No body else will say it so as usual I will…but who am I?
Ravi Zacharias…champion apologist and debator for the Christian faith, our intellectual gladiator for the age, was a serial liar and sexual abuser and pervert.
We only discover it after he died because he was as shrewd at cover up and intimidation as he was smart in apologetics.
He was a man who fell to his sexual desires. A lot of men do. But he was also nasty and abusive. He made women who were otherwise innocent feel defiled. He would get them financially dependent on ministry money as if it were benevolence and then pressure them for sex. He would reach into the deepest crevices of a woman’s conscience and tell them that if they ratted him out, souls would end up in hell because of the scandal. He did this crap for upwards of 15 years or more.
What a treacherous bastard.
Now that we have the situation clear in our minds here is the question that will haunt your dreams.
If God’s own glory is so important to Him why didn’t he stop this long before Ravi had a chance to hurt so many women and build such a high prominance among Christians?
This situation makes God look ambivalent.
For God to let this man who bragged on God’s Holy name to continue to get richer and richer and more and more famous is one thing. But to let him do it while defiling innocent women until the day he died…draws all sense of justice into question.
The only other option I can theorize besides God is ambivalent is that maybe God never found Ravi Zacharias to be on His team in the first place. God only corrects those he loves is what I hear. Think about how many times God corrected and intervened and judged in the bible. Moses almost died for not circumcising his son. The sons of Korah were swallowed up in the earth for challenging Moses. Annanias and Saphira were struck dead for cheating on their stated charitable donation.
Ravi Zacharias owned and operated two rub and tug operations and stored up naked pictures by the hundreds of women, abusively coerced women into sexual compromise with God’s money, and all the while made millions telling atheists they were fools for not believing in God to the applause of adoring Christians. As far as Ravis debate opponents are concerned, the evidence for God just took a major hit.
So let me now get to the point of the title.
Folks, Ravi Zacharias likely went straight to hell when he died. Based on what we have seen, he died unrepentant. He lied so well to everyone else he surely lied to himself and to God. The Calvinists would say he was never saved at all to have lived like this and the Arminians would say he backslid and fell from grace.
But what about the family he left behind? Could they bear such a sentence? It’s one thing to bear the shame. But the horror of God’s wrath upon the man you loved, adored, admired and trusted would be the stuff of nightmares. If I was one of his kids I don’t know how I would cope with the thought that my dad defended eternal punishment in hell as a doctrine and got to prove it with his own perished soul.
But what if hell wasn’t forever? What if Ravi gets to find out first hand that he was wrong about that? What if hell was punishment and purification by fire and then once the soul was properly cleansed and purged, Christ could allow them to heaven?
Wouldn’t that be far more satisfying?
I don’t want Ravi to burn in hell forever. But to know he paid for these sins in the afterlife in some proper form is quite OK with me. But despite all he did, I want his family and his victims to meet him in heaven someday. Perhaps after his last family member or last victim arrived in heaven, he could be brought out of the pit and be told by those who endured his offenses…we love you and we forgive you and he would fall to his knees and weep before them in repentance.
Or if you prefer the medieval justice that seems far less divine…let his victims spend eternity thanking God for his everlasting torture and let his family try to forget why dad’s not in heaven with them. That surely would bring God far more glory than the devils best laid plans being thwarted by God’s transformation, restoration and love.
Origen’s Belt 