Vice President Mike Pence shared a moving tribute on social media of Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, who died Tuesday morning from cancer at the age of 74.
“Deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist whose ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ impacted millions around the world. Ravi was a man of faith who could ‘rightly handle the word of truth’ like few others in our time & he was my friend,” Pence wrote, sharing a photo shaking hands with Pence. “Upon the death of Abner, the Bible tells us David said ‘do you not know that a prince & a great man has fallen today?’ Ravi was such a man & he will be missed. Karen & I send our deepest sympathies to his family and know he heard ‘Well done good and faithful servant.'”
Zacharias died Tuesday at his home in Atlanta after a brief battle with sarcoma, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries said in a statement.
The Rev. Billy Graham invited Zacharias to preach at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, the organization said.
He rose to prominence as a defender of the “intellectual credibility” of Christianity, the ministry said.
The ministry’s mission is “helping the thinker believe and the believer think,” it said in announcing the death of Zacharias.
Zacharias “saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered,” Michael Ramsden, the ministry’s president, said in a statement.
The AP contributed to this report.