Ravi Zacharias – Awesome Preacher!
To say that I’ve been flat out with work lately would be to understate the situation. Fourteen hour days have become the norm for me lately.
As part of my job, today I had to drive 4 hours to a regional hospital for a 1 hour meeting and then drive back.
But the drive gave me the opportunity to listen to a tonne of Ravi Zacharia’s preaching on my iPod. I must have gone through about 8 of his sermons and have developed a great admiration of how this man thinks.
He became a Christian at the age of seventeen after a failed suicide attempt and has developed into one Christianity’s brightest sparks – especially in the area of philosophy and apologetics.
He routinely speaks on the coherency of the Christian world-view,claiming that Christianity is capable of withstanding the toughest philosophical attacks. And this is what I admire about this man – he systematically cuts down every argument stacked up against Christianity.
Someone may ask a question and he simply launches into a response. By the time he finishes, you just sit back and think, “Wow! The thought process this guy has is amazing!”
Have a look at the following video as a typical example of what I’m talking about…
And this is just a mild response. A few posts ago, I talked about the debate ABC Nightline recently had regarding the existence of Satan and a friend pointed out the Ravi should have been present to take on Deepak Chopra. Now I make no excuse for despising the world view Chopra has – he glorifies “self” above anything and everything.
Personally I thought Mark Driscoll handled him quite well. But he didn’t nail Chopra on some of his claims. Chopra has now released a new book called, “The 3rd Jesus” – a complete mish mash of Hindu/Buddhist and Christian teaching to make Jesus more acceptable in this “self” elevated world.
And Ravi has responded to this book – completely exposing the fallacies of Chopra’s claims as well as exposing the limitations of Chopra’s own understanding of the faith’s he embraces. I encourage you to listen to Ravi’s critique below.
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If you want to dig deeper into your faith and if you want proof the the faith we embrace can withstand secular assaults upon it, then I strongly encourage you to check out more of Ravi’s materials.
What I enjoy most about his come back is he doesn’t resort to “Ad Hominem” or name calling. Instead, he elegantly presents what he knows are the truths about both the history of his faith and christian belief (as defined and referenced by the bible). He is a great example of why we must know our faith. He elegantly only details with the “higher points” of disagreeing. He deals with counter point and focus on the central points. He doesn’t resort of attacking the person. (for more details about tort / discussion here is a great article by Y Combinators Paul Graham – http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html ). There is a lesson is this for all of us.
I totally dig what you wrote. I was thinking the same about this ABC Nightline – that Mark Driscoll and Ravi Zacharias would have been an excellent panel to present the Biblical case on Satan’s existence.
Being here in Saudi Arabia allows me to travel also heaps of distance just for meetings and the sorts – and in those times on the wheel, I get to listen to both Ravi and Ptr. Mark.