I grew up in an evangelical environment prone to altar calls and conversionism. The Church’s primary function was evangelization which meant I was not steeped in theological discourse/dialogues in my early years. It was, however, sometime in my late teens that I began to think deeply about the faith. By that time, my father had died, and I was in a foreign country. In the evenings, I retreated to a room in a Pennsylvania home built in the 1920s.
The owner of the house was a delightful older woman who often went to bed around 8 pm, leaving my curious mind to pursue the only form of technology available to me, an old radio. I looked forward to those evenings because of two constant voices. The first was from a native of the same state by the name of Robert Charles Sproul, and the other was the inimitable voice of a man born in the southern city of Chennai and raised in the northern city of Delhi by the name of Ravi Zacharias.
I loved R.C. and had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions and sharing with him how beneficial those evening lectures were to me as a young thinker. On the other hand, I never had the joy of meeting Ravi to tell him just how beautiful his words were to me, how salient his exhortations were, and how his stories affected me at a personal level.
As the years went by, I lost touch with his ministry, but any moment his name popped on some headline, I was quick to peruse. When Ben Shapiro interviewed him, I couldn’t wait to hear his prose and eloquent patterned speech. He was a powerful force in the kingdom of Jesus.
In some ways, he was the more eloquent continuation of Walter Martin’s legacy going to Mormon tabernacles and hostile university settings to proclaim Jesus. Ravi was charming in his delivery but dogmatic in his proclamation of Jesus. I recall watching a video where an obtuse young man stepped up to the microphone. He belabored the point and couldn’t conceive why Christians like Ravi were so concerned about objective truth. “What are you afraid of subjective moral reasoning?” he asked pompously. Ravi got up from his chair and simply asked, “Do you lock your doors at night?” The audience immediately grasped the power of that question. We take action because it has objective consequences. And Ravi was a master of making the objective clear.
“The gospel is a story. It is a true story. It is for the world…It celebrates my origin and points me to my destiny,” he once wrote. Now, Ravi has reached his destination. He now sees face to face the One to whom the story pointed. Well done, Ravi! Rest in peace.
