Ray Comfort's Blog, page 27

Fearing Heaven

Atheists pride themselves that they don’t have “faith.” But look at how two founding-fathers of modern atheism base their whole life’s philosophy on a blind faith. Bertrand Russell “believed” that when he died, his body would corrupt and that nothing else would live on. That was his belief. That’s where he placed his faith…having nothing to base it on, unless he had some sort of unique insight into the afterlife:

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.”

Professing atheist, Isaac Asimov, also had a blind faith:

“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”

With no evidence upon which to base his faith he said that he didn’t believe in the afterlife. That was his belief. He was so full of faith that it got rid of his fear of Heaven. His fear needn’t have been of boredom. If Heaven exists, then God exists, and if God exists, Mr. Asimov, like the rest of us who die without as Savior, is in big trouble.

Photo: Isaac Asimov

For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Life’s Transient Pleasures

“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Notice the word “forevermore.” Every pleasure we experience on this earth is transient. It doesn’t last. We are left looking for more. Whether it’s the pleasures of sex, laughter with friends, the enjoyment of good food, the excitement of some sport…all of it is like water in our hands. It falls through our fingers. It is gone in a moment of time and becomes like a faded photo in the memory that senility eventually rips in two.

King Solomon concluded that the pleasures we chase are like the futility of chasing the wind, and he certainly chased pleasures. But the consolation we have is the knowledge that this futile existence isn’t the way things should be. When Adam sinned, he brought about the Genesis curse which ushered in futility, disease, pain, suffering and death. God subjected the entire creation to futility because of sin:

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:20-23).

The whole of creation groans because of the curse. Earthquakes, flood, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc., rock this earth. Animals, fish, birds and insects devour each other. Beautiful women fade like a rose, become old and die. So do birds, fish, dogs, cats, elephants, and trees. We all whither and fade because of the curse, and groan as we wait for the promised new immortal body that God can now legally give us because Jesus reversed the curse. He satisfied the anger of God against wicked humanity. He took our punishment upon Himself, and that meant that God could lawfully commute our death sentence, and let us live. He could freely give us eternal life with pleasure that never ends. We have the promise of life from Almighty God. All we need do is repent and trust Jesus. What incredible love God has for sinful humanity. How unspeakably kind and merciful.

Photo by: Nino Barbieri


For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

The Uncomfortable Yoke

It’s the claim of the Bible that man is in a state of “enmity” against God. Scripture says,

“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Romans 8:6-7).

Who could deny the truth of this statement? Human nature is in a state of continual hostility towards the God of the Bible. This is never more evident that when blasphemy rolls human lips. The holy name of the One who gave us life is used in place of cuss words, from people in high public office, to entertainment in movies and on television, to school children, to the man and woman on the street. This “enmity” that finds expression through our mouths is deeply-rooted in our hearts. We are offended by the God of the Bible—by His moral requirements and particularly by His judgments that are consequential to those requirements.

Our “carnal” mind isn’t subject to “the Law of God” (the Ten Commandments), neither indeed can it be in subjection. We don’t like the thought of being accountable to God and will go to any lengths to shake off that uncomfortable yoke. We are like a wild steed that bucks in revolt when saddled with moral accountability. Anything that helps us to do that is therefore highly prized by a sin-loving world.

Photo by: Matthew Forsythe

For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Becoming Dumber

In the BBC documentary “What Happened Before the Big Bang” [1] a professor asks a group of scientists if they believe that there was something before the Big bang. Most raise their hands. Then the commentator says,

Ten years ago, this would never have happened. Then, there was no doubt that "before the big bang" made no sense. But today, the certainty has gone. There is no escaping the inconvenient truth that Hubble's graph, work of genius though it is, contains a huge problem. It tells us that everything we see in the universe today -- us, trees, galaxies, zebras, emerged in an instant from nothing. And that's a problem. It's all effect, and no cause. The idea of "everything from nothing" is something that has occupied physicist Michio Kaku for much of his professional life.

The physicist then says,

You know, the idea sounds impossible. Preposterous. I mean, think about it -- everything from nothing! The galaxy, the stars in the heavens coming from a pinpoint. I mean how can it be? How can it be that everything comes from nothing? But you know, if you think about it a while, it all depends on how you define "nothing".
In Sandusky, Ohio, is Plum Brook Station. It is here that NASA recreates the conditions of space on Earth, and part of that means generating nothing. ..in vast quantities. This is the biggest vacuum chamber in the world. Its eight-feet-thick walls are made from 2,000 tons of solid aluminum. It takes two days of pumping out the air, and another week of freezing out the remaining molecules to create a near-perfect vacuum. A cathedral-sized volume of nothing. When they switch this place on, this is as close as we can get to a state of nothingness. Everywhere we look we see something. We see atoms, we see trees, we see forests, we see water. But hey, right here, we can pump all the atoms out, and this is probably the arena out of which genesis took place. So if you really understand the state of nothing, you understand everything about the origin of the universe.

The commentator then continues:

Except, of course, it isn't quite that straightforward. For a start, the "nothing" created by NASA still has dimensions -- this is nothing in 3-D. And the tests carried out within the chamber can, of course, be viewed. This is nothing through which light can travel. NASA's "nothing" has properties. This "nothing" is, in fact, something.

This sort of absurdity needs a warning that those who watch it are in danger of becoming dumber after the unfortunate experience. Many don’t get a warning and believe what they hear--that nothing that is something, is still nothing…a new and special scientific version of “nothing.” In their mind they think that it gets rid of the unscientific craziness of the “nothing created everything” scenario. An atheist website says,

“When physicists say there was ‘nothing’ before the Big Bang of our universe they do not mean literally “nothing.” What they mean is that there was no matter, just energy.”[2]

It is an intellectual embarrassment to have to point this out to a supposed rational human being, but if “energy” is present, there’s not nothing at all. There is “energy.”

[2] “Something from Nothing.” http://truth-saves.com/god-doesnt-exist/
Photo: Mars and Acidalia

For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Atheism’s Illegitimate Father

Atheists must have been overjoyed to discover the writings of Mark Twain--where they found a deep mine of eloquent anti-God material. Samuel Clemons chose the word “Twain” for his pseudonym, meaning “two.” But this man more than duplicated himself. The Internet spread his words like a wildfire, and his clones reproduced faster than in-season rabbits, scattering his vile words, joyfully calling God a “thug,” saying that people were dead before they were born, and that the afterlife will be a similar state.

Mark Twain was deeply offended by the God of the Old Testament and by religious hypocrisy. However, he was never so foolish as to claim to be an atheist. He is the illegitimate father of modern atheism.
Photo Source.
For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

The Bible is like a fiddle

It’s been rightly said that the Bible is like a fiddle. You can play any tune you want on it, if you have a mind to. For example, it would be easy to conclude from the Bible that you can buy your way to Heaven by quoting that the rich young ruler was told that he could have everlasting life by selling all of his goods and giving it to the poor:

Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ” And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Luke 18:18-22). 

It seems very clear from these words that all we have to do is sell what we have, then give the money to the poor. In exchange, God will give us everlasting life. But we know that no one can get right with God by obeying the Ten Commandments, and that salvation is a free gift (see Ephesians 2:8-9). Jesus is rather using the Law to bring the knowledge of sin. He is holding up the mirror of the moral Law for that man to see his sin.
So it’s essential that we approach Scripture in context with what the entire Bible says on a subject, and allow the text to speak rather than shape it to what we believe it says. This is something the Bible calls correct “exegesis.”

In our zeal to convince the world that the Bible is the Word of God, we can try and make the Bible say things that it doesn’t say, and atheists do the same thing in their zeal to present their case against God. Christopher Hitchens, just before his tragic death of cancer, said,

“Atheism by itself is of course not a moral decision or a political one of any kind. It simply is the refusal to believe in a Supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism, that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany. Darwinism wasn’t derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief. All the great modern atheist thinkers: Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist Regime.”[1]

Hitchens was either misrepresenting the truth or he was ignorant, and I have a hard time believing that such an educated and eloquent man as he would be ignorant.





For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Atheist blogs

“A dear friend of mine called me last night absolutely heartbroken, sounding like he had just finished intensely sobbing. His wife, who was once a zealous lover of Jesus, and also a big fan of your ministry, had been slowly slipping from God for about a year. She has spent much of her time feeding her doubts with atheist blogs and has now become a complete skeptic herself. She has cried saying she wants to believe as she used to, but can’t anymore. My friend, her husband, is very intelligent and well versed in apologetics and has given her apologetic books, but it seems like nothing he says gets through. My friend is one of the godliest people I know, so was his wife. They have a few children as well. He was calling me for support and advice. Do you have any suggestions on what he should do?”

You should tell him that one thing worse than finding out that my wife was a false convert, would be not finding it out. So these atheist bloggers may have done him (and her) a big favor, because Judgment Day will expose every human heart, and then it will be too late. I don’t know if his wife is a false convert, but the question I would have for her is why would she spend any time on atheist blogs? These writings are founded on the stupidity that nothing created everything. That is scientifically impossible. According to the Bible (and to common sense), atheists are fools who profess to be wise, and their agenda is to reproduce after their own kind. That is where they find a sense of security. They think that stupid is no longer stupid, if enough people believe the stupidity. They point to great intellects such as Carl Sagan (who wasn’t an atheist), Albert Einstein (who wasn’t an atheist) and Mark Twain (who wasn’t an atheist) and with no qualms of conscience say that these men didn’t believe in the existence of God.

They will also stand in moral judgment over God by saying that He told Joshua to kill every man, woman, and child, and when you ask them if He really did do that, they realize that they have painted themselves into a corner. This is because if God told Joshua to kill the Canaanites, then they are saying that God exists, and the issue is really that atheists are offended by His harsh judgments. If they say that God doesn’t exist, then God never told Joshua to do anything, because God doesn’t exist. And so they are complaining about something that never happened. That’s like spending your life complaining that it wasn’t fair that Cinderella’s slipper didn’t fit her ugly sisters. And this man’s precious wife suffers these fools gladly.

So anyone who spends their time reading lies written by fools will in time become like them. People who frequent porn sites become porn freaks. Those who bury their heads in violence become violent. Those who spend time in God’s Word grow to love and trust God. This issue goes back to Satan’s fist words to a woman “Has God said…?” Those who doubt God and instead believe the devil are left with an open invitation to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, but they are also left with no purpose in life, no origin for life, and no salvation from death and a very real Hell.


For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Sinful nature.

Every one of us is born with a sinful nature that has a propensity to sin—human beings have a natural bend toward things that God tells us are morally wrong: fornication, lust, greed, selfishness, adultery, lying, stealing, blasphemy, hatred, murder, abortion, rape, homosexuality, and some are even attracted to pedophilia. There are many different temptations that work in concert with our sinful nature, and sometimes people choose to follow a certain course. The supposed “gay” gene occasionally referred to, is just our inherited sinful nature. We are born with it.
If a pedophile takes pictures of naked children through a two-way mirror and can prove to you that no child is harmed by the practice—that they are in fact benefitted by it because their parents are well-paid, would you fight for the pedophile’s rights? If you would, then please send me your name and address. The local police in your area would like to alert your neighbors that you live nearby.


For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

The Quiet Sound of Evidence

We often have a studio audience when broadcasting "On the Box" -- our daily
webcast. One day there were only two people in the audience-a father (Larry) and his son. Larry had been a fisherman in his youth and had tragically lost one arm in machinery while on his boat. He had a great sense of humor and told us how having only one arm often came in handy when sharing his faith.

At the end of the broadcast, I did what I often do to give a sense of closure to the program. I held up a sign that told the studio audience to applaud. Larry's son didn't applaud much at all. He was too busy looking at his one-arm dad trying to clap with one hand. The program didn't have much closure that day. It did, however, remind me that the sound of that one-arm man clapping produces is the same sound that evolution believers produce when asked for sound scientific evidence for their theory.

Public domain picture.


For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Checking Out, and the Beatles

I saw an advertisement recently where cameras were set up to watch a supermarket shopper’s reaction to a scenario. Just as he was about to go through the checkout, a man who had a single item, asked if he could step in front of him. Of course, the shopper kindly let him go first. Suddenly balloons dropped from the roof and music began to play-- because the man he let through won $50,000 for being the one-millionth-shopper. The camera then zoomed in on the shopper’s look of unbelief.

Of course this was just a setup and it was fascinating to watch his response. The intrigue probably comes because of our ability to identify with someone being that close to winning $50,000, and missing out.

Pete Best was the member of the Beatles who was dropped just before the music group exploded across the world, making the other members millionaires overnight. They were stacking platinum albums as he stacked loaves of bread in a delivery van in a factory. He was close, but he missed out.

Many are like that when it comes to getting to Heaven. They believe in God, perhaps go to church, own a few Bibles, but they’ve never been born again (see John chapter 3). They are close, but they are in danger of missing out—not on mere money, but on eternal life. Horrible that may be, it’s not the real tragedy. If they die in their sins, they will not only miss the eternal pleasures of Heaven, they will find themselves damned in a terrible place called “Hell.”

God forbid that we should be complacent about the salvation of those around us. Today, preach the gospel using words, or witness one-to-one, hand someone a gospel tract, or at least leave one somewhere for someone to find. If you can’t do any of these things, please pray for those who can.

Pic. Urbankayaker



For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.