Ray Comfort
Clash Royale CLAN TAG#URR8PPP Ray Comfort | |
|---|---|
 Comfort open-air preaching, October 2015 | |
| Born | Ray Comfort[1] (1949-12-05) 5 December 1949 Christchurch, New Zealand |
| Occupation | Christian Evangelist, author, television host |
| Known for | The Way of the Master, Living Waters Publications, Christian Evangelism |
| Children | Rachel, Jacob, Daniel[2] |
| Website | www.livingwaters.com/team/ray-comfort/ |
Ray Comfort (born 5 December 1949) is a New Zealand Christian minister and evangelist who lives in the United States. Comfort started Living Waters Publications and The Way of the Master in Bellflower, California, and has written a number of books.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 The Way of the Master ministry
4 Debates
5 Publications
5.1 Tracts
5.2 Books
5.2.1 Abridged version of On the Origin of Species
5.2.2 List of notable books published
6 Film
6.1 Filmography
7 References
8 External links
Early life
According to Comfort's autobiography, his parents put "Methodist" on his birth certificate but he was given no religious instruction as a child.[2][3] Comfort identifies himself as both Christian and Jewish.[4][5]
Career
In 1989, Comfort accepted an invitation to join the pastoral staff at the non-denominational Calvary Chapel in Southern California.[6]
The Way of the Master ministry
An inedible wild banana, cut to expose its many seeds.
In the mid-1990s Comfort persuaded Kirk Cameron, star of the cancelled hit sitcom Growing Pains, to become an evangelist. In 2002, the pair formed an organization called The Way of the Master, with the intention of teaching the church to more effectively preach the message of evangelical Christianity.[7]
Comfort says that evangelism is the main reason the Christian Church exists and that many of the evangelistic methods used over the last century have produced false conversions to Christianity. Comfort often uses the Ten Commandments to speak about sin before presenting the gospel of Jesus. In the mid-1980s he formulated two sermons entitled "Hell's Best Kept Secret"[8] and "True and False Conversions."[9]
Comfort speaks professionally at churches and evangelism seminars, and preaches in Huntington Beach, California. As well as co-hosting the former The Way of the Master Radio with Kirk Cameron, he is co-host of The Way of the Master Television Show.
In 2006, Comfort recorded a segment for The Way of the Master's television show in which he argued that the banana was an "atheists' nightmare", arguing that it displayed many user-friendly features that were evidence of intelligent design.[10] Comfort retracted the video upon learning that the banana is a result of artificial selection by humans, and that the wild banana is small and unpalatable.[11]
Debates
Comfort, seated behind Kirk Cameron, at a debate on the existence of God at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan, 5 May 2007
On 13 April 2001, Comfort appeared at the 27th National Convention of American Atheists in Orlando, Florida, where he debated Ron Barrier, the National Spokesperson for American Atheists.[12] Comfort later stated that "they laughed at my humor, and although there was unified mockery at some of the things that I said, I was able to go through the Ten Commandments, the fact of Judgment Day, the reality of Hell, the Cross, and the necessity of repentance, and no one stopped me."[12]
On 5 May 2007, Comfort and Cameron participated in a televised debate with Brian Sapient and Kelly O'Connor of the Rational Response Squad, at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan. The debate focused on the existence of God, which Comfort claimed he could prove scientifically without relying on faith or the Bible. Nightline correspondent Martin Bashir moderated the event.[13] During the debate, Cameron and Comfort repeatedly referenced the Ten Commandments and denied the theory of evolution.[13]
In February 2009, Comfort challenged Richard Dawkins to a debate, offering to donate $10,000 to him.[14] Dawkins, who had previously stated a general policy not to debate with creationists,[14] said he would agree to do it if Comfort made a $100,000 donation to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science non-profit organization. Comfort raised his offer to $20,000, which according to PZ Myers was "not enough."[15]
Publications
Tracts
Gospel tracts produced by Ray Comfort's ministry, Living Waters
According to Comfort, he has designed dozens of gospel tracts since the 1970s, and sells millions of Living Waters tracts each year.[16] Some of his tracts are designed to resemble paper money, including fake $100, $1,000 and $1 million bills. Others employ novelties intended to amuse, such as a "ticket to heaven" that invites the reader to tear it if they do not need it; the ticket is printed on a polymer substrate, making it extremely durable.[17] The tracts typically attempt to persuade the reader that on judgment day, they will certainly be found guilty of breaking one or more of the Ten Commandments, and therefore will be sent to hell, unless they say a prayer to acknowledge Christ's substitutionary atonement.
In June 2006, agents of the US Secret Service confiscated thousands of Ray Comfort's "Million Dollar Bill" gospel tracts from Darrel Rundus, president of Great News Network. A federal district court judge ruled that the tracts, which were marked as "not legal tender", did not violate federal law and ordered their return.[18]
In October 2010, The New Zealand Herald reported that elderly people received "appointment cards" by Comfort's California-based publishing company, Living Waters, asking them to fill out information regarding the date and time of their deaths, and advising them to contact evangelists in order to avoid hell. Recipients of these cards expressed anger and horror over receiving them, and contacted police over the matter, with one of them commenting, "It's disgusting. It was quite spooky. I just couldn't comprehend why anyone would ask you to predict the date of your death." The New Zealand Herald summarized a statement from Living Waters spokesperson Lisa Law as saying that "the cards were a way of raising awareness of human mortality in order to spark discussion about Jesus", and that Law "did not know who sent [the tracts]".[19]
Books
Ray Comfort has authored more than 80 books and tracts.[20][21] His 2009 book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think, ranked #1 in Amazon.com's atheism and apologetics categories when it debuted in February 2009.[22][23][24]
Abridged version of On the Origin of Species
In November 2009, Comfort released an edited and abridged version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, with a 50-page foreword detailing creationist arguments against the theory of evolution.[25] The book was given away for free at selected schools around the United States.[26] Stan Guffey, a biologist at the University of Tennessee, alleged that most of Comfort's section on Darwin's life was plagiarised from his work.[27][28]
According to Comfort's website, "nothing has been removed from Darwin's original work",[29] but Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), noted that Comfort deleted four chapters by Darwin that described the evidence for evolution, adding that two of the omitted chapters, Chapters 11 and 12, showcased biogeography, some of Darwin's strongest evidence for evolution.[30] She wrote that Comfort's foreword is "a hopeless mess of long-ago-refuted creationist arguments, teeming with misinformation about the science of evolution, populated by legions of strawmen, and exhibiting what can be charitably described as muddled thinking".
On his website, Comfort said that the four chapters were chosen at random to be omitted in order to make the book small enough to be affordable as a giveaway, with the absent chapters available for download, and that the missing chapters were included in the second edition, which had a smaller text size that made printing the entire book as a giveaway affordable. The second edition still lacks Darwin's preface and glossary of terms.[31][32] The NCSE arranged a campaign at colleges across the US to distribute an analysis of the Comfort introduction, a one-page flier,[25] and "the NCSE Safety Bookmark" in the shape of a banana, a reference to Comfort's presentation of the banana as an argument for the existence of God.[33][34]
List of notable books published
— (1989). Hell's Best Kept Secret. Whitaker House. ISBN 978-0883682067..mw-parser-output cite.citationfont-style:inherit.mw-parser-output qquotes:"""""""'""'".mw-parser-output code.cs1-codecolor:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-free abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-registration abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-subscription abackground:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registrationcolor:#555.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration spanborder-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-errordisplay:none;font-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-errorfont-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-formatfont-size:95%.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-leftpadding-left:0.2em.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-rightpadding-right:0.2em
[35]
— (1993). God Doesn't Believe in Atheists (revised ed.). Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882709222.
[36]
—; Cameron, Kirk (2006). The Way of the Master. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882702209.
[37]
— (2008). Evolution: A Fairy Tale for Grownups. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 088270432X.
[38]
— (2008). World Religions in a Nutshell. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882706696.
[39]
Darwin, Charles (September 2009). Comfort, Ray, ed. The Origin of Species (150th Anniversary ed.). Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882709192.
[40]
— (2009). You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics. WND Books. ISBN 978-1935071068.
[22][36]
—; LaHaye, Tim (2012). Hitler, God, and the Bible. WND Books. ISBN 978-1936488247.
[41]
Film
Ray Comfort open-air preaching at a Great News Network evangelism boot camp in 2004
In 2011, Comfort wrote and produced a 33-minute documentary film called 180: Changing the Heart of a Nation. The film was criticized by The Huffington Post for its comparison of abortion to the Holocaust.[42]
Comfort's 2016 film The Atheist Delusion premiered at the Ark Encounter, a Christian theme park operated by the Christian apologetics and young Earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis on 22 October 2016.[43][44]
Filmography
The Secrets of Nostradamus Exposed (1995): Writer, producer
True Fiction (1999): Writer
The Way of the Master series (2003–14): Self – Host, writer, producer
180: Changing the Heart of a Nation (2011): Self, writer, producer
Genius (2012): Self, writer, director
Evolution vs. God: Shaking the Foundations of Faith (2013): Self, director
Noah and the Last Days (2014): Director, producer, writer, self, runner, sound
Audacity (2015): Writer, executive producer
The Atheist Delusion (2016): Executive producer[45]
Exit: The Appeal of Suicide (2017): Narrator, Writer, Executive producer[46]
References
^ Comfort, Ray (1986). In Search of New Jawbones. Living Waters Publications.
ISBN 0908751001,
ISBN 9780908751006. Google Books. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
^ ab "About Ray Comfort". RayComfortBooks.com. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
^ Comfort, Ray (2003). Out of the Comfort Zone: The Authorized Autobiography. Bridge-Logos Publishers. pp. 123, 202. ISBN 978-0-88270-943-7.
^ von Busek, Craig. "Ray Comfort: The Evidence Bible". Christian Broadcasting Network. Retrieved 5 August 2016.I cannot express to you how grateful I am that I am a Christian.
^ Comfort, Ray (1 September 2009). Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution. ISBN 978-1-935071-23-5.Jesus was Jewish. All the disciples were Jewish. The first eight thousand Christians were Jewish. I am Jewish. Christianity came from the home of the Jews.
^ Comfort, Ray (3 March 2011). "Atheists Question my Education". Bully Pulpit. Archived from the original on 14 November 2013.
^ Bashir, Martin (17 March 2006). "Kirk Cameron, From Sitcom Star to Evangelist". Nightline. p. 3. Retrieved 17 May 2007.
^ Comfort, Ray. Hell's Best Kept Secret. WVCY-TV 30. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
^ Comfort, Ray (3 Mar 2012). True & False Conversions. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
^ "Kirk Cameron and Bananas". Living Waters. 28 Apr 2006.
^ "'Behold, The Atheists' Nightmare!'". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2015-07-10.
^ ab Ireland, Michael (16 April 2001). "Atheists National Spokesman Debates Christian Author on Good Friday at National Convention". AssistNews.net. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
^ ab Bashir, Martin (7 May 2007). "The Nightline Face-Off". ABC News. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
^ ab Dawkins, Richard (14 May 2006). "Why I Won't Debate Creationists". RichardDawkins.net. Archived from the original on 13 August 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
^ Myers, PZ (24 Feb 2009). "Got $100,000?". Pharyngula. ScienceBlogs. Retrieved 2 Apr 2014.
^ Comfort, Ray (May 2004). Out of the Comfort Zone: The Authorized Autobiography. Bridge-Logos Publishers. p. 21. ISBN 0-88270-943-7.
^ "Ticket to Heaven". Living Waters Publications.
^ "Million Dollar Bill Gospel Tracts are Legal, Judge Rules". Christian Post. 2 April 2010. Retrieved 2014-04-24.
^ Carroll, Joanne (31 October 2010). "'Appointment with death' cards shocking for elderly". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
^ "Ray Comfort". Living Waters Publications. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
^ "Books by Ray Comfort". Amazon.com. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
^ ab Thompson, Dorothy (16 February 2009). "An Interview with Ray Comfort, Author of You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think". Blogcritics. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
^ "Book appeals to atheists, Christians alike". OneNewsNow. 18 February 2009. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
^ Phan, Katherine T. (14 February 2009). "Christian Evangelist's Book Ranked Bestselling 'Atheist' Item". The Christian Post. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
^ ab "The Don't Diss Darwin Institute". Analysis and synopsis. National Center for Science Education. 2009. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2009. via Archive.org
^ Gilgoff, Dan; Comfort, Ray (29 October 2009). "Exclusive: Ray Comfort Defends His Creationist Edition of 'On the Origin of Species'". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 31 October 2009.
^ Miller, Laura (23 November 2009). "Creationism vs. atheism: It's on!". Salon.com.
^ Hall, Rikki (2 December 2009). "[University of Tennessee] Professor Considers Legal Action Over Use of Charles Darwin Bio". Metro Pulse. Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group. Archived from the original on 27 July 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
^ "Origin Into Schools". Living Waters. 2009. Archived from the original on 9 November 2009. Retrieved 31 October 2009.
^ Scott, Eugenie (30 October 2009). "How Creationist 'Origin' Distorts Darwin". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 31 October 2009.
^ "Press Kit: Origin into Schools". Living Waters. 2009. Archived from the original on 3 June 2010. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
^ Darwin, Charles (September 2009). Comfort, Ray, ed. The Origin of Species (150th Anniversary ed.). Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882709192.
^ "Got Comfort? Get protection! | NCSE". 9 November 2009. Retrieved 20 November 2009.
^ Comfort, Ray (26 Apr 2006). Atheist Nightmare (Video). YouTube.
^ "Hell's Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort (Book Review)". South View Chapel. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ ab Lieberman, Tucker (2009). "God Doesn't Believe in Creationists: A Response to the Books of Ray Comfort". Positive Atheism Magazine. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ Speed, John (4 February 2008). "Review: "The Way of the Master" by Ray Comfort & Kirk Cameron". The Informed Evangelist. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ "Evolution is a Fairy Tale for Grownups, says Man Who Believes in Crocoduck". The Friendly Atheist. Patheos. 17 April 2008. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ "Book Review: "World Religions in a Nutshell: A Compact Guide to Reaching Those of Other Faiths"". The Godless Wolf. February 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ Kirshenbaum, Sheril (19 November 2009). "On Comfort's "Origin of Species"". Discover Magazine. Kalmbach Publishing. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ Keysor, Joseph (23 April 2012). "Hitler, God, and the Bible (Book Review)". Credo Magazine. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
^ "'180' Documentary Compares Abortion To Holocaust, Goes Viral Among Pro-Life Groups". The Huffington Post. 12 October 2011.The film, which shows a series of graphic images, is gaining attention not only because of its controversial comparison, but because it highlights 14 people who do not know who Adolf Hitler was
^ Malado, Jardine (22 September 2016). "Ray Comfort's 'The Atheist Delusion' movie to premiere at Ark Encounter in October". The Christian Times. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
^ Zaimov, Stoyan (27 October 2016). "Ken Ham Celebrates 400K Visitors to Ark Encounter, Says He's on Mission With Ray Comfort to Reach Unbelievers". The Christian Post. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
^ Zaimov, Stoyan (26 July 2016). "Evangelist Ray Comfort Tells Atheists 'Hell Is a Very Real Place' Ahead of 'Atheist Delusion' Release". ChristianPost.com. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
^ Law, Jeannie (20 July 2017). "Ray Comfort Releases New Faith-Based Film to Help People Combat Suicidal Thoughts". ChristianPost.com. Retrieved 17 September 2017.
External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ray Comfort. |
 | Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ray Comfort |
Official website
The Comfort Zone – Ray Comfort's blog
The Way of the Master – Website for his ministry with Kirk Cameron
Ray Comfort on IMDb
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