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Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, May 19 (EMN): Just two months after being diagnosed with cancer, renowned Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias passed away today, May 19 at the age of 74. He is survived by his wife Margaret and their three children.
In early May, despite success in his chemo treatments, Zacharias' prognosis became grim. Though the cancer on his sacrum had responded to treatments, the area where the cancer had metastasised had worsened. His daughter, Sarah Davis earlier this month shared about his grim prognosis, stating that he was in his last stage and "nothing can be done".
[Also read: Ravi Zacharias receives grim prognosis on cancer battle]
Zacharias was also slated to visit Nagaland in February this year, but had to be cancelled due to his failing health.
Over the course of his ministry, which spanned 48 years, he preached the good news of Jesus in more than 70 countries. His best-selling book “Can Man Live Without God?” was sold about 500,000 copies in 1995. His most recent book “The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind” won the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s 2020 Christian book award in the Bible study category.
"It was his Savior, Jesus Christ, that my dad always wanted most to talk about," said Sarah Davis, CEO of RZIM. "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."
The Zacharias family has asked that in lieu of flowers, gifts be made to the ongoing work of RZIM.
His official obituary reads: "When Ravi Zacharias was a cricket-loving boy on the streets of India, his mother called him in to meet the local sari-seller-turned-palm reader. 'Looking at your future, Ravi Baba, you will not travel far or very much in your life,' he declared. That’s what the lines on your hand tell me. There is no future for you abroad.
"By the time a 37-year-old Zacharias preached, at the invitation of Billy Graham, to the inaugural international conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, he was on his way to becoming one of the foremost defenders of Christianity’s intellectual credibility. A year later, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), with the mission of helping the thinker believe and the believer think."
Read the full obituary HERE.