Americans will miss the comforting voice of evangelist Ravi Zacharias: Vice President Pence

With the passing away of Ravi Zacharias, the world has lost a great evangelist, and Americans will miss his comforting voice and insights as the nation begins the process of "healing and recovering," Vice President Mike Pence has said. The 74-year-old Indian-origin evangelist died on May 19 in Atlanta, Georgia, after a brief battle with sarcoma, a rare kind of cancer.

Pence spoke about his longtime friend at a memorial service in Atlanta on Friday and said that God had put him at his side at the right moment in his life, with a word of wisdom and kindness and encouragement that he will never forget. "Yesterday President (Donald) Trump said that by making the intellectual case for Christianity, Ravi Zacharias was instrumental in helping millions of people around the world come to know the love and mercy of Jesus Christ," the vice president said.

Pence said the passing away of Zacharias comes at a time when so many families here and around the world are grieving the loss of loved ones who have succumbed amidst the coronavirus epidemic. The US, the worst-hit country in the world, has reported over one lakh deaths due to the coronavirus and has 1.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases.

"As our nation begins the process of healing and recovering, we will miss Ravi's comforting voice and his insights as we pick up the pieces of our national life and move forward," Pence was quoted as saying in a statement released by the White House. The vice president noted that during his last conversation with Zacharias from his hospital bed, he was more concerned for those who were struggling in the midst of this pandemic than he was for himself.

"So I know Ravi would approve if, on this day, we also made a point to remember and pray for all who have endured heartbreak during these unprecedented times," Pence said. He was a "man of faith who could rightly handle the word of truth like few others in our time. And he will be missed," the vice president said, adding that in Zacharias, "God gave us the greatest Christian Apologist of this century." Zacharias rose to prominence in 1983, when well-known evangelist Billy Graham invited him to speak at a conference for missionaries in Amsterdam. His non-Western background et Zacharias apart from American evangelical preachers, and gave him a certain authority as someone exposed to religious pluralism, The New York Times reported earlier this month on the evangelist who was born in Chennai.

He rose to prominence as a defender of the "intellectual credibility" of Christianity, the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries said in a statement after his death.