Ray Comfort 180 movie What Changed their minds in seconds ?
Ray Comfort 180 movie What Changed their minds in seconds ?
Early life
Comfort was born December 5, 1949 in New Zealand[3] to a Jewish mother and a father whom he has described as "a Gentile [who] was open to the things of God". According to Comfort's autobiography, his parents put "Methodist" on his birth certificate because his mother feared the possibility of "another Hitler", but he was given no religious instruction as a child.[3][5]Career
According to Comfort, he left high school at 17, worked in a bank, and began a successful business when he was 20[citation needed]; he says he converted to Christianity on 25 April 1972, when he was 22.[4] He then began seven years training at a local church, after which he was ordained as a full-time pastor. Comfort then spent three and a half years pastoring in Christchurch, New Zealand, and 12 years preaching open-air in the city's Speaker's Corner.[4] He has no formal training nor theological degree.[4] In his mid-20s, he began receiving invitations to speak internationally. In 1989, he accepted an invitation to join the pastoral staff at the non-denominational Calvary Chapel in Southern California.[4] Comfort identifies himself as a Jew.[2]The Way of the Master ministry
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"[7] and "True and False Conversions."[8]
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.
Debates
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.[10] During the debate, Cameron and Comfort repeatedly referenced the Ten Commandments and denied the theory of evolution.[10]
In February 2009, Comfort challenged Richard Dawkins to a debate, offering to donate $10,000 to him.[11] Dawkins, who had previously stated a general policy not to debate with creationists,[11] 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."[12]
Publications
Tracts
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]".[14]
Books
Ray Comfort has authored or compiled more than 70 books and tracts.[15][16] 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.[17][18][19]Controversy over abridged version of On the Origin of Species
According to Comfort's website, "nothing has been removed from Darwin's original work",[24] but Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, 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.[25] 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.[26][27] The National Center for Science Education arranged a campaign at colleges across the US to distribute an analysis of the Comfort introduction, a one page flier,[20] 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.[28][29]
List of notable books published
- — (1989). Hell's Best Kept Secret. Whitaker House. ISBN 978-0883682067.[30]
- — (1993). God Doesn't Believe in Atheists (revised ed.). Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882709222.[31]
- —; Cameron, Kirk (2006). The Way of the Master. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882702209.[32]
- — (2008). Evolution: A Fairy Tale for Grownups. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 088270432X.[33]
- — (2008). World Religions in a Nutshell. Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882706696.[34]
- Darwin, Charles (September 2009). Comfort, Ray, ed. The Origin of Species (150th Anniversary ed.). Bridge Logos Publishers. ISBN 978-0882709192.[35]
- — (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.[17][31]
- —; LaHaye, Tim (2012). Hitler, God, and the Bible. WND Books. ISBN 978-1936488247.[36]
Film
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
- Hellbound? (2013): Self
- Noah and the Last Days (2014): Director, producer, writer, self, runner, sound
Ray Comfort 180 movie What Changed their minds in seconds ?
Ray Comfort
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Ray comfort)
| Ray Comfort | |
|---|---|
October 2010
| |
| Born | Ray Comfort[1] December 5, 1949 New Zealand |
| Ethnicity | Jewish[2] |
| Occupation | Christian Evangelist, author, television host |
| Known for | The Way of the Master, Living Waters Publications, Christian Evangelism |
| Religion | Evangelical Christianity |
| Spouse(s) | Sue Comfort (1972-present) |
| Children | Rachel, Jacob, Daniel[3] |
| Website | |
| Living Waters | |
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