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Southern Evangelical Seminary Welcomes Ravi Zacharias to 2018 National Conference on Christian Apologetics
With Theme of ‘The God Who Is,’ 25th Annual Conference Will Welcome Nation’s Top Speakers and Equip Christians to Defend Faith
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—For 45 years, world-renowned apologist Ravi Zacharias has commended the Christian faith and addressed life’s great existential questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny with eloquence and grace.
This fall, Zacharias will be one of the key speakers at Southern Evangelical Seminary’s (SES, www.ses.edu) National Conference on Christian Apologetics (NCCA), which for 25 years has been providing Christians with the tools, knowledge and motivation to defend their beliefs in a culture that is sometimes hostile toward Christianity.
For 2018, the 25th anniversary of the conference, SES will focus on the theme of “The God Who Is,” as the seminary will welcome other top thinkers, scholars, authors, apologists and scientific minds who will address the thousands in attendance.
“Everyone in the SES family is delighted that Ravi Zacharias will be one of our plenary speakers at this year’s 25th anniversary National Conference on Christian Apologetics,” said SES President and Evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land, who will also serve as a conference speaker. “In fact, we consider Ravi, who has served as an SES adjunct professor and on the Board of Advisors, to be a vital part of the SES family. Ravi was mentored by our co-founder, Dr. Norm Geisler, and thus shares the Classical Apologetics Geislerian DNA with the rest of the SES extended family. Ravi has often spoken of the great intellectual debt he owes Dr. Geisler.
“As a token of our deep and abiding appreciation for his phenomenal apologetics ministry for the Lord and for His Church, SES awarded Ravi its ‘Lifetime Achievement in Apologetics’ award in 2016,” Land added. “We are eagerly looking forward to his participation in this year’s NCCA.”
Ravi Zacharias fully believes the truth of Jesus Christ can endure the toughest critiques and philosophical attacks. He has authored or edited over 25 books in the fields of theology, apologetics, comparative religion, and philosophy.
When former skeptic and 17-year-old Zacharias heard the words of Jesus in John 14:19, “Because I live, you also will live,” the trajectory of his life changed forever. In a time of helplessness and unbelief—when he was on a bed of suicide—the truth of Scripture brought hope to Zacharias, and he committed his life to Christ, promising, “I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth.” Earlier in John 14, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” This verse has become the cornerstone of Zacharias’s ultimate mission as a Christian apologist and evangelist: to present and defend the truth of Jesus Christ that others may find life in Him.
Zacharias’s calling to preach was first confirmed when he was awarded the Asian Youth Preacher Award at the international Youth Congress in Hyderabad at the age of 19. Years later, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association invited Zacharias to be a plenary speaker at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists (“Amsterdam ‘83”) to address a gathering of 4,000 other speakers. It would be another turning point for him, as he began to seriously consider the critical need of apologetics to remove the intellectual and existential barriers that kept many skeptics from considering the truth claims of Christ. A year later, in 1984, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM).
At age 71, he remains committed to his calling to represent the gospel of Jesus Christ through historical, philosophical, and moral foundations and to defend it against objectors with grace, clarity, and coherency. He has laid the framework of the truth of the gospel to millions of people in more than 70 countries, including on the campuses of some of the world’s leading universities.
RZIM exists to reach and challenge those who shape culture with the credibility of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In 2017, Zacharias’s vision to establish an apologetics training center in the United States with global reach was realized with the launch of the Zacharias Institute in Atlanta. RZIM has 16 offices throughout the world in the United States, Canada, Peru, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Romania, Macedonia, Turkey, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and the Middle East. Through its global team of speakers and more than 200 employees worldwide, RZIM seeks to impact the heart and intellect of society’s thinkers and influencers through evangelism, apologetics, spiritual disciplines, training and humanitarian support.
Zacharias and his wife, Margie, have been married for 45 years and have three grown children. They reside in Atlanta.
SES’s 2018 apologetics conference is set for Oct. 12-13 at Calvary Church in Charlotte. For answers to frequently asked questions about the conference, click here.
For more information on SES, visit its web site at www.ses.edu or its Facebook page, follow the SES Twitter feed, @sesapologetics, or call (800) 77-TRUTH.
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