The Cafe' Presents: We will be presenting a series of Churches that stand on Bilblical principles for those that struggle to finding GOD in an UnGodly world

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias (born 1946) is an Indian-born, Canadian-American evangelical Christian apologist. Zacharias is the author of numerous Christian books, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God? and bestsellers Light in the Shadow of Jihad and The Grand Weaver. He is the founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, host of the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking, and visiting professor at Wycliffe Hall of Oxford, where he teaches apologetics and evangelism. Zacharias studied as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and held the chair in Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance Theological Seminary from 1981 to 1984. Commentator Chuck Colsonreferred to Zacharias as "the great apologist of our time."

Early life Biography 

Zacharias was born in Madras, India. Zacharias claims descent from a woman of the Nambudiri Brahmin caste and Boatman caste. Swiss German missionaries spoke to one of his ancestors about Christianity and his family was converted. Zacharias grew up in a nominal Anglican household, and was an atheist until the age of 17, when he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by swallowing poison. While in the hospital, a local Christian worker brought him a Bible and told his mother to read to him out of John 14. Zacharias says that it was John 14:19 that touched him and caused him to commit his life to Christ.

He immigrated with his family to Canada in 1966, earning his undergraduate degree from Ontario Bible College in 1972 (now Tyndale University College & Seminary) and his M. Div. from Trinity International University. In May 1972, Zacharias married Margaret ("Margie") Reynolds, whom he met at his church's youth group.^[7] They have three children, Sarah, Naomi and Nathan.

He was later ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance and commissioned as an international evangelist. He founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in 1984 to pursue his calling as a "classical evangelist in the arena of the intellectually resistant."

Ministry 

Zacharias was invited to spend the summer of 1971 in Vietnam, where he evangelized to the American soldiers, as well as to POWs and Viet Cong. After graduating from Ontario Bible College, he began an itinerant ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. In 1974 the C&MA sent him to Cambodia, where he preached only a short time before its fall to the Khmer Rouge. In 1977, after graduating from Trinity, Zacharias was commissioned to preach worldwide.

In 1983, Zacharias was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's annual evangelists' conference. It was here that he first noticed a lack of ministry in the area of Christian apologetics. After Amsterdam, Zacharias spent the summer evangelizing in India, where he continued to see the need for apologetics ministry, both to lead people to Christ and to train Christian leaders. In August 1984 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was founded in Toronto, Canada. Today its headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and has offices in Canada, England, India, Singapore and theUnited Arab Emirates.

In 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zacharias was invited to speak in Moscow. While there he spoke to students at the Lenin Military Academy as well as political leaders at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy. This was the first of many evangelism opportunities towards the political world. Future events included an invitation to Bogota, Colombia in 1993, where he spoke to the judiciary committee on the importance of having a solid moral foundation.

Zacharias took a sabbatical in 1990 and spent part of that year as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. There he heard lectures by men such as Stephen Hawking and studied under professors such as John Polkinghorne and Don Cupitt. He also wrote his first book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism. In 1993 Zacharias was invited to speak at his first Veritas Forum at Harvard University, and later that year was one of the keynote speakers at Urbana. Zacharias continues to be a frequent guest at these forums, both giving lectures and answering students in question and answer sessions at academic institutions such as the University of Georgia, the University of Michigan, and Penn State.

Zacharias attracted media attention when in 2004 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) opened its signature pulpit at the Salt Lake Tabernacle to him for a series of messages. Zacharias delivered a sermon on "Who Is the Truth? Defending Jesus Christ as The Way, The Truth and The Life" to some 7,000 lay-persons and scholars from both LDS and Protestant camps in an initiatory move towards open dialog between the camps.

Some evangelicals criticized Zacharias' decision not to use this opportunity to directly address the "deep and foundational" differences between the historic Christian faith and that of the LDS church. He responded by asserting that Christians should not immediately condemn Mormonism's theological differences but "graciously build one step at a time in communicating our faith with clarity and conviction". He said this is just as effective as showing someone the faults of their faith. The speaking engagement was nearly sabotaged by a claim by event organizer Greg Johnson, president of Standing Together, that Zacharias had nothing to do with editing the book The Kingdom of the Cults and had only loaned his name to the latest edition. Johnson later apologized for his comment.

Zacharias is a frequent keynote lecturer within the evangelical community at events such as the Future of Truth conference in 2004, the National Religious Broadcasters' Convention and Exposition in 2005, the National Conference on Christian Apologetics in 2006. On successive nights in October 2007, he addressed first the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, then the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the topic of evil and suffering in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. Zacharias has represented the evangelical community at occasions such as the National Day of Prayer in Washington, DC, the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations, and the African Union Prayer Breakfast in Maputo, Mozambique, and was named honorary chairman of the 2008 National Day of Prayer task force.

Zacharias was interviewed in Focus on the Family's Truth Project. In November 2009, Zacharias signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration which affirms the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good.

Philosophy 

Zacharias states that a coherent worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer four questions: that of origin, meaning of life, morality and destiny. He says that while every major religion makes exclusive claims about truth, the Christian faith is unique in its ability to answer all four of these questions. He routinely speaks on the coherency of the Christian worldview, saying that Christianity is capable of withstanding the toughest philosophical attacks. Zacharias believes that the apologist must argue from three levels: the theoretical, to line up the logic of the argument; the arts, to illustrate; and "kitchen table talk", to conclude and apply.

Zacharias's style of apologetic focuses predominantly on Christianity's answers to life's great existential questions with defense of God. In some discussions, he explores the question of human origin, voicing skepticism over what he believes to be inadequate empirical evidence in the fossil records for an honest endorsement of the theory of evolution. He believes that evolution irreconcilably contradicts with the second law of thermodynamics, an opinion dismissed by the scientific community, since the second law of thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems.

Zacharias also believes that in Christianity homosexual acts are an “aberration” and “violation” of human sexuality and that though some people may have a homosexual “disposition,” they are not justified in expressing that disposition.

Whenever Zacharias speaks to non-Christians, he tries to avoid secondary issues such as the age of the earth , abortion, and sexuality.