“When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You’ve asked them, I’ve asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. ‘How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?’
These are the words of the great Ravi Zacharias, who spent his life defending Christianity through books and lectures. He has died at the age 74 after battling sarcoma. He managed to touch both the heart and the intellect of the thinkers and influencers of society by shaping the ideas of the culture with the credibility of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Zacharias also said that: “Beginning well is a momentary thing; finishing well is a lifelong thing.” Indeed for him it was a lifelong journey of fanning the flame of the Christian faith across the globe. And so anybody who moves within the Christian faith will know the name Zacharias.
He was a leading apologist, which it seems is becoming a rare art these days. Christian apologetics is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity against objections. And of course, there have been many such objections not just now but for hundreds of years to the Christian faith, so his defense of the faith has been most admirable and for many people, incredibly inspiring. His focus was largely based on apologetic arguments for the existence of God and the reasonableness of Christianity.
Zacharias was a popular author and Christian teacher was known for his work through Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). He preached in more than 70 countries and authored more than 30 books in his 48-year career, teaching Christians to engage with skeptics and arguing that the Christian worldview has robust answers to humanity’s existential questions.
Zacharias was born in India and raised in an Anglican family. According to https://www.rzim.org/, when former skeptic and 17-year-old Zacharias heard the words of Jesus in John 14:19, “Because I live, you also will live,” the trajectory of his life changed forever.
On the website it states that in a time of helplessness and unbelief—when he was on a bed of suicide—the truth of Scripture brought hope to Zacharias, and he committed his life to Christ, promising, “I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth.” Earlier in John 14, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” This verse has become the cornerstone of Zacharias’s ultimate mission as a Christian apologist and evangelist.
Zacharias’s calling to preach was first confirmed when he was awarded the Asian Youth Preacher Award at the international Youth Congress in Hyderabad at the age of 19. Years later, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association invited Zacharias to be a plenary speaker at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists (“Amsterdam ‘83”) to address a gathering of 4 000 other speakers. It would be another turning point for him, as he began to seriously consider the critical need of apologetics to remove the intellectual and existential barriers that kept many skeptics from considering the truth claims of Christ. A year later, in 1984, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
In 2017, Zacharias’s vision to establish an apologetics training center in the United States with global reach was realized with the launch of the Zacharias Institute in Atlanta. RZIM has 16 legal entities globally including offices in the US, Canada, Peru, the United Kingdom, Romania, Turkey, South Africa, Singapore, and India. Through its global team of nearly 100 speakers and more than 250 employees worldwide, RZIM continues to seek to impact the heart and intellect of society’s thinkers and influencers through.
“(Ravi) saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered,” said Michael Ramsden, president of Zacharias International Ministries.
“People weren’t logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ. Those who knew him well will remember him first for his kindness, gentleness, and generosity of spirit. The love and kindness he had come to know in and through Jesus Christ was the same love he wanted to share with all he met.”
His best-selling book, Can Man Live Without God? sold about 500,000 copies in 1995. His most recent book, The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind, won the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s 2020 Christian book award in the Bible study category.
Right upon to his last breath, Zacharias remained true to his calling and his gifting. If you fancy yourself a philosopher, a deep thinker, a Christian wanting to know more, or if you are someone asking big questions about life than listen to his sermons (also on Youtube), read his books and take note of his incredible lectures epecially at Harvard.
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