Evangelist Ravi Zacharias Taught His Followers to Ask Tough Questions — Just Not about His Sexual Conduct

By Michelle Boorstein1
Washington Post
February 9, 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/02/09/ravi-zacharias-apologist-rzim-sexual-misconduct-lori-anne-thompson-spa/

As a boy growing up in Canada, Daniel Gilman loved church and what he saw as compassion from the God of the Bible for those who suffer. As a college philosophy student, a question began to chip away: Is God just an inspiring fairy tale character, or does he exist? It was a celebrity evangelist named Ravi Zacharias who filled Gilman with confidence that it was possible to be an intellectual believer in a God who is real.

“He was hugely helpful in my becoming convinced I could be intellectually honest and really believe,” said Gilman, now 32, who became a minister with Zacharias’s global, $36-million-a-year ministry, built around a truth-seeking, evidence-exploring, Q-and-A-style of evangelism called apologetics. “He said: ‘If evil is a category, there must be good. If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law. If there is a moral law there must be a moral lawgiver.’”

Now GiIman and millions of others are left with deep questions about good and evil as independent investigators hired by Zacharias’s Atlanta-based ministry are set Wednesday to release a report detailing serious sexual misconduct by the iconic apologist. Until his death of cancer at 74 in May, Zacharias had been one of the best-known figures of American Christian radio and TV for decades.