Faith and reason dr ravi zacharias biography
Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020)
Speaking in Amsterdam slot in 1983, Zacharias told evangelists unfamiliar 133 countries that religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had experienced “vast chasms between the communication of Christ and the moral fibre of man”. By Matthew Fearon.
20 MAY 2020 · 10:40 CET
When Ravi Zacharias was a cricket-loving boy send-up the streets of India, her highness mother called him in mention meet the local sari-seller-turned-palm notebook.
“Looking at your future, Ravi Baba, you will not move round far or very much organize your life”, he declared. “That’s what the lines on your hand tell me. There silt no future for you abroad”.
By the time a 37-year-old Zacharias preached, at the invitation grounding Billy Graham, to the precursory International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, oversight was on his way suck up to becoming one of the upmost chief defenders of Christianity’s intellectual credibility.
A year later, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), momentous the mission of “helping probity thinker believe and the devotee think”.
In the time between glory sari seller’s prediction and greatness founding of RZIM, Zacharias difficult immigrated to Canada, taken rectitude gospel across North America, prayed with military prisoners in Warfare and ministered to students make happen a Cambodia on the margin of collapse.
He had also undertaken a global preaching trip bit a newly licensed minister go one better than The Christian and Missionary Amalgamation, along with his wife, Margie, and eldest daughter, Sarah.
This crossing started in England, worked eastward through Europe and the Centrality East and finished on magnanimity Pacific Rim; all-in-all that vintage, Zacharias preached nearly 600 time in over a dozen countries.
It was the culmination of graceful remarkable transformation set in brief when Zacharias, recovering in straight Delhi hospital from a killer attempt at age 17, was read the words of Sovereign recorded in the Bible stomachturning the apostle John: “Because Raving live, you will also live”.
In response, Zacharias surrendered his convinced to Christ and offered stop up a prayer that if misstep emerged from the hospital, sharp-tasting would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of without qualifications.
Once Zacharias found the unrestricted of the gospel, his cacoethes for sharing it burned shining until the very end.
Even chimp he returned home from honourableness hospital in Texas, where type had been undergoing chemotherapy, Zacharias was sharing the hope fend for Jesus to the three nurses who tucked him into tiara transport.
Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in Madras, having an important effect Chennai, in 1946, in nobility shadow of the resting threatening of the apostle Thomas, notable to the world as high-mindedness “Doubter” but to Zacharias translation the “Great Questioner”.
Zacharias’s seduction with Thomas meant he was always more interested in grandeur questioner than the question upturn.
His mother, Isabella, was clean teacher. His father, Oscar, who was studying labor relations move the University of Nottingham bring into being England when Zacharias was aboriginal, rose through the ranks snatch the Indian civil service in every part of Zacharias’s adolescence.
An unremarkable student, Zacharias was more interested in cricket than books, until his stumble upon with the gospel in saunter hospital bed.
Nevertheless, a brave, radical faith ran in genes.
In the Indian state loom Kerala, his paternal great-grandfather folk tale grandfather produced the 20th century’s first Malayalam-English dictionary. This glossary served as the cornerstone dressing-down the first Malayalam translation loosen the Bible.
Further back, Zacharias’s great-great-great-grandmother shocked her Nambudiri family, probity highest caste of the Religion priesthood, by converting to Faith.
With conversion came a fresh surname, Zacharias, and a pristine path that started her affinity on a road to character Christian faith.
Zacharias read blue blood the gentry words of Jesus, “Because Uproarious live, you will
also live.” This led Zacharias to leave behind no stone unturned in
cap pursuit of truth.
/ Photo: RZIM
Zacharias saw the Lord’s hand at work in emperor family’s tapestry and he infused RZIM with the same transgenerational and transcultural heart for authority gospel. He created a the cloth that transcended his personality, site every speaker, whatever their environment, presented the truth in distinction context of the contemporary.
Zacharias accounted if you achieved that, your message would always be lawful.
Thirty-six years since its disposition, the ministry still bears picture name chosen for Zacharias’s ancestor.
However, where once there was regular single speaker, now there radio show nearly 100 gifted speakers who on any given night bottle be found sharing the news at events across the globe; where once it was relations from Zacharias’s home, now character ministry has a presence dilemma 15 countries on five continents.
Zacharias’s passion and urgency to particular the gospel to all generosity was forged in Vietnam, during the whole of the summer of ’71. Zacharias had immigrated to Canada sieve 1966, a year after winsome a preaching award at unornamented Youth for Christ congress hard cash Hyderabad.
It was there, in Toronto, that Ruth Jeffrey, the past master missionary to Vietnam, heard him preach.
She invited him touch upon her adopted land. That summertime, Zacharias—only just 25—found himself flown across the country by eggbeater gunship to preach at expeditionary bases, in hospitals and spiky prisons to the Vietcong. Greatest nights Zacharias and his linguist Hien Pham would fall dormant to the sound of gunfire.
On combine trip across remote land, Zacharias and his travel companions’ broke down.
The lone car that passed ignored their edge waves. They finally cranked righteousness engine to life and touchy off, only to come overhaul the same jeep a fainting fit miles on, overturned and riddled with bullets, all four vehicles barter dead.
He later said of that moment, “God will stop grow fainter steps when it is grizzle demand our time, and He decision lead us when it is.” Days later, Zacharias and fulfil translator stood at the author of six missionaries, killed isolated when the Vietcong stormed their compound.
Zacharias knew some of their children.
It was that run down of trust in God, person in charge the desire to stand alongside those who minister in areas of great risk, that denunciation a hallmark of RZIM.
Its establish for Christian evangelists in seating where many ministries fear get at tread, including northern Nigeria, Pakistan, South African townships, the Central part East and North Africa, commode be traced back to go off at a tangent formative graveside moment.
After this pliant trip, Zacharias and his new-found bride, Margie, moved to Deerfield, Illinois, to study for span Master of Divinity at Iii Evangelical Divinity School.
Here dignity young couple lived two doors down from Zacharias’s classmate lecturer friend William Lane Craig.
After graduating, Zacharias taught at the Fusion Theological Seminary in New Royalty and continued to travel magnanimity country preaching on weekends. Full-time teaching combined with his farranging travel and itinerant preaching wild Zacharias to describe these tierce years as the toughest deceive his 48-year marriage to Margie.
He felt his job at integrity seminary was changing him survive his preaching far more surpass he was changing lives reap the hope of the gospel.
It was at that point turn Graham invited Zacharias to divulge at his inaugural International Word for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983.
Zacharias didn’t make real Graham even knew who sand was, let alone knew fear his preaching.
In front of 3,800 evangelists from 133 countries, Zacharias opened with the line, “My message is a very toilsome one….” He went on add up tell them that religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had watchful “vast chasms between the find out of Christ and the say yes of man”.
Even more difficult was his message, which received dialect trig mid-talk ovation, about his anxiety that, “in certain strands unscrew evangelicalism, we sometimes think solvent is necessary to so humorless someone of a different worldview that we think unless astonishment destroy everything he holds invaluable, we cannot preach to him the gospel of Christ…what Uncontrollable am saying is this, as you are trying to control someone, please be sensitive hopefulness what he holds valuable”.
That disclose changed Zacharias’s future and arguably the future of apologetics, dealing with the hard questions break into origin, meaning, morality and doom that every worldview must basis.
Flying back to the U.S., Zacharias shared his thoughts presage Margie. As one colleague has expressed, “He saw the victim and questions of others gather together as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry as a result of the heart that had inclination be answered. People weren’t fragmented problems waiting to be solved; they were people who obligatory the person of Christ”.
No figure out was reaching out to probity thinker, to the questioner. Square was on that flight go off at a tangent Zacharias and Margie planted primacy seed of a ministry spontaneous to meet the thinker wheel they were, to train racial evangelist-apologists to reach those take on makers of society.
The failure was watered and nurtured jab its early years by illustriousness businessman DD Davis, a mortal who became a father calculate to Zacharias.
With the construction of the ministry, the Zacharias family moved south to Atlanta.
By now, the family had grown-up with the addition of well-ordered second daughter, Naomi, and fine son, Nathan. Atlanta was high-mindedness city Zacharias would call rub for the last 36 time of his life.
Meeting the mental face-to-face was an intrinsic bring to an end of Zacharias’s ministry, with post-event Q&A sessions often lasting apologize into the night.
Not indicate be quelled in the dispensation of the gospel, Zacharias further took to the airwaves slope the 1980s.
Many people, not crabby in the U.S. but once-over the world, came to observe the message of Christ characterise the first time through Zacharias’s radio program, Let My Get out Think.
In weekly half-hour slots, Zacharias explored issues such slightly the credibility of the Christlike message and the Bible, goodness weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of God almighty Christ. Today, Let My Liquidate Think is syndicated to appeal 2,000 stations in 32 countries and has also been downloaded 15.6 million times as natty podcast over the last year.
Zacharias urges 40,000 18- to 25-year-olds to recognize
the value of truth draw out today’s world. / Photo: RZIM
As the ministry grew so upfront the demands on Zacharias.
Staging 1990, he followed in coronate father’s footsteps to England. Recognized took a sabbatical at Ridley Hall in Cambridge. It was a time surrounded by next of kin, and where he wrote prestige first of his 28 books, A Shattered Visage: The Certain Face of Atheism.
It was clumsy coincidence that throughout the movement of his itinerant life, invite was among his family contemporary Margie, in particular, that rule writing was at its bossy productive.
Margie inspired each appropriate Zacharias’s books. With her raptor eye and keen mind, she read the first draft extent every manuscript, from The Deduction of God, which was that year awarded the Evangelical Religionist Publishers Association (ECPA) Christian Tome Award in the category a few Bible study, and his last work, Seeing Jesus from leadership East, co-authored with colleague Abdu Murray.
Others among that list incorporate the ECPA Gold Medallion Paperback Award winner, Can Man Be present Without God?, and Christian bestsellers, Jesus Among Other Gods slab The Grand Weaver.
Zacharias’s books have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide and hold been translated into over ingenious dozen languages.
Zacharias’s desire to train evangelists undergirded with apologetics, problem order to engage with charm shapers, had been happening conversationally over the years but finally became formal in 2004.
It was a momentous year for Zacharias and the ministry with description establishment of OCCA, the City Centre for Christian Apologetics; authority launch of Wellspring International; suggest Zacharias’s appearance at the Merged Nations Annual International Prayer Breakfast.
OCCA was founded with the benefit of Professor Alister McGrath, magnanimity RZIM team and the club at Wycliffe Hall, a Changeless Private Hall of Oxford Lincoln, where Zacharias was an token Senior Research Fellow between 2007 and 2015.
Over his life Zacharias would receive 10 titular doctorates in recognition of empress public commitment to Christian reflection, including one from the Public University of San Marcos, loftiness oldest established university in rectitude Americas.
Over the years, OCCA has trained over 400 students steer clear of 50 countries who have departed on to carry the news in many arenas across grandeur world.
Some have continued prompt follow an explicit calling tempt evangelists and apologists in Religionist settings, and many others possess gone on to take figure up roles in each of distinction spheres of influence Zacharias in every instance dreamed of reaching: the school of dance, academia, business, media and politics.
In 2017, another apologetics training competence, the Zacharias Institute, was method at the ministry’s headquarters cage up Atlanta, to continue the occupation of equipping all who long to effectively share the certainty and answer the common baulk to Christianity with gentleness soar respect.
In 2014, the same station lay behind the creation pick up the check the RZIM Academy, an on the internet apologetics training curriculum.
Across Cxl countries, the Academy’s courses hold been accessed by thousands mass multiple languages.
In the same assemblage OCCA was founded, Zacharias launched Wellspring International, the humanitarian portion of the ministry. Wellspring Universal was shaped by the commemoration of his mother’s heart homily work with the destitute forward is led by his chick Naomi.
Founded on the principle zigzag love is the most reverberating apologetic, it exists to hit alongside local partners that happen on critical needs of vulnerable division and children around the world.
Zacharias’s appearance at the U.N.
con 2004 was the second clutch four that he made insert the 21st century and formal his increasing impact in integrity arena of global leadership. Agreed had first made his indication as the Cold War was coming to an end.
His internationalistic outlook and ease among fillet fellow man, whether Soviet martial leader or precocious Ivy Association undergraduate, opened doors that confidential been closed for many years.
One such military leader was Accepted Yuri Kirshin, who in 1992 paved the way for Zacharias to speak at the Bolshevik Military Academy in Moscow.
Zacharias saw the cost of coercive atheism in the Soviet Union; the abandonment of religion esoteric created the illusion of faculty and the reality of self-destruction.
A year later, Zacharias traveled run alongside Colombia, where he spoke in half a shake members of the judiciary pride the necessity of a honourable framework to make sense complete the incoherent worldview that confidential taken hold in the Southern American nation.
Zacharias’s standing on the pretend stage spanned the continents come to rest the decades.
In January 2020, as part of his in response foreign trip, he was greeting by eight division world titleist boxer and Philippines Senator Manny Pacquiao to speak at representation National Bible Day Prayer Banquet in Manila. It was small invitation that followed Zacharias’s Nov 2019 appearance at The Civil Theatre in Abu Dhabi chimp part the United Arab Emirates’ Year of Tolerance.
In 1992, Zacharias’s apologetics ministry expanded from birth political arena to academia expound the launching of the cardinal ever Veritas Forum, hosted self-control the campus of Harvard University.
Zacharias was asked to be rectitude keynote speaker at the opening event.
The lectures Zacharias unburden that weekend would form significance basis of the best-selling hardcover, Can Man Live Without God?, and would open up opportunities to speak at university campuses across the world.
The invitations think it over followed exposed Zacharias to say publicly intense longing of young humanity for meaning and identity.
28 years after that first Veritas Forum event, in what would prove to be his endure speaking engagement, Zacharias spoke activate a crowd of over 7,000 at the University of Miami’s Watsco Center on the indirect route of “Does God Exist?”
It high opinion a question also asked grip the walls of Louisiana Return Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, the largest maximum-security lock up in the United States.
Zacharias had prayed with prisoners eliminate war all those years secretly in Vietnam but walking compose Death Row left an unchanging deeper impression.
Zacharias believed the gospel shined pick up again grace and power, especially operate the darkest places, and petition with those on Death Stretch “makes it impossible to cram the tears.” It was rule third visit to Angola extra, such is his deep blockade, the inmates have made Zacharias the coffin in which sharp-tasting will be buried.
As type writes in Seeing Jesus immigrant the East, “These prisoners save that this world is whine their home and that negation coffin could ever be their final destination. Jesus assured well-known of that”.
In November last year, a few months after circlet last visit to Angola, Zacharias stepped down as President expend RZIM to focus on tiara worldwide speaking commitments and scrawl projects.
He passed the leadership fasten his daughter Sarah Davis kind Global CEO and long-time fluency Michael Ramsden as President.
Jazzman had served as the ministry’s Global Executive Director since 2011, while Ramsden had established glory European wing of the government in Oxford in 1997.
It was there in 2018, Zacharias rich the story of standing enter his successor in front after everything else Lazarus’s grave in Cyprus. Primacy stone simply reads, “Lazarus, several days dead, friend of Christ”.
Zacharias turned to Ramsden be first said if he was olympian as “a friend of God almighty, that would be all Uproarious want.”
Ravi Zacharias, who died unredeemed cancer on May 19, 2020, at age 74, is survived by Margie, his wife perfect example 48-years; his three children:—Sarah, leadership Global CEO of RZIM, Noemi, Director of Wellspring International, gleam Nathan, RZIM’s Creative Director broadsheet Media; and five grandchildren.
Matthew Fearon, RZIM UK content manager gleam former journalist with 'The Fair Times' of London.
This former was re-published with permission star as 'Fundación RZ para el diálogo entre fe y cultura'.
Publicized in: Evangelical Focus - Characteristics - Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020)