ATLANTA (Word News) May 19, 2020  — Apologist Ravi Zacharias died this morning at his home in Atlanta, following a brief battle with sarcoma. He was 74.

Ravi Zacharias spent the past 48 years commending the Christian faith and addressing life’s greatest existential questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny with eloquence and grace. Through his founding and leadership of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), Zacharias 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.

“[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, in a statement. “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 is survived by his wife of 48 years, Margie; daughters, Sarah and Naomi; son, Nathan; and five grandchildren.

“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.