RAVI ZACHARIAS HERE IN LANGLEY

Ravi Zacharias

(Feb 18, 2021 .. at the end of this post is an update about Ravi Zacharias and the news that rocked the Christian world)

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Last evening Christine and I attended a public meeting at which renowned internationally recognized Christian apologist and author Ravi Zacharias spoke on the theme, 'Notions of Truth and Tensions in Society.' I was so glad to hear him in person once again. His daily radio program Let My People think, enable listeners to process views within popular culture that are steadily influenced by the New Age obsession with human potentiality and spirituality and also to properly appreciate the definitive person, work and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Smiths Falls Logo

At the conclusion of yesterday's meeting, I was able to shake his hand, mention "Smiths Falls Ontario 1972" and immediately his face registered recognition and we briefly chatted before his attention had to be given to the scores of others who wanted to meet him. Now I can tell you what he remembered with me.

Tyndale University and College

Ravi and I graduated a couple of years apart from Ontario Bible College (OBC) in Toronto, now Tyndale University and Seminary.

I was already aware of Ravi's giftedness as a communicator and his spirituality when in 1972 I invited him to be a keynote speaker for an eight day crusade in the town of Smiths Falls, Ontario where I was pastoring Calvary Bible Church. He was 26 years of age and I was 30. Mine was a small church of eighty people but in preparation for the crusade I trained spiritual counsellors there and in three other churches in the area.

Calvary Bible Church, Smiths Falls, Ontario 

Typical of crusades at the time, I had arranged for guest musicians for each of the eight dates in October. An entire college choir from OBC under the direction of Warren Adams drove from Toronto for the event. Advertisements reached surrounding communities and each evening at the local civic arena an audience from 500-700 people listened to Ravi's challenging messages that invited people to place their trust in Jesus Christ. Seventy two individuals were recorded as having committed their lives to God that week. God knows the lasting outcome of that work.

It was evident in those days that Ravi Zacharias was empowered by God with unique perceptions and oratorical skills. Not surprisingly Ravi became a global evangelist with an ability to intelligently communicate the credibility of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He began to receive invitations to universities to engage the minds of young adults and thirty years ago he founded RZIM, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Distinctive in its strong evangelistic and apologetic foundation, the ministry of RZIM is intended to touch both the heart and the intellect of the thinkers and influencers of society through the support of the visionary leadership of Ravi Zacharias.

He has authored 20 books in which Ravi has defended Christianity against atheism, Darwinism, Oscar Wilde, religious hypocrisy and world religions. In his book, Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality (FaithWords, $21.99), he sets his sights on the New Spirituality/New Age movement and such prominent proponents as Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra.

I wrote a reflective blog piece in September 2009, called 'A Distant Greeting from a Former Resident,' the content of which I had sent to the town of Smiths Falls and an appreciation for the years I spent in the town gaining my footing as a young pastor, and referencing the special eight day crusade for which Ravi Zacharias was my invited speaker.

UPDATE: Ravi Zacharias died at his home in Atlanta on 19 May 2020, at the age of 74. He had been diagnosed in March 2020 with a malignant and rare cancer in his spine. For several years before his death, allegations surfaced that Ravi was involved in sexual misconduct both at home and during international ministry trips. Women began to come forward with their stories. Multiple sources accused Zacharias of serious sexual misconduct including rape. RZIM ministries and Ravi himself initially denied the allegations despite the mounting evidence. Following his death, on 9 February 2021, Miller & Martin, the law firm hired by RZIM to look into these allegations, concluded in their investigation report that Mr Zacharias had engaged in sexual misconduct. The RZIM Board issued an official public confession of their own failures as well as their acknowledgments of Ravi’s misconduct.   

The Wikipedia account of Ravi Zachias

TESTING 70 YEAR OLD DRIVERS

That's my ride, a 2007 MX5, and my female passenger hidden in the reflection is my sweetheart of 46 years of marriage. We are looking out to the Gulf Islands. Driving in the open air and with the sun on our faces is one of the pleasures of our lives.

I heard someone say that the provincial government of B.C. was going to legislate that driver retesting would begin at age 70 and be repeated every two years. Public safety must be maintained. Of course it does. Do you think this is the place to begin?

Well sorry, but the closer one is to three score and ten or if you are 70 as I am or even a bit older than that, one tends to react with irritation.

A defence response kicks in. Sure I am 70 but I can still do math. I can read posted speed limits and I can read my dashboard data. This is the year that I should be retested if the program was already in effect. I might have to do a written as well as an actual motor vehicle street exam.

I used to drive truck for a living, both during college days and later full time before I obtained my first job as a church pastor. In Toronto I could drive a large Sears truck downtown, whip across a road when the Sears flagman stopped traffic and I could back up fast into a truck elevator with 3 inch clearance on each side mirror. I have always taken driving seriously and been diligent about observing good driving habits. I have driven in blinding snow storms on the worst of road conditions without negative incident. But that was then.

What about now? Has anything changed? Perhaps. The eyes are not what they used to be. The reactions perhaps a touch slower. I understand the concerns. But wait a minute. There are tens of thousands of drivers much younger than I who have poor driving habits and drive foolishly and even recklessly. There are inexperienced, unqualified and careless drivers of every age against whose driving I must daily be a defensive driver. Why, by virtue of age should teens, twenty-somethings, thirty, forty, fifty and sixty year olds be exempt for decades from testing beyond the initial exam that granted them their license?  There is an equity issue here. Fair play demands that statistics and medicine and wisdom combine to produce a piece of legislation that truly addresses public safety on our roads.

          Application

Test 70 plus drivers every two years. Fine! Re-examine every other driver every three years. Test drivers of trucks and buses for their specific licenses every three years as well.

George Frederick Handel’s famed oratorio called 'Messiah'

MESSIAH

Early each December in our home, our cherished CD’s of George Frederick Handel’s famed oratorio called Messiah are dropped into the CD player and we begin to listen to the words of scripture set to some of the finest music ever composed.

I credit two friends of ours with beginning that tradition for us thirty years ago. For a stretch of nine years, a couple of elderly women in my Toronto church spoiled Christine and me each December. Their Christmas gift to us was to take us to Ed’s downtown restaurant just across from the Roy Thompson Hall where following dinner we would enjoy the magnificent sounds of the Toronto Symphony and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir as they performed Handel’s Messiah.

Handel’s Messiah is a choral oratorio, not an opera, determined by the fact that the choir plays the major role. Handel’s Messiah is by far the most popular of all choral literature and while I know oratorio is not everyone’s choice of music you have all been exposed to some music from the Messiah, even if only a perverted Hallelujah chorus used offensively in Bugs Bunny cartoons or toilet tissue advertisements. The music is exquisite but the best part is the text. It’s Biblical. For the child of God the text is enough to make one shake and tremble in admiration of God.

Handel’s Messiah is a reflective commentary on God’s Promise, His Incarnation, His Passion and His Resurrection. With most sacred oratorios, while the themes may be biblical, they do not use Biblical texts. The Messiah does, skillfully, brilliantly, movingly. Today I will read you the text of the first part and preach on a small section of the scripture I quote. There are three parts. I was guest preacher this past Sunday morning at Aldergrove Baptist Church and I chose to preach from Isaiah 40:1-5 which contains the opening words of Part One. The text of Messiah is taken from the King James version of the Bible.


"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."

I told the folk there that if they like what they hear they can invite me back around Easter and I can read to them the second part from Handel’s Messiah and preach a message from the text it uses. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” Then if they are up to it, they can invite me as summer begins and I will read to them the text from the third part which is such an encouraging and triumphant reminder of our hope. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” For now is Christ is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep.” How’s that for inviting oneself.

Listen to conductor Trevor Pinnock introduce "Comfort, Comfort ye My People," and then tenor Kurt Streit singing this 3:37 min section.

Photo credit for Roy Thompson Hall: Cliff Spice

Drew Mann

A NEW LEARNING
I remember him today because I must. He came to my mind and I cannot release him until I write about him. Chalk it up to a retiree’s adjustment and time to reflect.

In a 40 year pastoral career and in a couple of large churches, I have officiated many funerals. The most demanding memorial service I have ever led was for Drew Mann.

Drew was the 21 year old son of one of our faithful church women. Her husband predeceased his son. Drew’s mother also had two daughters.

At the conclusion of a Sunday evening church service, I was at the rear of the church when two policemen came to me to say that Drew had been killed in a vehicle accident. At a nearby intersection, in a car with four youth he was one of two youth who died while the other two were seriously injured. Some things you do instinctively so I gained the attention of parishioners happily engaged in casual conversation and I solemnly announced to them the news that would break their hearts. Beside me one of his young male friends dropped in a dead faint.

Drew was on the same summer church ball team as my son Jeff and me. On this Sunday night Jeff was enrolled at Trinity Western University several provinces away. My daughter was at university in Winnipeg. Drew had magnetism, good looks and athletic prowess. He was studying physical education at York University, had so much potential and wanted to be a high school Phys Ed teacher and coach. He had friends at church, at school and in the sports community. His faith had been hot and cold. Two weeks prior to dying he had uncharacteristically written a letter to Cari our daughter to tell her that he had renewed his commitment to Christ.

His mom asked me the night of Drew’s death to come to the hospital to identify him. He lay on a gurney, a big sneaker on one of his feet, and one off, his muscular body reposed in his denims and lettered jacket and his peaceful handsome face seeming to be grabbing a few ZZZ’s, but he wasn’t going to wake. I helped his mom to select a casket. On the day of the funeral I entered early into the church auditorium and was unprepared and shaken to see his baseball glove, his football helmet, a football perched atop his casket beside a picture of his lively face. Four hundred seats were occupied with double doors open to the gym where more seats were filled. His youthful school friends, most at the first funeral they ever attended, wept as they entered and as they listened. I talked about Drew’s hope and home. Weeks later his mom called me to give me Drew’s blue blazer for my son whom I would soon see at TWU. We received a phone call from Jeff some time after that western visit to tell us that the first time he wore the blazer he reached inside the breast pocket and found a small sample bottle of Drew’s favourite and familiar cologne.

I contacted his mom recently and she sent me some photos that brought this precious young man back into my heart with vivid memories. The last line of the tribute printed in the March 7, 1990 memorial program was “We find comfort in the knowledge that he is now with his heavenly Father and his earthly father.”

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A NEW LEARNING
Journalists have made a big deal of Obama as the potential first ‘black’ US President. Aren’t you weary of this? I have lived long enough to recall when TV ads first began to feature African American actors. I remember when bilingualism became a source of chronic national complaint in Canada as all product labeling appeared in French and English. People of different racial backgrounds still look suspiciously at one another. I’m white so I know that Caucasians carp about cross cultural, multi-lingual relations all the time. I have been guilty of it myself sometimes. I’m not proud of it. Like you I have found myself in a confusing phone conversation with a service person for a major Canadian company like Telus or National Car Rental only to learn that the person lives in Karachi or some other distant location.

One of the most enriching experiences of our family life was our move from Peterborough to Toronto when my two children were entering their teen years. The communities in which we lived and the schools they attended were rich with ethnic and racial diversity. Each member of my family enjoyed friendships that accepted this fusion of peoples. We worked and played with people from Asian, Jamaican and European personal histories. When I moved to B.C. eighteen years ago my new network of acquaintances was all white and I was uncomfortable. I missed the racial mix of God's people who I had learned to love as brothers and sisters. During these two decades in BC the people landscape has changed with immigration. My life and work has enabled me to meet and to appreciate French speaking Quebec residents and the Chinese community in Richmond BC and a few Indo Canadians.

My sensitivity quotient has heightened as I have aged. I cannot express how it hurts my spirit when my friends, some Christians ... please forgive us God, even some missionaries I have heard speak pejoratively about other races and language groups. Hurt? No, I find it offensive that people who should know better and love larger as God loves, would denigrate His creation with careless words, with irresponsible attitudes. What kicks my butt is my reluctance to speak up and challenge this prejudice.