In an embarrassing turn of events, Tom White, the executive director of Voice of the Martyrs who was found dead earlier this week, died of what police believe was a suicide. He was being investigated for having inappropriate contact with a young girl.
Since the investigation was ongoing, no one at the ministry knew what was going on. Tom White led the charge for bringing to light what persecuted Christians all over the globe were facing, often working with lawmakers and various ministry leaders to help the persecuted. It’s really sad that someone with such a high profile as a Christian had such a dark side, if the allegations are true. I feel sorry for his wife, children, and grandchildren who are left to deal with the allegations on top of the suicide. My prayers are with them for God’s strength and love to uphold them in this dark hour.
This situation has brought to my mind Paul’s warning to us in 1 Corinthians 10:
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. [v. 12]
But I’m also thankful for the next verse:
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. [1 Corinthians 10:13]
If Tom White was guilty, I imagine that pornography had some role in all of this and he had the power to make better choices. Fellow Christians, I hope that this serves as a lesson to us all to stop any sinful, illegal behavior in our own lives that we do in secret that would not reflect well on the gospel or the church.
Source: Jeremy Weber. Voice of the Martyrs’ Tom White’s Death an Apparent Suicide… ChristianityToday.com. April 20, 2012.
–Harry A. Gaylord–
sunandshield.wordpress.com 
You have absolutely no grace in your speech, it’s because of the fear of facing people like you that this man killed himself, you and I would both do the same thing if God were to remove His grace from us.
-Braulio
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I believe my speech was more than gracious considering who the real victims are–the little girl, her family, & his family. True godly sorrow for one’s sins brings about repentance & trying to right wrongs. Suicide is a selfish act that says I don’t want to tell people I’m sorry for my wrongs & I’m too proud or fearful to face the results of what I did. That’s what Judas Iscariot did.
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Judas wasn’t a christian, Jesus gives us a clue when he says “one of you is a devil”. Do you think it’s easy for this man to do what your saying he should have done when you are saying things like “It’s really sad that someone with such a high profile as a Christian had such a dark side”. Every christian has a dark side, it’s called the flesh. If you are not abiding in Christ, the arm of the flesh will reach in to your life. All it takes is something as simple as a death in the family, you start praying less then you go to porn and then one sin leads to another and then bam you are caught in adultery. But if we were all perfect then these things would never happen because we would catch them before they came every time. There is the flesh and there is the devil to consider too. The sin is not ok, it’s terrible. but we can look at that man and say, ” it’s ok if it weren’t for God’s grace on my life, I know I would do the same thing, worse even.”
If it weren’t for God’s grace surpressing wickedness, our sinful flesh would have nothing to stop it, we would all be as bad as Adolf Hitler! You have no grace in your speech because you sound like the pharisee who said ” I am glad I am not like other men, I go to church twice a week, I right chistian blogs, I read the Bible and pray, I am glad you didn’t make me like that violator or that rapist over there.” Is there no grace for the violator or the rapist? Even if they are a christian already when they commit this sin? Even if they have a high profile?
Consider king David, all those sins he did, according to the law him and Bathsheba were supposed to be stoned the next day! But God was graceful to him, and a lot of people are encouraged by his life’s testimony, knowing that he was the king of the only nation that God was working through on the whole planet and that God said of him” He is a man after my own heart” yet he committed all those terrible sins. That’s the kind of testimony you can share in a prison and people hearts turn to the LORD! You can’t share the testimony of a Pharisee who never sinned and followed after God his whole life and have people hearts moved to worship Jesus like the one of King Davids. Look at the fruit of his repentance in psalm 51! Look how God used the sin that David intended for evil for His glory. (Gen. 50:20) I wonder how many billions of believers have been lifted up by reading psalm 51 after committing big sins, all because David was inspired to write it after he repented of that very big sin. God is sovereign and he works around sin and gets Glory.
Praise the Lord
Braulio
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Braulio,
So now I’m a Pharisee because I said this situation “serves as a lesson to us all to stop any sinful, illegal behavior in our own lives.” I included myself in that statement with the “us all” and “our own lives” so your trying to frame me as the Pharisee won’t work. Your argument is the typical misapplication of the “judge not, lest ye be judged” argument. You apparently don’t want me to make a judgment about this guy, but you are okay with judging me for speaking out against pedophilia, hypocrisy, & suicide.
But you forgot to mention that Jesus commanded us “judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment,” John 7:24. He even gave us commands on how to handle those who cause offenses that are contrary to the gospel in Matthew 18:15-17, commanding us to cast them out as heathens if they don’t repent, which requires a judgment to be made. Paul commanded the same thing in 1 Corinthians 5 when they were dealing with an incestuous fornicator. Jesus even said about those who commit an offence against a child, “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea,” Mark 9:42. He said they deserved capital punishment.
However, you’re overlooking the main point of this whole scenario in your argument. A supposedly Christian man committed a crime, then when found out he became too proud to repent, did not admit his crime, and did not make amends for his wrongdoing, but tried to avoid all the consequences via suicide. In order for a man to have a testimony like King David’s that could change inmates, he would have and should have done what David did or what Jim Bakker did or what Marcus Lamb of the Daystar Network did. They came clean about their wrongdoing. So you’re attacking the wrong guy. It’s nothing for us to be ashamed of as Christians to call sin what it is, whether it’s in our own lives or someone else’s.
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So when I said “The sin is not ok, it’s terrible”, what part of that makes you think I’m judging you for condemning pedophelia/ rape and adultery. If you look through my whole comment nowhere did I say the word “judge” or “judging” . You are justifying yourself by putting words in my mouth. In fact that very verse(john 7:24) is what I was thinking about too.
My whole problem is not judging or condeming sin for what it brings(Death). I really am against people who say it’s not ok to judge and say that “it’s ok to sin because we have grace”… that is one extreme. The other extreme is what your doing here, it’s the spirit of pride in condemning the man and his sin. You make it seem in your article as if you are better then this man, you can deny it as much as you want, but your self-righteousness comes through very clearly. You make it seem as if this man is an alien who was immune to the attacks of the devil and the flesh. What we need is the vital center where one says “what you did was terrible! but … I am worse then you(1 Tim 1:15) and if it weren’t for God’s grace and Christ in me I would have done worse than you. Because of your terrible sin God did something terrible to his Son, He crushed Him so you could be forgiven, now repent and run to Him NOW! BECAUSE He still loves you!”
If you were the minister that was to meet with him after the fall would you minister any grace to him? Would he feel comforted at all or would he just see someone looking at him who’s facial expressions or even words are saying “I can’t believe you did that” “you destroyed the image of the church” “shame on you!”. Don’t you think he is already feeling these things? What he needs is someone to comfort him and lift him up out of the mire, and I find that christian’s are worse at doing this than the world is far too often because we are more concerned with “the image of the church” then with loving our brother, as ourself. God’s Holy Spirit will take care of the severe discipline if no one else does, don’t you worry.(Rom, 12:19)
We need to stop being like Peter who said “everyone else will turn away but not me Lord” basically he was saying everyone else will do this big sin against you but not me, that’s the spirit of pride and God had to humble him and show him he’s no better then any of the other sinners. When we do these things we don’t say it with our mouths but our attitudes are saying “everyone else needs the cross, except me!” We need to stop this, I pray that God gives me the grace to be the first one.
Grace and Peace
Braulio
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Braulio,
I’ll deny your accusation that I’m self-righteous as much as I want since it isn’t true. I really don’t care about your judgments against me for speaking against this man’s sin. You are reading much more into what I said than is there. You accuse me of being Pharisaical and self-righteous, when I didn’t say anything about being immune to spiritual or fleshly attacks. That’s why I quoted 1 Corinthians 10 as “Paul’s warning to us” not as “Paul’s warning to everybody out there except me.”
I was speaking about reality. You’re speaking in hypotheticals. I talked about a man caught in sin who didn’t repent, who tried to cover his sin. You’re talking about someone who fell, but hypothetically would admit his sin and the hypothetical reaction one should have toward that person. You accuse me of being harsh, but you’re the one being harsh against me. I don’t regret anything I’ve said here because your view is all too typical in today’s church. Whereas Paul told us not to associate or eat with someone who calls themselves a brother, but who isn’t remorsefu for their habitual sin (1 Corinthians 5:11), you want us to comfort them with “grace” that isn’t grace, but is cowardice masked as love. Too fearful of confronting someone about their sin. Instead of us delivering “such an one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved…” (1 Corinthians 5:5), you would rather give them a pat on the back with a “there, there, everything will be okay–none of us is better than you,” in spite of the fact no repentance or apology has taken place. That’s why churches are so weak today. People like you fill churches who don’t want to say to the fornicator, “stop fornicating!” Who don’t want to say to the adulterer, “stop committing adultery!” So a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump and the church becomes a bunch of weak-kneed, wimpy, hypocritical Christians who give atheists justification to criticize us and who turn young people off so much they can’t wait to grow up & leave the church.
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