Ravi Zacharias has left this world for his heavenly home. Yet his powerful influence will remain with us, and he will long be remembered by believers around the world who have followed his teaching and ministry over many years. Most well-known as a wise and godly Christian apologist, Zacharias was also the author of more than 30 books, founder of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, an international evangelist, and host of radio programs, all focused on sharing the light and love of Jesus Christ with a broken world.
Born in India on March 26, 1946, Ravi grew up as an atheist until age 17 when he attempted suicide. After that event, while at a hospital, a Christian worker shared a Bible with his mother and encouraged her to read to him from John 14. Zacharias said later that the verse John 14:19 touched him deeply, "Because I live, you also will live.” He shared, "This may be my only hope: A new way of living. Life as defined by the Author of Life." He committed his life to Christ praying, "Jesus if You are the one who gives life as it is meant to be, I want it. Please get me out of this hospital bed well, and I promise I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth.” And for 48 years, Reverend Zacharias did just that, sharing the hope of Christ wherever he went.
In March 2020, he announced he’d been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. Though he pursued treatment and chemotherapy, his condition progressively, and sadly, worsened. Ravi returned home to Atlanta, GA where he was surrounded by his loving family in his final days. Zacharias Davis, shared these words about her Dad’s powerful life, love, and ministry, “It was his Savior, Jesus Christ, that my dad always wanted most to talk about. Even in his final days, until he lacked the energy and breath to speak, he turned every conversation to Jesus and what the Lord had done. 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… Today my beautiful father is more alive than he has even been. We thank God for him and recommit our lives to sharing this truth with all who will hear, until He calls us to our eternal home.”
RZIM honors Ravi’s influential life with these thoughts, “Ravi’s heart was people. His passion and life’s work centered on helping people understand the beauty of the gospel message of salvation. Our prayer is that, at his passing, more people will come to know the saving grace found in Jesus through Ravi’s legacy and the global team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.”
1. “Love is a commitment that will be tested in the most vulnerable areas of spirituality, a commitment that will force you to make some very difficult choices. It is a commitment that demands that you deal with your lust, your greed, your pride, your power, your desire to control, your temper, your patience, and every area of temptation that the Bible clearly talks about. It demands the quality of commitment that Jesus demonstrates in His relationship to us.”
–I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
2. “Yes, if truth is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the truth repulsive.”
3. “Love is hard work. It is the hardest work I know of, work from which you are never entitled to take a vacation.”
On God’s Purpose and Calling
4. “But the greatest dream of all is to know God and to know what he has intended for your life.”
–The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
5. “The world was made for the body. The body was made for the soul. And the soul was made for God.”
–Why Jesus?: Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality
7. “A calling is simply God’s shaping of your burden and beckoning you to your service to him in the place and pursuit of his choosing.” 6. “There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny.”
– The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
On Truth and Seeking Christ
8. “We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right."
9. “Often we are not aware of how close we are to that which we need but we think we do not have. In His grace, God has placed some hidden gold somewhere in all of us that meets our need at a desperate moment.”
– Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows
10. “Truth by definition excludes.”
11. “Respect for the right of another to be wrong does not mean that the wrong is right.”
12. “My goal is to satisfy the hunger and longing for those who are seeking the truth.”
13. “The truth is that whenever a fence is removed, it’s wise to ask why it was put there in the first place.”
– Sense and Sensuality: Jesus Talks to Oscar Wilde on the Pursuit of Pleasure
14. “When you come to religion, you come to a place. When you come to Jesus Christ, you come to a person.”
On Prayer and Christianity
15. “I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.”
- Has Christianity Failed You?
16. “It is important to understand that it is a prayer life that builds character that honors God,”
– I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
17. “Only through repentance and faith in Christ can anyone be saved. No religious activity will be sufficient, only true faith in Jesus Christ alone.”
On Struggles and Pain
18. “So do not fear the struggle; rather, embrace it. Embrace it in the knowledge that the Grand Weaver will take all of your struggles, questions, disappointments, and fears and use them to build your faith and increasingly make you into a man or woman who looks like Jesus Christ.”
- The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
19. “I thank the Lord that, even though things were so wrong in my life here, I finally was brought to the realization of what all those struggles were about. There are some wonderful things from your painful past, things with a beauty you may not have realized at the time.”
- Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows
20. “You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.”
21. “The world is larger and more beautiful than my little struggle.”
– Recapture the Wonder
Quotes On Faith
22. “What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind.”
23. “Faith is a thing of the mind. If you do not believe that God is in control and has formed you for a purpose, then you will flounder on the high seas of purposelessness, drowning in the currents and drifting further into nothingness.”
- The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
24. “The Christian faith, simply stated, reminds us that our fundamental problem is not moral; rather, our fundamental problem is spiritual. It is not just that we are immoral, but that a moral life alone cannot bridge what separates us from God. Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus' offer to us. Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.”
Quotes On Life
25. “I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.”
27. “I remember the time an older man asked me when I was young, "Do you know what you are doing now?" I thought it was some kind of trick question. "Tell me," I said. "You are building your memories," he replied, "so make them good ones.”
28. “You can only learn so much from books. You can only learn so much from education. Ultimately, it is the wisdom of God that will carry you through in the toughest situations of life.”
29. “God trained Moses in a palace to use him in a desert. He trained Joseph in a desert to use him in a palace.”
– The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
30. “Goodness can endure a few moments; holiness is life-defining.”
31. “Beginning well is a momentary thing; finishing well is a lifelong thing.”
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