'Outside were stray animals and people, each about some pursuit. Sometimes it was a beggar at the door, sometimes a leprous hand reaching for a handout with a plea for compassion. Life with all its hurts and pains squinted at you, squatted before you, and stared you down daily. This was the street where I grew up.' Ravi Zacharias has lived an extraordinary life. He has walked with great leaders, slept in the villages and homes of the poor, and crossed continents to bring the good news of the gospel to the world. Already a man of two worlds by the time he was twenty, Ravi never dreamed that God would lead him from his birth home in India to Canada and the United States, and eventually to a platform on the world stage. For thirty-three years he has spoken all over the world. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president's cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. He has given the keynote address at the National Day of Prayer in Washington, DC, and has spoken twice at the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations in New York. Walking from East to West is Ravi's life story, a deeply personal journey into his past. Dr. Zacharias invites you back to the southern India of his early childhood, and into his troubled youth in the sophisticated capital city of Delhi. He recalls the importance of a mother's love and his difficult relationship with his father. He tells about his long search for truth in wrestling with Eastern thought and the newer ideas of Christianity, the cry for help in a dark moment when he tried to take his own life---and the dramatic turning point that led to a life lived for Christ. Zacharias recalls his early days as a new convert, what it was like to find a new life in the Western world, and the eventual birth and growth of a worldwide ministry. This is a story about an amazing man. Yet it is also everyone's story about belief---how it begins, how it grows, and the struggles associated with it. Walking from East to West is a heartfelt personal story of one man's discovery that God is the author of our destinies, no matter how dark the shadows that hide the light.

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

Biographies & Memoirs

Zacharias, Ravi

Leaders & Notable People

Zondervan

God in the Shadows The life journey of one of our generation’s greatest defenders of the faith. In a contemporary world, most travel is at breakneck speed. But this memoir is a journey on foot―a walk―with plenty of time to stop, to wonder, to talk, to linger, and to reflect. For more than three decades, apologist Ravi Zacharias has shared bits and pieces of his personal life and experience. Now in Walking from East to Westhe invites readers to follow him on a journey through his life: to see and smell the neighborhood in India where he grew up, to feel a mother’s love and the consternation of a harsh father . . . and the lure of a rebellious soul. In a crisis experience, Zacharias exchanged pantheism for monotheism, and meaninglessness for true fulfillment in Christ. He has traveled from the East to the West, and then back again to answer skeptics’ penetrating questions about the meaning of life and the existence of a God who is there for his children. Dr. Zacharias believes that the greatest argument for the living God is a life lived in Christ, and in this book, he reveals his own. Also available as abridged audio CDs, read by the author.

Religion & Spirituality

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events in Our Lives

How differently would we live if we believed that every dimension of our lives―from the happy to the tragic to the mundane―were part of a beautiful and purposeful design in which no thread were wrongly woven? That’s what best-selling author and internationally-known apologist, Ravi Zacharias, explores in The Grand Weaver. As Christians, we believe that great events such as a death or a birth are guided by the hand of God. Yet we drift into feeling that our daily lives are the product of our own efforts. This book brims with penetrating stories and insights that show us otherwise. From a chance encounter in a ticket line to a beloved father’s final word before dying, from a random phone call to a line in a Scripture reading, every detail of life is woven into its perfect place. In The Grand Weaver, Dr. Zacharias examines our backgrounds, our disappointments, our triumphs, and our beliefs, and explains how they are all part of the intentional and perfect work of the Grand Weaver. Also available: unabridged audio CD.

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us through the Events in Our Lives

Christian Books & Bibles

In 2006, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) held an open forum at the Fox Theater in Atlanta to address the subject: “Has Christianity Failed You?” Tickets were sold for the event and―to the complete surprise of everyone―the event was sold out with a capacity crowd of over 5,000. People lined up offering to buy tickets from folks in line for higher prices. Before the event, an RZIM cameraman walked the streets and asked people if they had rejected the faith they held at one time. One answered that, because of a Christian’s rejection of his gay lifestyle he had done just that. Another answered that she had left her faith because she had fallen into adultery and could never live it down in the church. Others had their own reasons. Some said it was just intellectually untenable in an age of reason. They chose to come to the event to judge if there were adequate answers. It is estimated that for every one person who writes a letter or attends an event, there are one thousand who agree. If the Atlanta crowd was any indication, the question is real and troubling. Why is it that many live with silent doubt, many leaving the “evangelical fold” for something else? Is there something wrong with the message, the communicator, the hearer…or is it all three? It’s time to ask the hard questions of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and why it seems as though God has made it so hard to continue believing. In fact, the son of a prominent U.S. Senator phoned me with that very question. “Why has God made it so hard to believe in Him?” Such skepticism is not just representative of the hostile; it also represents many honest questioners. This book attempts to lay out the response to those within as well as those outside the Christian faith so as to understand what it is we believe and why it is so hard to do so. More to the point: Why it is actually so hard to deny God and still make sense out of life? In the end the answers should be both felt and real, with the added truth that God is nearer than you think. He desires that we sense Him very near to us and not distant. But closeness comes at a cost just as any relationship of love and commitment does.

Has Christianity Failed You?

In 2006, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) held an open forum at the Fox Theater in Atlanta to address the subject: “Has Christianity Failed You?” Tickets were sold for the event and―to the complete surprise of everyone―the event was sold out with a capacity crowd of over 5,000. People lined up offering to buy tickets from folks in line for higher prices. Before the event, an RZIM cameraman walked the streets and asked people if they had rejected the faith they held at one time. One answered that, because of a Christian’s rejection of his gay lifestyle he had done just that. Another answered that she had left her faith because she had fallen into adultery and could never live it down in the church. Others had their own reasons. Some said it was just intellectually untenable in an age of reason. They chose to come to the event to judge if there were adequate answers. It is estimated that for every one person who writes a letter or attends an event, there are one thousand who agree. If the Atlanta crowd was any indication, the question is real and troubling.Why is it that many live with silent doubt, many leaving the “evangelical fold” for something else? Is there something wrong with the message, the communicator, the hearer…or is it all three? It’s time to ask the hard questions of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and why it seems as though God has made it so hard to continue believing. In fact, the son of a prominent U.S. Senator phoned me with that very question. “Why has God made it so hard to believe in Him?” Such skepticism is not just representative of the hostile; it also represents many honest questioners. This book attempts to lay out the response to those within as well as those outside the Christian faith so as to understand what it is we believe and why it is so hard to do so. More to the point: Why it is actually so hard to deny God and still make sense out of life? In the end the answers should be both felt and real, with the added truth that God is nearer than you think. He desires that we sense Him very near to us and not distant. But closeness comes at a cost just as any relationship of love and commitment does.

Ravi Zacharias was born in India and has literally moved from the East to the West and the West to the East and repeated the cycle again and again to answer skeptics' questions about whether God is alive, who Jesus is, what is truth, and whether we can really find absolutes. Ravi has spoken of his own journey only in bits and pieces in his other books and talks. It is a journey that has led him beyond his family and culture into a revelation that replaced pantheism with monotheism, and into a relationship with a God the vast majority of his people do not worship. From this new understanding birthed in him by the founder of Christianity, Ravi has gone forward to teach as one of our generation's great apologists. A life lived in Christ is the greatest argument of all for the living God. Ravi urges the reader to look at the lives that have turned the hearts of people into movements for Christ. In the first three centuries of the church, the Apostles and followers like Polycarp and Tertullian and Origen demonstrated with their lives the truth of the resurrected Christ. A whole line of witnesses from every generation succeeded these who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, with names like Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, and Wesley leading the procession. But history begins on an individual level. Ravi shows readers his life, in its successes and failures, in its existence in the East and in the West, and in his attempts to bring the truth of Christ to those in any culture who don't know him. The Hebrew poet has said that a life rich in experiences is a life from which others can learn. This book is about Ravi's journey, from meaninglessness to the abundant joy of Christ, from East to West and back again, in the all-consuming passion of letting the world know about true freedom, and in whom that freedom is found.

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives

When you pray, are you talking to a God who exists? Or is God nothing more than your 'imaginary friend,' like a playmate contrived by a lonely and imaginative child? When author Sam Harris attacked Christianity in Letter to a Christian Nation, reviewers called the book 'marvelous' and a generation of readers---hundreds of thousands of them---were drawn to his message. Deeply troubled, Dr. Ravi Zacharias knew that he had to respond. In The End of Reason, Zacharias underscores the dependability of the Bible along with his belief in the power and goodness of God. He confidently refutes Harris's claims that God is nothing more than a figment of one's imagination and that Christians regularly practice intolerance and hatred around the globe. If you found Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation compelling, the book you are holding is exactly what you need. Dr. Zacharias exposes 'the utter bankruptcy of this worldview.' And if you haven't read Harris' book, Ravi's response remains a powerful, passionate, irrefutably sound set of arguments for Christian thought. The clarity and hope in these pages reach out to readers who know and follow God as well as to those who reject God.

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists

What does it all mean? Why does it often seem that the things that happen in the world are random? Is there a purpose for my life? This book is the perfect gift for those asking the tough questions about life and wondering how they fit into God's plan. Featuring 96 short, easy-to-read pages, and including topical Scripture verses, this book is sure to speak to those searching for meaning. Content is excerpted from The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias.

There Is a Plan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zacharias, Ravi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Zacharias, Ravi

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zacharias, Ravi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us through the Events in Our Lives

Has Christianity Failed You?

Has Christianity Failed You?

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists

There Is a Plan