Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows

by Ravi Zacharias

He said, in essence, “Sacrilege is often defined as taking something that belongs to God and using it profanely. But there is a bigger sacrilege we commit all the time. That is to take something and give it to God when it means absolutely nothing to us.”

didn’t know the full ramifications of the verse. But to me, Christ’s words in John, chapter 14, verse 19, were the defining paradigm: “Because I live, you also will live.

“Jesus,” I prayed inwardly, “if You are the one who gives life as it is meant to be, I want it. Please get me out of this hospital bed well, and I promise I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth.”

Chesterton says, in essence, that there is a dislocation of humility in our times. We have become more confident in who we are and less in what we believe. Our pride has moved us from the organ of conviction to the organ of ambition, when it is intended to be the other way around. In short, our confidence should be in our message and not in ourselves.

All the things I had thought were the causes of my despair — my failing studies, my senseless wandering, my hopelessness — had actually been the results of my despair. The Austrian concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl wrote, “Without meaning, nothing else matters. With meaning, everything else falls into place.” If you can’t see the why, you cannot live for the what.

locked within me. He could explain my emotional life, my actions, and my reactions. He could explain why I longed for human touch, and why it was actually the touch of soul that I was ultimately after. Without Christ, I still would have the gnawing undercurrent that had run through everything in my life and that had led me to the tragic choice that very nearly brought me to an end.

A wealthy man walked into a village one day seeking to buy up all the homes. One by one, the villagers sold their houses to this man for a good price, except for a poor fellow who lived in the middle of the town. He simply wasn’t willing to part with his home. The wealthy man offered a generous amount, but the poor man still wouldn’t budge. Even when the price was doubled, the man said no.

few days passed and the rich man was seen strolling through town with his friends, showing them the village. When the poor man heard about it, he stopped one of the wealthy man’s friends and took him aside. “Is this man telling you he owns the whole village?” he asked. “Don’t believe him! The ground you’re standing on still belongs to me.”

That is the key to every believer’s life — full ownership by Christ. Everything we are and want to be belong to him.

“Trespassers Will Be Forgiven.” Everywhere else in the city, the trespass signs read, “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” and “Trespassers Will Be Arrested.” The simple difference in this sign had always struck me as profound.

believe that you either will make a very profound impact with your life and God will use you mightily,” he said, “or you will be a colossal wreck.”

tough man’s face wasn’t just from a sense of satisfaction over my career path. He was reveling at the change he had seen in my life. It was a true change. I know my dad could not have envisioned

knew that, when this happened, there was no turning back for my father. For the first time, he made a public confession that he was determined to serve Christ with all his heart. From that point on, my dad became a transformed man, probably more than any person I ever knew. His life, his temperament, his language, the way he treated my mother — everything changed. He was truly transformed from above. God gave me a brand-new father.

physical geography part of it had been easier; for the terrain of the soul, only God was big enough.

The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all-sufficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by the clouds, a heaven unruffled

outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for the lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.” Thoughts such as these, as well as Ravenhill’s own writings,

The Spirit of God had come upon him, and Hien could no longer translate. I had to stop my sermon as a handful of pastors came forward and began to minister to my friend. Then something strange happened. Virtually the whole roomful of pastors came pouring forward,

was a shock to me. Later I was told that when Hien stopped interpreting, he said, “What this man is saying to us is true. We need to take the Word of God seriously. We need God in our land. It is we, the church, that is the problem.” The whole place had come under conviction. I realized the meeting was over — at least the meeting we had planned — and we all knelt and prayed for a couple of hours. For the first time in my life, I was tasting the drops of revival, that moment when a group is touched from beyond the ordinary speech or word of a person.

Every time, I was intensely aware that I was unfit to be there. I wondered, “Why are all these people reacting this way? What is it that’s

In the early days of the conflict, the Vietcong had stormed into that same building, and terror had struck. Now that terrible history plagued me. Every sound at night would wake me up, and I slept with the dresser pushed up against the door. It was a long three days and three fearful nights for me before the missionaries finally returned.

As we drove through the area, suddenly our car began to sputter and chug, and then it died. Just like that, we were stranded on the side of the road — four missionaries and me, with not a soul in sight. Terrified, we opened the hood and poked around, trying to locate the problem, but nobody could find anything wrong. We tried everything, hoping that whatever needed repairing would be fixed as we fiddled around. We tightened what was already tight and loosened what was already loose — but nothing worked. After a while, a white jeep appeared behind us, coming up the road we had

God has an appointment with each of us, and it is critical that every man and woman

know this. He will stop our steps when it is not our time, and He will lead us when it is. This is a reassuring truth to know for every believer, and a necessary trust for anyone who ministers in areas of great risk.

Three years after I left Vietnam, I was reading an article in a missions magazine about a revival that had taken place there. The author was describing the roots of its beginning, tracing it back to a young Indian who spoke at a Bible college in Nhatrang, where a group of Koho young people had responded to his invitation to follow Christ wholeheartedly, and from there had begun the revival. What a surprise to read that. Yes — I remember those college students! During the time of our meetings in Vietnam, I had seen nearly

everything was being put back together. It was as if all the dismantling I’d done with the first seventeen years of my life was being given back to me, but this time the Lord was putting it together with His unerring hand.

When God puts a broken life back together, He removes the scars because He builds from the inside out. And when God steadies a faltering life, He puts you on His footing.

the life of one’s belief is from the head to the heart. My own life was testimony to this fact. The truth that had gone into my head had rescued my heart from its turmoil.

In short, if the reasoning is sound, the feelings will follow. Feelings follow belief; belief, then, should follow truth.

would add that the converse to Coggan’s statement is just as true, namely, that the longest journey is also from the heart to the head. And

it can easily become to you just a text for analysis and not the Word of God in all its life-altering power.

not before. Once you realize how much you’ve been forgiven, you see how great that forgiveness really is. In that moment at Mom’s casket, the hard truth fell upon my father that his chance to remake

If the church didn’t place true value on a person’s questioning, then we were effectively absolving

ourselves of any responsibility to that person. At the same time, if the skeptic’s questions weren’t honest, we had to address them in ways that exposed his or her dishonesty. Apologetics had to be about much more than answering questions — it had to focus on questioning the questions and clarifying

We all agreed that any attempt at apologetics is ineffective unless your heart is also made tender to the physical needs of the world. I quoted someone who once said, “If you speak to a hurting world, you will never lack for an

be wise and not careless. To deny the reality that there are some places where you cannot go is to play the fool. More important, if you have not learned to pay the smaller prices of following Christ in your daily life, you will not be prepared to pay the ultimate price in God’s calling.

practically hung from the ceiling. I told them stories right out of their own books. One was of Joseph Stalin, who at one time had been a seminary student but decided to renounce his faith in God. Stalin wasn’t his true name, but a name given to him because it translates in Georgian as “man of steel.” Stalin could will people into a different worldview with his piercing

bird by the neck and began to de-feather it until it was completely denuded. Then he placed it on the ground. Stalin grabbed a piece of bread, got up from the table, and started walking away. The chicken hobbled behind him and began nuzzling up to his trouser legs. Stalin reached down with a crumb from the bread, and the chicken pecked away at it. “Do you see this chicken?” Stalin asked his guest. “I inflicted pain on it. Now it will follow me

for food the rest of its life. People are like that. If you inflict pain on them, they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.”

As I finished this story, I saw tears running down General Kirshin’s face. He knew the cost of atheism was enormous. The Soviets had sacrificed...

“Sir,” I told him, “you will never be able to find an answer for your society until you find the answer for yourself.” He looked intrigued. We talked further about how a worldview that is incoherent within will only yield to an incoherence on the outside. What life is about defines how life must be lived.

Apologetics is not just giving answers to questions — it is questioning people’s answers, and even questioning their questions. When you question someone’s question, you compel him or her to open up about his or her own assumptions. Our assumptions must be examined.

This image was a metaphor for atheism: always trying to dance on the grave of theism, never realizing that in the Christian worldview there is nothing in the grave. Our Savior is risen. Atheism is just too philosophically bankrupt to answer life’s tormenting questions. History is replete with power-mongers

experience at Cambridge that year had reaffirmed to me an important task in apologetics, namely, to unmask the skeptic, because his problem with God isn’t an intellectual one; it is a moral one.

was fascinated by her reaction, for even in her skepticism she made morality an evidence of

truth. Yet, a skeptic has no metaphysical basis for such morality. By her reaction, the doctor had demonstrated that deep inside our souls, God’s reason keeps surfacing unwittingly to the skeptic.

For me, the best thing that ever happened culturally was the intersection of East and West. While the languages of the tongue and the anguish of experience may vary, the language of the soul is the same all over the world.

Only on the cross of Jesus Christ do love, justice, evil, and forgiveness converge. Evil, in the heart of man, shown in the crucifixion; love, in the heart of God who gave his Son; forgiveness, because of the grace of Christ; and justice, because of the law of God revealed.”

Her name, the dates she was born and died, and then the words carved into my grandmother’s stone: “Because I live, ye shall live also” — John 14:19.

was astounded. The words in the hospital — the Bible passage that Fred David shared. They were the very words that had rescued me when my mother read

Who is the answer to life’s questions? I have pondered this for seventy-some years. I now want to share the answer with you.” In the presence of his wife, his Hindu friends, my sister, and Sunder, he paused and raised his voice: “The answer is Jesus.”