Ray Comfort has been preaching the gospel for more than five decades

Jenna Ellis: Welcome to On Demand. This is our AFR exclusive podcast where we do a deep dive into issues that you care about from guests that you love to hear from. And my guest today is one of the most recognizable evangelists in modern Christianity. So for more than five decades, Ray Comfort has devoted his life to fulfilling the Great Commission and boldly sharing the truth of the gospel of Christ through living waters. His ministry now reaches millions around the world. And he has a brand new autobiography out called Compelled My Story, which traces his journey from life without Christ to his conversion as a young man in NewSong Zealand, to a lifetime spent proclaiming the truth of the gospel. And it's the story of what God can do through an ordinary person willing to faithfully answer his call, which is all of us and should be, every Christian, that we are ordinary people who are willing to live in extraordinary lives for the sole purpose of worshiping the Lord and advancing the truth of the gospel. So I'm delighted to welcome Ray Comfort to the program. thanks so much for being here.

Ray Comfort: Oh, it's a joy. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. And so you titled your autobiography Compelled. What is it that compelled you for more than five decades to keep sharing the gospel? And where did that sense of urgency begin?

Ray Comfort: Well, it was the existence of hell that did it right from the beginning. If there was no hell, I would have probably retired in Australia. I'm from NewSong Zealand and, lay on the beach rest of my life. But I didn't, because hell exists. And like the apostle Paul, I said to myself, wherefore, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. So my horror began with my thought and my family not being saved, and then neighbors and then friends and then strangers. And it's compelled me for years. The love of Christ compels me. In the same way if you saw, a child drowning, it would be love that would compel you to reach out. And that's what's compelled me for more than five decades.

Jenna Ellis: Wow. And you know, what a stark truth that, we will face eternity, all of us, someday. And I feel like sometimes that reality is overshadowed by the minutia of this life and also some, you know, very realistic concerns, like we have to, live and support ourselves and, we engage in, you know, all kinds of things that we should, though, as, human beings made in the image of God and living our lives. But, then there are some moments that the reality of eternity is, is right there in front of us. And I think one of those moments, most recently Globally was the murder of Charlie Kirk. And the stark reality of seeing someone so young and so bold for the Lord, be assassinated on, on video and on the world stage. really provided, an opportunity to talk about those things. What have you found in your ministry? Has been maybe the. The key obstacle or objection or cognitive dissonance that people have in recognizing the reality of the truth that there is. There is a hell. And that if we do not have salvation and we don't believe in the lordship of Jesus Christ, that's where all of us are headed. But for the truth of the gospel,

Ray Comfort: boy, that's got to be one of the most pregnant questions I've ever been asked. There was so many things I could go on. But, you know, I go to a local college twice a day, have done for about 15 or 20 years. And, I have a. I have a dog that wears sunglasses on my electric bike, which has a platform on which my dog sits, wearing sunglasses. So I arrive at the college immediately. Students come around and say, whoa, how cute that dog is. And, I bounce from there and say, we've got a YouTube channel, 350 million views. Would you like to come on? And the first question I ask them is something like this. You're afraid of death. And they answer with a, little bit. So what do you mean a little bit? Someone's going to put you in a box and bury you six feet under the ground. Death is a horror beyond words. And I can see in their eyes, they're saying, how does this guy know? I haven't told my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister. But I'm terrified of dying. I think about it all the time. And the reason I know is because the book of Hebrews says. And this is from the Amplified Bible, so I'll read it a little louder. It says, every human being is haunted by the fear of death all their lifetime. And because of that knowledge, I'm able to say, well, did you. Do you ever read the Bible? And they usually say, no, because it's not exactly prioritized in a secular college. I said, did you know in the Old Testament, God promised he would destroy death? And in the NewSong Testament, we're told Harry did it. And they say, no, I didn't know that. Would you like me to tell you about it? and who's going to say no? Because God's written eternity upon their heart. Even an atheist who believes that the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything, or set aside his own preconceived Ideas and say, yeah, yeah, tell me, tell me. Because he's got a will to live. Something him says, I don't want to die. So the death of Charlie Kirk and the coronavirus, brought to the forefront the fact that we're all mortal. Usually young people don't think about death, but the pandemic made a whole generation think about death. And it's opened them to the gospel. As long as you know how to get to the gospel. And the way we do it as a ministry is what we teach Christians how to share their faith, how to overcome their own fears, how to address the conscience as Jesus did, rather than the intellect, which is what most people do. And it makes reaching out to the lost so much easier when you have this knowledge that's given to us in the word of God.

Jenna Ellis: M and what a genuine comfort, and sense of hope that we have that there are answers to these questions that do haunt us because we all, as human beings, living under the same conditions and the same fallen nature, we all have to ask and answer the question, who we are and, is there a God? And what happens after death? And so even as you, as you mentioned, Ray, comfort for those who believe that, you know, we'll just go into eternal sleep, we won't exist anymore, or, you know, all of these other kind of false notions, they still face that same fear. And, And so how do you get from that fear to then translating that into proof of the reality of what the gospel presents and the hope that's found in Christ?

Ray Comfort: Well, another wonderful question. You know, often people say, nobody knows. I have to say, look, you can't say that. You're one human being. And with one sweeping statement, you're saying there's 8 billion on the people. There's 8 billion people on the surface. And I know that nobody knows what happens after you die. So all you've got to do is say, I don't know and my friends don't know. And the knowledge I've come up to, hasn't brought me an answer. But you can't say nobody knows because millions know. And the reason we know is because God puts power in his word. And so there's a difference between faith and trusting in Jesus. And faith is belief that God exists.

Having faith in Jesus can rid ourselves of fear of death

And we believe God exists in the same way we believe a builder exists because we've got the building as evidence. We believe a painter exists. We have the painting as evidence. Paintings don't paint themselves and buildings don't build themselves. So we have empirical or scientific evidence that God exists through creation. The invisible things of him through the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are, made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. But when we speak of having faith in Jesus, we're not talking about an intellectual belief, we're talking about a trust in the same way you trust a parachute. And this is how we can rid ourselves of the fear of death. If you're standing on the edge of a plane 10,000ft, you're going to jump without a parachute. That's a horror beyond words. That's breathtaking and terrifying because you're going to hit the ground at 120 miles an hour and spread all over the ground. But if someone gives you a parachute and you trust it implicitly because it was packed by your mother, then you're going to be going to be able to control your fears. I will not fear. I'm going to trust this parachute. And the Bible says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, trust in him. And that's how I know I'm 77. Coming up, 77. I may not even finish this interview, but I have this knowledge that I trust in Jesus. And when I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, in this life and in death itself, I am saved because of God's amazing grace. And that's what every person can have if they'll obey the gospel. The other thought is this. We're not talking about an intellectual belief once again. We're talking about experiential knowledge. By that I mean the little kid's looking at a heater and he believes the heater's hot. He has an intellectual belief. But if he reaches out and touches the heated bar with his hand, a stick in his flesh burns. He stops believing the heat is hot. He now knows it's hot because he's moved out of the realm of belief into the realm of personal experience. Now, for 22 years, I believed in God's existence. Who wouldn't because of creation? However, on the 25th of April, 1972, I reached out and touched the heated bar of God's love and mercy and the power of the gospel. And the Bible says you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. The gospel came power. And in much assurance, the Bible says so you pass out of the realm of intellectual belief into the realm of personal experience the moment you're born again. When you completely trust Christ with your life.

Jenna Ellis: And what an amazing transformation it truly is. And the assurance that we can have in the sufficiency of the gospel and in the knowledge that we're not placing our faith and belief in something that's empty, but something that is secure. And, you know, when you're speaking about, experiential belief and we're talking about life and death, I'm reminded of, Shakespeare and Hamlet. When he, when Hamlet is contemplating, taking his own life, but the fear that grips him of death, he calls it the undiscovered country from which no man returns. And he doesn't know what's going to happen after death. So ultimately decides, not to commit suicide. And it's such an interesting and fascinating concept that we can't talk to people who have experienced death. We can only recognize that every person will end up in, Hamlet's words, shuffling off that mortal coil. And so when we contemplate some of those things, throughout world history, death seemed so much closer in other, in other eras of world history because we didn't have such modern advances and technologies and frankly, the comforts and security of modern conveniences. And so do you find that it's more difficult to have this sense of urgency where people are actually confronted with their mortality now versus when you started your ministry, just because it seems like we can put off death and people don't want to be confronted with their own mortality?

Ray Comfort: Yeah, there's one way to do it, and I do it all the time. I tell them Romans 6:23. I say to them, have you ever heard the Bible verse, the wages of sin is death? And they say no, because they go to a secular college and they never open the scriptures. And so we're saying that God is paying you in death for your sins. Because most people have no idea why they die. They haven't, haven't a clue why everything they, they love is going to be ripped from their hands by this black horror called death. And so it's wages. God is paying you in death for your sins. I say it's like a judge who looks at a criminal who's committed multiple murders, but he's not at all concerned. So the judge says, I'm going to show you how serious your crime is. I'm giving you the death sentence. This is your wages. This is what you've earned. And I say, sin is so serious to a holy God. He's given you the death sentence. You're on death row. You've got a nice holding cell with a blue roof, good air conditioning and good lighting. But this life is a holding cell. And your death will be evidence to you that God is deadly serious about sin. And then I say this. Do you think God is justified in giving you the death sentence? Are you that evil? Or are, you a good person? And they'll almost certainly say, I'm a good person. Book of Proverbs says, every man will proclaim his own goodness. So let's see how good you are. How many lies have you told in your life? And they say a lot. Ever stolen something? Yes. Ever use God's name in vain? It's. Oh, yeah, it's a bit of a heaven. I shouldn't do that. So, you're taking God's holy name and using it as a cuss word. That's called blasphemy, punishable by death. In the Old Testament, Jesus said, if you look at a woman and lust her, you commit adultery with her in your heart. I say, oh, I do it all the time. Have you ever hated someone? They say, yeah. Some of the Bible says, he who hates his brother is a murderer. So here's the summation of your court case on judgment day. You're not a good person. You're like the rest of us. You've just told me you're a lying thief, a blasphemer, adulterer at heart, and a murderer at heart. Have you had sex before marriage? Yes. And a fornicator. And the Bible says fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The Bible says that in Romans 2, verse 15, the conscience bears witness

Now what happens is the conscience begins to be a witness. The Bible says that in Romans 2, verse 15, the conscience, which is the work of the law written on the heart, bears witness with the commandments. They know what you're saying is true, that it's wrong to do these things. And it accuses, like a judge, an impartial judge in the courtroom of the mind. And it produces a fear which is legitimate. The Bible says, through the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And they say, with the Philippian jailer, wow, what must I do to be saved? Because you've just given them their own personal earthquake. And then you bring in the glorious gospel and say, look, God's the lover of your soul. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He provided a savior. He's given a parachute for when you jump. Christ died for our sins. We broke the law. He paid the fine. If you're in court, you've got speeding fines and somebody else pays them. A judge will let you leave, so you're out of here. You're free to go because someone paid your fine and it's legal. Well, God can legally take death off sinful human beings because Jesus paid the fine and full cry to it is finished, the debt is paid. Rose from the dead, defeated death. It was not possible that death could hold him. And now all who repent and trust alone in him receive remission of sins and the gift of God, eternal life because of God's amazing grace. And people just the light goes on in their eyes as I've never heard this before. And all that is is a biblical presentation of the Gospel. All it is is doing what Jesus was did with a rich young ruler. What Paul did In, Romans 2 when he says, you say, you shall not steal, do you steal? You who say, shall not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? All I'm doing is using God's law to bring the knowledge of sin, something Paul spoke of in the book of Romans. And that's why our ministry exists and that's why we've written the book Compel. It's actually a true story about how I discovered this way back in 1982, biblical evangelism, and then was invited to come and live in the US Couldn't find any doors, to share the message. So I began preaching in MacArthur park, the most murderous portion of Los Angeles. Didn't realize it was so bad. Had to preach with my back to a tree because they said, you'll get stabbed if you keep this up. it's an amazing and true story of, God leading one little kiwi from NewSong Zealand into, the realm of the miraculous. It's just been a wonderful trip.

Jenna Ellis: Amazing. And, you know, it's such a powerful testimony of what God can do with one person who, is ordinary and says, I'm willing to, go where the Lord sends me. And, you know, this is such a powerful witness. And I wish that most, evangelical pastors in America would have, just the, the courage that you do to speak the truth of the gospel instead of just these kind of motivational, sermons that really aren't teaching the powerful, word of truth. And how have you, over the last, 50 years of your ministry, really grasped hold of the concept of assurance of salvation? Because I know that there are so many Christians who are listening to this thinking, well, I've accepted the Lord, but sometimes I still doubt, whether I'm saved or I doubt that I really will be in the presence of the Lord. And I still fear death.

Ray Comfort: It's something that each of Us have to fight daily. I fight all sorts of fears. the Bible says it's a fear that has tormented. And the fear of death can torment you if you allow it to. And what you're going to do is just pick, up the shield of faith and resist all the fiery darts of the wicked. One key, and it's a key that I think is so vital, is this. When, I first started itinerating back in the early 1980s, I asked one question of a congregation. I said, how many of you read God's Word every day without fail? Now, I've done that for 54 years. Never once have I failed to read God's Word. And I thought every Christian did that. But in this church, I estimated about 5% put their hand up. 95% couldn't say they read God's Word every day. Some read it every second day, which is they go 180 days a year without reading God's Word. Some skip a day now and then. Do they do that with their stomach? Of course not. Belly comes before Bible. So I challenge them to read God's Word every day without fail. No Bible, no breakfast, no read, no feed. If you're a Christian and you realize that you're thinking because God gave you a brain, you're seeing because God gave you eyes, you're enjoying good food because he gave you taste buds, enjoying music because he gave you ears to hear with, and Harry's lavished his love upon you with a blue sky, friends and family, freedom of his country, all these things are gifts of God. Then you'll say, I owe him everything. I'm going to love him with heart, mind, soul and strength. And you will put your Bible before your belly. No Bible, no breakfast, no reed, no feed. And if you do that, you've got his promise. You'll be like a tree that's planted by rivers of water that brings forth fruit in its season, its leaf won't wither, and whatever you do will prosper. So that's a challenge I give to Christians who often say to me, yeah, I try and read God's Word every day. I say, oh, do you try and eat your food every day? No, you don't. You just eat it because you prioritize it. Well, do the same with the Word of God. Show God that you love him by reading his love letter, and it'll cause you to grow and become strong. Any child who skips food for days on end will become weak and sickly. And many professing Christians alike because they don't esteem God's word more than the necessary food is what Job said.

Jenna Ellis: M Absolutely. Amen. And this, this new book is called Compelled My Story. And you can pre order [email protected] that's 316publishing, and it's titled Compelled My Story.

Jenna Ellis asks Ray Comfort about his new book, Compelled

And ah, last question for you, Ray Comfort and I so appreciate it. I followed your ministry for years and I'm so grateful, for your bold witness and for, for proclaiming the truth of the gospel of Christ. And and so I want to ask you as well, if there's one kind of vignette out of this book that you, you maybe added that people would be unexpectedly, surprised to see is in here. what's maybe one story you could share from it?

Ray Comfort: Well, I was just remembering this morning when I first came over. I went to MacArthur Paak. I thought, I'll just preach the gospel. I felt led by God. Number of reasons I knew I should be at MacArthur Paak. It's a famous park. It was made famous through a 1960s song called MacArthur Paak. So I went there to preach, not knowing it's the most murderous portion of Los Angeles. Couldn't get a crowd, would stop and listen as I preached. So I got a board and I got a marker. And I began drawing faces on, just on board, little circular faces, eyes and mouth. And suddenly a guy comes walking up to me and says, what are you doing? I says, I'm drawing a crowd. And it seems to be working. And I still couldn't hold the people. They wouldn't listen. During those, days of frustration, a great big goose came up to me while I was preaching and began to peek at my shoe and undid my shoelace and then bit me on the leg if I, if a goose can bite. And I screamed and jumped off. And next day, while I was preaching, that same goose came waddling up to me. I jumped off because it was going to bite me. It jumped on my soapbox and wouldn't get off. So if you wonder where Legion went to from the scripture, it went into the goose at MacArthur Paak. Anyway, I finally decided I'd move over to the very dark area where the drug dealings were going on. And that's when I did what I usually do and illustrated, a, spiritual fact by giving away money, just a few dollar bills, to show that faith without works is dead. You can't believe the money is yours. You take it and put your trust in the person giving it to you. When I did that the crowd of drug addicts so rushed at me, the money got ripped in pieces. And a girl came behind me. Her name was Snow. And she says, do not do that. You will get murdered. Preach with your back to a tree. So from then on I preach with my back to a tree. So it's full of stories like that. Very interesting stories. I think one day when I'm dead, I, may make an interesting movie because it so glorifies God. And Harry led us to start a television program that ended up going to 190 countries for 20 years. And it all comes because of God's faithfulness. And that's what Compelled is about. Wow.

Jenna Ellis: Amazing. Well, thank you so much Ray Comfort, and thank you for your dedication, to the truth of the Gospel of Christ. And again, the book is compelled my story. you can also pre order this on Amazon as well and you can also go to 316 publishing calm. And you know, this is just one of those examples and stories and and part of the great cloud of witnesses that has come before all of us and that we can look to other humans that we also, we all face the same, fate, the same fears unless we grasp hold of the truth of the Gospel of Christ and allow the Lord to use us in way, beyond what we could do ourselves or beyond what we could possibly imagine for his kingdom and for eternity. And I hope that this will be an inspiration, to those who are listening and read this book that we can make an impact and a difference for Christ and that's what we're called to do as Christians. So the book compelled My story by Ray Comfort. Get it on Amazon, and also316publishing.com and as always, if you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest, you can always reach me and my team, Jenna fr. Share this podcast with all of your friends and tune in each and every weekday for our radio broadcast. Jenna Ellis in the morning from 8 to 9 eastern Monday through Friday. And I'll see you next week here on demand. M.