Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias (26 March 1946 – 19 May 2020) was an Indian-born Canadian and American Christian evangelical minister and Christian apologist who founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). He was involved in Christian apologetics for over 40 years, authoring more than 30 books. He also hosted the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. Zacharias belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained as a minister.

Public allegations of sexual misconduct by Zacharias first emerged in 2017. In the months following his death, multiple other alleged victims came forward, and RZIM hired the law firm Miller & Martin to investigate. Their report substantiated several of the allegations and showed how Zacharias had tried to conceal his behavior from RZIM employees and the public. The report's authors described their investigation of Zacharias's behavior as "not exhaustive," particularly in regards to his activities when traveling overseas, because they had already uncovered enough evidence to conclude that Zacharias had engaged in sexual misconduct. The revelations led to a civil action against RZIM, and to ongoing scrutiny of its management and culture.

Ravi Zacharias was born on 26 March 1946 in Madras, India into a Tamil family, and grew up in Delhi.

Zacharias' family was Anglican, but he was a "skeptic" until the age of 17 when he attempted suicide by swallowing poison. While he was in the hospital, a local Christian worker brought him a Bible and told his mother to read to him from John 14, which contains Jesus' words to Thomas the Apostle. Zacharias said it was John 14:19 that touched him as the defining paradigm, "Because I live, you also will live", and that he thought, "This may be my only hope: A new way of living. Life as defined by the Author of Life." Zacharias committed his life to Christ, praying that "Jesus 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."

In 1966, Zacharias emigrated with his family to Canada, earning his undergraduate degree from the Ontario Bible College in 1972 (now Tyndale University) and his M.Div. from Trinity International University in 1976. In 1990 he participated in guided study at Ridley Hall, a Church of England theological school in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.

Zacharias spent the summer of 1971 in South Vietnam, where he evangelized U.S. soldiers as well as imprisoned Viet Cong members. After graduating from Ontario Bible College, he began an itinerant ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in Canada. In 1974 the C&MA sent him to Cambodia, where he preached only a short time before its fall to the Khmer Rouge. He was later ordained by the C&MA in 1980, and between 1980 and 1984 he taught at the C&MA-affiliated Alliance Theological Seminary, where he was a professor of evangelism.

In 1983, Zacharias spoke in Amsterdam at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's first International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. After Amsterdam, he spent the summer evangelizing in India, where he continued to see the need for apologetic ministry, both to lead people to Christ and to train Christian leaders. In August 1984, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to pursue his calling as a "classical evangelist in the arena of the intellectually resistant." Later its headquarters were located in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, United States.

In 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zacharias spoke in Moscow with students at the Lenin Military-Political Academy as well as political leaders at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy. This was the first of many evangelism events in the political sphere. Future events included one in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1993, where he spoke to members of the judiciary on the importance of having a solid moral foundation.