Welcome back to Defender’s Voice. This is Paul Kattupalli. Thank you for joining us today. Defender’s Voice is about defending Christian truth against the falsehoods of our culture. Today I would like to discuss this news that Tyndale University rescinding the doctorate it conferred on late apologist Ravi Zacharias.
In Chaos theory, we study about the butterfly effect. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere around the world, and a few weeks later that effect causes a big storm in our neighborhood. Its central premise is a very small change in initial conditions can produce a significantly different outcome as time passes. We can see simple sins in the beginning later transforming into spiritual storms in the life of Ravi Zacharias.
Tyndale University is a Christian university in Toronto, Canada. It honored Ravi with the Doctor of Divinity in 1998. Ravi started to call himself Dr.Ravi Zacharias. Many individuals with ‘Doctor of Divinity’ are being called doctors. It became a controversy. So, Ravi said, it was a cultural thing and stopped referring to himself as Dr.Zacharias. More troubling was that Ravi was describing himself as the professor at Oxford University and a visiting scholar at Cambridge University.
Atheist Steve Baughman dug more deeply into the academic credentials of Ravi and found out those claims were false. When we heard about this, we raised our eye brows but still we stayed with Ravi. I was still attending his seminaries. I was enjoying reading his books and asking him questions. I told myself, Ravi is capable of obtaining 10 Ph.D’s if he wants to. It did not bother me that he only got an honorary doctorate.
Then Steve Baughman started to get phone calls from women. First from Lor Ann Thompson and later from women who worked in Ravi’s spas. Christianity Today jumped on their allegations, investigated deeply into their stories and confirmed that Ravi indeed abused these women. The hornet’s nest was opened and the whole Christian world was shocked.
Steve Baughman told me that he was not expecting this news. He was troubled when he heard that Ravi was abusing women working in his spas. He went after one sin and found other sins hiding in the closet.
There are good spiritual lessons for all of us in this story. The Bible says, in Numbers 32:23, ‘Behond, you have sinned against the Lord and be sure your sin will find you out’
When we sin against the Lord, we cannot hide it forever. One day our sin will find us out. Because sin grows with time.
We read in James 1:15
Then when lust hath conceived,
it bringeth forth sin: and sin,
when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Sin grows with time and when it is finished, it brings forth death. If you go to the RZIM website, all resources are gone. It is heartbreaking to see that. I used to go to their website when I wanted to study Christian apologetics. Now, it is all gone. Our sin not only finds us out, but it can ruin the Lord’s ministry. In Chaos theory, a butterfly flaps its wings and after some time there will be a storm. A big storm that collapses everything. Chaos theory has a spiritual equivalent. When we allow sin to grow in our lives, soon there will be a storm in our lives.Let us learn that lesson from this incident. That’s all for today. Please leave your comments, subscribe to our channel and visit us at www.doctorpaul.org. Thank you, God bless.
I personally do not believe in most of the allegations. I believe he may be guilty of immorality but the well planned attack and portrayal after his death raises a big question for me. I do not believe LT and will continue not to. We all will stand and account for our transgressions according to my belief. I hope he found peace and pray for his family. I pray for the TRUE victims in this