Apologist Ravi Zacharias passed away this morning at his home in Atlanta, following a brief battle with bone cancer. He was 74.
The Christian apologist was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in March 2020 after going in for back surgery on February 20. Since then, he had undergone rounds of chemotherapy. However, the condition of the area where the cancer metastasized deteriorated and Zacharias returned home to be with his family last week after doctors declared they could do no more.
Ravi Zacharias founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), and launched a global team of nearly 100 Christian scholars and authors who continue to speak, resource, train and address the questions of millions around the world. today
"[Ravi] saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered," said Michael Ramsden, president of RZIM. "People weren't logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ. Those who knew him well will remember him first for his kindness, gentleness, and generosity of spirit. The love and kindness he had come to know in and through Jesus Christ was the same love he wanted to share with all he met."
Zacharias' daughter Sarah Davis, CEO of RZIM, said: "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 17-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."
Ravi Zacharias is survived by wife Margie, his three children: Sarah, Naomi, Nathan, and five grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, the Zacharias family has asked that all gifts be made to the ongoing work of RZIM.
