Ravi Zacharias, 1946-2020, to Forever

The story of the Gospel is the story of eternal life. My life is unique and will endure eternally in God’s presence. I will never be “no more.” I will never be lost because I will be with the One who saves me. 

Ravi Zacharias

Today, May 19, 2020, Ravi Zacharias, Christian apologist, author of 28 books, and founder of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM)  went to be with the Lord he adored. Zacharias was at home in Atlanta, surrounded by his loving wife of 48 years, Margaret (Margie) and his children. He was 74.

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in Madras (now Chennai) in 1946. His official obituary on the RZIM website notes that his birthplace was “in the shadow of the resting place of the apostle Thomas, known to the world as the “Doubter,” but to Zacharias as the “Great Questioner.” It adds that Zacharias was always “more interested in the questioner than in the question itself.”

“Ravi Zacharias, Now with Jesus,” a beautiful tribute by his daughter, Sarah Davis, the Global CEO of RZIM, states of Zacharias who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer just two months ago:

It was his Savior, Jesus Christ, that my dad always wanted most to talk about. Even in his final days, until he lacked the energy and breath to speak, he turned every conversation to Jesus and what the Lord had done. He perpetually marveled that God took a seventeen-year-old skeptic, defeated in hopelessness and unbelief, and called him into a life of glorious hope and belief in the truth of Scripture—a message he would carry across the globe for 48 years.

In addition to Zacharias’ brilliant mind, a critical aspect of his apologetics, his winsome presentation of truth, was in telling his own testimony. The obituary tells the story that he shared personally with so, so many people from all parts of society, many nations, and of every age, of the:

remarkable transformation set in motion when Zacharias, recovering in a Delhi hospital from a suicide attempt at age 17, was read the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible by the apostle John: “Because I live, you will also live.” In response, Zacharias surrendered his life to Christ and offered up a prayer that if he emerged from the hospital, he would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of truth. Once Zacharias found the truth of the gospel, his passion for sharing it burned bright until the very end. Even as he returned home from the hospital in Texas, where he had been undergoing chemotherapy, Zacharias was sharing the hope of Jesus to the three nurses who tucked him into his transport.

We in the Body of Christ have lost temporarily one of our great brothers and fathers in the faith. We have lost the presence on earth of one of our top allies in the battle to make the kingdoms of this world the Kingdom of our Christ.

And those still searching for truth have lost a great friend who cared and wept over their souls. Like his Savior, Ravi Zacharias was a friend of sinners and a friend of sinners saved by Grace.

He visited Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola Prison), the largest maximum security prison in the United States, three times. His last visit to pray with the prisoners of Death Row was in November 2019. The RZIM obituary assures:

Zacharias believed the gospel shined with grace and power, especially in the darkest places, and praying with those on Death Row “makes it impossible to block the tears.” It was his third visit to Angola and, such is his deep connection, the inmates have made Zacharias the coffin in which he will be buried. As he writes in Seeing Jesus from the East, “These prisoners know that this world is not their home and that no coffin could ever be their final destination. Jesus assured us of that.”

I was blessed to meet Ravi Zacharias and hear him speak at our Anglican Provincial Assembly in 2019. He was a great friend of the Anglican Church in North America. He cheered us on from the beginning of our ten year old denomination. He celebrated our determination to allow the Lord to heal the wounds of our past and put first Jesus and the mission of His Kingdom.

But it is even more of a blessing to watch the videos of Ravi’s encounters with great thinkers and searchers for truth. Just last night I watched the Ravi Zacharias interview on The Rubin Report with Dave Rubin. What a brilliant presentation of the Gospel, but so gentle and so genuinely loving. How clearly it sets out that the best apologists for the Gospel are not those that can argue most successfully, but those that love well.

Zacharias said, “An argument may remove doubt, but only the Holy Spirit can convict of truth.” And he delivered that truth in the manner commanded by the Apostle Peter, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3: 15).

This heart attitude was a hallmark of RZIM. In 1983 Billy Graham invited Zacharias to speak at the inaugural conference for international evangelism in Amsterdam. His obituary records that speaking to 3800 evangelists from 133 countries, Zacharias declared to them that “religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had formed “vast chasms between the message of Christ and the mind of man.”

He continued, expressing fear that, “in certain strands of evangelicalism, we sometimes think it is necessary to so humiliate someone of a different worldview that we think unless we destroy everything he holds valuable, we cannot preach to him the gospel of Christ…what I am saying is this, when you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable.”

A colleague summed it up that to Ravi, “People weren’t logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ.” Oh God, please make us more like that because to be more like that is to be more like Jesus.

We have lost a great friend,  but Ravi has won. He has won his Promotion to Glory. Ravi told Dave Rubin back in his October interview that “Jesus did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive!” Now Ravi Zacharias is more alive than any of us in this world.

Rest in peace  and rise in Glory to hear Jesus say “well done, good and faithful servant” and we will see you later, Ravi.

Ravi Zacharias is survived by his wife Margie; his three children, Sarah, the Global CEO of RZIM, Naomi, Director of Wellspring International, and Nathan, RZIM’s Creative Director for Media; and five grandchildren. Please keep them in your prayers.