15. One Destination
The founding of RZIM extracted a much greater cost from me than I would have thought. I have to say it changed me more than I shaped it. First, let me share its downside.
You start an organization to help support and free you, but, especially in the formative years, the reverse takes place. You end up creating an organization that you support. Today, RZIM employs about a hundred people full-time in six countries, and for years a lot of that burden fell on my shoulders. I remember the early days, when I’d come home from a trip to India and sit down with my secretary and my administrative assistant. As we looked at our bank balance, I realized we weren’t going to be able to meet payroll, to say nothing of the bills on hand. During that crisis, I wondered, “Have I traded one set of financial burdens for another?” Now I was responsible not only for my support but also for the needs of so many here and overseas.
If I could have done things differently in those days, I would have taken the role of leadership much more seriously. I didn’t realize how much it takes to lead. On the day RZIM was officially launched, I went to bed at night, wondering, “Do I know what I’m doing?” I never envisioned that our ministry would grow as it has.
If you have a very particular individual calling like mine, you can become so focused on it that you lose sight of the bigger picture. I’m convinced that the most difficult task in leadership is to build the right team — and we now have a fine one at RZIM, but it hasn’t been without its bumpy roads. The biggest price you pay is when you do not choose the right people for certain tasks. That is not to impugn them; it’s just to say it’s not fair to you and even to them. You can pick a wonderful person for a job, but if he or she is not right for the task, you’re in double jeopardy.
This is where Billy Graham excels. He apparently is comfortable with his limitations, and over the years he has put together an incredible ministry team. Down through the years, people haven’t recognized the genius of his leadership.
Conversely, you can become so focused on the bigger picture that you forget the individual call that God has placed upon you. I have always underestimated what God was trying to do in my calling. And when you underestimate that, you are at fault, because you do not prepare adequately. I’m a preacher and writer, not an administrator. But inevitably you must administer your role as a leader.
After twenty-one years — with millions of miles traveled, thousands of conversations with people, the constant press for development and fund-raising, continual apologetic study, intense open forums, and threats on your life — your restfulness is deeply affected. I have to admit that it has sapped my lightheartedness about life. I changed from being a typically happy, “take life as it comes” sort of guy (and a practical joker, remember!) to one who’s very serious. I’ve become more driven than I ever wanted to be, and more impatient. That’s not a natural trait for me.
Margie has often expressed sadness that I have lost the humorous side of my personality. Although it may sound odd for me to say this, that may be one of my biggest regrets. In the early days of my preaching, I used a lot of humor. It’s an effective way of lightening serious issues and yet getting at them from an additional angle. But once I got into major philosophical issues, I decreased my use of humor until I dropped it altogether. People’s expectations seem to be different in the realm of apologetics, and that probably had a lot to do with it.
My children have always shown great affection for me, but I’m sure that deep inside they probably think, “We wish Dad had remained the way we’d known him before.” More and more since 1984, our children have had to see their father as spearheading a ministry in a continual growth pattern. When you’re in the kind of position I took on, expectations are always rising, with people wanting more of you, and gradually you no longer have freedom to socialize as you want. You have to plan not only your days but also your hours. It’s a reality my family has graciously coped with. Those wonderful days when I could study at home, enjoy lunch breaks with my family, take thirty-minute naps, and have afternoon tea are long gone.
But there is a brighter side, a much brighter side than I can fully state. The rewards of this ministry have been immeasurable, too numerous even to name. One thing that has never changed about me is my continued pleasure in a handful of close friendships, whether old or new, and my years in RZIM have provided me with treasured ones. In fact, bonds with close friends have become especially important to me during these heavy ministry years. There are a handful of people I feel I can pick up with at any time and be right on track. One of these is Joe Stowell, the former president of Moody Bible Institute. Another was Kip Jordan from Word Publishing, who died tragically a few years ago.
I continue to miss Kip deeply. He became for me the kind of friend I’d always wanted. Kip was a fantastic conversationalist, and he and I and our wives shared a love for reading. We once took a trip together to the Grand Cayman Islands, and while our wives went snorkeling, Kip and I spent a whole day reading and talking, trading off reading passages from several books. I can’t express the pleasure we had that day as we exchanged knowledge, wonder, beauty, and joy.
God has given me terrific friendships all over the world. I can go to just about any airport and call someone, and they’ll meet me to share a meal. I think of marvelous friends in Singapore, India, Oxford, New Zealand, and the Middle East — people whom I know would do anything for me.
And there have been wonderful surprises in latter years — the kinds of moments that cause me to step back and marvel at the wonders God has worked.
Some years ago, I was speaking to a filled auditorium at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas. After the meeting, a man came up, pushing his way through the well-wishers in the front. “There’s a gentleman here in a wheelchair who would like to shake your hand,” he said. “Would you be able to come to the back for just a moment, please?”
I followed him to the back of the auditorium, where the man in the wheelchair extended his hand to me. “It’s really nice to meet you, my brother,” he said. “My name is Leonard Ravenhill.”
I almost fell on my knees. I now had the opportunity to tell this man what his book, Why Revival Tarries, had meant to me. He was quite moved and invited me to his house in Lindale for tea the next day. What a day that was!
Now, virtually every major engagement I have brings about some event in the present that ties to the past. I could link so much in one anecdote after another. And I keep always in mind that it’s important to see these connections as a design that God has woven. He alone knew what was coming, and, in bringing it to pass, He has taken me into the future with His design in mind, not mine. In doing so, He causes me to see this design His way, and that is the best way. His story always has a greater plot than ours, and His surprises make the story continuous and not fragmented.
In 1989, as I was speaking in England at a conference, I mentioned that Malcolm Muggeridge was one of my heroes and that his books were among my favorites. A man in the audience came to me afterward and said that Muggeridge lived just fifteen miles up the road from where we were. Unable to pass up the opportunity, I got Muggeridge’s telephone number and phoned him — and the next day, I was at lunch with Malcolm and Kitty Muggeridge! We spent about three hours together, hours I have treasured since then. What stories he had — from Gandhi to Stalin to the great figures of the mid-twentieth century. That afternoon was a gift from God to my heart. Muggeridge agreed to write the introduction to my book The Real Face of Atheism, but to my great regret, he passed away before my manuscript was complete. He and I exchanged notes on the tragedy of the West as it flirts with atheism but also celebrated the reality that truth has a long reach and will triumph in the end. His encouragement to me was momentous. Meeting him was another reminder that God was at work, putting everything together for me over the years.
I was in my office in Atlanta one day when a young man from Russia showed up at our ministry. He asked if he could see me. I welcomed him in and kept staring at him, knowing that he looked familiar.
“I am a military chaplain now,” the grinning man told me. He was the young military officer whose courage had remained so vivid in my memory. Now he had come to thank me for speaking to the Lenin Military Academy.
“You didn’t know it then, but your lecture had a great impact on the officers,” he said, and he proceeded to describe to me the wonderful things that had happened. Then he urged me, “Please don’t give up doing what you’re doing. It is making a difference.”
He could not have known what his reflection meant. People like me find courage from watching what God has done in others who heard truths that came through you. I remember well the lives that God used to keep me on the path, and now I rejoice to hear about how the impact that once was made on me has been transferred to another.
India continues to hold so much of my heart at this stage in my life. I go back two or three times a year to fulfill key invitations. I could mention many experiences. But a very recent one stands out — once again to complete a story. In 2004, I was invited to speak at a dinner in Mumbai, and when I arrived, the host extended a hand in greeting.
“Dr. Zacharias, my name is Sunil Dutt. I will be your host.”
I paused. “Sunil Dutt? The famous actor?” The man I had admired as a moviegoing youngster, whom I’d seen in the epic Indian film Mother India?
He turned red and answered, “You know who I am then?”
“I certainly do, sir, and what an honor to meet you!”
“The honor is mine,” he interjected. “I really want to hear what you have to say as a son of India who is now speaking to audiences the world over.”
He had no idea how strange those words sounded to me, coming from him. And he couldn’t have imagined my first encounter with him, on-screen in a Delhi movie theater, my feet kicked up alongside my buddies’ in the cheap seats. Now we sat side by side in a hotel as he introduced me and then requested that all the speakers — who were prepared to do the pleasantries in typical Indian fashion, taking up long spans of time — please forgo all of that so I could have all the time I needed to speak to them. After my speech, he stood to his feet, and with hands folded, he thanked me for what I said. He then invited me back so that more in his profession could hear this message.
I couldn’t help but think of the irony. I had gone to the movies to escape my desperation; now I was being invited by those who made the movies to speak about what meaning in life really is and where it comes from.
One of the great thrills in these years has been to meet the man from whose lips I first heard the gospel — Sam Wolgemuth. Here was the man whose careful sermon in a hot auditorium in Delhi had led me down an aisle and into a decision that would change everything for me. After I moved to the West, our paths crossed many times. I cannot count the number of times Sam would show up when I was speaking in the United States. Invariably, from the front row, he would gaze with a look of parental pride as I presented the talk for the evening. He and his wife, Grace, used to take an annual trip on which they visited their children, who were scattered around the country, and they always managed to fit Margie and me into that schedule as they drove through Atlanta. He always held my arm as he walked by my side — like a father would hold the arm of a son he loved. The last time I saw him before he passed away, he walked from the pastor’s office at the famed Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, Illinois, to the auditorium where I would speak, with his arm in mine. In his other arm he held a bag full of my books and tapes that he had bought from the church’s bookstore. I have no doubt he already had them at home, but this was just more for the keeping, in the gratitude that filled his heart for my life. I took him with me then so that he could have the front row one more time and be my seniormost cheerleader. Little did I know, the first time I met him, that his son Robert, an author himself, would one day become my close friend, my adviser in the vocation of writing, and my literary agent. God knew it long before. He just saved the story lines.
As I talk about “seniormost,” one of the greatest friends I could have had in the last twenty years was D. D. Davis. It was so fitting that I had met this man at a laymen’s conference, because he was to me the ultimate example of what a lay contributor to the gospel could be.
In November 2003, just two days after we had been together, D. D. went into the hospital for a pain in his leg. It was exactly twenty years before, almost to the day, that we had met. In this instance we had just finished our annual event, which D. D. always funded to enable us to move forward for another year. It had been a wonderful weekend. But now he had suddenly taken ill. When I phoned him from Dallas, where I was attending a meeting, I reached him in his hospital room. His response was characteristic: “Why are you wasting your nickel on this call?”
I did not know it would be my last conversation with my dear friend and cofounder of this ministry. Something went wrong in the immediate treatment a young doctor had given him. I shall not go into the details because it was quite upsetting to his family and to all of us; what was done ought never to have been done. D. D. died on the operating table. He had gone to the hospital, complaining of a pain in his leg, and he ended up undergoing a heart procedure from which he never recovered. As painful as it has been to think of that, D. D. was a firm believer in the sovereignty of God. He would always say to me, “There are no accidents in life — just incidents that remind us who is boss.”
D. D. Davis gave millions to RZIM over the years, in so many generous ways. RZIM was not the only ministry D. D. supported, and I know that others can testify as we can, that each time he gave, it reflected the spirit of the gospel. And he never asked for anything in return. “All I want,” he said to me time and time again, “is your integrity.”
He was one of the finest human beings I had ever met in my life. His life was about right things, and he wanted only that from others — all for the sake of Christ. What a privilege it is now to have his daughter Beverly playing the role in the ministry that he did. And now one other businessman and his wife have come alongside to model their lives after what D. D. did for us. Together they pour into my life the affirmation of D. D. Davis. Yet, I should say that what I miss most in his absence is the fatherlike figure he was to me. He really loved me and believed in my calling. This is so individual in its expression that no one ever replaces that individuality. Each one brings their irreplaceable individuality to make life a pattern of diversity with a pursuit of unity.
So has it all been worth it? Yes, and more. Add to this the thousands who have come to know Jesus Christ through this ministry and the incredible team that now works with me, supporting, doing their part, preaching the gospel with heart and mind — many of them half my age. The board of this ministry has been a blessing that I cannot gainsay. And to have the joy of my family working so closely with me is the biggest thrill of all.
In one sense, the family becomes larger. There is one such person from many years before who has come near in later years. His appearance was perhaps the greatest surprise of all. Yes, God was in the shadows here as well.
I was in Vancouver for a lecture when my phone rang late at night. “Hello?” I answered.
“Brother Ravi.”
With that one sound, I knew immediately who it was — Hien.
After Vietnam, I hadn’t known whether my young interpreter friend was even still alive. Now, as my excitement gushed forth, he explained, “I am in San Francisco.”
“What are you doing here, Hien?”
“Have you got time to listen?”
If ever I had the time for anything, it was this.
After Vietnam fell, Hien was captured by the Vietcong and imprisoned. They accused him of collaborating with the CIA, since he had worked with missionaries. In prison, they worked him over, telling him again and again that he had been brainwashed by Westerners. They took away his Bible and forbade him to speak English, the language he had loved, permitting him to use only Vietnamese or French.
“There is no such thing as God,” came the refrain from his captors, day after hellish day.
The hour finally came when Hien wondered, “Maybe they are right. Maybe there is no such thing as God.” As he thought back to some of my sermons and the shared blessings we had enjoyed, he wondered if perhaps I had been deluded too. That night he went to bed, muttering to himself, “I’m through with God. When I wake up in the morning, no more God, no more prayer.”
The new day dawned, and the commanding officer of the prison barked out the assignments for the day. Hien was to clean the latrines. He cringed when he heard it. It was the ultimate form of indignity for the prisoners. The latrines were the absolute dregs of human filth, and Hien spent the entire day in those inhospitable surroundings.
His final task was to empty the trash cans, which were filled with soiled toilet paper. All day long, he labored with reminders to himself — “No God today.” But as his work was coming to an end, something in the last trash can happened to catch his eye. It was a piece of paper with printed type. As Hien looked closer, he saw it was in English. Hungry to read this language again, he looked around to make sure nobody was watching. He hastily rinsed off the filth and tucked the paper into his pocket.
That night, after everyone had fallen asleep, he carefully took out his flashlight and removed the still damp paper from his pocket. In the upper right-hand corner of the page were the words “Romans 8.”
The Bible.
Hien, in a state of shock, began reading.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
He read on.
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hien began crying. Of all the Scripture verses he had known, these were the ones he most needed to hear, and now they had come back to him. “Lord,” he realized, “you would not let me out of your reach for even one day.” He turned over in his bed that night and prayed.
The next morning, when he saw the commanding officer, Hien asked him, “Sir, would you mind if I cleaned the latrines again?”
The officer stared at him, quite puzzled. Thinking Hien was being rather arrogant, he decided to assign him to the latrines indefinitely. “You are going to clean them every day, until I tell you to stop,” he commanded.
Hien did not know it in the beginning, but the officer himself had been tearing out those pages from the Bible and using them for toilet paper. Now, each day, Hien rinsed them clean, hid them in his pocket, and used them for his devotions at night. He ended up collecting numerous passages from the book of Romans, as well as from other books of the Bible.
After a while, he was let out of prison, and he started to plan his escape from the country. Some fifty others, including a high-powered political family, were involved in this attempt, Hien’s third after two failed previous attempts. As the days passed, they worked to build a boat that would be able to navigate the high seas.
A few days before they were to leave, two Vietcong confronted Hien. “Are you planning to escape?” they demanded.
“No.”
“Tell us the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Are you lying to us?”
“No.”
As they left, Hien was filled with remorse. He’d felt he had no choice but to lie, especially since it would have put the others at risk. Now he prayed, “Lord, I want you to be in control of my life again. I am sorry that I lied. Here I am again, depending on my own wisdom. If you want me to tell those men the truth, send them back to me. I promise I will tell the truth.”
They did come back — just hours before the group’s departure time. Only now, there were four Vietcong, and they grabbed Hien, pushing him against a wall.
“We know you’re going to leave,” they said.
“Yes, I am,” he admitted, “with fifty-two others. Are you going to put me back in prison?”
“No,” they whispered. “We want to go with you.”
Hien was rendered speechless. At first, he wondered if it was a trap. But it wasn’t — the four Vietcong did go with them.
Once they hit the high seas, the boat was rocked by a terrible storm. “Brother Ravi,” Hien told me, “if it weren’t for those four men, we would not have made it. They had a tremendous ability to sail.”
Days later, they arrived safely in Thailand, and Hien was free. Eventually, he made it to San Francisco, and, after earning a degree from the University of California (Berkeley), he now ran a financial planning firm.
“Brother Ravi, I am getting married,” he said, “and I wanted to ask if you would officiate at my wedding.” I was overjoyed when my friend later visited our home in Atlanta and spent time with my family. His words carried real weight as he spoke tenderly to our children about what real intimacy with God means, and what it means to live a successful life.
People sometimes have the illusion that success is the tangible result from a plan or effort put to work, or some material gain accomplished through genius or expertise. I would answer that those things should bring the right kind of enjoyment, but only if you are undergirded in life itself by what is true and of ultimate value. Otherwise, if you are merely a pragmatist, success and possessions bring only the wrong kind of enjoyment.
I am asked about this on occasion with regard to whether I’ve found greater fulfillment through the larger organization of RZIM. On a very practical level, the answer is no. As the ministry has grown larger, so have the demands, and that has never suited my personality. Managing those things has always gone against the grain for me.
On a personal level, the answer also is no. To me, there has never been any greater fulfillment than in being where God wants me to be. And that fulfillment isn’t any greater now, because I was fulfilled from the beginning, knowing that God had me in the right place at all times. If anything, I had more of a comfort level in the early years — with a normal, day-to-day life with my wife and children — than I do now.
I would prefer to rephrase the question: is there fulfillment in knowing you’re where God wants you to be? Does that bring satisfaction? The answer is yes, absolutely!
A few years ago, I was writing on the subject of the cross and found it difficult to bring the Lord’s suffering into focus. The more I pondered it, the more I thought about his words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So I prayed, “Lord, help me to understand the agony of what you went through.”
I had just gotten up from my computer to ponder this in my mind. How and why did the Son of God pray such a prayer? Suddenly a truth came into sharp focus. At the very moment that Jesus cried those words, at the height of his sense of desolation, he was, in actual fact, in the very center of his Father’s will.
This epiphany turned my thoughts in a small way back to my own moment of desperation — my suicide attempt as a teenager in Delhi. At the very moment I had thought I was farthest away from God, the Lord had his appointment with me. It was an appointment of life, and not of death.
I was speaking at Oxford a few years ago when a colleague and son in the ministry, Michael Ramsden, told me, “A young man is traveling here to meet you. He’s taking a train, and he’s coming a long way.”
“What is it about?”
“I’ll let him tell you the story.”
When I met this strapping young fellow, he shook my hand heartily. “I can’t tell you what it means to see you and put a face to your voice,” he said.
He was a university student, and at one point in the previous year, he had been lying on his bed, ready to commit suicide. His life had gotten onto the wrong track, and he had decided to end it.
“I had made up my mind, and I had everything planned,” he said. “I was going to slit my wrists. But I was afraid that I might cry out and that someone might hear me. So I needed some noise to shut out the sound if I were to shout in pain.
“On the nightstand next to me, there was a tape recorder my father and I had shared. I turned it on, expecting one of my rock music tapes to start blaring. Instead, out of the blue came a sermon of yours, titled ‘The Illusions of Our Culture.’ My dad must have been listening to it.”
I had preached that message almost twenty years before. In it, I shared the story of my suicide attempt.
“I thought, ‘I cannot believe this,’ ” the young man said. “I just could not believe it.” It was a message about disillusionment on many levels of life, and the young student connected with it.
“Instead of ending my life,” he said, “I got up out of bed and got down on my knees.”
He committed his life to Jesus Christ that day, and he is now actively involved in his university with missions for the cause of Christ.
“I just wanted to come and say thanks,” he said. His face shone with joy.
I’ve lost count of the number of people who have spoken to me or written to our ministry, saying that they heard a tape or one of our radio programs at the very moment when they were contemplating suicide — and they turned to the Lord instead. Others who had a hatred for Christianity — Muslims, Hindus, atheists, disillusioned academics — tell the same story of hearing a message and committing their lives to Christ.
One day, I was at the bedside of a friend who was a Muslim convert to Jesus Christ. He was in the hospital to have a leg amputated. Some years later, he would pay with his life for his commitment to Christ. But before I left his hospital bed that day, I prayed with him. With tears of joy, he said one sentence that I will never forget: “Brother Ravi, the more I study other beliefs and religions, the more beautiful Jesus becomes to me.”
He is right. Even in ministry, the same applies. Through all of the visitations of life — successes or failures — it is not how well you are known or not known. It is not how big your organization is or isn’t. It is not even how many sermons one has preached or books one has written or millions of dollars one has accumulated. It is how well do you know Jesus? That’s it. That is what shapes how you view everything else. Successes are hollow if you do not know the author of life and His purpose. To me, with each passing year, Jesus has only become more beautiful.
I am reminded of the story of a man who was a devout church member, who also happened to love golf. Any opportunity to play golf he would leap at and enjoy doing. Then the day came when it was cutting into every other commitment. Every Sunday, he just felt the urge to play, although he knew there were responsibilities at the church. He nevertheless leaped out of bed, got dressed, and took off for the golf course. As the story goes, Peter and Paul in heaven were talking about this man’s out-of-control appetite, and they agreed, “We’ve got to trim this back.” So Peter said, “Leave it to me.”
As the man took a massive swing from off the tee, the ball sailed into the air. Peter blinked his eyes, and as the ball descended, it rolled into the hole with a precision never before experienced by this player. Paul, rather aghast at this result, chided Peter and said, “What did you do that for?” Peter grinned and said, “Who’s he going to tell?”
A funny, imaginative story indeed. But life’s joys are joys only if they can be shared. Even more, joys multiply when they can be shared with honor and purpose. That is what makes the walk with God so beautiful. It is the ultimate form of sharing and the ultimate imperative to share. The family has grown larger, and the joys have multiplied. After all these years, the ministry that began in our small apartment in Toronto has multiplied into many tracks. But it has still led to one destination.