His name was Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias. We all knew him as Ravi Zacharias.
Ravi is now home with the one that he spent his adult life pointing people to. Ravi is now face to face with his Savior, Jesus Christ.
Ravi was sharing Jesus to the kind nurses that were helping him into the transport that would carry him home to finish out his days here on this earth.
Ravi left his mark on so many hearts and souls, both believers and unbelievers. He spoke with such gracious clarity and yet he pointedly directed people to the errors of this world’s ways and its hell bound direction.
In 1963, at the age of 17 years old, Ravi laid recovering from a suicide attempt in a Delhi hospital when he read these words of Jesus, recorded in the Bible by the apostle John: “Because I live, you will also live.” Ravi was always grateful that God’s Word came to him as he lay in that hospital, and he spent the next 57 years helping people know his Jesus.
A short portion from Ravi’s official obituary reads, “Zacharias’s great-great-great-grandmother shocked her Nambudiri family, the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood, by converting to Christianity. With conversion came a new surname, Zacharias, and a new path that started her descendants on a road to the Christian faith.”
Friedrich von Hugel once shared, “Behind every saint stands another saint.”
God graciously includes and uses each of us to stand behind another generation of Ravis, Billys, Spurgeons, Bathmans, and all the missionaries that we stand with at ITMI.
God used Jacob’s son Joseph to save his family and future generations from starvation by strategically placing a young foreign immigrant into the second most powerful position in all of Egypt.
God has given the church a pandemic that is worldwide. A pandemic that is being stirred up into a frenzy of fear by politicians and the godless media.
God has given the church this panic driven state to cause His light to shine even brighter in the midst of the darkest storm.
Our need to feed…continues until Jesus returns. Our need to feed food…is just beginning.
We are hearing many stories of how God is using Christian love, in the form of stomach-filling food, to pierce previously hard hearts and reveal the need for a Savior.
We ask you to continue to help us help our brothers and sisters who are serving on the frontlines, continue to accept the opportunity God has placed before us, to use, at this time, food to reach hearts and minds for Christ.
Ravi often said, “Beginning well is a momentary thing; finishing well is a lifelong thing.”
As long as God gives us such exceptional opportunities, and He gives us provision and strength, we will, with each of you, seek to finish well. May you be richly blessed as you humbly follow His leading.
In His Service,
