Ravi Zacharias

On Sunday evening, May 24, Eric Metaxas played an interview he had with Ravi Zacharias in July of 2019 (Ravi died May 19, 2020 of a rare untreatable cancer at the age of 74).

Ravi told about his attempt at suicide in his homeland of India using poisons that put him in the hospital for five days at the age of 17.  While there a Youth for Christ man visited his room (he and his mom were not sure how as he was in ICU and very restricted) and began reading John 14 (Interesting that a major figure in John 14 is the apostle Thomas who took the gospel to India.).  Ravi was unable to grasp so the man exited but not before giving his mother the passage.  His mother read the chapter to Ravi and verse 19 struck him and stuck:  “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me.  Because I live, you will live also.”  Ravi claimed that was the time of his conversion to Christ.

This near-death time was in 1963.  He noted that his family was seven generations Christian on one side and five generations Christian on the other side (likely the heavy influence of England as India was a colony).  He noted that being Christian was not what we think for if you weren’t Hindu, Isalm, Buddhist, or Sikh then you were most often cast as a Christian.  He attended the Church of England as a youth but it was a ritual with no personal meaning.

In 1966 Ravi moved to Toronto for work and to begin schooling for a career in the motel industry.  During that time he found himself soaking up Bible teachings and taking Bible classes on the side.  In 1971, the Christian and Missionary Alliance sent him to Vietnam to preach up and down the country at the young age of 25.  Bernice, who attends SSBC when she can (she is 93 and restricted to her care home now), and her husband, Kenneth, were C&MA missionaries in Vietnam in 1971.

In the mid 90’s Ravi desired to find the grave of his grandmother in southern India who had died in 1955.  They found the cemetery and the spot indicated by the registry but there was no stone.  A caretaker began digging and eventually hit the stone.  As they uncovered the stone they found it read:

BECAUSE I LIVE, YOU WILL LIVE ALSO

[A number of you know Olsens who came to Christ in a C&MA church in Missoula, MT in 1981.  The evangelist was Ravi Zacharias!]

[Photo taken at the 2011 General Council of the C&MA in Kansas City]