Ravi Zacharias | The Eric Metaxas Radio Show

[Music] I'm not the announcer Todd Wilkerson but I sound so much like in that Eric asked me to take over evidently Todd was caught stealing again or it was nothing big just some toilet paper out of the studio bathroom and little soaps and some potpourri but still Eric said it was the principle of the thing so he fired Todd's behind just like that and now your host mr. law and order Eric Metaxas but I I thought we were currently under grace 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 Socrates in the city calm 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 guys I feel I 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 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 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 too Robbie the man and to tell 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 I 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 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 in you you speak Hindustani yes sir yeah Hindi is short for the Hindustani yeah yeah actually very comfortable with that because all of my friends spoke and they growing up and the movies if you see the movies in India which is the major avenue of communication I was a movie goer 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 the meaning Wilmore war beat what we are not we were not Hindus we are not Muslims you're not Buddhist we are not six so we're branded as Christians five generations on one side seven generations and the other side our ancestors came to Jesus Christ a fascinating story but I did not know Christ at all I went to church it was a cultural thing every Sunday early morning and hanged 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 so I was gonna ask you what's cricket a Hindu god no it's his fourth the 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 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 you know it is just a profession I want to play cricket for India I didn't realize when you said you love cricket you really loved cricket 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 creators 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 gonna be a means of support you were thinking exactly what I was thinking when I told my parents I wanted to be a writer you know it's like okay and what are you gonna do to pay the rent well I don't know that's it but my dad that built tension between him and me and then what actually happened Erik in the most serious serious most 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 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 world is they don't talk about meaning it's all a cyclical thing yeah every birth is a rebirth and there the repetitive nature of life so 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 the 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 bit of suicide which is you know you're writing 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 consider yourself yes and 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 mocked poison and the science lab and you know it's still a very painful thing to talk about but can I but can I ask you what led you that's a very dramatic thing for it for a seventeen-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 kind of classmates of mine who more mercilessly ended their lives by 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's 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 their 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 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 that don't say unfortunately it is that saltiness that caused the body to reject what you'd put in there and as the moisture was being thrown out so was the poison and I was in the hospital for five days before I was released and it did a lot of gastro gastronomical damage they branded it as gastroenterology mishap something like that but that's what it did some damage to me then and but that's what that's the valley that God brought me through let me hit pause here for a moment folks we're gonna take a break for station identification we'll be right back with Ravi Zacharias it's the Eric Metaxas show hey there folks it's here crow 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 what for what for you it's for Christ but I was and I was not in the clearest 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 head 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 he 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 yeah and paid with his life yeah and so the exclusivity passage is there I'm the way the truth and the life no one comes unto 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 blackness 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 very intense but that's the way I was I still I'm still a lover 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 stone her great stone and I took John 14:19 many many years went by and I was in Delhi and I 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 the particular grave I mean nobody had been there for decades she died when 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 in the dirt scumming I was going deeper and deeper and deeper and I just thought somebody had already plundered the grave then he hit stone summable slab 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 T Monica the date of birth the date of death in 55 because I live you also shall live my grandmother had that on her grave that I mean that is a story Ravi 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 it's correct and then as if you know floating out of the past here it comes the same scripture I I know God has spoken to me that way sometimes and people often think well it's coincidental alerts this to that but I think that when it happens to you because we serve a personal God you know it is not coincidental you know what 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 have changed 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 well we did not know who was with us at this time I think in life God does that on many punctuated moments yeah just enough to remind you I'm with you all the way it's it's so beautiful well I want to go back then to this moment so you're on this hospital bed your 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 okay 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 maybe a couple of Sundays after that I walked into a mainline church there I didn't know there was such things as liberal preachers and conservative preachers and when I went and told the vicar there what I had done the minister they were 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 richly he passed away last year I still stay in touch with his daughter now 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 Brahmin 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 he 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 Romans by Saint Paul by WH Griffin Thomas oh my god 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 Evan pitched it no I haven't pitched it a lot of 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 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 my training went to MIT and then later in life he gave his life to the Lord azzam in ministry to his merit to my sister he now has 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 a wife see summer camp just the handiwork of God you know this is beautiful I'm so glad that 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 Metaxas show do not go away hey there folks Ciara taxes show I'm sitting here with Ravi Zacharias Ravi you have a new book out called the logic of 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 God's 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 and you come to faith dramatically and very very intentionally it's 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 suddenly didn't want to become a pastor this is the 60s roughly that is correct yeah in mid 60's oh I would not have thinking 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 ever meeting a single itinerant who was doing evangelism of any repute out there I'd heard a Billy Graham in fact he came to our church I've got a picture when he visited the seminary Methodist Church in Delhi I sitting on the platform small Church but he came and spoke there what happened was I was going into the hospitality industry till this day I really loved the hotel industry the food industry no don't you pretty much live in hotels at that point in your life on the right side of it yeah yeah so I was I moved to Canada and when I was 20 my why why that's it my father sent my older brothers 22 and me 20 to get I was gonna go to Cornell take a degree in hospitality management course Cornell they have that I have had friends that have gone to Cornell for that specific ignite so it 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 there getting some experience and working I started taking some passed our 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 father isn't all blast taking these courses and this was like my appetite was being stirred I was excited about going 2 to 3 hours of lectures every day and while I was in the thick of that fascinatingly because there was such few Indians in Toronto at that time the only 500 engines in Toronto and we arrived today there are five hundred thousand-plus Wow so I mean it there in fact we used to be introduced as to Indian natives who have arrived here in Canada whenever we were introduced in church so my brother he was very sensitive so what do you mean natives nationals but my brother got a job with IBM he loved the computer world within five days you 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 hotels 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 or 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 at all they all left and tallied the money and all of that she locked up all the expensive liquors all this kind was going on and says 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 fellows now my brother-in-law son the Krishnan he was a brilliant guy he was to represent Delhi in the preacher contest but he didn't reach her contests 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 just 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 Prix he won the Asian Youth Bridge a 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 Ravi it's so obvious that it had to be God this miracle happens and you win 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 what I mean we knew of Billy Graham we knew of the Canadian barrymore but these were the big guys you know and I wasn't yes it's so high and so I went to formal theological training in what is now called Tyndale College in Toronto at that time it is called the Ontario Bible College I went there finished my four years bachelors followed that at Trinity in Deerfield Illinois hang on one second we're gonna go to a break and we're gonna get the rest of this wonderful story with Ravi Zacharias stick around hey folks that's Orleans I'm Eric Metaxas and I'm sitting here with Ravi Zacharias Ravi you're telling us this extraordinary story you 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 in 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 so you when I went to Trinity Erica died 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 Jada Fame Jonathan go forth of China Alice Jeffery 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 model students before the fall of Saigon that is correct Saigon fell in what 77 it was 75 but this is some time before 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 their helicopters or I drove on the lonely Highway this is amazing I had no idea that 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 amazed 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 there was called The Thin lon the good news Church and the National Protestant Church of Vietnam was the CNMI 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 how only I had one sermon book I kept in my jacket I don't know there handful of someone's 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 and yet rang 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 a Trinity studying on some of the greatest minds of that time you know Carl FH Henry John Gerstner Kenneth cancer J I Packer John RW start I Howard Marshall please an archer they were all there then while they're at the sinkhole a day how and then the two that changed my path with John Warwick Montgomery and norm Geisler whose funeral I just preached that I was lost so he just passed away that's me I mean two of the premier apologists I had the privilege of meeting John Warwick Warwick Montgomery but never norm Geisler but you so yeah you said at the feet of some some of the Great's of that day I still can't believe they were all there at universities that's I mean amazing you know Thomas makovski Walter Kaiser they were the old testament apartment under Gleason arch I mean Gleason arch has books of the Old Testament introduction we call to the yellow Bible you know and dr. staat was teaching the Sermon on the Mount you know ji Paco was doing his lecturing there on the sovereignty of God and angel' ISM 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 start at a meeting in Toronto and he just listened to me for a few minutes he said looking at the heartbeat you haven't 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 cancer who was the Dean at that time and one of the finest theologians of those days and that's that's what became the story and after being under dr. geiszler and Montgomery watching their incredible debates at that time I said this is what I want to do I didn't want to defend the gospel for prior 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 is to win the opponent is 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 and in other words it's one thing to win an argument as you just said but it's nothing 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 yeah they're like Louis you know one of his most famous debates so he nearly walked away with his head hanging down yeah he'd been beaten up at there I have never felt that urge to knock over a person I felt have always felt the urge that of this person with this zeal and disability 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 77 the CNM a sent me around the world 15 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 you were talking about 50 years of this kind of activity when we come back more folks with Ravi Zacharias this is the Eric Metaxas show you can find us at metaxas talk.com you can find me at Eric Metaxas dot-com don't go away hey folks here crow taxes 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 in the few minutes we have left take us forward I mean you say that that was this signal year in your life kind of determines the future and 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 and something sermons a year maybe not I don't know well that was 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 you I paid the price with my voice I had to come back and have vocal cord surgery your are you kidding I didn't Wow they had to remove some nodules which they did but all that aside I found my calling Erik you know yeah 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 pastors privilege is to present line upon line to build the truth and let the truth do that persuading over a period of time we evangelist 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 your rights 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 had three have sweet children five grandchildren it's not an easy life you know and you remember the kids names because if you can't then probably you need to spend more time at home or important if they still love and respect you you know that's much more important wow that 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 um 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 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 gonna be a birthday papa and 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 a 1984 that we founded the ministry as it stands now rzi M which is a ministry of evangelism undergirded by apologetics we have a staff of between two to three hundred based in 15 countries and with 90 full-time apologist speakers some of the finest voices here I want to talk to you more about that in our in our next hour but before we go I want to give people the website our Z I M org that's Ravi Zacharias International Ministries org RZ i m dot org Ravi thank you so much thanks Eric [Music] hey there folks is here contacts the show I get to continue my conversation with Ravi Zacharias Ravi welcome back thank you I want to talk to you about everything so that's a problem we have limited time you you have a book out called Jesus among secular God's the countercultural claims of Christ and you have a new devotional out called the logic of God let me ask you Ravi there are so many people in the culture in which we live that don't believe one can rationally make the case for the God of the Bible you've spent 50 years doing just that what what do you say to somebody who says that these are things that we can't know or there are too many questions for me to make a decision well I think it's partially true there are too many questions the fact of the matter is there are many unanswered questions for scepticism also yeah there's even more unanswered questions in the anti theistic or atheistic worldview I mean when a person like Richard Dawkins raising all these questions about the horrible things of the God of the Old Testament but then ends up saying ultimately we know I don't believe there's any such thing as evil we were all dancing to our DNA so the God he takes down he takes down on the notion of evil but then when he comes to defend his own view says the no such thing is evil we're all dancing to our DNA so obviously didn't want God to dance to his DNA just wanted us to dance to our DNA I think Chesterton's comment is very appropriate here he talks about the fact that for the Christian joy is central and sorrow is peripheral for the skeptic he says sorrow is central and joy is peripheral and what he meant by that is why is joy central for the Christian because the fundamental questions are answered the peripheral questions are not answered and so sorrow lingers on the periphery there but for the skeptic the fundamental questions are unanswered that's why he thinks of pessimism and meaninglessness and emptiness being at the center of it and the peripheral questions are answered therefore the laughter and frivolous nature of life and so on I think that is true because when you what are the fundamental questions of life why am I here what does it mean to be human how do I differentiate between good and evil what really brings meaning how do I find fulfilment in sexuality with the with illegitimate boundaries that it ought that we enjoy what happens to human being when he or she dies those are the fundamental questions those are the ones that define who we are and how we should live and so I think the rational arguments and the existential irrelevant arguments are on the side of the theist not on the side of the anti theist or the atheist if I were not a believer in God I would have no way to explain absolute moral reasoning nor would I be able to explain the purpose and meaning of human life don't you think that the the issue for me at least the issue is that in our culture we give a pass to a theist points of view in other words we ought to mock them ridicule them we ought to call them out we ought to hold them to account hold their feet to the intellectual fire that's never done in the culture unless someone bumps into you or a handful of figures I mean when I think of the Charlie Rose program all of those years I I don't think I ever saw anyone like you on that program in other words everyone has these questions these these are not peripheral questions every human being has these questions but you would get the idea from the culture that we don't have any good answers yeah and I think they've actually concluded that there are no answers because they think there are no good answers they think there are no answers whatsoever and yet Eric you know my experience all over the globe I mean why the name of reason that China becomes the fastest growing church in the world they lived with the atheistic underpinnings all that Wow why didn't you go to Moscow today and see an auditorium full of young people coming to listen to an open forum why is a per capita Iran one of the fastest growing churches right now in the world on a per capita basis we my colleague and I were in Carroll and we saw so many come to Christ night after night in Egypt they themselves are moving away to a natural heir to an atheistic framework because their own worldview has not given them the answers I think the answers of Jesus so profound Eric you know why I am here what my marriage means how to raise my family but it is all based on the fact that we have essential worth given to us by God himself not some kind of extrinsic worth given to us by some temporary state or order of some leader to have that essential value given to you of every human life and to have the wisdom and the legitimacy of options and whatever it is that God is calling us to in in our in our existential reality there are no answers and the naturalistic framework and that's why the best-known philosophers will make me even Bertrand Russell would say you know I don't know why I think there is good and evil I have no satisfactory explanation or others saying without an antique referent of a infinite being and a purposeful being was created us there is no basis for deciding between good and evil so I think there are rational arguments there are existential irrelevant arguments and there are empirically verifiable propositions in the scriptures the Bible is not just a book of some spiritual ethereal stuff this propositional truth of geographical realities that can be tested against what the claims are the Bible is the most unique book when you've got a volume for 1500 years 66 books 40 different authors all pointing to the birth life death and resurrection ultimately of Jesus Christ I think so beautiful it's a beautiful cohesive narrative i I think yeah if people are honest with themselves I think they have to conclude that if I must choose and I must this has to be the best choice by far there's no doubt in others you always have questions but what amazes me Ravi is that we live in a culture that doesn't encourage us to choose or to think things through it encourages us distract ourselves away from making those kinds of decisions you are so correct and the way you phrased it in your opening lines that's exactly actually what Anthony flue ended up saying before he died he said the world view that from which he represented the atheistic worldview just didn't fit together with the facts as he sees them and fascinatingly he pointed to two authors to see us Lewis an NT right and he says CS Lewis's argument for this moral framework which we think an NT rights argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus he says if those two realities are true it makes absolute sense and he said the same thing no other worldview does if there is one it has to be this judeo-christian I mean it seems to me very clear but as I say I think we live in a culture where no nobody is forced to think it through in fact they're encouraged not to think it through but when I think of what folks like Richard Dawkins and so on have gotten away with it mystifies me that they're able to get away with such incredibly sloppy thinking I mean if you say that I don't have any real basis on which to determine what is good or evil or whether there are such things as good or evil then I would simply say why should I take anything you ever say seriously especially since one of the major arguments they have against God is evil yeah he's so terrible that I don't want to believe in heads where do you get this idea of terrible so he's obviously got some intuitive certainty about what God ought to not be like but some certainty about what life is like it is it's a very very strange thing and we are of course living in strange times we're living in I would you know say that when you began in the 70s there was a different mindset where I still think there was respect for the idea of truth and logic and we seem to have moved into a place now where truth and logic are dismissed almost as patriarchal constructs that they're part of an older way and that if you're trying to convince me with logic there's some deception there I'm not going to buy into your phony logic well and that's why along with all of that we have lost civility we have lost hope we have lost any manner of proper reasoning across political lines and theories and if I were a young person growing up today watching the behavior of some in leadership and how they ever got into office to say what they do and the irrationality of statements that come out almost every day in the news aided and abetted by mass propaganda as well they seem to take the weirder stuff and put it up on the front pay of course and the reason is because logic and reasoning has gone and once you've done away with logic and reasoning and moral reasoning particularly as Gertrude Himmelfarb in her book roads to modernity points out that the United States did not have like the french full of softs reasoning alone rationality it was moral reasoning that was at the foundation of the US and the UK so I think when we've lost that then we've lost behavioral norms also I don't know why they don't connect the dots and see why our culture has become so violent and so vicious and so disrespectful at the same time as we have tossed out the notion of a moral order and of God himself that's this is the logical outworking of what we have actually been done I'm sorry to agree with you it is a it's a difficult and strange time in which we live people often say and I agree with them that our our only real hope is for revival that we need spiritual revival otherwise in a way it becomes impossible impossible for us to see what we need to see in order to do what we need to do we'll be right back folks talking to Ravi Zacharias you can go to our Zi m org and find out more oh hello it's the extra taxes so I'm sitting here with Ravi Zacharias a lot of you were thinking so Eric shut up quick so Ravi can talk Ravi it's such a joy to have you here now you always have a new book out the newest of your books is called the logic of God it's a devotional 52 Christian essentials for the heart and mind 52 I'm just guessing does that have something to do with the deck of cards what's the significance of 52 well I think it really is much well my way of thinking and the number of there 52 it is the fact Erik when I take a thought for the day and I do my devotions today and then all of a sudden next day need need to read another two or three chapters and you keep moving on the treasure of yesterday suddenly gets replaced by what you've just done again this morning I like to meditate cogitate on issues that have really made an impact on me and I thought to myself why take a daily different passage take one or two central ideas with a particular passage and let it form your life for the week thinking on these reflecting and then allow your own natural imagination to add to it and other thoughts so this is to be done once a week every Monday I had actually called titled the book thank God it's Monday but the publishers didn't like that publishers are always wrong especially Zondervan ladies and gentlemen know it's so funny is that publishers people always say why did you name your book their wedding and you yeah well I don't you know there are publishers they have ideas and they have sales forces which are the most wrong of all and they have these different ideas the logic of God they seem to think that would sell better we'll find out won't we won't we rob a because it to me have and I look at that yeah I talked a lot about the pattern of God's sauce let this mind be in you with Jesus Christ Jesus but the average person says doesn't read it that way thank see that's the point that the title becomes irrelevant if people aren't reading what people think you know is there the logical God could mean anything thank God it's Monday that is tremendous on at least two points and you know that right I mean thank thank God it's Monday if you are looking for hope in life you say thank God it's Friday I want it but but thank God it's Monday it's countercultural but then also the idea that thank God it's Monday I get to do another wonderful hopeful devotional I think the people at Zondervan are really really kicking themselves right now as they should as they should I have to say that a devotional from you after all these years why did you wait till now people would have thought that you might have done this a long time yeah I think the answer to that too was the publishers came to me and said you know you write so many things over a week or a month and so on that would make beautiful reflective reading yeah but in a devotional yard so it was their idea so with zonna vans idea that then then technically they get to title the book how could I take it back everything I said well the the book the logic of God let's talk about the meaning of what you just said the logic of God because your whole life has been summed up in a way by expressing the logic of faith and unpacking I hate that verb but unpacking the logos trying to make it understandable to minds and so is that part of what's running through this well what's running through this is the questions that haunt us oftentimes where we run into some dead ends on answers the logic of God is intended to unpack God's answers on different themes for example if you have a deep regret or something that happened last week you know how do you get over that you say are not to have done that or not to have said it why did I make that mistake or even in a message you say boy that one line I ought not have said there's one I say they're called please shut the gate and it's taken from there an essay by FW Bohr on the English writer he said he used to go for a walk every morning and he would see a farm where he would wanted to walk through but there was just a sign on it please shut the gate if you don't shut the gate the critter is gonna follow you and wreck your whole walk let us say nothing about the farm and so he takes the thought please shut the gate and he weaves beautiful the notion of memory and its profitability but also the pain that it can bring and then ultimately he will take you to the verse Paul says forgetting those things which are behind I pressed towards the mark for the prize of the high calling which is in Christ Jesus boram had that brilliant way of taking thoughts and then anchoring it at the end so I did an essay borrowing that title how do you cover the past regrets for the present and the future then there's our essays on problem of pain suffering you know how do you how do you so that the question of meaning the question of finding transitional moments in life so it takes various questions that we have brings it into a devotional for the day and then there are discussion questions and it can be done as a group too and those ideas were all Jean divans actually I did the writing and so I was very happy that we could write it I guess I'm pretty lucky to have them as a publisher suddenly that's that's very interesting in in in in these conversations the names CS Lewis keeps popping into my mind he has to have had at least some influence on your life because we I guess most people would think of him as somehow the premier apologist of the twentieth century to what extent that he influenced you Lewis influenced me a lot but not as much as one might imagine of all people I think there were a couple of writers that really influenced me that would be Malcolm Muggeridge and GK Chesterton Muggeridge his ability to turn a phrase you know when he wrote on almost anything for example his book the end of Christendom which is a slender volume on Pascal you're absolutely brilliant he wrote one called Christ in the media on the danger yeah what the I gate was all about how it could manipulate here so I would say Malcolm Muggeridge was the number one person that probably because of the way he articulated he was more a social theorist I would say immoral I wanna I'm gonna cut you off but I want to come back and talk more about Malcolm Muggeridge and about Chesterton with Ravi Zacharias stick around hit it folks I almost said I'm talking to Malcolm Muggeridge I'm not actually I'm talking to Ravi Zacharias but Ravi you said that Malcolm Muggeridge was a great influence on you literally last night I popped in a DVD that I got either from eBay or something Malcolm Malcolm Muggeridge talking about the lives that I remember the title of it but but the lives of six people I think Pascal Saint Agustin and it ends with Bonhoeffer Tolstoy whatever and I watched the one on Bonhoeffer and it was made in 1974 and it was an extraordinary thing because the first time I had ever seen Bonhoeffer's fiance on film probably the last time I'll see her on film but she's interviewed this would have been 74 3 years before her very early death from cancer but I was marveling as I watched the documentary at what I ought to have known and probably did know but but his facility with language and I thought my goodness I need to go back and read Muggeridge because apart from Chesterton as you mentioned that there's there's really nobody quite like Malcolm Muggeridge and and many people don't know who he is just like young people haven't heard of my hero and French or Coulson you think Malcolm Muggeridge is worthy of reading but what I mean I assume you met him yes I did yeah only once though uh-huh when I visited his home in Roberts bridge in England I was actually speaking at some meetings and I quoted him two or three times and somebody came from the audience and said do you know that mr. Paresh lives just down the road I said no I didn't he said would you like to meet him I said are you kidding me he said no would you I said it would be a dream come true next day I had lunch with Malcolm and Kitty Muggeridge their home a simple peasant type lunch you know with the crusty bread and cheese ah what a water afternoon and he took me through the wall of his pictures you know he was well-loved in India he taught journalism in India from John he was the first one to call out Stalin for who he really was how many in his book winter in Moscow he was a contributor to the Guardian I think and then became matter of punch magazine I forgot he was editor of punch I mean he was such a legend and I read a lot of his books when I first came to faith but I have you know halfway forgotten about him so to hear you mention him he he was you know what do they say sui generis see there's there was no one like him absolutely no one like well I remember one of his lines he said when he would meet up with God he was going to ask God to forgive him for being so fatally fluent because he had manipulated in his own words you know ideas as a journalist he would make things seem what they were just by the use of language till he met Christ and I think you know the name of Fred Barnes they're journalists here I asked Fred Barnes once how do you come to know Jesus he said oh that's interesting tuberous journalists were visiting our home they were staying with us and after they left my wife said to me there's something about those guys I want you to find out what makes them tick so he said I wrote to them as my wife wants to know what you make guys stick and the reply came in the book and the mail Jesus rediscovered by Malcolm Muggeridge and you know it was Muggeridge that now if there's a lot of things in that burg there's a lot of thing in my garage theology that I don't quite agree with but he loved Jesus and I think his farewell address at st. Giles in in Borough when he quit the chaplaincy at the University there because of all that was happening that talk of his I think it's in vintage Muggeridge the book vintage Moggridge that farewell address is so powerful in which he talks about he said I have no way to no desire to stand in your way of pleasure but whatever else life is about it's not going to be found on the plastic wings of Playboy or in psychedelic fancies and so I stepped down from this position because the decisions the university is making here he had found Christ and he knew how devastating the culture had become in that day and this was in the in the early 70s sir you know I think it was 74 or something yeah when he quit the chaplaincy yeah I've become Chapel I imagine that chaplaincy in the India in Edinburgh Scotland and and can we credit him essentially with the quote/unquote discovery of mother Teresa I would say so because what did what did his book call dibs on something beautiful for God for God yeah and I think he just said she turned his life around and that was that was his own testimony to the 20th century pilgrim awesome yeah that's right yes and this therefore I mean what a different tape by Muggeridge visa vie some of the other atheistic thinkers went oh yeah well any wrote didn't you write a memoir called the greenstick yes sir I guess I read these many many years ago but I feel renewed zeal to go back and look up Volume one of a two volumes the second was the infernal Grove and the greenstick a chronicle of wasted years that's it I mean that book was I mean loaded with phrases so to me the precision of articulation is what enamored me with the way Margaret wrote yeah I said he opens up vistas that nobody else does and for the Gospels sake that's what I wanted to do Wow we have about a minute left to talk about Chesterton before we go again there is nobody like G K Chesterton obviously he influenced CS Lewis and so many others and after you leave I'm talking to a Chesterton expert oddly enough to talk about Chesterton but for people who don't know Chesterton what was it about him that spoke to you what did you did you read orthodoxy first yeah I think that's one of the best books ever written it is especially that chapter the ethics of a life favorite chapter probably of any chapters it's such a slender book yeah but yeah or you've picked up the write his everlasting man is tougher but Lewis says that it was ever like the LOA everlasting man that put the last link in his own spiritual journey Wow so he credited that book with something very I just think once again Muggeridge being a an analyst of society in that day of those pungent one-liners even his poetry I mean I went to visit his home and sat in his chair for some time I think between Muggeridge in Chesterton is a toss-up yeah Wow a century they well chesterton I mean you talk about a way with language it's stunning I mean he thinks in aphorisms and but the first 50 pages of the everlasting man are really tough I mean I remember thinking where am i and then finally it gets a little clearer but so much of his stuff is just genius Ravi I'm sorry we're out of time or you're out of time but we're just so happy finally to get you here in the studio I want to tell folks again about your books Jesus among secular gods the countercultural claims of Christ came out last year and then the brand-new book the logic of God 52 Christian essentials for the heart and mind which seems not like your average devotional and then the website rzi m dot org ravi thank you so much thanks Eric and by the way love your books I just carry them they're heavy but I still carry them if you're listening I'm blushing we have pillows in America but the best pillows are my pillow my fellow the reason I bring it up and and a lot of people watching don't know this Mike Lyndell you know he advertises on a lot of programs a lot but they always put up a code like put in this code and you get a discount right but what people don't know and I don't care if it's on Fox or whatever it is if you put in a code other than our code mm-hmm those are all Democrat codes really do it I'm telling you so you put in the word Eric er IC also happens to be your son is named Eric that is correct one of the reasons my parents named me Eric even though I'm older right I just thought I knew it was coming as a no Maj that kind of you know well they were they're pre she n't but the point is that if where were they from you know I forget it's so long ago I was like near Persia I wasn't even born but but the point is that I want if we have a pillow Albin do we a pill we always keep pillows ahead and as you're feeling it think invented while on crack cocaine ended while on crack that's how good he is I'm not a drug person but if you know you can come up with this on credit anyway so that's what you could do at the point is with this pillow and the sheets and everything if you don't just hold in sheets and the code is Eric Eric Eric but but the thing that people don't know is if you put in the code Eric you get a fabulous discount huge discount terrific tremendous discount if you don't put in the code Eric you can also put them at axis but if you don't do that people don't realize it's a democrat discount oh then it goes to an oval OC o net CP loser crazy Bernie I mean we have to imagine I think they people should only use your discount code mr. president I just want to say thank you very much oh it's yours thank you thank you very much thanks for watching folks [Music]

Channel: The Eric Metaxas Radio Show

Views: 410,757

Rating: 4.8659167 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Metaxas, The Eric Metaxas Radio Show, The Eric Metaxas Show, Ravi Zacharias, RZIM

Id: 0LfmEVJ1d_k

Length: 64min 50sec (3890 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2019