It is a rare person who can step onto a college campus, wade into a crowd of cynics, and hold forth a defense of classic Christianity with wit, compassion and reason. Mr. Zacharias was unexcelled at this particular form of Christian apologetics. As another giant of apologetics, Alister McGrath, wrote in a tribute:
“Ravi Zacharias (1946–2020) will be remembered for his landmark contributions to Christian apologetics, especially his concern to connect the gospel with the life of the mind. … Zacharias’s approach was to demonstrate that Christianity makes rational sense on the one hand, and is able to offer deeply satisfying existential answers to life’s grand questions on the other.”
Born in India to a family of Christian converts, he did not initially embrace the faith and nearly committed suicide as an atheist at age 17. While in the hospital, a bible given to him by a youth pastor turned his life around.
On the RZIM website, his daughter Sarah Davis noted, “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.”
He left India and later studied in Canada and the U.S, receiving a master of divinity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, where he was influenced by John W. Montgomery and Norman Geisler.
In turn, he became a prolific writer and speaker, and founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, with the mission of “helping the thinker believe and the believer think.” His efforts have influenced many others, ranging from current Evangelical leaders, to a devout roommate of mine in medical school, to football star and motivational speaker Tim Tebow.
Notable milestones of his career include rising to prominence at a conference for evangelists hosted by Billy Graham in 1983, speaking at the Veritas Forum at Harvard University in 1992, and speaking to the academic community of Virginia Tech after the tragic shooting incident in 2007. He controversially accepted an offer in 2004 to engage in a major dialogue with the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City.
He died of cancer at age 74.
Further reading:
New York Times: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/ravi-zacharias-dead.amp.html