The Eric Metaxas Show - Ravi Zacharias (Encore)

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

In honor of his passing, we are re-airing an interview from last summer where Ravi Zacharias discloses how personal tragedy as a teenager led to encountering Jesus and his subsequent promise to God to "leave no stone unturned in pursuit of truth." (Encore Presentation)

I'm not the announcer, Todd Wilkerson, but I sound so much like him that Eric asked me to take over. Evidently, Todd was caught stealing again. Oh, it was nothing big, just some toilet paper out of the studio bathroom and little soaps and some poppery. But still, Eric said it was the principal of the thing. So he fired Todd's behind just like that. And now your host, Mr. Law and Order. Eric Woodson. But I go, we are currently under the New Covenant.

We'll get back to that at another time. Right now, I'd like to introduce a particularly special guest. I have been trying to hunt down the great Ravi Zacharias. For years, some of you know if you go to Socratesandthecity.com, I've interviewed all kinds of people there, and people always say to me, have you had Ravi Zacharias on? And the answer, inevitably sadly, is no, because Ravi Zacharias never touches down long enough in the United States

where you can capture him on film. until today somehow, I'm not sure we got him into the studio in New York City. Ravi Zacharias, welcome. Thank you, sir. What an honor to be with you, Eric. This is like spotting the white buffalo or something, some rare beast that is never seen fabled beast. And to have you with me in the studio, we've tried such a long time. Now, I know, Ravi, there's so many people that they know you, but there are many people listening right now who are saying,

who's this guy? And I thought, that's precisely why I do the program, because I have the great joy and honor of introducing folks like you to new people. So I think of you as an apologist for the Christian faith, principally, as an author of innumerable books. You really do travel around the world incessantly. I mean, you really have an international life. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. But there are many people who don't know your story, and I don't know that I've ever heard you tell your story. So I thought before we talk about what you've got happening now, I wanted to introduce my audience to you, to Ravi, the man, and to tell your story. So tell us where you grew up, how it was you came to faith, and how it was you came to be what we call

an apologist for the Christian faith. First of all, thanks for having me, Eric. You know, love your work, Love your books, those massive tomes that you put out there, which linger for a long while on many a journey. So thanks so much for what you're doing. Yeah, even though the last several decades have been in the West, I was 20 years old when I moved to Canada, but prior to that, my home was India. I'm an Indian by birth, born in the southern city of Chennai, where the language is Tamil, and raised in the northern city of Delhi, where the language is Hindi. India has many major languages.

or my dad was from even a different state, Kerala, where the language in Malayalam, which I never got to learn, but Tamil is okay for me. Hindi, I'm quite fluent. You speak Hindustani? Yes, sir. Yeah, Hindi is the short for the Hindustani. Yeah.

Yeah, actually very comfortable with it because all of my friends spoke Hindi growing up, and the movies, if you see the movies in India, which is the major avenue of communication. I was a moviegoer every Saturday. But that's where I grew up in Delhi. And the interesting thing is, even though we were nominally Christian, and I mean that very literally in name, meaning more what we are not, we were not Hindus, we are not Muslims, we are not Buddhist, we are not Sikhs. So we are branded as Christians.

Five generations on one side, seven generations, and the other side our ancestors came to Jesus Christ. It's a fascinating story. But I did not know Christ at all. I went to church. It was a cultural thing. Every Sunday, early morning, a very beautiful Anglican church. But I can't tell you one single sermon I heard there

because my heart was not in it, my mind was not in it. I was a lover of cricket, and all of our cricket matches were played on Sundays. I was going to ask you, was cricket a Hindu god? No, it's a sport. Your experience, of course, is quite typical. There are many people around the world for whom Christian faith has a cultural experience.

That was mainly my story up until I was in my 20s. So what did you think you wanted to do with your life when you were a teenager in India? When I was a teenager in India, sports was everything to me. And that's what built a great wall between my father and myself because there was no money in it. It was just a profession. I want to play cricket for India. I didn't realize when you said you loved cricket, you really love. loved cricket. I did. And, you know, India is one of the major cricketing countries, England, New Zealand,

Australia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka. They were the five or six major countries that played it. But they were not professional cricketers. They had to be working elsewhere. And then when the so-called test matches were played between two countries, which would happen once a year or once every two years, they'd come out of their professions. You could be working for the railways. You could be working as a teacher somewhere. So I don't know what I was really thinking. It was not going to be a means of support. You were thinking exactly what I was thinking when I told my parents, I wanted to be a writer. It's like, okay, and what are you going to do to pay the rent?

Well, I don't know. That's it. But my dad, that built a tension between him and me. And then what actually happened, Eric, in the most serious stage of my life, you know, I've always been a pursuer of meaning. I don't just do things. I don't just write for the sake of writing. What is the purpose of this book?

Am I contributing anything new in what's happening here? Why am I speaking on this subject? You know, what is marriage going to mean? What is this afternoon with my son and me going to accomplish? So the fact is I was looking for tiny little meanings, but I had no ultimate meaning. When you talk about Hinduism and the pantheistic worldviews, they don't talk about meaning.

It's all a cyclical thing. Every birth is a rebirth and the repetitive nature of life. So at the age of 17, I ended up on a bed of suicide in Delhi. And that, to me, till this day, is a very emotional thing. I hardly ever talk about it to my family, although when I wrote my book about it, walking from east to west, I asked their permission. I said, this may embarrass the family.

What do you think? and they supported me. I have four siblings, and on that bed of suicide, which is, you know, your book on miracles. Why did it happen this way to me? Why did this man come into the hospital room with a Bible in his hand to talk to me? I have to ask you, when you say you found yourself on a bed of suicide, I'm not clear on what happened. Had you attempted to kill yourself? Yes, indeed.

And then you find yourself in a hospital having survived. That is correct, but hanging on by a thread. I had taken poison that I had brought with me and mixed it with a glass of water, some chemicals that were marked poison in the science lab. And, you know, it's still a very painful thing to talk about, but that's what it was. But can I ask you what led you? That's a very dramatic thing for a 17-year-old to try so seriously to take his life. Can you say what led you to this? In India, it's not that uncommon.

and especially during examination time. I could name two or three classmates of mine who more mercilessly ended their lives. One of my closest friends, you know, dumped kerosene on himself, set himself ablaze. His father had a big business there. It's a culture of honor and shame. It's not exaggerated. India is a culture of study. Study is the number one thing.

That's why even when they go abroad, they do so. well. They will just pour themselves into the books. They will memorize. They are mathematicians to the core, scientists, computer engineers, and the competitiveness is very real out there. And I just didn't have the discipline to do it. My class, my friends did. I was looking to the cricket pitch every day. But that attempt to poison myself failed. And I've often said when I used to tell my story, the concoction that I made and took into my system, turned out, I said, unfortunately, turned out to be very salty, and my body started to reject it.

And I remember a doctor saying to me in the audience, and said, don't say, unfortunately, it was that saltiness that caused the body to reject what you'd put in there. And as the moisture was being thrown out, so it was the poison. And I was in the hospital for five days before I was released, and it did a lot of gastro-gastromical damage. They branded it as a gastroenterology mishap, something like that. But that's what it did some damage to me then.

But that's the valley that God brought me through. Let me hit pause here for a moment, folks. We're going to take a break for station identification. We'll be right back with Ravi Zakarias. It's the Erkmataxis show. slip away across the universe. Hey, folks, it's here from Texas show. I'm sitting here with Ravi Zacharias,

Christian apologist, author, former cricketer. Ravi, you just took us to the darkest place anyone could ever go, which is to say, to the point of death by one's own hand, you mercifully survived. And so what happens at this point? You are 17 years old. I'm sure your family is horrified. And you said someone came to you on the hospital bed who was a Christian.

And I think it's important for the listener to know, you know, oftentimes there are different reasons for one who would go through that dark stage. Sometimes there are definitely some psychological, neurochemical issues at work and so on. It was none of that for me. For me, it was the pursuit of meaning. And struggling to be accepted by a very disciplined, dad and a dad who was tough on me for reasons that he had. I wanted to sort of shame me into reality. I'm sure that's what he meant. But when I went through that dark stage, this gentleman whom I had heard once before met once worked for youth for Christ. But I was not in the clear state of mind, you know, lying in that bed and dehydrated, which meant I couldn't use my limbs. I couldn't lift my hand. And he came into the room with a Bible in his hand.

and wanted to read it to me. And my mother was sort of surprised, saying, how did you even get here? He's in intensive care. He said, well, I'm a minister and so on. But she wouldn't let him stay. So he opened it to the Gospel of John, John Chapter 14, and had my mother read it to me.

My mother was a teacher, but English was not her first language, a very heavy accent in English. And here was the King James Version. She's holding it in her hand, reading it, and I'm having a hard time tracking what she's saying. But you know, the amazing thing to me, again, how God orchestrated this all. That conversation in John 14 is with Thomas.

And Thomas is the one who was the first one to bring the gospel to India and paid with his life. And so the exclusivity passage is there. I'm the way the truth in the life. No one comes under the Father but by me. But I was going past all of that until in verse 19, Eric, it's like a bolt of lightning in a moment of pitch black. because I live, you also shall live. Because I live, you also shall live. And but nobody explaining it to me, it had to be the Holy Spirit of God because I was green as far as the scriptures were concerned. Never opened a Bible in my life before. And just thinking to myself,

whatever this live is about is not what my life was about. And so it's Jesus, of course, talking and I said, Jesus, if you are who you claim to be here, I want that life that I do not have if this is the life you offer to me. And I promise if you will take me out of this hospital bed, I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth. That was the line. I will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of truth. That's pretty intense for a 17-year-old. Very intense, but that's the way I was, I still, I'm still, a love, of words. I'm a lover of articulating something with precision. And I said, this is how I'm feeling. And the irony of it is, Eric, years later, when my mother passed away, my dad asked me what verse I wanted on her gravestone, and I took John 1419. Many, many years went by. And I was in Delhi. And my wife, Margie, who's Canadian, she said to me, you have talked so much about your grandmother dying. Have you visited her grave? I said, no. I said, let's find it. And fortunately, in Delhi, there's only one Christian cemetery at that time. We found it, but they couldn't find the particular grave. I mean, nobody had been there for decades. She died in the 50s, and we're not talking about the 90s. Okay, so four decades had gone by. So we found the mark, but it had sunk. We found the plot number, I should say, through contacting the registry. And so I called a gardener with his shovel and bucket.

And he starts digging and digging and digging, and the dirt is coming up. He's going deeper and deeper and deeper. And I just thought somebody had already plundered the grave. Then he hit stone, some marble slap. And as the stone begins to clear, my wife is standing next to me, and she gripped my arm. And there's the name of my grandmother, Agnes D. Monacham. The date of birth, the date of death, in 55. Because I live, you also shall live.

My grandmother had that on a grave. I mean, that is a story. Robbie, this is one of those stories for people who don't believe in miracles. I mean, just the idea that that was the scripture that God used to bring you to faith. Then the idea that it should be on your mother's grave, then the idea that you should somehow decide to go looking for a grave, which is buried underground, which no one would see unless you happen to go there. That's correct.

And then as if, you know, floating out of the past, here it comes the same scripture. I know God has spoken to me that way sometimes, and people often think, well, it's coincidental or it's this or that. But I think that when it happens to you, because we serve a personal God, you know it is not coincidentally. You know it. It's God's way of winking at you and saying, just in case you wondered whether I'm paying attention to these details, what do you think of this? I planted this here in the mid-50s, and you see it now. I mean, that's staggering. It was quite astonishing to Margie and to myself, and we just stood there.

And actually, a long story followed after that, I contacted the Delhi Cemetery Authority, and I said this stone is just about falling apart. Can we put a new one in? And they said, well, the rules of laws of change. But I built it up, and my younger brother and I paid for that. stone and now it's very clearly set up in sort of three little layers with the same wording. But yeah, you know, it's one of those Luke 24-moment type thing where Jesus connects all the dots for the disciples. You know, he's telling them all from the beginning how all of this was meant

to be. And they invite him in for dinner and when he breaks the bread, they say, wow, we did not know who was with us at this time. I think in life, God does that on many punctuated moments. just enough to remind you, I'm with you all the way. It's so beautiful. Well, I want to go back then to this moment. So you're on this hospital bed, you're age 17, and you make this vow. So what happens following that? So you don't become a Christian on the hospital bed as a result of your mother reading this to you?

Or would you say your faith began there? I would say my faith began there. But it matured a lot over the next two to three years through the Ministry of Youth for Christ. I knew what I had done. I didn't know the depth of what it all meant. I tried to go to a church the next Sunday, or maybe a couple Sundays after that. I walked into a mainline church there.

I didn't know there were such things as liberal preachers and conservative preachers. And when I went and told the vicar there what I had done, the minister there, what I had done, he just stared at me. He said, you know, this is some kind of melodramatic thing. he said like sitting at the foot of the mountains staring at yourself or something like that is what he said he said you'll get over it and i said but i don't want to i said what i have just found is what i needed so then a little later an american preacher came there and became his name was ernest fritly he passed away last year i still stay in touch with his daughter now who lives in minnesota when i started hearing him preach the gospel i said this is exactly what I have done, what I needed. So I attended a Bible study with Youth for Christ every Monday night.

And believe it or not, within about six months, I was teaching that Bible study from the book of Romans. Because my closest friend, who later on became my brother-in-law, a Hindu Brahman, was able to bring him to the Lord. We were walking outside in the neighborhood. Okay, it's a 204 flats there surrounding a field where we used to play cricket. So we're walking past a garbage dump. And at the top of the garbage heap, we see a book. And we lean over, and it says a commentary to the epistle of Romans by St. Paul, by W.H. Griffith Thomas. Oh, my gosh. That incredible writer.

Now, till this day, I don't know who threw it there, because I don't know if there was a single Christian in the community. I actually guess some missionary had given it to my dad. and he's the one that may have pitched it without knowing what he was throwing away. I still have that, by the way. I still have that volume. I have it right on my desk. You haven't pitched it. No, I haven't pitched it.

A lot of gold nuggets in there. So we started teaching the book of Romans. And, you know, the whole idea of justification by faith and the grace, brand-new believers. You know, we'd just come to know the Lord. And verse by verse, my brother-in-law and I, he's now in the ministry. He was a nuclear physicist by training, went to MIT, And then later in life he gave his life to the Lord in ministry to his marriage to my sister. He now is just retired from being a pastor for 30 some years.

And he wrote to me in May. He said, do you remember this day? This is when we walked forward together to totally commit our lives to Jesus Christ at a hill station of Missouri for our YFC summer camp. Just the handiwork of God, you know. This is beautiful. I'm so glad that you're here, generally speaking, and then specifically to get this story from you. People need to hear these wonderful stories that what God does in people's lives.

Folks, I'm talking to Ravi Zacharias, the one the only. This is the Eric Mataxis show. Do not go away. Christian bestselling author and speaker, Richard, E. Simmons does not shy away from the big questions of life. His latest book is called reflections on the existence of God, and it tackles the biggest question of all, does God exist? I've read this book, and I got to tell you, I'm a little biased, but you can imagine that I like it a lot, because Simmons offers insights for those grappling with life's biggest questions. Where do we find

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That's Existence of Godbook.com. Hey there, folks. It's here from Taxis Show. I'm sitting here with Ravi Zakarias. Ravi, you have a new book out called The Logic of God. God, 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. This is a devotional book. And I want to talk to you also about the book that came out last year, Jesus among secular gods, the countercultural claims of Christ. But before we get to that, I want to just continue with your story, if we could. It's an extraordinary thing. A young man comes to faith, and you come to faith dramatically and very, very intentionally. It's not everyone is like you. And it's amazing. to hear how everyone is different. So you dive in, and before you know it, you're teaching a Bible study from the book of Romans of all things. That's not exactly an easy book. And what happens to you

subsequently? Do you know rather quickly that you want a life in ministry? Good question. No, I don't think so, although it would have been fascinating. The thought would have been fascinating. In India, you don't have any models for that. You know, I certainly didn't want to become a pastor. This is the 60s, roughly? That is correct, yeah, mid-60s. I would not have thought of becoming a pastor. And then the ones I met were missionaries. They were from overseas. So those were the only two models I actually saw. I don't remember of a meeting a single itinerant who was doing evangelism of any repute out there. I'd heard of Billy Graham. In fact, he came to our church. I've got a picture when he visited the Sanitary Methodist Church in Delhi.

sitting on the platform. It's a small church, but he came and spoke there. What happened was I was going into the hospitality industry. Till this day, I really love the hotel industry, the food industry. Don't you pretty much live in hotels at this point in your life? I do. And on the right side of it, you know. So I was, I moved to Canada when I was 20. And why? Why? That's it. My father sent my older brother, was 22, and me 20, to get, I was going to go to Cornell, take a degree in hospitality management. Of course, Cornell, they have that. I had friends that have gone to Cornell for that specifically. Very well recognized. But it's not in Canada. No, I got a visa to go to Canada first to work. I was going to earn my way,

save some money. My dad and mom couldn't have supported me with that cost of education. So while I was working in the hotel industry, they're getting some experience and working, I started taking some part-time courses at a seminary in Toronto. And again, I just, I don't know how all of this happened. You know, I mean, why did I start doing that? I was working nights. Why do I need to be awake longer during the day? But it was that hunger. I just wanted to study. I'd never heard of the term systematic theology. Never heard of the great church fathers and all. But I was taking these courses and this was like my appetite was being stirred. I was excited about going to two, three hours of lectures every day. And while I was in the thick

of that, fascinatingly, because there were such few Indians in Toronto at that time, only 500 Indians in Toronto when we arrived. Today there are 500,000 plus. Wow. So I mean, in fact, we used to be introduced as two Indian

natives who have arrived here in Canada whenever we were introduced in church. So my brother was very sensitive. He said, what do I mean natives? Do I want to bring a spiroia? Do I want to bring a beer here or what? What exactly does that mean? So anyway, then they changed it to Indian Nationals. But my brother got a job with IBM. He loved the computer world. Within five days he got the job,

ended up becoming a systems engineer, then starting his own company. I was plowing through this whole hospitality industry, and I was getting more and more restless for a couple of reasons in the hotel. I looked at the life there. And without getting too detailed, I said, is this what I really want? Eric, things happen after midnight in those places that, you know, is not good for anybody for the family. That was the first thing. Second thing was we worked long hours.

We were working. I would get home only about three in the morning. I was overseeing banquets where I was working. So by the time they all left and tallied the money and all of that. She locked up all the expensive liquors, all this kind was going on. I said, is this really what I have in life? But in the meantime, just before I left India, at the age of 19, the first Asian Christian Youth Congress was held in Hyderabad. I went in order to cheer for the Delhi team.

They were coming from all over. The fellow is now my brother-in-law, Sunder Christian, and he was a brilliant guy. He was to represent Delhi in the preacher contest. The preacher contest? That is correct. I can't believe that. He didn't come because he was a good student. I came because I didn't worry about my studies, the examination time.

So I, although I was doing well by then as a new believer, I was trying to stay as much as I could at the top of my class. My principal loved me, and he said, look, I know this is in your heart, you go. So I went, I represented Delhi, and unbelievably, I won the Asian Youth Prejic Contest Prize. It makes no human sense, because anybody who knows you knows that you just don't have any homiletic talents. It had to be God, Robbie. It's so obvious that it had to be God. So this miracle happens and you win the preaching contest. And what does this lead to?

That's the seed that the Lord may have sown in my heart. That there is a possibility that I started considering. Could I take the platform someday and speak for my Lord? But I didn't know what it would look like. So at one point I had to tell my dad, I was losing interest. in the catering industry. What I really wanted to do with my life was prepared to become a preacher, but I had no idea in what, I mean, we knew of Billy Graham,

we knew of the Canadian Barry Moore, but these were the big guys, you know, and I wasn't setting my sight so high. And so I went to formal theological training in what is now called Tendale College in Toronto. At that time, it was called the Ontario Bible College. I went there, finished my four years, bachelors, followed that at Trinity in Dendale. feel a little annoyed. Hang on one second. We're going to go to a break and we're going to get the rest of this wonderful story with Ravi Zakarayas. Stick around. Texas. And I'm sitting here with Ravi Zacharias. Ravi, you're telling us this extraordinary story. You seem a man on a mission,

even that early age before you meant to be on a mission. You're studying and studying. And you said you went to Trinity and Deerfield, which is in Chicago. So at this point, you know that you're on this ministry path. Did you think at that point that you would, be the pastor of a local church, or were you thinking of something along the lines of what your life has now become? See, when I went to Trinity, Eric, it was 1973. So I was then 27 years old, and I had already had a life-changing experience just prior to that. In the year 17, 1971, when I was 25, I was invited to preach in Vietnam through the daughter of the fame, Jonathan.

and go forth of China, Alice Jeffrey. She had invited me to go to Vietnam because she'd been a missionary there for nearly 50 years. And she said, you know, the American troops are there, the country's falling apart, young people have no models to listen to. This is before the fall of Saigon. That is correct. Saigon fell in, what, 74? It was 75. But this is sometime before that. This was in 71. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. So I went there and I traveled through the length of the country with the Christian and missionary alliance,

the denomination that I later on got ordained with. But the American troops got me around in the helicopters or I drove on the lonely highways. This is amazing. I had no idea that you or anyone

had done such a thing. To be preaching in Vietnam in 1971, it's one thing for Bob Hope to crack a few jokes, but I really have never heard anything like this. It was amazing.

Again, as I sit here talking to you and you retrace your steps, you see the hand of God and all. Now, there were great missionaries there. The church, it was called the Tinlan, the Good News Church, and the National Protestant Church of Vietnam was the C&A Church at that time. But there were many other missionaries there too. But for them to trust a young guy like me, you know, I'm still halfway through my theological education. But what happened was revival broke out through those meetings. My interpreter was about 17 years old.

I was shocked how God was using us. I had one. I had one. sermon book, I kept in my jacket. I don't know there are a handful of sermons. I just kept repeating them, moving through every city. I still remember one of them was the cross of Christ that I preached again and again. And every time people would respond in one of those sessions in Yatrang, just about the whole student body walked forward and fell on their face before God. And that, again, was the imprint of God reminding me what he could do with me. So to answer your question, by the time I got to Trinity. I knew evangelism was really flowing in my veins, but I didn't know exactly what. So here I am at Trinity, studying on some of the greatest minds of that time. You know, Carl F. Henry, John Gersner,

Kenneth Kanser, J.I. Packer, John R. W. Stott, I. Howard Marshall, Gleeson, Lisa Archer. They were all there then? They were all there at the safety of the heyday. And then the two that changed my path were John Warwick Montgomery and Norm Geisler, whose funeral I just preached at last Saturday. Wow, he just passed away. That's amazing. I mean, two of the premier apologists, I've

had the privilege of meeting John Warwick, Montgomery, but never Norm Geisler. But you, so yeah, you sat at the feet of some of the greats of that day. I still can't believe they were all there at Trinity in the 70s. That's amazing.

You know, Thomas McComboskey, Walt Kaiser, they were the Old Testament Department under Gleasonacha. I mean, Gleason Archer's book, Survey of Old Testament introduction, we called it the Yellow Bible. You know, and Dr. Stott was teaching

the sermon on the Mount. You know, J. I. Pacco was doing his lecturing there on the sovereignty of God in evangelism and so on. Now as I look back, and you know how it all happened was, I was actually headed elsewhere.

I won't name the school I was going to. But I bumped into John Stott at a meeting in Toronto. And he just listened to me for a few minutes. He said, looking at the heartbeat you have and the passion you have for evangelism, apologetics is what you need, Ravi, you should be going to Trinity.

So I literally got into my car, drove to Chicago a few days later, met Kenneth Kanser, who was the dean at that time and one of the finest theologians of those days, and that's what became the story. And after being under Dr. Geisler and Montgomery, watching their incredible debates at that time, I said, this is what I want to do. I want to defend the gospel for Christ's sake. Montgomery, of course, was sort of with a two-edged sword. You know, he'd pierced the opponent.

That was not my goal. My goal was to win the opponent. That's always the trick, isn't it? In other words, when we're talking about debating about God, I have seen people win debates and lose souls. In other words, it's one thing to win an argument, as you just said, but it's another thing to win another person to Christ. That's a tricky thing, isn't it?

It's very tricky. because the audience can draw less out of you than that. You know, they may go to you in a different direction or your opponent if he or she is clever. Like Lewis, you know, one of his most famous debates, how he nearly walked away with his head hanging down, felt he'd been beaten up at that. I have never felt that urge to knock over a person.

I have always felt the urge that if this person with this zeal and this ability, could find the truth in Jesus Christ, that's who they would actually be debating. So I went to training in apologetics under them, and after I graduated, traveled the world. I graduated in 76. Seventy-seven, the CNMA sent me around the world. Fifteen countries, over 48 straight weeks, I preached 576 times with my wife and my two-year-old daughter, and I came back, a changed man. I was worn out, but I said, this is my calling. Wow.

I am an evangelist in my bones, and that's what I want to do. It's fatiguing, just listening to you, recount that in a sentence. The idea of doing that is extraordinary, and you've been doing that, Ravi, for a little while now. Yeah. I mean, this is coming up on, you know, we're talking about 50 years of this kind of activity. When we come back, more folks with Ravi Zacharias. This is the Eric Metaxus show. You can find us at Metaxistalkis talk.com.

You can find me at Ericmetaxis.com. Don't go away. Hey, folks, here at Metaxus show. I'm talking to Ravi Zacharias. Ravi, in the second hour, I want to talk to you about your books and about apologetics specifically. But on the few minutes we have left, take us forward. I mean, you say that that was this signal year in your...

your life kind of determines the future. And now it's been, you know, more than four decades that you have been doing just what you did that year. I hope you're doing a little less preaching than 500-something sermons a year. Maybe not. I don't know. Well, that was a year of many great success and stories, but also a lot of lessons learned. You know, you can't push your voice. I paid the price with my voice. I had to come back and have vocal cord surgery. Are you kidding? Wow. They had to remove some nodules, which they did. But all that aside, I found my calling, Eric, you know. I don't think anybody would want to listen to me Sunday after Sunday in the same church. I'm too intense. You know, I've got a lot of passion in what I say.

A pastor's privilege is to present line upon line to build the truth. and let the truth do that persuading over a period of time. We evangelists go in for shorter spans. So we have to come in with that intensity and the passion, because whoever is coming is also coming sort of once in a way for that. So that's what I was called to do, and I began doing evangelistic work. You're right, about 47 years since I did that, I started that, and never look back. I know right now this is my calling, and that's why it was so critical that I marry the right

person because they pay a higher price. When you're on itinerant out of the door so often, if your spouse is not more committed than you are to the calling, it's just not going to be that which would work out. And then my kids, you know, I have three children, five grandchildren. It's not an easy life. Can you remember the kids' names? That's key. Because if you can't, then probably you need to spend more time at home.

And more important, if they still love and respect you, you know, that's the thing. important. Wow, that is a, it's a heavy price. Billy Graham spoke about that very often, about how difficult that was and how he might have preached less, actually. As he got older, he was thinking about that. So what is your schedule like these days? How often, how many countries are you in per year? How many times do you speak, roughly speaking? Because you're now 70, 71? 73. 73? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, born in 46. I wish I could say I have slowed down, but I think I'll average about a couple hundred days on the road this year.

I'm trying to bring it down to about a hundred in two years. I'm already quite committed for the next year, so I'll have to pull back. I feel the anointing of the Lord as rich as I ever have. I'd be a liar if I didn't acknowledge that. But at the same time, you have to have wisdom and know when to hold back. You know, that's a harder thing. And now the grandkids are growing up, and they ask me questions, are you going to be. of my birthday papa.

That's a heart-melting question, you know. So it's important that I spend more time writing and more time now on our base in Atlanta. But it was in 1984 that we founded the ministry as it stands now. RZIM, which is a ministry of evangelism undergirded by apologetics. We have staff of between 2 to 300 based in 15 countries and with 90 full-time apologists speakers,

some of the finest voices that you'll hear. I want to talk to you more about that in our next hour, but before we go, I want to give people the website, r-zim.org. That's rabbi Zacharias, international ministries.org. RZIM.org, Ravi, thank you so much.

I just want to remind you, we're doing a fundraiser for AngelTree. Right now, AngelTree is doing is they're sending care packages to the families where one of the parents is currently in prison. And for $200 in this care package, $150 is grocery gift cards. You can just imagine how this will bless them by giving to AngelTree. You go to metaxustalk.com. Metaxistock.com. I'll give you the phone number 888, 206, 2793. I know there are lots of folks right now you can pick up the phone and give anything.