After being rescued by the hand of Jesus Christ from a suicide bed at the age 17, Dr. Ravi Zacharias spent the next 57 years of his life telling as many people that would listen, about his experience on what could have been his death bed.
He read the words of Jesus from the Bible that said because I live you also would live. He believed it. He accepted it. He says that Jesus Christ regenerated him and his life was never the same after that. He became a follower of Jesus Christ, a defender of Christianity, and approached the whole endeavor not just as a matter of faith, but also as an intellectual pursuit. He believed as a follower of Jesus Christ that it is important to engage the mind as much as it was to engage the spirit.
He never avoided the tough issues, in fact he seemed to relish discussion of them. He always gave thoughtful answers to the difficult questions that people enquired of him, and he tackled the objections to Christianity with intellectual rigor and a sharp analytical mind. No one who ever listened to Dr. Zacharias speak ever walked away thinking that the man was an intellectual fraud, or a charlatan.
He espoused a biblical worldview and spoke extensively on the importance of each individual finding purpose and meaning in life. He believed that Jesus Christ was the one who could give to any searching soul a purpose for living. His message that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life was uncompromising, but he always spoke it in love.
He was a compassionate man who was always respectful toward his audience no matter of whom it was comprised. He understood that his worldview on Jesus Christ being the only way to God conflicted greatly with other popular philosophical outlooks on life, but he was always ready to defend it. He knew that people would disagree with his message. He never took it personally, but he gladly offered the message to all who would receive it.
He once said “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.”
Ravi Zacharias passed on from this world a couple of days ago, and for some reason his passing feels like a personal loss.
Christianity has lost one of its staunchest defenders and a man who from all indication lived the life he preached.
To anyone who has questions about what Ravi called the basic questions of life “Where do I come from? Why am I here? How should I treat people? Where am I going? Origin, meaning, morality, destiny, then check him out on YouTube to learn more.
Rest in peace Dr. Ravi Zacharias.
See Ravi’s interview with Dave Rubin:
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