Discover Why Jesus Is Essential Today! - Ray Comfort

0:00 And I find it really annoying. I don't like evangelism. And every day when I go out to preach the gospel or go to witness, I'm going somewhere I don't want to go to say something I don't want to say to people who don't want to hear it. Ray Comfort, it's great to have you on Charisma to be able to talk about what God is doing around the world in specifically evangelism and your new book, Why Jesus, is what we're going to be talking about. And that's so important that Christians share their faith, share the faith in the Messiah Jesus. And so tell me about why Jesus and why this is such an important book for today. You use the word that we don't use, the word evangelism. If you want to cause any YouTube video to flop or have an outreach, you use the word evangelism because most Christians are so excited about evangelism as they would be with a root canal. And I understand how they feel.

0:57 I know I'm not excited about door knocking. When I was a brand new Christian, I went door knocking and I had the door open in front of me and a woman was standing there. And I just in a sincere voice said, I'm not a Jehovah's Witness. And she said, well, I am. So I have like a nervousness when it comes to knocking on doors. And if someone said to me today, we're going to talk about knocking on strangers doors, I'd freak out. And that's how people feel about evangelism. But we've got to do it. Charles Spurgeon called it an irksome task. It's really annoying. And I find it really annoying. I don't like evangelism. And every day when I go out to preach the gospel or go to witness, I'm going somewhere I don't want to go to say something I don't want to say to people who don't want to hear it. But there are certain keys that bring Goliath down to Zacchaeus that will bring the mountain down to a molehill. So the fear doesn't torment us. And that's why the book was published. Yeah. So I find that very interesting because you are known as somebody that is preaching the gospel out on the streets every day, all day. And that's what you're best known for, I believe.

2:00 And, you know, going over the asking people if they've been if they've ever lied or stolen or cheated and, you know, by their own admission, they are a thief, an adulterer, you know, all these different things. And so you're really you do a really good job of pointing out our need for a savior. But you just said something that I think is eye opening. And you said you don't feel like doing it. Never do. If you don't feel like doing it, how do you get up in the morning to do that? Well, it's the same way a firefighter who arrives at a fire and he sees on the fifth story, it's in flames as a woman screaming out for help. Got two kids clinging to her. She's going to be burned to death within five minutes. He's not excited about climbing a 60 foot ladder with smoke and sirens and a screaming woman and screaming children. He'd be probably be terrified. He'd rather be at home with his wife, watching an old black and white movie, having a cup of coffee. But he's a firefighter. So what he does is he ignores his fears and thinks about the fate of that woman and her children. And that's what motivates him. That's what motivates me. You know, when I became a Christian, I stopped saying not your will, but mine be done and swung it around and said not my will, but yours be done. That's what a Christian is. Someone who's had a Gethsemane experience. So the Bible actually likens Christians to firefighters in the book of Jude. I think it's 23, 24.

3:24 It says others making a difference, having compassion, pulling them from the fire. And the key is that word or those words, having compassion. Charles Spurgeon said, have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you're not saved yourself. Be sure of that. Was he saying you have to evangelize to be saved? No, no. He was saying if you've got love in your heart, if you're a Christian, if the love of Christ is within you, you will weep at the thought of the ungodly being swallowed by death and ending up in hell. And so it's love that gets me out of bed and seeking and saving that which is lost. I don't spend all day evangelizing. I go out twice a day to a local college. I've got a bike with a platform on the bike and I take my dog and the dog wears sunglasses. I ride straight into a college. College students come up and say, I love your dog. How does he wear sunglasses? How does she wear sunglasses? How do they stay on? Do you have a dog? Would you like to be on YouTube? 273 million views. I'll ask if you think there's life after death. And I get these interviews and we put them on YouTube and it gets the gospel out there. So I am very fortunate to have that platform that motivates me to reach out to the lost. But we should all do it. Not exactly what I do, but we should, when we go to the supermarket, take some gospel tracks and just leave them with the attendant and say, you might like to read this when you've got a minute. That's all you have to say and say, have a great day. And then you just pray that that person will read the words of everlasting life. So every Christian has this moral obligation. We're like doctors with a cure to cancer. You know, there's a crime that we commit when we don't save someone from drowning. If

4:58 someone's drowning and you let them drown, you just walk away when there's a rope right by your feet. You're guilty of what the law calls depraved indifference. Depraved, as low as you can get, and difference couldn't care less. And it seems that much of the church is guilty of the crime of depraved indifference. We're saying, world go to hell. I don't care. Well, I care and I want Christians to care. I love the words of D.L. Moody. He said, I'd rather set a thousand to work than do the work of a thousand. And so our task as a ministry, Living Waters, is to equip Christians, to show them how they can deal with their fears. We all have fears. I have fears. Every time I go to get on my bike, I've got these negative thoughts coming to me. I just ignore them like that firefighter. So I'm just going to go and do this because that's what I should do. Yeah. You know, Ray, one of the things that I know a lot of people don't share their faith with is because of the fear of not having the answers or getting stumped. You've been doing this for a long time. So I know that you have some great strategies to help people to get unstumped. But could you tell us about a time where you were stumped and then how you responded to that? Yeah, I remember I was open air preaching at Huntington Beach and a gentleman went past and with a cry in his voice of just absolute agony, he said, where was God when my wife died of cancer? And he just walked off. And I wanted to grab that guy and say, let's have lunch. Let's talk about this because all around us there is suffering, but suffering isn't an excuse to reject God. In fact, it's a very real reason

6:34 to accept the Bible and God because suffering substantiates the truth of scripture. You know, if some, sometimes I meet people, say I'm an atheist because there's all this suffering. If there was a God, there'd be no suffering. There wouldn't be earthquakes and floods and diseases and cancer and pain and all these things. And I say, well, let me just share something with you. If you purchased a brand new Toyota and you're raving about how wonderfully it was made, and then you go through an intersection and you hit some pedestrians and all around you, people are lying in agony and suffering. You don't say, look at the suffering. Therefore, no one made the Toyota. That's a leap that doesn't make sense. It doesn't, it's just not coherent.

7:14 No, you don't say nobody made the Toyota because of the suffering. You say, oh, something went terribly wrong. The brakes failed or something like that. And when we look around us, we see the genius of God's creative hand. It's no such thing as an atheist. The heavens declare the glory of God. We see those big puffy clouds, the blue sky, the rising of the sun, the setting of the sun, the stars, the moon, all these things speak to us of the glory of God. The flowers and birds and trees and sun, moon, stars, puppies, kittens, hummingbirds, the marvels of the human eye, the miracle of childbirth, male and female and all these species. We see the genius of God's creative hand. Everything is fearfully and wonderfully made. So we acknowledge that.

7:56 Everybody does. Even an atheist knows this. He denies it because he's sleeping with his girlfriend and watching pornography. He doesn't like the thought of God's moral accountability. So he denies God's existence like an ostrich or this head in the sand. But when things go wrong, it's a leap of an illogical leap to say, well, look at all the suffering. Therefore, no one made everything. No, we should just say, oh, something went terribly wrong. And what went wrong is sin. We have disease, pain, suffering and death because of sin. In Genesis, God created everything and it was perfect. It was good. No pain, suffering, disease or death. But with sin, with evil came all these tragedies. So every time you see an earthquake or a tornado or a flood or people dying of cancer, in fact, every day 150,000 people die. All these are evidences. The Bible is true that we live in what's called a fallen creation. And yet God and His great kindness has provided us a hope of the future. He's provided us hope and death through the gospel. And that's what we proclaim. Amen. So even if people were stumped, there is still, you have the explanation of that's not part of God's design. Like, yeah, but you don't even need to get stumped. I'll tell you why. And this is what helps me. I am, when I go evangelizing, putting into practice two very important biblical principles. One is that I address the sinner's will to live. Everybody has a will to live. God has written eternity upon their heart. And even an atheist will lift up his eyes when I say something like this. So you're an atheist. Okay. I'm going

9:30 to say you're an atheist. Okay. You ever read the Bible? And he says, yeah, a little bit. I said, do you know that in the Old Testament, God promised He would destroy death? And in the New Testament, we're told how He did it. Do you know that? And he'll go, no. Is he interested? Of course, he's interested, even though he's an atheist. Something in him says, oh, I don't want to die. That's His God-given will to live. And so I said, let me share with you why the Bible says we die. It says the wages of sin is death. God is paying you in death for your sins. Like a judge who looks at a criminal who's committed multiple murders, but he keeps saying, I'm a good person, judge. The judge says, I'm going to show you how serious your crime is. I'm giving you the death sentence.

10:14 This is your wages. This is what you've earned. And I say to this atheist, sin is so serious to a holy God, He's given you the death sentence. You're on death row and your death will be evidence to you that God is deadly serious about sin. So I'm addressing His will to live. And often when I begin an interview for a YouTube channel, I'll begin like this. You're afraid of dying. And the person will often say, yeah, a little bit. I say, what do you mean a little bit? It's massive. It's a horror beyond words. Someone's going to take you, put you in a box and bury you six feet under the ground. It's horrific. So you know, the Bible says we're all haunted by the fear of death all our lifetime. Book of Hebrews chapter two. I said, it's a haunting feeling, isn't it? They go, yeah, it is. And I know what they're thinking. They're thinking, well, how does this guy know?

11:00 I haven't told my mom, I haven't told my boyfriend, my girlfriend, but I'm terrified of dying. I think about it all the time. It really does haunt me. And so I say, let me share the gospel with you. Let me tell you why we die, because we've sinned. Go through the commandments and say you've sinned, you've earned your wages. And here's the gospel. Jesus Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to life through the gospel. We broke God's law. Jesus paid the fine. Now God can legally dismiss our case. He can grant us everlasting life as a free gift and I share the gospel. So that's the first string to my bow. The sinner's will to live. God's placed eternity upon his heart. And I tap into that. I'm not getting into apologetics. I'm getting into his will to live.

11:43 And secondly, I address his conscience. Every single sane human being has a God given conscience. It's like a judge on the courtroom of the mind that agrees with the commandments. In fact, the Bible says it. Hebrews 2 verse 15 says, which show the work of the law, that is the moral law, the 10 commandments written upon their hearts, the conscience bearing witness, the conscience, the word conscience means with knowledge. So when I get to the commandments, what I do is I go through them knowing that on the inside there is this little judge on the courtroom of the mind saying, yes, that's true. It's wrong to lie, wrong to steal, wrong to commit adultery. And so I do what Jesus did and address that conscience. And I do it by saying, do you think you're a good person?

12:29 And I go through the commandments. That will to live is so powerful and it's such an untapped untapped weapon that we can draw upon. Think of a waitress in her restaurant looks up, she says, three men come in and they're, they're obviously wheeling and dealing a lot of money. They're wearing three piece suits. There's little cases on the table. Does she feel intimidated? She doesn't want to butt in because they're talking big business. No, she's walks up and says, can I take your order? Why is she so bold? Well, she has what they want. She knows that they want food. And so she's bold in that knowledge that they want food. And you and I have what the world wants more than anything. Right at this free moment, there are literally, and I don't think I'm exaggerating, millions of people in these torture chambers called gyms, sweating their hearts out, lifting weights that are too heavy for them or drinking green slime because they want to extend their lives just a little. We have everlasting life. We're not religious. God forbid that anyone call me religious. I'd rather be called stumpy than religious. We have found the source of everlasting life. And in Christ, we have life. And if they only knew what we had in Christ, this is what Jesus said to the woman at the well. He said, if you knew who it was that was speaking to you, you would ask of him and he would give you living water. And so like that waitress, you and I have to be bold with the knowledge that we have what this world wants. Amen. You know,

14:01 Ray, a lot of the questions that we have in this life, Jesus is the answer, but there's questions that people have that the rise of artificial intelligence, you know, since the last time you and I talked, artificial intelligence has become more and more an issue. And we have, people are questioning about the end times with this and how does this connect to the future? What is our response and how is Jesus the answer? Well, while the world might have their hearts fail for fear of that which is coming upon the earth, it doesn't really worry me. I'm not really concerned about all these different things. I love artificial intelligence. I use chat GBT if I'm going to prepare something. I thought, well, where do I go with this? I don't take it word for word. I just say, give me 10 points on the woman at the well. What can I learn from it? Within seconds and it sparks thoughts in me that I'm not had before. And so I actually love it. I'm not concerned about it taking over the world. God's in control. And Jesus said, when you see these things coming to pass, lift up your heads, rejoice because the end is near. And so we need not be like the world and be fearful of that which is coming upon the earth. And a lot of things to make us fearful. There's a huge increase in cancer which terrifies the world and terrifies even us as Christians.

15:24 There is Middle East wars going on that have the potential for nuclear war. There's inflation that's eating away at the paycheck. All these terrible things. We should use them to drive us to our knees and to get closer to God because there are storms. And Jesus warned that the Christian and the non-Christian will both have storms. The wise men build his house on rock. That's the teachings of Jesus. And the foolish man ignored the teachings of Jesus. And he was likened to a man who built his house on sand. So when those storms come to the Christian, we can still rejoice. We have got a podcast and tomorrow I'll be interviewing a lady who got a kidney stone. And she went into hospital, septus said it and they removed her hands and her feet. And she's got little kids and a loving husband. And she's coming in and I met her a while ago. Another lady in Texas had the same, exactly the same thing happen. Both those women are rejoicing that God is in control.

16:21 I've got a friend who's going through terrible suffering but there's always Romans 8 28 for the Christian. All things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to his purposes. So I love the words of Spurgeon when it comes to trials. He said, faith may swim where reason may only paddle. No matter what comes to us, we trust God. And that trust is our salvation. We say, Lord, I've got you by the hand. You've got me by the hand. You're going to take me through this dark period of time. Wow. So we don't need to fear the future. We don't need to fear technology. We know that God is with us in all things. And you mentioned cancer is on the rise and a very prominent person just came out with a cancer diagnosis and that would be King Charles.

17:10 Whenever you and I had talked before, you were getting ready to have this amazing outreach to London, to the United Kingdom with these incredible tracks that look like the new notes that, or the bank notes that King Charles was on. But it had the plan of salvation on that. How did that go? And tell us a little bit about King Charles as well. Because before you told us that some people were considering him the Antichrist. What are we looking at now? Yeah. Boy, I really have no idea about prophecy. Whatever unfolds, I just say, thank you, Lord. But it's just all over the place. For the last 50 years, all these different names of who the Antichrist might be, I have no clue whatsoever. But I do see a lot of signs that are happening to tell us we're living, definitely in the last days, especially with Israel and what's happening.

18:07 In fact, I've just written a book called Volatile, in which we see where God, through Ezekiel, named the nations that will attack Israel in the last days. Very exciting, because only God knows the future. We can't even tell what's going to happen with the weather tomorrow. It's just an estimated guess. Someone says they know the future, just move to Vegas and you'll make billions by just saying the dice is going to be a seven. We just haven't got a clue. And it shows us only God knows the future and he's given us the future in his word. So it's substantiated as being his word and the promise of everlasting life is therefore credible. So Charles has got cancer. I've just made a video and it's for our channel. I'm not even sure. It's called Just Witnessing YouTube.

18:47 And the name of the video is, I hated doing this video and you're going to hate it too. I don't know if that'll stir people up to watch it, but it's about cancer and how it's on the increase, especially for young people. It's terrifying because there seems to be no real answer. They can't seem to hold back this terrible thing. However, Charles has got cancer and has made people think about it. So there's a good coming out of it then. With the outreach we did, let me tell you about my friend Mark Spence who's on our podcast. Very intelligent guy, loves the Lord with a passion. When I told him about the outreach to London for the King's coronation, he was in an office with me and he poo-hired it, walked out and said, it's just not going to work.

19:30 And he went on the outreach and in the podcast, and this was so moving, he actually broke down in tears and said, I was wrong. He says, I've never ever experienced anything like happened in London. He said, I'm going to keep talking about it till the day I got to be with the Lord. And he said it with tears rolling down his cheeks. And that's because I read in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth was coronated, she promised before God and before the world to uphold the biblical truth of salvation by grace through faith without works. That's what she said, the Protestant affirmation that eternal life comes through trusting alone in Jesus without works, by grace through faith and that not of yourselves. And I thought, Charles is going to do this in front of the whole world. And so we printed these tracks with Charles on it and we had, I think, 16 million printed and we had them printed in Australia and in Europe and in the US. And in one day, 22,000 people gave out those 16 million tracks. And it was just wonderful. And Mark was saying, and so our whole team was saying in London, people were running around saying, wow, can I have more? They looked on them as valuable memorabilia with a perceived value because of what it was. So we're doing the same thing with the Olympics. With Charles, there was this contention from some Christians that Charles is the Antichrist and you shouldn't have his picture on the front here. And they were really offended by

21:03 it. That's not going to happen with the Olympics. Everybody loves the Olympics. In fact, three billion people tune into the Olympics. That's 3000 million. So for our first print, we're getting 12 million printed and we've got the million euro, the Olympic million euro being printed in Europe. And in Britain, we've got one pound. Then we've got in Australia, we've got a dollar, Australian dollar, Olympics dollar, and the United States also. And these are completely free. You just pay for the shipping and people that want them, we want people to take advantage of this whole Olympics thing by giving out these tracks around the time of the Olympics when they'll be seen as memorabilia and they can get them free of charge. You'll get information about it by going to livingwaters.com forward slash Paris, livingwaters.com forward slash Paris. And you'll see the tracks there and you'll see how you can get them. Very cool. So are you going to be able to go there this time? Nope. No. And it's because I'm in my seventies, my wife's in my seventies. I don't want to leave her for a week with a crazy dog. I've spoken in a thousand churches and for years I have left her behind and I really at this stage of our life just don't want to leave her.

22:21 And there's a huge team going and I'll have a video there to encourage people that they'll show in the meeting that they're having, the other convention. So I would love to go, but I've got other priorities. Amen. Those are good priorities and you definitely need to keep those straight there too. But you've got a great group of people that are working with you. You've got a wonderful team that does your videos and helps you get the gospel out there in ways on the streets, but in the modern day marketplace of YouTube and all these other venues where things are getting out there and sharing the gospel. Ray, how can we be praying for you and Living Waters?

23:02 Yeah, just pray that God continues to bless the YouTube channel. I think back to the Crusades that they used to have, combined church crusades, say 50 years ago, they would take two years to pull together because getting churches to combine was like herding cats. They cost millions of dollars. You get 60,000 people in the stadium, most of whom were churchgoers or Christians. But today with a poke of a button, we can reach literally millions. Our YouTube channel, we've got two channels, Just Witnessing is just on 20 million views and Living Waters YouTube, 273 million views. So it's just a matter of pushing a button after we create a video and seeing it watched around the whole world. In fact, we've even got a new channel called Living Waters Hindi channel. It's in Hindi and it's not going anywhere because we don't know how to contact people in India. So if anyone's got any contacts in India, contact our ministry because this is great potential to reach that huge market. Ray Comfort, thank you so much for sharing about why Jesus is the answer to life's most important questions. And thank you for putting this book together. Thank you for taking the time to share about that and other things during this conversation. God bless you. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.