Ray Comfort in New Zealand

World renowned evangelist Ray Comfort visited his home country of New Zealand last week. The man who began his ministry by preaching daily in Cathedral Square, and debating with the Wizard now heads up one of the largest evangelical movements in the World. I admire Ray for his devotion to the Great Commission which Jesus gave his followers moments before he ascended back into Heaven. Ray's model for witnessing is also of great value, and I have used it myself many times. You can view a web-presentation of this model by taking the good test. Living Waters, Ray's ministry has also been responsible for publishing many well thought-out and professionally presented tracts. In particular, I have been* a fan of the Smart Card, the Million Dollar Bill, and the Christmas tracts. More recently however, Living Waters has been publishing tracts (like this Obama Million Dollar Bill for instance), which cause me to roll my eyes and wonder what on earth they are hoping to achieve.

I attended three events in Christchurch where Ray was speaking, and found them to be increasingly dissapointing and frustrating.

On Tuesday17 March, Ray "debated" with an atheist at the Ngaio Marsh theatre, University of Canterbury. I can't remember the fulla's name, but he was a post-graduate philosophy student. I say "debated", because that's precisely what it wasn't. The atheist opened the forum by presenting his views, outlining his understanding that it was absolutely impossible for a god to exist, and then proceeding to pre-empt arguments that he suspected Ray would make, and then proceeded to answer them himself. A bit below the belt I thought, but nonetheless; he aired some weighty arguments for his case. Ray spoke next - and instead of addressing the atheist's arguments, he lightly touched on one or two of his comments, but then proceeded to give a short version of his life story, a collection of apologetic arguments, as well as a presentation of the Gospel. During question and answer time at the end, Ray ignored two fair and well thought-out questions, by simply responding, "yes... next question?" One of these was, "If humans are sinful and unable to please God, how are they able to ask God to save them; to repent?" Ray could have addressed this doctrinal issue, but instead left the question hanging. I spoke to a student (A Bahai follower I think) later in the day, and he told me that he had been surprised to hear Ray mocking people who disagreed with him.

The following Thursday I dropped in on Student Life's weekly meeting, where they had invited Ray as a guest speaker. This talk wasn't quite so bad, considering that it was in a different context. However I was reminded of Ray's neglect to consider other approaches to presenting the gospel. The whole of the Living Waters ministry is really stuck in the rut of their single Gospel model.

Sunday evening, I attended the evening service at South City Church where Ray was speaking. To kick off the evening, Ray told us a joke which immediately marginalised anyone in the audience who was dyslexic, or who knew someone who was. "I've just figured out what the acronym D.N.A. stands for," said Ray. "The National Dyslexic Assocaition." What the heck. That's relevant isn't it.

To his credit, Ryan the atheist had made it along to each of these three events. So I cringed as Ray proceeded to crack yet another of his thoughtless jokes. He told us of the time that an atheist organisation had flown him to another city in the United States where he was scheduled to speak at their conference; and had put him up at a hotel for the night. "When I got into the room," he said, "there was a big plate full of fresh fruit. I had someone else taste it first to see if they had poisoned it." What would Ryan - or any other atheist in the room think when they heard that... am I supposed to take these Christians seriously?

As with the last two speaking arrangements, Ray spent a large section of the time sharing his life story with us. In a manner that I can only say is foreign to Kiwis, but much more common with Americans, he excitedly told us of how many million tracts he had sold, how many atheist conferences he had spoken at, how his book had shot to number one in the Atheist section on Amazon.com, etc. I am delighted to hear of Ray's success in his ministry, however it comes across wrong, having him tell us this from the stage.

Ray gave us a good number of ideas for what Christians can say when sharing the Gospel. However as a friend of mine said, "Ray seems to think that if you follow his pattern of logic, you will become a Christian. He seems to skip over God's salvation of people, and simply thinks that we should laugh at people who are atheists or otherwise."

Thankfully, there are many more positive aspects to Ray and his ministry than negative ones. I agreed with, and appreciated much of the content of Ray's talks. He has a good knowledge of apologetics, the Bible, atheism and evolutionism. This post has not been an attempt at running him down, but rather summarising the opinions of myself and others - of Ray's talks while he was here in New Zealand.

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*I have been a fan of the Living Waters tracts. I have a 100 pack of Smart Cards sitting here on my desk; they've been there for a few years now. I don't know what to do with them. The Gospel message on the back is sound, apart from the explanation of what Jesus' death on the cross means to us. Here is the relevant excerpt:

"Jesus Christ suffered and died on the Cross, so you could go free. That's how much God loves you. We broke God's Law, but Jesus paid our fine."

If this summary is correct, then in fact every person in history is going to Heaven. In actual fact, Jesus died on the cross, paying for the sins of only those who would put their trust in Him. I agree that God loves everyone in the World; but not in a saving way as the tract implies. We've all broken God's law, however Jesus only paid the fine for those who would put their trust in Him. If Jesus in fact died for people who would never put their trust in Him, then God's plan is thwarted, and he is therefore not sovereign: that is impossible. I can't give out tracts that tell people that they're going to Heaven no matter what they do.