Ravi Zacharias, renowned Christian evangelist, scholar, and author, has died at age 74.
Zacharias died of sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, in his Atlanta home on Tuesday, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries confirmed in an obituary.
The Indian-born Canadian American Christian apologist was born in 1946 and later immigrated from India to Canada before moving to the United States to begin studying theology. He launched his ministry when he was 37 years old in 1984, one year after hearing renowned evangelist Billy Graham preach at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam.
Prior to starting his ministry, Zacharias’s journey in the Christian faith began at age 17 after attempting suicide. While recovering in a New Delhi hospital, he was read words from the Book of Matthew, in which Jesus said, “Because I live, you will also live.” He claimed hearing those words inspired him to convert to Christianity.
Over the years, Zacharias communicated the Christian faith through a radio show called Let My People Think, which has reached 2,000 stations and 32 countries.
As an evangelist, Zacharias focused on apologetics, which is the practice of offering answers to the most difficult moral, philosophical, and ethical challenges to his faith. In one of his most famous arguments for the existence of God, he said that those who believe in good acknowledge the existence of a moral law, which therefore necessitates a moral lawgiver.
“When you say there is evil, aren’t you admitting there is good? When you accept the existence of goodness, you must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But when you admit to a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver,” he said.
The Christian leader presented his arguments in various academic institutions, speaking at Ivy League schools such as Harvard University and establishing the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics at Oxford University in 2004. He was an honorary senior research fellow at Oxford between 2007 and 2015 and wrote 28 books in his lifetime.
Zacharias traveled the world to deliver the message of the gospel and spoke to political leaders at international events, including the United Nations Annual International Prayer Breakfast.
In November 2019, he stepped down as president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, passing the leadership roles to his daughter Sarah Davis and colleague Michael Ramsden. According to this obituary, it was then that Zacharias turned to his partner Ramsden and said he wanted to be remembered as “a friend of Christ, that would be all I want.”
He is survived by his wife of 48 years Margie, three children, and five grandchildren.
