Posted on 09/30/2016 11:36:30 AM PDT by Gamecock
New Zealand-born evangelist Ray Comfort, who's best known for his street evangelism in which he asks people about God, the Bible, sin and salvation, explains why he never leads people in the "sinner's prayer."
In Comfort's many taped evangelism videos he is rarely seen praying with those he encounters and has received many questions from believers who are curious about this particular omission.
One commenter posed the question to Comfort on Facebook last Friday: "You often have them at the point of belief but then don't allow them, or encourage them, to confess. You do great work to get them to believe, and yet not confess. If you don't want to lead them in a prayer, which is what people do when they exchange vows at a wedding, why not encourage them to pray their own prayer? Help them if they need it, but why not?
Comfort responded with a video message to provide insight as to why he doesn't lead people in the "sinner's prayer."
"I regularly pray with people off camera. But I think you are talking about leading people is what is often called a 'sinner's prayer.' It's similar to the difference between a 'shotgun' wedding, and one where the bride and groom make vows because they want to. Many who make decisions for Christ nowadays are shotgun weddings. They are manipulated by man rather than born of God, and it has filled our churches with false converts," he said.
Comfort also used the example of a husband and wife who are at odds. He explained that leading someone in the "sinner's prayer" is similar to him walking up to the house of the fighting couple with the husband, then ringing the bell and telling the wife that her husband was terribly sorry and then proceeding to lead the husband in an apology to his wife.
The California-based minister pointed to the fact that the apology would not be sincere or genuine since it's not coming directly from the heart of the husband. He likened that scenario to the way one should pray and repent of their sins on their own to God and not be led by someone else.
Comfort's evangelism videos can be seen on YouTube. His work also includes the miniseries "The Way of the Master" and films "180: Changing the Heart of a Nation," and "Noah and the Last Days."
His last film, "Audacity" took on the subject of homosexuality and Christianity, and seeks to answer the question of whether or not Christians should share the truth of the Bible with the LGBT community even if it's frowned upon.
Everyone knows that is BigFoot!
The unbeliever considers these things foolishness, because they are spiritually discerned, but he lacks the faculties to discern them.
Reformed theology studied this aspect immensely when they developed the doctrines of common and efficacious grace.
I concur I haven’t found a passage explicitly stating the unbeliever lacks a spirit, but the function of the spirit is not available to the natural man.
1Co 2:14
(14) But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Yes, but it is more of a “healthy respect” sort of thing. My father was not a sadist. He never found pleasure in just being mean to us.
This is the core thing. To use an analogy, I know that my wife will eat nothing that grows underwater. This includes fish, crab, seaweed, you name it. It’s part of who she is. You can’t even sneak it into food.
Now, if someone wrote that my wife and I ate dinner at a seafood restaurant every friday, one could glean from that that my wife ate seafood with me. Except that is not what was said. What was said was that we ate at a seafood restaurant.
And here are two facts that enable one to determine whether or not she ate seafood:
1. My comments above, if they actually KNOW her. It’s part of who she is.
2. Seafood restaurants have “non-seafood” items for those that don’t want seafood.
Those two revelations tell you that even though one could INFER that she ate seafood, we can maka a stronger case for her not eating seafood.
Same with God and the fate of the lost. We know how He dealt with His enemies in the old and new testament. He offed them. And all of His analogies about the fate of the lost point to the same thing. Romans 3:26, John 3:16 and so many other “famous” as well as some more obscure quotes from the bible plainly say one receives immortality and one doesn’t. Why even word it that way if both receive it?
And to take it a step further, the image of being thrown into an “unquenchable” fire is clearly one of being destroyed, not being tortured, except for the first excruciating seconds.
Now, people do infer ECT from verses about “weeping and gnashing of teeth” but all those verses say is that those two things will happen. They don’t address how long they will happen.
Nevertheless, there are a few verses that, when taken on their own, may cause one to infer that there is ECT for the lost, but even then, it ignores the meaning of the original Greek and Hebrew words as well as their context. There are many studies about things in the bible that were “eternal”, yet very finite. And sometimes, they were very short lived indeed. Imagine a book that said “Joe was a plumber forever.”, and what it really was saying was that Joe was a career plumber until he retired or died. This is often the type of thing it means in the bible when the English words “forever” or “eternal” are used in the bible.
So, there is scripture that allows one to infer that ECT is correct, and there is scripture that allows one to infer that Annihilation is correct. So which is it?
Well, ignoring the fact that there is a lot more evidence to support the latter, the thing that trumps ECT is the same thing that trumps my wife eating seafood at the seafood restaurant. Anyone that knows her WELL, knows that she doesn’t eat seafood, so the inference is that she had the “Turf” without the “Surf”. And that person would infer correctly.
Yes, we should “fear” God as we fear a nuclear power plant or a gun. But God loves us. He made it clear what would happen if we sin: Death. Actually, He says that over and over. And just as all may be saved through Jesus, all are lost through Adam, due to Adam’s sin. And what was God’s warning to Adam? If you eat of it you will surely die. Not your body. YOU. Your soul.
Only God is immortal, though he offers it to those who believe. Those who don’t believe don’t have it. If they did, his promise of immortality to believers would be pointless and irrelevant.
Your reasoning requires limiting the temporal and/or spatial aspects of the Universe to only those which are sensed by a human. You may be framing the syllogisms in such a way that they are self supporting, but not accurate in the broader sense of what the spatio-temporal reality is for the greater universe than your senses.
EXample: how far away was the being whose hand appeared in palace party central of Daniel Chapter Five?... Belshazzar suddenly confronted the TRUTH that the Universe was far more complex than he could sense: someone invisible to Belshazzar was reaching into his limits well to write upon the wall.
Do you know why the being was invisible while the hand of the being was visible? Was the reality a different temporal or a different spatial quality which rendered the rest of the being invisible to Belshazzar and the guests in palace party central?
“Did Genesis man conquer space?”
That’s certainly an interesting question which I have contemplated. Not much to go on within the Bible or other historical records. Certainly the antediluvian era represents a time of technological advance that is often ignored.
Here are some scriptures that hint at the possibility of men reaching the second heaven (i.e. outer space):
Deuteronomy 30:4
If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you.
Daniel 8:10
And it grew up to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and some of the stars to the ground, and trampled them.
Nehemiah 1:9
but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.
Obadiah 4
“Though you ascend as high as the eagle,
And though you set your nest among the stars,
From there I will bring you down,” says the Lord.
Amos 9:2
Though they dig into hell,
From there My hand shall take them;
Though they climb up to heaven,
From there I will bring them down;
Remember that God intervened in the days that Nimrod led mankind in the rebellion of Babel, attempting to build an edifice that reached to heaven.
“The jury decides whether it is pertinent or not.”
What is on trial here, me? Or the scriptures?
Who picks the jury members?
I thought the point of these posts was to ascertain the truth. No one needs to believe what I have said simply on the basis of my own self-appointed authority. (I don’t claim any.) But if it is a question of the word of God, there is no jury anywhere that can stand in judgment of that authority.
If anyone benefits from what I shared, praise God. If you or anyone rejects it, that is between that person and God. I don’t intend to twist anyone’s arm.
“Everyone knows that is BigFoot!”
Do you reject the idea that giants existed?
I thought you were basing your beliefs on the Bible.
Your reasoning requires limiting the temporal and/or spatial aspects of the Universe to only those which are sensed by a human.
Thing is, I see this world basically as made of “coagulated energy”. Nothing really exists. In a very real sense the world is perception. The only thing that REALLY exists is our conscious minds. And as C.S Lewis says in his book, Miracles, there is a miracle we all experience every day, but because we’ve experienced it since before birth, we take it for granted. And what makes it a miracle is that it is something from outside of our physical laws that is projected into it. That thing is our human consciousness.
And then there is what I say about eternity and time: Time is a current that flows in an ocean called eternity. It’s why I believe that Jesus stepped out of eternity into our timeline to wrestle with Jacob and be in that furnace with the three jewish boys.
I get that there is MUCH we don’t know. But I still must fall back on the personality of the God of the bible. That personality, when fed up with something He created, is to un-create it - or kill, destroy, or whatever other word you want to use to describe a piece being wiped from existence. He has no need that is mentioned in the bible to torture people beyond what happens to them before their body is destroyed. It doesn’t fit His personality to torture for the sake of torture.
Now, the Lord’s ways are “mysterious”, so if there is something in the bible to say that is what happens, so be it. But there isn’t. And an important thing to consider: When the bible mentions something regarding the fate of Satan, he is not talking about a human being. He’s talking about satan, for whom Jesus did not die, and does not exist under the same rules as humans. So comparing his fate in the lake of fire with that of a human is like comparing the fate of tungsten vs lead in a 1000 fire. They do not respond the same, for they are different entities.
Saying the opposite is true doesn’t make it true. But I can see why you would insist on that ...
Note / hint: IF the temporal reality of the soul is only present time, the soul does not have past or future, only the present. IF the soul is oriented to time only such that it receives past stimuli and fabricates a projection for what will be the present determined by those data received, then what is the temporal orientation of the soul? ... In point of FACT that is the reality of the body soul interface. You sense the Universe around you via photon arrivals to the body's senses. There is an interval between the origination of the photons and the reception and processing. The brain fashions a virtual present from the arriving data of past events. It is the nature of electromagnetic phenomena. A photon crosses the Universe always int he present of its origin.
You assert, “It doesn’t fit His personality to torture for the sake of torture.” In that foolish comment you ignore your own claim of the conditions are beyond your knowledge!
I go by what His word says. That and prayer are all we have. I go with that.
Now we see as though through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.
While the men you cited certainly are men of God, they are still just men. They both lived in times with limited access to records we can easily find at the typing of a few keystrokes. I do not fault them. They had a spiritual discernment and godly manner that was rare in their days and much rarer in ours.
However, I cannot subscribe to the line of reasoning presented.
“Such [’sons of God’ meaning angels in Gen. 6], however, are not meant in the present passage. For they were not created as a race, have no distinction of sex, and therefore no sexual desire; they ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage’ Mt. 22:30”
Matthew 22:30
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.
The Lord compared the future life of resurrected saints to the angels in relation to marriage. He did NOT compare them to demons or fallen angels.
“It is contrary to the law of nature for different species even on earth to cohabit in a carnal way; much more for those in the body, and those who have not a body of flesh.”
While this may be true, it does not mean that it never happens or has happened. It is clear from the Biblical record that demons and fallen angels CAN and HAVE engaged in such perverse desires and actions. In fact, it is the very subject under discussion. Simply asserting that something did not happen because it cannot happen is a tautology.
I refer to the verses I have already posted for evidence:
Jude 6-7
And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
1 Peter 3:19-20
By whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
2 Peter 2:4-5
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly.
Let us ask some specific questions to help get to the meaning of these passages:
Which angels sinned?
What was their sin?
What was the consequence of their sin?
Clearly Peter and Jude are describing the same group of angels. These cannot be holy angels as Jesus had used for His comparison to the resurrected saints. They are wicked angels. Yet they also cannot be the rebel angels who have not yet been cast out of Heaven. Jude describes them as having not “kept their first estate”. This was not a condition God brought upon them. It was not their punishment. Their punishment would follow. Not remaining in their natural (i.e. designed or prescribed) state WAS their SIN.
Contrary to the assertion of the commentator, that angels cannot engage in carnality because of their nature, here we find angels who abandoned their nature, i.e. their natural estate. These passages link the angels in question to the days of Noah. Jude compares the actions of these angels to the perversions of Sodom. That the men of Sodom attempted to rape angels is inescapable.
The consequence of the particular sin of these particular angels was to be imprisoned in Tartarus, the abyss.
How can the commentator say that angels, even fallen angels, are incapable of sexual lust. Are there not demons of lust? Are there not demons of perversion and uncleanness? Are they not called “unclean spirits”? If angels, in this case fallen ones, cannot engage in the physical act of sexual relations because their nature prohibits it, how is it that holy angels (are they not ministering spirits?) were able to eat food?
Genesis 19:3
But he insisted strongly; so they [the angels who visited Sodom] turned in to him [Lot] and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
“But it is sufficient to understand by this phrase, the daughters of man in general, without any distinction of a moral or spiritual kind, and therefore including both Cainite and Shethite females. ‘And they took them wives of all whom they chose.’ The evil here described is that of promiscuous intermarriage, without regard to spiritual character. The godly took them wives of all; that is, of the ungodly as well as the godly families, without any discrimination.”
Certainly it is destructive when the people of God marry unbelievers. It is dealt with in the Old and New Testament. But it requires doing violence to this passage to force and superimpose that meaning on it. If God intended that meaning, why would He hide it and obscure its meaning? Why not state so plainly?
Here is the passage under discussion again:
Genesis 6:1-4, 11-12
Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown...
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
The commentator does not address the context in which God found that ALL FLESH had become corrupted. He does not address who these Nephilim were. Who were these “men of renown”?
Moses is writing about some men who were famous. They were the stuff of legends. This means that the Israelites contemporary to Moses would have heard of these men. He is obviously referring to extra-Biblical stories. This cannot be ignored.
So I will restate the issues I posted in #106. Your and the commentator’s position fails to explain...
1) who the Nephilim were,
2) how they got here, and
3) why they were here. And
4) why certain angels from the time of Noah are described by Peter and Jude as being imprisoned, while Satan and his angels clearly are not. And
5) where demons came from. And
6) what it means that “all flesh” had been corrupted except for Noah’s family. And
7) why God commanded to destroy every living person and animal among certain inhabitants of Canaan. And,
8) why Jude compares the actions of these antediluvian, rebel angels with the sexual perversions of Sodom.
The superficial imposition that makes the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 to be merely sons of Seth or otherwise believers, scratches the surface of hardened clay that requires a plow. It simply glosses over the difficult issues of the passage and settles for something comfortable rather than what is required. And that is that we set aside our preconceptions and approach the engrafted word with meekness. Receive it for what to says, not what we prefer it to say.
God does not torture for torture sake. He has made the Universe as He fashioned it, with parameters well beyond our sensing and comprehension. But He has given us a few data points regarding His Character. The temporal reality of the spirit may be always in the present, which would make punishment, for the spirit, something always in the now unless He redeems that spirit by His regenerating it. The Gospel of the Grace of God in Christ is revealing His love in His desire to redeem us, even as we are enmity with Him in our fallen state inherited from Adam.
God has warned humanity that the nature inherited from Adam is under judgment to be always separated from the Love of God, UNLESS individually we accept the Grace of God in Christ Jesus. When we accept that Grace we are born again, born from above by His Spirit. If we reject that Grace, our fallen nature awaits the results of the judgment upon it.
You can believe that judgment means the individual spirit is annihilated out of existence. That would be separation from space and time, outside of the Creation of God. Can you tell me what or where or in what meaning could anything be outside the Creation?
Your comment was foolishness because you set the limits as either or, without knowing the spatio-temporal reality of the soul and spirit.
These sorts of discussions, sadly, can become arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The more I’m exposed to the bible and, more importantly, the original Greek and Hebrew, the less confident I am in my opinion on things “inferred” from scripture.
I’ve become a bit more of a literalist with some parts and less so with others (like dreams). This comes from understanding His personality more and more through several things:
1. His word
2. Prayer
3. His interaction with my personal life and those around me (i.e. genuine miraculous answers to MY prayers)
4. My study of the Nature He created, including the physical body he inserted me into in order to live a life in this creation.
Those four things all point to CI and away from ECT.
You can believe that judgment means the individual spirit is annihilated out of existence. That would be separation from space and time, outside of the Creation of God. Can you tell me what or where or in what meaning could anything be outside the Creation?
That is because now we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face.
Don’t forget he told John to not write down what the seven thunders said for a reason. He has been intentionally unclear about certain things. I’ve chosen to go with what He says in His word and avoid too many thin inferences.
Then you should avoid claiming that the spirit or the soul goes out of all existence.
Hebrews 12:1 NIV
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily besets us.
I reject their SOURCE.
There were giants in those days.
That's ALL one can accurately state.
A darned good way to analyze stuff!
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