of the company that they worked for. Sarah Davis, RZIM CEO, and Ravi Zacharias' daughter says this,

00:33:02.300 we know this news will send all of us and thousands of others into grief, confusion, disillusionment,

00:33:07.000 and anger. We know that you will have many questions, as we all do as well. Davis also wrote that we

00:33:12.440 grieve profoundly for those who have suffered from Ravi's sexual misconduct and asked staff and

00:33:17.540 supporters to pray for them. RZIM initially denied the allegations, releasing a statement that said

00:33:22.760 the family and ministry teammates of Ravi Zacharias did not believe them to be true because they do not

00:33:28.060 in any way comport with the man we knew for decades. A number of RZIM teammates objected to the statement

00:33:33.460 and said they did believe the woman making the allegations. So when the allegations originally came

00:33:38.200 out, some team members said, yeah, I can actually see this happening. And then other team members of

00:33:43.000 RZIM said, no, I can't. And so that's why they had hired the law firm to investigate. And then the

00:33:50.120 report has said, yeah, that this probably happened. And so this is very difficult news for a lot of people

00:33:56.900 who really admired him, who felt like they kind of built their faith. Yes, of course, with the Holy Spirit

00:34:02.840 upon the Word of God, but also upon Ravi Zacharias' works. Like, I know that I have been, that a lot

00:34:10.660 of his apologetic work has helped me and my own faith kind of answer really tough questions. Like,

00:34:16.120 why does God let bad things happen? How do we put our faith and our apologetics against the faith and

00:34:22.880 apologetics of other faiths? How do we have these kind of productive debates and discussions and

00:34:28.380 dialogue? And he was really an example for so many Christians and all of that. He was one of the great

00:34:34.240 defenders of the faith. And yet we hear that he was a different person in private than he was in public.

00:34:39.920 What are we supposed to make of that? Does that mean that nothing he preached was true? Does that mean

00:34:46.220 that we throw out all of his books? Does that mean that we can't give any credibility to anything

00:34:53.280 that he said? I do want to read you Philippians. Let's see. I'll start with, so I'll start with

00:35:01.640 verse 17 and then I'll just go to verse 18. But Paul is talking about in Philippians, he's talking

00:35:07.860 about some people who preach the gospel under a false pretense or they preach the gospel from selfish

00:35:13.160 ambition. They're just trying to gain themselves some kind of reputation or they're looking for fame

00:35:18.300 or they're looking for power. And the question that is posed in the midst of what Paul is saying

00:35:23.680 is, okay, well, what do we do with the message that they're preaching? Because they're still

00:35:28.400 preaching truth. Do we just throw it out? Do we discount it? Here's how Paul answers that.

00:35:32.880 The former claim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my

00:35:38.500 imprisonment. And so he's also, that's, we won't even get into the whole context of that because it's

00:35:44.320 not applicable to what we're talking about right now, but he is talking about how their motives

00:35:48.660 are selfish. Their motives are not good. Their motives are actually vindictive in the midst of

00:35:54.180 preaching the gospel. He says, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth,

00:36:00.900 Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice for I know that through your prayers

00:36:07.060 and the help of the spirit of Christ Jesus, this will turn out for my deliverance. And he goes on,

00:36:11.800 but he's saying, look, no matter how Christ is proclaimed, if Christ is proclaimed, God is going

00:36:16.380 to use that to bring people to himself. And so if something that Ravi Zacharias holds up in light

00:36:22.800 of scripture, if he preached the gospel and someone preached the gospel or someone believed the gospel

00:36:27.680 because of that, that belief is false. It's not based on a false premise because it's based on the

00:36:33.600 gospel that there was an imperfect, a very imperfect, even abusive vessel that preached that gospel,

00:36:40.540 but your faith doesn't become false or your faith doesn't become hollow just because Ravi Zacharias

00:36:48.740 helped you believe in that faith because the faith that you have is Christ's and he is trustworthy.

00:36:54.040 He is faithful. He is the foundation of your faith, not Ravi Zacharias. I don't know how this could

00:37:01.640 happen. Like, I don't know how someone could play such a sincere role out front and get thousands of

00:37:08.000 people to fall for the characterization of himself that he made. And then to be a completely different

00:37:13.720 person behind the scenes. I don't know how you keep something like that up your entire life.

00:37:18.000 I don't understand it. And I don't know why God allows something like that to happen. I don't know.

00:37:24.280 What I do know that even though Ravi Zacharias was acting in a way that was evil, maybe he repented

00:37:29.980 before he died. I hope that that was the case. Even though Ravi Zacharias was doing something that

00:37:39.220 was evil, that God still used the truth of what he and his ministry proclaimed to bring people

00:37:44.660 to him. And that the faith that you have that may or may not have been helped by Ravi Zacharias's work

00:37:51.100 is based on Christ and his trustworthiness and his sincerity and his purity and his truth,

00:37:57.380 and not Ravi Zacharias, the vessel. So I think that's the lesson that we need to take from that.

00:38:03.560 And we also just need to be, we need to be praying for our ministers of the gospel. We need to be

00:38:09.260 praying for these apologists that if they are living a double life, that that would be exposed before they

00:38:14.580 die. That we would be able to know that, that we would be able to detect these false teachers who are

00:38:21.260 living this kind of dishonest lifestyle. We need to pray for integrity from our leaders. We need to pray

00:38:27.080 for protection, spiritual protection and physical protection for these people that we know that

00:38:34.460 Satan is after in so many ways. We need to pray as if engaged in spiritual warfare on behalf of the

00:38:42.460 people who are leading our churches and leading these ministries. Because Satan is going to want

00:38:47.340 to use this to discount the faith of many people and to cast many people into doubt and despair.

00:38:52.360 And we have to pray also for those people that the Holy Spirit would comfort them,

00:38:57.520 would remind them of what is true and the everlasting goodness and faithfulness of the

00:39:01.900 God who saved them. Ravi Zacharias did not save you. Christ did. He is trustworthy. He is faithful.

00:39:08.720 You can take him at his word. All right. That's all I have for today. I will see you guys

00:39:15.360 back here next week. Have a great weekend.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 14, 2021

Ep 352 ｜ Trump Impeachment, Abortion in Argentina & Ravi Zacharias

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