Ray Comfort Interview for Captivated Documentary — Ray Comfort

Okay, the name is Ray Comfort. I'm from New Zealand. You can pick a slight New Zealand accent. I was born twice in New Zealand. I was invited to base our ministry in Southern California back in 1989. I've been here for over two decades.

We love it. We think we'll stay in America. Love California. It's good to be able to see what you're breathing, and it's great in the morning to wake up and hear the birds coughing. While they're not obeying what Scripture says, it says what's everything's good and holy, etc.

Media Consumption and the Christian Mind

It gives a whole list. Think on these things. There's a reason for that, because while you take in, you bring out. They don't spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl appetizements for nothing. They know if they've got 30 seconds of your time, a little bit of good musics and good visuals, it's going to go in.

You know, if you found yourself on the moon, and you're walking around incredibly lonely, and you look down, you see a Coke can. You'd say, oh, America. And that's because Coke has done their job. They make you feel secure with the product.

And appetizers know they can sway the hearts with music. They can sway the hearts with the visuals. And so when you take in violent stuff within to your heart, you're going to reap what you've sown. You're going to affect your spirit and your soul.

Something happens when you do that. So if you're a Christian, take in that which is good and just, and things that please God, if He's your Lord. There's also the the words of Jesus in Matthew 7, 21, when He said many on the day of judgment shall say, Lord, Lord.

And He'll say, depart from me, you worker of iniquity. I never knew you. If you're a Christian, Jesus is your Lord, and everything you do, you should do with a smile of God in mind. And if you're doing anything that makes God frown, then you could be part of that great multitude that called Jesus Lord and didn't do what He said.

Hollywood, Film Standards, and Christian Compromise

Yeah, the Hayes Code was brought in, I think, around the 1930s. Before then, when the medium of film came into being, it was like the world clapped their hands because they could feed their hearts on that which is sinful.

What the Hayes Code said is there a certain standard you've got to keep. There's no blasphemy, no violence, and it just put a halt on everything. It was because of the fact that Hollywood had some terrible murders and adultery and things that were greatly publicized, and some people realized how the film industry could be used for good or it could be used for bad, and they could see it was heading for a bad way.

So all movies had to go through the Hayes Code, and that stayed till about the early 1950s, where it changed to a rating system, and that let all hell loose, where they said, well, it's up to parents to pick what movies you want to go and see.

And consequently, we have what we have today. We have a syrup flowing through the film medium. Hollywood is a great industry for good or for bad, and it's being used for bad, and there's a reason for it, I believe.

People in the film industry are a certain type of people, usually good-looking, confident, want to be in front of a camera, love the praise of men. They're usually proud people, and they let you know it.

They let you know they're talented. They're not the sort of people that gravitate to the humility of Christianity. So consequently, we have a nucleus of people in Hollywood who are anti-God in their life's philosophy, and it's reflected in the film industry.

You know, genuine Hollywood actors that love the Lord Jesus Christ are about as rare as hen's teeth. If an actor truly is a believer in Jesus Christ, not just acknowledging God with his lips, then his lifestyle will accompany what he professes to believe, and he won't jump in bed with a woman.

He won't kiss another woman on screen. How could you do that? I love what my ministry partner, Kirk Cameron, did in Fireproof. He flew in his wife to kiss her at the end. So that woman you see him kissing in the end wasn't that woman on screen, his on-screen wife.

It was his real wife, because he wouldn't kiss another woman on screen. I remember once he called me, and he said, this was years ago, he said a certain channel has asked if I would go on a movie, and great movie.

I love the script, but he said they want me to kiss a woman at the end. I said, how much are they offering you? He says a hundred grand, and I said get some plastic lips. I was just kidding. I said get a, both ride together on a white horse off into the sunset, but he turned it down because he wouldn't compromise, and we should be exactly the same.

God's not impressed with a hundred thousand dollars, or ten million dollars, or a dollar. Don't compromise your Christian walk, because we're talking about eternity, and there's nothing more serious than when we'll spend eternity.

Yeah, we can't complain about Hollywood with one hand, and pay them money to do what we abhor. With the other, I like to ask Christians, do you go to R-rated movies, and they'll say, yeah, I do. I know I shouldn't, but I do.

So, do you go to movies with blasphemy in them, and they'll say, yeah, I know, you know, it's sort of wrong. So, do you think it's good or bad? No, I don't like it at all. So, do you stay and watch the movie?

Do you pay to go in the movie? I say, yeah, I do. I shouldn't do it. So, would you go to a movie that used your mother's name as a cuss word, and they say, no, I wouldn't. So, shouldn't you stop going to movies, and paying Hollywood to use the name of Jesus Christ to express disgust?

The way to speak to Hollywood is to speak to them through the box office. Withhold their money, and there are millions and millions of Christians that go to R-rated movies. This shouldn't be, and it comes back to a lack of fear of God.

You know, is he our Lord, or isn't he? Are we living in holiness, or aren't we? Holiness means separation from sin, and from this world. Nothing epitomizes this world as Hollywood. So, why should we go to movies that epitomize the world?

Bible says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord, and I think we need to go through the whole of the body of Christ, and get each person to examine themselves, and see if they're in the faith, because there are certain things that should accompany salvation.

And if we don't have the things that accompany salvation, how do we know we're saved? Most Christians don't even know that there's such a thing as false conversion. Jesus spoke often that the false convert, the stony ground hearer, the thorny ground hearer, the wayside hearer, people that receive the word with joy, and sit amongst God's people as tears among the weak, foolish virgins among the wise, bad fish among the good, goats among the sheep, and Jesus said they're going to be sorted out on Judgment Day.

And a lot of people are going to get the shocks of their death when they stand before God after they die, and find themselves at the very gates of heaven, and then find themselves thrust into hell itself.

What a fearful thing to fall out of the hands of the living God, if we can say such a thing. To actually get to the gates of heaven, and end up in hell. But if you read Pilgrim's Progress, that's what happened in Pilgrim's Progress.

Someone made it to the very gates of heaven, and ended up in hell. And that's based on Holy Scripture. It's based on the words of Jesus, Matthew 7. So, we really need to look at ourselves closely as the church in America, in these days, and say, what have we done?

The Fear of the Lord and the Danger of Idolatry

We've got rid of the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord from which men depart from sin, and we need to reinstate it, the pulpits and then within the pews. Yeah, there's a godlessness that comes in the guise of a form of God.

America has a form, there's no nation like America. When we came from New Zealand to America, we couldn't believe how on television people would say during, after a hurricane, God protected us, and the secular media would actually publicize that people said that.

They didn't censor it like Australia, New Zealand, England. They wouldn't let people come on and say, you know, God protected us, and let people testify to Jesus Christ and God. America has this form of godliness, and it really is rooted in idolatry.

God is seen as a divine butler. He's not seen as the God that's revealed in Holy Scripture, the God that's to be feared. When you talk about the fear of God, where the average person who goes to church or believes in God, they'll say, I don't want to fear God.

He's your friend. He's your buddy. But there is a philosophy that's within America that slides along. I think Oprah's got a certain philosophy. Her belief in God is a God of love, a God of mercy, but it's not the God that is preached in Scripture, and that's called idolatry.

It's a transgression of the first and the second of the Ten Commandments, and humanity gravitates toward idolatry. We love it. Someone once said, Most I fear God, next I fear him who fears him not. Hitler had a belief in God, but his was rooted in idolatry.

He created a God in his own image, a God that let him live any way he wanted to do, any way he wanted to. And that's why idolatry is so attractive to human nature. A God that we make in our own image doesn't have moral dictates, and that's the philosophy of this world.

It's not really atheism. Atheists are very vocal, but they're only a tiny percentage in society. It's agnostics. People who have a belief in God, or don't know if God exists, or people have got a church, but they're not converted, that has this philosophy that's rooted in the world system.

Yes, I was in idolatry before I was a Christian. I didn't make a God with my hands, I made a God with my mind. And that when the Bible says stay clear of idols, it doesn't just mean idols that you make out of wood and stone.

You can make an idol of God in your mind. And you can see this, you can hear the language in my idolatry. They say things like, My God is, and that's how they begin, my God. It's a small g. They don't realize it, but it's a God of their own creation.

They shape a God they feel comfortable with, a God they can snuggle up to, and a God that doesn't have moral dictates. And that's why idolatry is such a scary thing. And that's why pastors and preachers have to preach the Ten Commandments from the pulpits.

They have to thunder Sinai, and let the flashes of lightning put the fear of God into people, because that's what the commandments do. They destroy idolatry. They smash the idols into a thousand pieces.

Remember Moses when he came down from the mountain, threw the commandments at the feet of Israel. Moses was first to break the commandments. And what that did was put the fear of God into Israel. The ground opened up and swallowed the idolaters and people that had danced around that golden calf.

And Wall Street is a golden calf. I mean, you either serve God or you serve money. And that's why the Ten Commandments are so effective in preaching. They're not a standard for us to live by. They're a reflection of the righteousness of God.

The Law as a Mirror That Leads to Christ

When you and I get up in the morning, what the first thing we do is go to the mirror. Why do we do that? We want to see what damage has been done during the night. And when we see an outstanding hairstyle, pale face, and puffy eyes, we go, Whoa, I better clean up before I go public.

And that's the function of God's law. It's like a mirror. When we look into the perfect law of liberty, we should see that we're all as an unclean thing. And once we see ourselves in truth, we go from the mirror of the Lord to the water of the blood of Christ to wash.

The law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified through faith in his blood. So that's what we should do as Christians. Hold up that law to get rid of idolatry from the land so people will smash their idols.

Hold up that law so they see that lust is the same as adultery in God's eyes. Hatred is the same as murder. That liars and thieves will end up in hell. And they'll rush to the cross where they can find shelter through the grace and mercy of God.

Okay, people that play video games where they lie or steal or rape or murder or commit adultery are playing on very, very scary territory. Because the Bible says if you as much as lust, you commit adultery in God's eyes.

If you look at a woman and desire her sexually, God says you have committed adultery. Surely as David desired Bathsheba and committed adultery, we commit adultery just with desire. We might say, well, that's too hard.

Well, the Bible says God which requires truth in the inward parts. The law is spiritual. God sees the thought life. But we also have in civil law similar ordinances. If you conspire within your mind to assassinate the President of the United States and they find out about it, you're just conspiring.

You could go away for life in prison. If you write down, I will kill him at such-and-such, and you write down what you're thinking, you are transgressing criminal law just by conspiring. And it's the same with God's law.

So if you're playing games that displease God, you're doing things that give you pleasure, you're playing on very scary territory. You're walking around on a landmine. And I would even ask you to examine yourself and say, am I truly a Christian if I'm doing things that aren't pleasing to God?

Read Philippians chapter 4 for the things that you should be doing. I think it's Philippians 4, 15 or 13 or somewhere around there. But just read Philippians chapter 4 and you'll find out what God requires of you, the sort of things you should be desiring as a Christian.

Using Media to Proclaim the Gospel

Well, Christians need to use the media for the gospel. There was a time when we could get away with just being restricted to certain things like, we publish gospel tracts. We publish, we've published over a hundred million gospel tracts.

Gospel tracts are great, but there's another medium that's coming up, social media, that we need to take advantage of. We need to use emails to reach people with the gospel. You need to use Facebook and all the other things that are out there.

I've got a blog called Atheist Central and it's not uncommon for me to get a thousand comments on anything I put up there. When I started it three or four years ago, I did it for Christians. It was originally called Comfort Food, but so many atheists flocked to it.

It's like I created this little campfire and suddenly mosquitoes came to sting me and I swatted them, tried to get rid of them, but I couldn't and they stayed. It's been four years. We're hundreds of atheists each day who wait for me to put something up there and that's, it's like I've got an atheist church.

But it's an example of the social media and how we can use it to reach the lost. So as Christians, we need to use these things like Facebook and email and YouTube. Our YouTube videos have got over eight million hits.

I checked a couple of years ago. Eight million people have viewed our videos on YouTube. So these are wonderful means that Christians need to use for the message of everlasting life. Many years ago, Janis Joplin sung, Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, but the Bible speaks of a freedom that's kind of an oxymoron.

It's something that makes no sense at first. It says, Jesus said, if you truly are my disciples, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. In other words, discipline produces freedom. You say, how could that be?

Well, I read of a story of a little train. This is many years ago. I read it to my kids. This little train would come down a hill and see little ponies and lambs in a field and it thought, I don't like being on these tracks.

I'd love to be free like those lambs and ponies. And one day, it came down this hill and it jumped the tracks to find freedom. All it got was absolute disaster because a train was not designed to find freedom leaping around in a field like a pony or a lamb, but it finds freedom of expression within the confines of those tracks.

That was why it was created. And you and I were created to find freedom in a disciplined relationship with a God that gave us life. And that's why when you discipline yourself to the words of Jesus, you'll find complete freedom from the power of sin, from the power of the grave.

You'll find freedom that this world doesn't offer because it's a freedom that comes from God. When you're a Christian, you're disciplined to feed on God's Word daily. And I've for many years asked Christians, do you read the Bible daily without fail?

And they usually say, almost. So you missed the question. Do you read the Bible daily without fail? I say, not every day. I just read every maybe second day. So you go 180 days a year without reading God's Word.

They say, you just forget now and then. I say, do you do that with your stomach? Oh, why am I feeling hungry? I haven't eaten for three days. That doesn't happen, does it? You make sure your stomach gets fed every day.

So what you got to do is swing it around because your belly is before your Bible. Turn it around and be like Job. He said, I've esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. So if you honor God's Word and feed upon it daily, you'll be like a tree planted by rivers of water.

You'll bring forth fruit and season. You'll leave for more than whatever you do or prosper, according to Psalm 1. He made his hand on the law of God both day and night. So that's what Jesus meant, I think, by, if you continue in my Word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you'll know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

So if you call yourself a Christian, read God's Word daily. Write in front of your Bible, this book will keep me from sin, and sin will keep me from this book. If you get into sin, you'll keep praying to the God of your own image.

But if you get into sin, you'll stop reading the Bible because the words of God can fix. So do yourself a favor. Discipline yourself like a soldier of Christ to feed on his Word daily, and you'll never look back as a Christian.

You'll find complete freedom and success as a Christian. I don't give you my word on it, I give you God's Word on it. You have to, if you call yourself a Christian, you're no longer your own. You order your priorities to please God.

You're brought with a price. So what you've got to do is say, Lord, you're my Lord. I mean, why will you call Jesus Lord and not do what he tells you? You put God first. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Genuine Conversion, Repentance, and the Lordship of Christ

But the problem is deeper than that. We're talking about leaves and branches when we need to get to the root. If you're someone who doesn't esteem God's will and his way above your own, you're not a Christian.

You're a false convert. You're like Judas, who named the name of Jesus, followed Jesus around, but you don't do what he said. You haven't seen who Jesus is. How much do you think Judas thought Jesus was worth?

Well, not much. Someone broke an alabaster bottle of ointment once, and he complained that Jesus wasn't worthy of this, that it should be given to the poor rather than wasted on worship of Jesus. Judas thought Jesus was worth about 30 pieces of silver.

And how you spend your time will be reflected on how much you think Jesus is worth. If God is your creator, he's the giver of life, he's giver of your eyes, and your mind, and your ears, and everything you've got, then you'll put him first and seek his will above your own.

That's what a Christian is. Someone who's had a Garden of Gethsemane experience and said, not my will, but yours be done. When we talk about freedom, we often think rules are opposed to freedom. But that's not true when it comes to football.

You imagine a football game where you threw out the referees, and you said there's no rules for this game. What are you going to get? Chaos. You're going to get fights. I mean, there's fights in these football games, or hockey games, with all the rules involved.

But if you take away the rules, you're going to get chaos. Teams that obey the rules implicitly find complete freedom within the game. There are no hold-ups, there's no time-outs, there's no stops. The whole thing flows because people are obeying the rules.

What we see reflected in society is a society that refuses to obey the rules. That's why we see tragedies on television every night. That's why we see young people dying in mass through drug abuse, through suicide, through alcoholism.

Conscience, Guilt, and the Reality of Judgment

When we do things that displease God, we're going to reap what we sow. We have a society that's plagued with guilt. Guilt can drive a man to suicide, and that's because when we do things that displease God, we transgress the law of conscience.

Conscience is like a smoke detector. If you say, I don't want a smoke detector in my house. That noise it makes really bothers me. I'm going to take the batteries out. Well, do that, but you're going to reap the consequences.

If your house catches fire and you stay asleep because there's no alarm, you're going to burn to death. Horrific death you're going to have, because you took the batteries out of your smoke detector. You were foolish.

When you don't listen to your conscience, you take the batteries out of the smoke detector, because you don't like that alarm that sounds. It says, this is wrong. Even though it gives you pleasure, it's wrong.

Do that, and you're going to suffer the consequences, because there are consequences not only in this life, when you transgress the conscience, but there are consequences in the next. Hell is very real.

People often can't equate God's goodness with the reality of hell. I can't equate the reality of hell without God's goodness. If God wasn't good, he wouldn't punish murderers and rapists. I mean, the most sinful of us have got to admit that Hitler deserves hell.

He killed 11 million people, including 6 million Jews. If there isn't a hell, then God is unjust. Hitler should get his just desert. But so should murderers and rapists. So if God is good, he's got to see that those people are punished.

There must be a day of justice. But God is so good, he's going to punish not only murderers and rapists, but thieves and liars and fornicators and blasphemers and those that have lusted, which he considers to be adultery.

Those that have hated, which he considers to be murder. God's standard is extremely high and the day of judgment is coming and each of us need to bear that in mind. Keep in mind there is a day of judgment and that'll keep us close to the cross.

A lot of people don't realize why Jesus died on the cross. I mean, a lot of churches have got a crucifix at the front, but you talk to them about the reality of that cross and what actually happened, they don't have a clue.

But this is what happened. We broke God's law, the Ten Commandments. Jesus paid our fine in full. That means God can legally dismiss our case because 2 ,000 years ago, a fine was paid in full. God can commute our death sentence.

He can let us live because of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But what we have to do is repent. That means turn from all sin, not just say, God, I'm sorry, but turn from sin and trust alone in Jesus Christ as we trust a parachute.

That's what salvation is. When you find genuine repentance and true saving faith, you're made a brand new person so that the temptations of the world mean nothing to you. You can just turn your back on them no matter how pleasurable they are because sin and death go hand-in-hand.

So what a fool would I be to embrace sin when death comes along with it? No, no. Sin may be pleasurable, but I don't want it because God's changed my heart through the power of the new birth. I remember I was in Hawaii once ministering.

Someone had to do it, and I watched a chef get a big knife out and say, I'm gonna cut into the seared meat. And he seared the meat by just throwing into a hot pan, one side and on the other. And I sat up because the Bible speaks of a seared conscience.

The Ten Commandments and Evangelistic Conviction

He got the big sharp knife and he cut into that meat and he said, look, on the inside it's soft and tender, even though it looked hard and crusty on the outside. When we give ourselves to sin, we sear our conscience.

We make it hard on the outside. What God's given to us as the church is a very sharp blade to cut into the sinner's conscience. And that blade is the moral law, the Ten Commandments. So when I say to someone, do you think you're a good person?

And they say, yeah, I'm a really good person. I then get out that great big sharp blade of the law and begin to cut into the conscience and say, well, how many lies do you think you've told in your life?

And they say, oh, plenty. So what do you call someone who's told plenty of lies? They say, a liar. All I'm doing is what Paul did in Romans chapter 2. He said in Romans chapter 2, you who say you shall not steal, do you steal?

You who say you shall not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? What's he doing? He's taking the sharp blade of God's law and cutting into the conscience so the conscience, the work of the law written on the heart, will begin to do its duty.

It's soft and tender on the inside. The most hardened of sinners can be reached with what God has given us. The weapons of a warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty through God, the pulling down of strongholds.

And Charles Spurgeon said that moral law, the Ten Commandments, which Jesus used in Mark 10 verse 17 and Paul did in Romans 2, is our most ablest auxiliary. By that he meant our most powerful weapon. So what we need to do is pick up that law and begin to use it.

Before you share with someone the good news of the gospel, bring out the bad news of sin and righteousness and judgment. Before you give sinners the cure, make sure you convince them they have the disease.

Because if they don't know they've got the disease, they won't appreciate or appropriate the cure. And that's what sadly happened over the last hundred years within Christendom, especially in America.

We've had this, God has a wonderful plan for your life. God is your buddy. He's your divine butler. When we haven't preached the truth of Scripture, that God is holy and righteous. He set aside a day in which to judge the world in righteousness, but he's rich in mercy and he provided a savior for humanity.

We might be saved from death and from a very real hell. Okay, there's some people that condemn television and radio, but that's not the problem. The problem is our heart. We've got television in our home, but there are certain channels that we won't watch.

We won't watch anything with blasphemy in it, anything with violence, adultery, anything that we know would displease God, we don't watch. It's not because we are holier-than-thou, it's just we know what pleases God and what doesn't.

And there are plenty of cable channels that you can get that are good and wholesome that you can just keep as your favorite. So if you call yourself a parent, you love your children, all you do is do your best for your children.

Family Worship and Raising Children in the Fear of the Lord

And what I would say to do is have a family altar. We were told that when our kids reach teenage years, they'd get into rebellion and just go off for a time of rebellion. That did not happen with any of our three children.

There was no rebellion at all, because what we did is we put into practice biblical principles. We established a family altar and every day around six o 'clock, I'd call out, reading time, and no matter what anyone was doing, we'd gather together around God's Word.

We would learn memory verses. We would pray, I'd teach the children the fear of the Lord, I'd teach them the character of God, teach them the Ten Commandments at an early age, so that when they hit the teenage years and those unlawful desires began to come with those hormones, they knew that God saw lust as adultery, hatred as murder.

They knew that God saw their thought life. So if you call yourself a parent, you care for your kids, establish a family altar, pray with your wife, read the Word together. Don't be a hypocrite in front of your kids.

Don't let your kids see you. Don't let God see you watching any movies or watching any on television that uses blasphemy, because if you do it, you're going to create children in your own image with the same moral standards or lack of moral standards that you've got.

So there's a certain standard you should keep as a Christian. There is a certain lifestyle you should live that's a testimony to your children, and never ever argue in front of your children. Never play the hypocrite, because nothing will lose respect for you from your children as does hypocrisy.

So live the Christian life in front of your children and train up the children in the way they should go when they're old and not depart from it, because no success is a success if your children end up in hell.