Ray Comfort's Blog, page 51

David Wilkerson: Not available

Everyone has heros--or at least people they respect. David Wilkerson was one of mine, along with John the Baptist and a few others. So I was deeply saddened when my daughter called and said that he had been killed in a car accident. Of course there was the sweet knowledge that he was with the Lord, but there was also the bitter reality that we no longer had him here on earth.

His passing brought back a flood of memories. Back in 1980, I screened the movie that was based on his best-selling book, The Cross and the Switchblade. It starred Erik Estrada (from the television series CHiPs) as Nicky Cruz, the hardened gang member who mocked the naive country preacher who had come to his rough neighborhood.

I loved the way Wilkerson trusted God and went to New York, gave his shoes to some hoodlum, and ended up walking around the city in his socks. He epitomized the love that each of us should have for the lost. I decided there and then that I had to fly David Wilkerson seven thousand miles to New Zealand for a series of meetings.

New Zealand is about 16 hours ahead of New York, so I climbed out of bed at 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and put a long distance call through to the United States. After about 40 minutes of complications, I finally got through to the church and was disappointed to hear a busy signal.

The next morning I got up at the same time, and after another 40 or so minutes I was able to contact his personal secretary. I boldly said, "May I speak to David Wilkerson please?" Any second now and I would be speaking to the man himself. The voice came back, "Mr. Wilkerson is not available." I said, "But I'm calling from New Zealand!" Once again I heard a stern, "Mr. Wilkerson is not available." I placed the phone down, and felt a little stupid. David Wilkerson was untouchable.

Fast-forward 13 years to 1993. Sue and I were now living in the U.S. A few years earlier, a pastor had heard a teaching called "Hell's Best Kept Secret," had said, "America must hear this message!" and invited us to base our ministry in Southern California.

A woman had called my office and said that David Wilkerson had also heard "Hell's Best Kept Secret" and wanted to speak with me. He would be calling in a few minutes. When the phone rang, I quickly picked it up, and sure enough it was that famous voice. He wanted to fly me from Los Angeles to New York to share the teaching with his church. I could hardly believe my ears.

A few days later, I was sitting wide-eyed having lunch with David Wilkerson in New York City. Just me and him. It was almost like having lunch with John the Baptist. Seriously. I hardly heard a word he said because I kept thinking, "That is David Wilkerson! It's him. The man. I could reach out and poke him in the eye. I can't believe this!"

I then preached in his church, and had the wonderful experience of walking with him (with his shoes on) through the streets of New York, as he gave me a personal tour through his ministry.

When I arrived back in Los Angeles airport I saw Pat Boone at the baggage claim and cleverly broke the ice by saying, "Hi Pat. I'm Ray Comfort. Have you heard of David Wilkerson? I just spoke at his church." It was then that I remembered that Pat Boone starred as the famous preacher in "The Cross and the Switchblade." Duh.

A year or so later, I spoke for a pastor in Texas. He kindly gave me an endorsement for the ministry. It said, "I have served as a local pastor, Teen Challenge Director, Crusade Director for David Wilkerson, and missionary, but never during those years did I encounter an evangelist with a more life-changing message."

It was then that I found out that he was the secretary, who, 14 years earlier had wrongly told me that David Wilkerson was not available. Sure he was. It just had to be in God's timing.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Back on December 15, 2004, the Dallas Morning News said, "The most famous atheist in the academic world over the last half-century, Professor Antony Flew of England's University of Reading, now accepts the existence of God. Flew said, 'What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together,' he said. 'The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence.'"

This revelation epitomizes how stupid athiesm is. It took this man a lifetime to figure out that whoever or whatever made this incredible earth was intelligent. A slow child can figure that out in a second.

An atheist has no idea as to the Genesis of life, and neither has he figured how non-living matter can form by accident into a living cell—how dead matter became live matter. But to an atheist, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that his worldview excludes any thought of the existence of God, and for that he pats himself on the back and thinks that he's intelligent.

If that isn't crazy enough, here is where evolution gets really weird. It says that man wasn't "created" at all. He just happened and he happened over a long period of time. It was a lucky accident that man, like the fish, birds, and animals, has eyes, ears, a heart, and an instinct to search for food and a strong desire to bring forth after his own kind.

He was once a primitive life form, which meant that at one time didn't have eyes with which he could see, or ears with which he could hear. Neither did he have a heart or blood or blood vessels to carry his blood.

But as blood began to evolve, it couldn't get around the body, so he evolved a heart to pump it around. The heart would take a long time to evolve, and it also needed a complex system of blood vessels to evolve. So survival was impossible for the first pre-human primitive life form. But that doesn't matter to an atheist. It just happened. Evolution-did-it.

Neither was man a moral creature. As time past he was the only beast in nature who cared about right and wrong and set up courts to send transgressors to a place of punishment. That set him head and shoulders above the beasts. He evolved a conscience. Unlike the 1.4 million differing kinds in nature, man is the only creature that seeks retribution for violations of a moral code, which, for some reason says that it's wrong to steal, to lie, to murder and commit adultery.

Evolution doesn't know why he has a moral code, nor why man evolved to the top of the evolutionary chain. But that doesn't matter to an atheist.

In truth, we are top because God gave man "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." The sea yields delicious fish for our plate, and chickens give us eggs and finger-licking food. Cows give him milk that with a little churning gives him cream, and butter, and yogurt and ice cream. How cool is that?

The cattle also gave him meat to eat and leather for the weather, whether you believe that or not. The "creeping" things--from bugging bugs to stinking skunks run from man, because man has dominion over this planet. Lions don't like it, but a chair and a whip subdue him for circus fans. Even whales and porpoises will jump at his command and make a splash for delighted tourists. He has dominion because God gave dominion to him.

Here's another puzzle that doesn't matter to an atheist. How did man survive in his primitive state until females evolved? Ask any fundamentalist evolutionary believer that question, and like a wounded and cornered animal he will try and bite you, because he has no answer. He will tell you that to even ask the question, you are an ignorant fool who doesn't understand the principles of evolutionary biology.

He believes that male and female came about because of "populations." It just happened. Anything written on the subject moves to the subject of sex, and doesn't deal with where the sexes came from. It's just a given that procreation is possible because of random chance. Nothing created everything. Evolution is real science, and the Bible is nothing but an ancient bronze-age book that doesn't even deserve a first glance.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Do you notice how the Bible repeats one phrase? It keeps saying "after its kind," as though it is making some kind of important point. Think about nature. Notice that every animal, bird, fish, and insect (but for a few slugs and worms), has both male and female, and they each bring forth after their kind. Cows have baby cows, horses have baby horses, ants have baby ants, spiders have spiders, cats have kittens, and dogs have puppies.

A male dog chases an on-heat female dog, because he wants to mate with the female dog. If a cat is on heat, he's not interested, no matter how cool a cat it is. He mates only within his kind--dogs. He recognizes a dog, whether it's a Great Dame or a not-so-great long-haired Chihuahua.

A dog doesn't want to mate with a chicken, a fish, a squirrel, and he's certainly not attracted to a skunk. He stays within his kind because God was kind enough to give him a kind-of instinct to stay within his kind.

Yet evolutionists ignore this uncompromising pattern throughout nature. It's as though the existing creation doesn't exist, and in their imaginative minds, they imagine that all the animals, fish, insects and birds of the past, never had male and female and didn't stay within their kind. Such is the power of the human imagination. It can go anywhere it wants, and within evolution it knows no logical boundaries.

Again, it's very clear what the Bible means by "after its kind." It means that a dog will never cross into another kind. It will always bring forth a dog. Darwinian evolution has searched for over 200 years for undisputed evidence of one kind of animal evolving into another kind, and it hasn't found anything that isn't a big bone of contention. The "missing link" between man and ape is still missing.

The following quote is from Steven J. It shows how modern believers in the theory move the goalposts during the game:

Ray, "species" refers to distinctions such as those between, e.g. a lion and a tiger, or a wolf and a coyote, or a chimpanzee and a bonobo. "Kind," in creationist jargon, generally refers these days to groups larger than a species but still thought to be related by common descent, such as entire genera or families (e.g. the "cat kind"). There are "species-to-species" transitions in the fossil record (e.g. Stephen Gould described a sequence of transitional fossils between two species of the snail genus Cerion), but presumably if you bothered to consider that rather than simply regurgitate your standard list of slogans, you dismiss this example as "they're still snails" (which of course is on some other creationist's list of standard slogans). Since "kind" is undefined, it's difficult to find a good example of a "kind-to-kind" transitional series. But the fact that creationists disagree on whether, e.g. the Trinil skullcap (Homo erectus) is just another ape or as much a "fully human" remain as any H. sapiens skeleton, or the fact that there are similar disagreements about KNM-ER1470 (the skull of Homo rudolfensis) ought to indicate that in fact intermediates between obviously nonhuman apes and obvious human beings do exist. There are indeed quite a few such.

He uses the word "species" in an unashamed attempt to link animals within "kinds," and therefore maintains that he has evidence of evolution. He says that the evidence is that snails evolve into snails. Then he says that the word "kind" is "undefined" and maintains that it is "difficult to find a good example of a kind-to-kind transitional series."

The fault isn't with the definition of the word "kind." It hasn't changed in the slightest. One more time; here's the definition: dog-kind, cat-kind, horse-kind, snail-kind, human-kind, etc. The atheist's difficulty is with the so-called evidence for evolution. There isn't any. Repetition is the mother of knowledge, so one more time--every animal, bird, fish, and insect brings forth after its own kind. They stay as animals, birds, fish, and insects. Evolution is a farce. It's bogus science that has no evidence to back its fantastic claims.

Years ago I had an eccentric friend. He could talk on any subject at the drop of a hat. I once said, "The inside of a ping pong ball. Sixty seconds. Go!" and he immediately began a spiel about the nothing of its inside for sixty seconds, without the slightest hesitation. He reminds me of the atheist and the subject of evolution. He has nothing at all, and yet he forever argues about it without the slightest hesitation.

Picture: Golden retriever puppy, three months old. (Daisy Parker)For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Have you ever watched a whale playing in the ocean? It jumps high out of the water; it twists, it turns and sends a geyser into the heavens, and seems to be having a whale of a time. It's as though this big mammal loves life, and lives it to the fullest.

He's like a playful puppy, or a bird that sings in the cool of an early morning sunrise.

Look at the little fellow as he sits on a tree branch and sings his joy-filled song. Listen closely, and notice that his tune is complex. So are his feathers. They are amazingly complex. So are his wings and the muscles and nerves that move them. He can twist and turn them, so that in flight he can turn on a dime, faster than the human eye can even track him.

The Wright Brothers studied his amazing design, and they knew that it was evidence of a Designer. The atheist doesn't think so. This is because he doesn't think at all. The Bible calls him a fool. Newton rightly said atheists are senseless.

To them, the fact that both birds and fish have design and that each need male and female to continue to live, is an amazing purposeless accident. A lucky coincidence that happened billions of years ago, when nothing caused everything with a big bang...that he's not even sure really happened. This is because scientists now disagree about whether or not there was a big bang.

Whatever did or didn't happen, it resulted in the bird and fish population--that coincidentally have all matured to a point of perfect adaptive survival. Half a wing, half an eye, half a lung, or half a gill would mean death in seconds to any of these birds or fish. But somehow they survived as these necessities evolved. How lucky for them and us. Praise Nature for brilliantly making itself, even though nature, like the atheist doesn't think.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Have you ever snorkeled in the crystal clear waters of Hawaii? It's breathtaking, even under the water. It's truly breathtaking if you have eyes to see and a brain that works, that is. Otherwise you will look at the bright yellow fish with their bright blue spots, as they go about their daily routine of looking for food, then looking for a mate, so that they can reproduce and bring forth after their own kind, and not think at all.

But if you think deeply while under the shallow waters you will see design everywhere, from each fish with its amazing colors, to its tiny quivering fins, to its perfectly formed eyes, its mouth, tail and gills.

If it evolved from some sort of primitive life form, did the primitive life-form have lungs, a heart and eyes, when it was in this primitive form? If it did, it wasn't primitive. If it didn't, how did it see, and live, and eat? If it was doing okay as a heartless, bloodless, and blind life form, why and how did it evolve a heart, blood and eyes? And how do you know this to be true?

And why are there hundreds of thousands of other amazing fish with two eyes, one heart, blood, a mouth, stomach, fins and a tail? Why and how did they all evolve from a primitive life source into what we see today? Why is it that all this life in the ocean is mature, in our time? Why don't we see semi-evolved fish with eyes that don't yet see or fins that don't direct or gills that don't yet grab the necessities of life out of the waters that came to be because of a big bang in space?

And when you give your pat answers, ask yourself how you know all this, and why you would believe such crazy musings of the imagination? The Bible will tell you why, in the book of Romans. It's in chapter one, if you have a mind to read it.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Gensis on Trial

20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Have you ever snorkeled in the crystal clear waters of Hawaii? It's breathtaking, even under the water. It's truly breathtaking if you have eyes to see and a brain that works, that is. Otherwise you will look at the bright yellow fish with their bright blue spots, as they go about their daily routine of looking for food, then looking for a mate, so that they can reproduce and bring forth after their own kind, and not think at all.

But if you think deeply while under the shallow waters you will see design everywhere, from each fish with its amazing colors, to its tiny quivering fins, to its perfectly formed eyes, its mouth, tail and gills.

If it evolved from some sort of primitive life form, did the primitive life-form have lungs, a heart and eyes, when it was in this primitive form? If it did, it wasn't primitive. If it didn't, how did it see, and live, and eat? If it was doing okay as a heartless, bloodless, and blind life form, why and how did it evolve a heart, blood and eyes? And how do you know this to be true?

And why are there hundreds of thousands of other amazing fish with two eyes, one heart, blood, a mouth, stomach, fins and a tail? Why and how did they all evolve from a primitive life source into what we see today? Why is it that all this life in the ocean is mature, in our time? Why don't we see semi-evolved fish with eyes that don't yet see or fins that don't direct or gills that don't yet grab the necessities of life out of the waters that came to be because of a big bang in space?

And when you give your pat answers, ask yourself how you know all this, and why you would believe such crazy musings of the imagination? The Bible will tell you why, in the book of Romans. It's in chapter one, if you have a mind to read it.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Do you ever wonder why we have 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year? Why is our time "divided" into days and into years? Who started such a numbering process, and upon what is it based?

We know that different civilizations numbered their days, but the reason for the 24 hour numbering is that it takes the earth 24 hours to spin on its axis. It has a 24-hour rotation.

And why is it that it takes 365 days for the earth to rotate around the sun? And while it is orbiting the sun, why does the earth consistently turn around and give us day and night with such incredible and predictable precision? Atheists don't know. They simply believe that evolution-did-it. Of course, evolution doesn't "think." They know that. It just happened.

The amazing order and precision happened because of a causeless bang in space that happened for no reason with no preexisting materials, billions of years ago. So they believe.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

The next time you bite into a juicy apple, or eat sweet grapes, or a succulent orange, or eat tasty cereal, or look at lush green grass, you have a Cause, in Genesis. Instead of saying that the causeless chaos of a big bang in space resulted in the accident of all the different herbs--alfalfa, mint, cinnamon, basil, garlic, parsley, siege and thyme, in time, you can know that they were created by God, for the taste buds of mankind.

And as you plant the plants in the dry earth that God made, you can thank Him that each of these tasty plants contain the inherent ability to bring forth after their own kind. The garlic plant has seeds within it to produce more garlic plants. The parsley plant has its own ability to "go to seed" and put into your thankful hands seeds that will give you more parsley. But if you are an atheist you have to look at everything and think "A fortunate accident." Such thoughts are indeed foolishness.

Each of the varieties of fruits we so love also have this ability to put seeds into your hand so that you can grow more fruit, after their kind. Evolution doesn't know why this is. It neither asks the deep questions, nor gives a hint of an answer. It just is, with no reason or purpose.

This is perfectly summed up by an atheist, who said,

"Ray, You apparently fail to realize that atheism is merely the position on the existence of God (or any gods for that matter), and that it does not pretend or intend to offer a position on things like the formation of planet Earth, the tides, daylight or the other things you're complaining atheism has no explanation for."

Atheism is nothing, believes in nothing, and offers nothing but hopelessness, death, and damnation. You only have one shot at this life. Don't blow it big time with the stupidity of atheism.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

6And God said, Let there be a firmament [the expanse of the sky] in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

How amazing it is that the clouds are filled with trillions of tons of water. Most people have no idea that the average puffy raincloud weighs something like 350 thousand tons, and yet it floats like a feather and waters the earth so that food can grow and feed man and beast. Scripture tells us that it was God who divided the waters in the heavens from the waters on the earth.

The heat from the sun causes the oceans to rise into the heavens, leaving their salty taste and in time, the evaporated oceans fall back down onto the earth to give life to its inhabitants. Without this process, we wouldn't have a green life-giving earth. It would mostly be dry and fruitless desert, but for the irrigation waters that man is able to bring from lakes in different parts of the earth.

The perfectly balanced division of the oceans from the mass of water in the clouds didn't come about by causeless accident, as evolution believers and atheists believe. The "Big Bang" folks are shallow in their understanding of the water cycle and its origin. Big bangs produce chaos not order.

9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Only in recent years has science discovered that there are mountains and valleys under the seas. It was assumed by experts that the sea bottom was just flat land. But it's not. It's massive mountains and deep valleys, because God caused the dry land to "appear." These appeared as the seas receded, because God was the Cause.

Many atheists believe that we originally evolved from fish. Some think that all land animals trace their roots back to fish called Eusthenopteron, which was the first fish to evolve dual gills/lungs and then spend part of its life on land. But the Bible says that we were created as dry-earth creatures, with arms and legs, skin, and lungs. Still, those who believe in evolution don't believe we were made as we are. Instead, they postulate that we once didn't exist, and then we miraculously appeared and became a primitive life form, that over time became sea-dwelling creatures.

The theory goes that we temporarily left other sea-dwelling creatures and crawled onto dry land to evolve (over time) lungs and a heart that could accept oxygenated blood, while under the water. Then, with primitive legs that had also evolved, as a "population" we ventured onto the dry land and over millions of years, decided to stay permanently.

Evolution's followers don't know why we made the decision to leave. We just did, and so here we are on the dry land that came about by chance, with no rhyme, no reason, and no purpose. It's not "good" as the Bible says. It just is. Evolution-did-it.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.

Genesis on Trial

3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The Bible not only tells us that God is light, but we are told that He caused natural light to exist upon the earth. However, in the beginning, light wasn't divided from darkness. There was no division of day and night. Atheism has no explanation as to why we have the amazing balance of the earth spinning as it moves through space--turning upon its own axis, and travelling around the sun at such a speed that we end up with the divisions of day and night.

Each year, our winters faithfully produce shorter cold days, and then we enjoy the warmer summer days. This consistently happens to a point where we can predict the average meantime temperature on a certain day or night of the year, 100 years ahead in time.

This is because there is an incredible balance within the division between day and night caused by the constant and predictable movement of the earth, as it flies at breakneck speed through space. The Bible says that it was God that created the light and caused the division. Again, atheism has no explanation. It was just a cosmic accident that happened. Day and night just are.

How cool it is--to have an explanation of the first day. Evolution believers don't have one. They don't know. The cool and fresh air of the morning just is. The beautiful evening sunset, with its panorama of colors just are. They evolved from an explosion caused by nothing that produced amazing order, by itself.

A committed atheist will tell you that it isn't ordered at all, it just looks like order.

He believes that there was a point in time billions of years ago when there was a semi-sunrise and semi-sunset, semi-light and semi-darkness, and a semi-day. He believes that it took time to bring about the order and completeness we think we see.For Evangelism Resources, please visit LivingWaters.com.