Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 208 - Ray Comfort’s Amazing Testimony

Transcript

Ep. 208 - Ray Comfort’s Amazing Testimony · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: So I had this tremendous life, very, very happy and surfing anytime I wanted.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And remember one day I had this little dog called Jordie that just loved to get to the beach with me I'd just say beach and he would run around in circles like dogs do.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: In fact, I love dogs.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I think dogs are better than people.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: People don't wag their tails when they see you coming.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Dogs are just so faithful.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So he ran around in circles, crazy.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I grabbed my new surfboard, went down a driveway, turned to the left and he ran ahead of me, tremendously excited, and I screamed out Jordie, come back.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And I, as a young guy, had not trained my dog to be obedient.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It just didn't end in my head and he didn't obey me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: He was just excited.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: He ran onto the road and I saw this in slow motion.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It was a large car hit him.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: He went under.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The car was thrown out the back.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I dropped my brand new surfboard on the sidewalk, ran onto the road without looking I could have been killed too Grabbed my beloved dog, ran home, sat at the bottom of our driveway with this dog in my arms, with a hold on his head and blood dripping out of his mouth.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: He was still conscious and suddenly a car pulls up just opposite me and it was the guy that had hit the dog, and a man walked across, put his hand on my shoulder and burst into tears.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It was so traumatic.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: The dog was rushed to the veterinarian and that night they called us and said we had to put him to sleep.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And that was the night I was confronted with death, not the death of a human being, the death of just a dog.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: But it hit me.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Where is God?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Why do people die?
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Why am I going to lose my mom and dad, my brother, my sister?
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Why is not my dog going to die of old age, whatever, or be put down?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Grandma, grandpa, everybody dies.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Hi, it's Ray Comfort.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Here I'm all alone in the studio with our Easy Mark and Oscar, and the reason they're not here is because they're roughing it in Tahiti and Fiji and other places in the Pacific, and also they're going to Australia and New Zealand and Hawaii.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: They're filming season 10 of our television program.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So it's just me.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So please be patient with me, because I haven't got my three crazy guys with me Ever been called up for jury duty.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I have a lot and I've got a confession to make.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I actually hate it.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Now some of you are probably cringing because you see jury duty as a civic responsibility.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's because you don't live in Los Angeles.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: In Los Angeles, the county that I'm in, it's quite chaotic.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You go there and you're hurted like sheep.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You're left in rooms for ages when you get on the trial, even though the trial hasn't started, when they're still picking jurors.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You're not allowed your phone, you're not allowed to look at a laptop and it drives me crazy.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: So I want to be productive in my life, so I do everything I can to get out of jury duty.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Don't tell anyone.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I remember one time I was listening to a guy this is pretrial and he was sharing who he wanted to sue.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: And I remember thinking this guy is so covetous.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: So I called the bailiff and he took me up to the judge and I said to the judge this guy is covetous, he's breaking the 10th commandment.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't give him a bean and he kicked me out.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I was off.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Another time they said would you come on jury duty?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And this is just recently.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I'm in my 70s, early 70s, and I thought I don't want to do this because I want to get asleep.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I love Spurgeon's quote.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: We talked about boring preachers, he said, whose victims.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Nature does well to give relief through sleep.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And that happens to me when I get bored.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I try and find relief from boredom through sleep.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: So I wrote back and said look, I got a sleep.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Drop of a hat.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: If you want to mistrial, get me on the jury, and I'll no doubt get asleep if it gets boring.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So they never got back to me, so that was a relief.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: So in jury duty, people are called to testify what they've seen and heard, and you and I, as Christians, are called to testify.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: We're called to give out testimony, and that's what we're going to look at today in a podcast.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Do you ever give your testimony?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: It's very powerful to say what Christ has done in your life.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: When you're called to give testimony in a court of law, all you to do is say that which you've seen and heard, speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: So help your God.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: As they used to say, and they don't want your eloquence the judge doesn't want to hear you say well, it was a dark night.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: The moon peeked from behind a large puffy cloud which moves silently across the gilded sky.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: No, he's going to say stop.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Stop.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Just plainly, tell us what you've seen and heard, and that's what we're to do as Christians.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: The disciples said we cannot but speak that which we've seen and heard.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So put aside any thought.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: You have to be eloquent and say great things.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Just share what Christ has done for you in your life.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: You know, often we as Christians glorify people who have been through terrible things before they came to Christ.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to kill your grandmother eight times to have a powerful testimony.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: You've come to the foot of the cross, you realize your sinner, even if you brought up in a Christian home.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: It's powerful for you to say well, I didn't realize I was a sinner until I saw the law of God and open up those commandments and realize that God required truth in the inward parts and I realized I was heading for hell.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: So people can often identify with someone like you rather than someone who's got a very so-called powerful testimony where they did all sorts of things that the devil evoked them to do.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: The apostle Paul gave his testimony three times in the book of Acts, so that's a good lesson for us Give your testimony.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Often I resort to giving my testimony when I find someone who's very contentious, someone who says I don't believe the Bible, I don't want to talk about it, I say let me share with you what's happened to me and I share my testimony because it's a first person way of sharing the gospel.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I bring in sin, law, righteousness, holiness and judgment, and it can be very powerful to do that.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Someone wisely said the man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: So let's look at some of the resources we've got for today's episode.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: The Bible's four gospels.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Why do we just choose the four gospels?
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Why not the whole New Testament?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Because this is a pocket edition.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Either you have to have a huge pocket or you're going to make the text in the whole New Testament very, very small, so it's not very readable.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So we chose to just do the four gospels.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: The four gospels contain the gospel and the gospel is the power of God's salvation.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So this is a great gift to give to an unsafe person.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: The Bible's four gospels.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Also, this episode is brought to you by All Means.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: This book will tell you what you can do to reach the lost, to fulfill the Great Commission and, of course, the starter kit, which is very, very popular If you want to start giving out tracks or if you just want good tracks to give out.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: The starter kit has a total of 350 tracks.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It has the million dollar bill, which is so popular and so easy to give out, the ten commandment coins, which are not plastic, this is real metal.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I've got to perceive value.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I remember throwing a half a dozen onto a sidewalk and watching teenagers fight to get them, and the comic Are you Good Enough and 101 of the world's funniest one-liners.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It's a great resource to help you get started in sharing the gospel.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So we're now going to listen to a conversation I had with my friend, paul Hastings.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Paul is the producer and host of the Compelled broadcast which gathers testimonies celebrating the transformative power of God, and he recently invited me to share my testimony.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So here we go.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I'm Paul Hastings and, thanks to our friends at Living Waters, you're listening to the Season 6 finale of the Compelled podcast, where we use gripping, immersive storytelling to bring Christian testimonies to life.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: In each of our episodes, we highlight the power of Christ to transform any life, like a girl who lived as a transgendered man for over a decade before being confronted by the commands of Christ.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Or a pastor of a thriving church who secretly carried an addiction to pornography what was too ashamed to admit it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Or a firefighter who fell through the roof of a burning building and instantly realized he was going to die.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Every story on Compelled is unique, riveting and true, and today our guest is no stranger to you.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: It's Ray Comfort who, as a young man, had everything he could want a thriving business, a beautiful wife and a successful career in front of him.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: But when he realized the brevity of life and the finality of death, he began to despair.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So gather around, lean in and join us for this Season 6 finale of the Compelled podcast.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I first heard about Ray Comfort when I was a young teenager, around 2006.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: The speech and debate club that I was part of had a strong emphasis on evangelism, and some of the evangelism training materials we used were created by a ministry called Way of the Master and featured a fellow named Ray Comfort, with a strange accent and an even stranger sense of humor.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Fast forward by another 15 years and today Ray's ministry is now called Living Waters and has a YouTube channel publishing videos of open-air preaching and man-on-the-street witnessing encounters.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if perhaps you've come across their videos at some point.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: This summer, I went by the Living Waters headquarters in Los Angeles and sat down at a ping pong table across from the one and only Ray Comfort, who still had the same accent, the same deadpan humor and the same eagerness to tell others about the Lord.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: But that journey began over 70 years ago, in 1949, in the Southern Hemisphere.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I was born twice in New Zealand.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: First time I was born was to a family that wasn't at all quote religious.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: My mum was Jewish.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: The only thing Jewish about her was she didn't eat pig.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know who Moses was and I'm not kidding I was born up with no instruction whatsoever.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: At the age of about 10, a Catholic aunt taught me the Lord's Prayer and that was it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I said the Lord's Prayer for 10 years every night is kind of a sleeping pill.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get to sleep and I said come through that.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I could do it in about five seconds and, I'm not kidding, it meant nothing to me really, even though I believed in God.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what a Christian was.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I had never, ever been a witness to.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, I would have considered myself.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Someone said you were a Christian, so of course I remember hearing people give their testimony on street corners how Jesus had saved them from alcohol and I thought I'm not an alcoholic, so the whole thing was irrelevant to me.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I prayed at night, as I said, believed in God, but never knew you had to be born again.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I believed he was the Son of God.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: You even asked me yeah, absolutely, total respect for Jesus.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Believed he died on a cross, hadn't got a clue what that meant.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And I lived opposite a beach, well, about 50 yards from a beach.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I just absolutely love surfing.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: In fact, I trained my mother to raise a flag when I was to come in from my surfboard and come home for dinner.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: She was well trained.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So I had this tremendous life, very, very happy and surfing anytime I wanted.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: And remember one day I had this little dog called Jordie that just loved to get to the beach with me I'd just say beach and he would run around in circles like dogs do.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: In fact, I love dogs.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I think dogs are better than people.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: People don't wag their tails when they see you coming.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Dogs, they're so faithful.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So he ran around in circles, crazy.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I grabbed my new surfboard, went down a driveway, turned to the left and he ran ahead of me tremendously excited, and I screamed out Jordie, come back.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And I, as a young guy, had not trained my dog to be obedient.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: It just didn't end in my head and he didn't obey me.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: He was just excited.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: He ran onto the road and I saw this in slow motion.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It was a large car hit him, he went under, the car was thrown out the back.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I dropped my brand new surfboard on the sidewalk, ran onto the road without looking.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I could have been killed too, grabbed.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: My beloved dog, ran home, sat at the bottom of our driveway with this dog in my arms, with a hold on his head and blood dripping out of his mouth.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: He was still conscious and suddenly a car pulls up just opposite me and it was the guy that had hit the dog, and a man walked across, put his hand on my shoulder and burst into tears.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: It was so traumatic.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: The dog was rushed to the veterinarian and that night they called us and said we had to put him to sleep.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: That was the night I was confronted with death, not the death of a human being, the death of just a dog.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: But it hit me.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Where is God?
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Why do people die?
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Why am I going to lose my mom and dad, my brother and my sister?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Why is not my dog going to die of old age, whatever, or be put down on my grandma, grandpa?
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Everybody dies.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Now, obviously, the death of Ray's dog was heart-wrenching for him, but in the grand scheme of things, god was actually using that moment to stir up a spiritual restlessness within Ray's heart and around.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: The same time that Ray was contemplating the reality and finality of death, he had also entered the workforce.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I got a job in a bank.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: An uncle got me the job.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: At the same time, this young lady named Sue Hibbert got a job.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: She was born in England and the first time I saw her I was blown away, fell in love, and she didn't like me at all.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I was just a silly little guy as far as she is concerned, A little teenage weed.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I used to run everywhere.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I still do run everywhere.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And one day we had to deliver a remittance from the bank across to the other side of the city and she had to deliver it.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I said I'll take you on my motorbike.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And so when I say motorbike, it was a Honda 50.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It was a headwind.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I couldn't go over 30 miles an hour.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: She jumped on the back of the bike and she had to put her arms around me and when she felt that six pack, no, she fell in love with me and from then on we became the best of friends.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: We were called the parakeets or the budgies, because we sat together and had lunch.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: We'd see each other in the weekends and we fell in love.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And the moment she proposed to me, I said yes, actually she did.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: She just said to me why don't we get married?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I said that was a great idea.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I remember going and seeing her father, who was a Christian Christian family.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a Christian.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Sue had had a false conversion and she got pulled away by me and I had hair on my shoulders.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I think the idea was surface.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: You should try and look as much like seaweed as you can.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I look like seaweed.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: My hair was on my shoulders, it was sun bleached and I went in and asked his permission Sue's dad, and I remember what he said.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He said huh, and he took one step backwards, but he said yes.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: After his time at the bank, Ray started his own business.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: His main passion at the time was surfing, so naturally he opened a surf shop and started making custom leather jackets.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: He was located right across the road from the beach, which allowed him to spend a lot of his non-working hours surfing.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: But as business began to boom, he realized that he was having the same nagging sensation that he'd had after his dog died.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Everything his dog, his friends, family and business would eventually pass away.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: You may not have heard of an E-type Jaguar.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: An E-type Jaguar in those days was similar to a kind of Lamborghini and I thought what am I supposed to do?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I'm as successful as a businessman, I've got all these surfing buddies, I can make money what I do get an E-type Jaguar.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I thought my friends won't even they'll despise me if I do that.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I won't be one of them If I take that route.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: And I remember one day I was making these leather jackets on this wave of surfing and making leather jackets with this movie that came out that made them so popular.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: A businessman walked into my shop and he stood and he said stay small.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He'd just retired.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And it hit me.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: He said you could become tremendously successful, have a factory with all these ladies and you're going to have these big tax bills, you're going to have financial worries, you're going to have this and that he says stay small.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: And that was the revelation that I got Stay small, because chasing materialism doesn't do anything.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: It just means you've got more money in the bank, I've got as enough as it is.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And couple that, seeing the futility of the world with the fact of death, just sent me into that spiral of futility and darkness that nobody knew about.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: That God saw Like a Ecclesiastes.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Basically, it was absolutely vanity.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: All is vanity, it's chasing the wind and a lot of people don't get that till they're on the deathbed.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: They spend their whole life saving money.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: For what?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: For whom?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: For their relatives that can't wait for them to die and they don't get it.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And I thank God that I got that revelation when I was 20 years old.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Over the next two years, not only did I see the futility of life, but I saw the futility of material possessions.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I had an epiphany.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I began thinking I'm part of the ultimate statistic 10 out of 10 die.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And it just seemed ridiculous.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I had my own business, my own car, my own house, my own wife, everything I wanted materially.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And I remember looking at my wife one night, newly married.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: She'd just gone to sleep and I wept and I thought she could be snatched from me by this big black, horrific thing called death.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: She talks about the ultimate elephant in the room and everything material would mean nothing to me, and tears just flow down my cheeks and I remember crying out why, why, it just didn't make sense.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Ray had reached the depths of emptiness and soul searching and even though to the outside world he was a successful business owner, happily married, able to follow his passion of surfing, inside he felt no fulfillment from any of that.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: But God was just about to intervene.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Up to this point in Ray Comfort's life, his pursuit of happiness through earthly success had only brought him emptiness and searching.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: While he believed that there was a God and that Jesus was even his son, Ray had no real understanding of his sin or need for his Savior.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: But it was in the midst of this darkness that God began to show himself.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I wasn't crying out to God, I was just crying out.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: But God heard my prayer and six months later I was on a surfing trip with a buddy.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: He had a Bible, he was a Christian, a New Christian, and I read the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived, where he said you've heard it said by them of old you shall not commit adultery.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I'll make it to heaven if there is one, because I've never committed adultery.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: But then I read the words of Jesus where he said but I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman to last for her has committed adultery already with her in his heart.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And it was like an arrow hit my chest, it was all over.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I thought, man, I'm undone.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: If God seen my thought life, I'm in big trouble.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: The testimony of Scripture is true Men love darkness rather than the light.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Their eyes are full of adultery.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: We drink iniquary light water.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And that perfectly described me Successful, clean-cut young businessman who was filled with unlawful sexual desire that God had seen.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And I never understood the cross until that particular moment.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: It was very interesting.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: He was a brand-new Christian, he didn't know what he was doing.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: He didn't know how to lead me to Christ.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: We spent six and a half hours together but I was a new creature when I came out of that room, looked up in the stars and I was brand-new instantly.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: So I called my wife the next day and I said are you lonely Because we just got married?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: And for some reason she let me go on the surf and trooped with my buddies without any protest.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And I went and I called her and I said are you lonely?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: She said a little bit and I said well, god is with you.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And I must have been a shock because I'd never talked like that ever.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And I remember the next day and I cannot tell you what a grip surfing had on me the next day I didn't want to go surfing, it just absolutely consumed me.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I was just brand-new.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I thought I don't want to go surfing, I just want to read this Bible.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And that's a typical conversion, Something extraordinary about that.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It's just that modern evangelism has watered down the message and we don't see people transformed, like Saul of Tarsus was transformed, made new creatures, and if any man be in Christ, he has a new creation.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Old things have passed away.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Behold, all things become new, born again, new heart, new desires.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And so, as Christians, we need to get back to preaching, as the men of old Spurgeon, wesley, whitfield, moody didn't compromise the gospel, they preached the bitterness of the medicine because they knew that had the healing properties.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And I use an analogy when I'm sharing with people.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I say to let's say you're a doctor and you've got a cure to cancer and there's a guy in front of you who's got cancerous disease.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: It's very, very, very serious, but he thinks he's well, he looks well, he's healthy, fit and great physique.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And you've got this cure and you've looked at his x-rays.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: You know he's going to be dead in about two weeks.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: So what are you going to do?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Give him the cure or show him the x-rays.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: And most people say I'll give him the cure, just give it to him.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: I say no, that won't work because he thinks he's well.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: He's going to say what are you giving this to me for?
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I don't want your silly cure, get it out of my face.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: A good doctor will show him the x-rays, show him the poison seeping through a system and make him sweat to a point where he says wow, doc, I can see what you're saying.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: This is deadly serious.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Now he's ready for the cure, and the cure is the gospel, the x-ray is the 10 commandments.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And that's what happened to me on the night of my conversion.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: The law cut me in two.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: It showed me I was terminal to a point where I cried out what must I do?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: I had my little personal earthquake as to the Philippine Jailer or my trembling as to Felix, and I understood the cross and I embraced that cure like a dying man embraces a life raft or something, and I'm not exaggerating.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: I exploded with gratitudes in you, christian.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I cannot express to you how grateful I was that God took me out of death and futility into life itself.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: He granted me everlasting life.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: He gave me heaven instead of hell and in those days gratitude was a high-octane fuel that drove me to do the will of God.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I purchased a 34-seater bed for bus and put scripture around the outside and 12-inch-high professional lettering the gift of God as eternal life.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus said I'm the way, the truth and the life.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I signwrote my car professionally with scripture on it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I put the Bible from John, chapter 3, verses 1 to 16, on the front window and three-inch-high lettering of my store I had on the doorway scripture.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: People got into my store and I even got a printing press and put it in my home and put a billboard outside our house with scripture on it.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I got on a soapbox and began preaching in the local square in the heart of the city, a city of 350,000 people, the city of Christchurch.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And how old were you at this point?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I was 22.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And you just do it all this.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was giving out tracks, witnessing to anyone, and if anyone could have been considered a religious fanatic in those days, it was me.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Nowadays I am much worse.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I am still exploding with gratitude as I get close.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I'm coming up to 74.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I may not finish this interview, but I'm so grateful I was just thinking I was coming here.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Only a Christian can have a happy death day.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: You know we talk about happy birthdays.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Well, christian has a death as lost at sting, and so that's my motivation as a Christian to share my faith, because God took me out of darkness into His glorious light.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: The fruit of the gospel was immediately visible in Ray's life, and while others often saw his fire for Jesus as crazy and obnoxious, ray continued to look for more ways to share what Christ had done on the cross.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: And as Ray was obedient to God's leading in his life, things began to change.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Something was very interesting.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I had a Gethsemane experience, probably about a month after I became a Christian.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: By that I mean, I realized what I had in Christ Everlasting life.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Death had lost its sting and so I decided I'd give my life to Christ.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: But I decided I would give him everything, with my teeth, gritted, sweat, drops of blood, and then say not my will, but yours be done.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: And I did that on my knees, I think.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: If I remember rightly, in my business, and it was either the same day or the next day, a gentleman walked into my store and said you're out of here.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: You didn't even have a lease and it was just month to month and paid this guy for this building, and so he kicked me out.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So I started working from home and the city came and said you cannot have an industrial sewing machine in your home.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: That's a factory.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: So I got kicked out of my home and had to move to a place six miles from our house and set up business in a small building.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And remember I shared doors with a barber and it was very interesting.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened is that when I was a non-Christian, I must have been about 18 or 19, I went because there was no surf around to a cliff edge, and I watched all my buddies jump off a cliff About a 50 foot cliff into a pool of water, and one of them jumped first to see how deep the water was.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And I remember standing back and saying I would never do this.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: These guys are so crazy because they love surfing no surf.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: They've got to get in a drain on a rush, I thought I so.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I so want to show respect for this precious life.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I would never even go near a cliff's edge.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: And so these guys that were so tempted to do things like that getting a drain on a rush were ripe for drugs when they came to the area and so they got into drugs, tried to get me into it and I said no, I'm not interested.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: And they got into what was called palpheum, which was a synthetic heroin, and it killed two or three of them.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Another one committed suicide, jumping off a cliff, killing yourself on LSD.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Another one got into a fight over drugs and was stabbed and died in front of his friends.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Just said tell my family I love them.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And so I put a little pamphlet called my friends are dying, and a trust gave me a large amount of money.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: So I decided to write a book and the book became a national bestseller and that opened a door for me to start a drug prevention center, which I started in High Street, which is an unfortunate choice of street names for a drug center.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: The barber one day got me into a store.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I was good friends with him.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: He said I got to tell you something very interesting.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: He said my clients for years have come in and looked at what you've done to your store with Bible verses everywhere and they'd just be just disgusted and say didn't have any words to say.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: But he said, since you got into quote drug prevention work these same guys that looked down on you are saying don't a great job that young man next door.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And what it was for scripture, what it says so is the will of God that by your well-doing you put to silence the ignorance of foolish men and it really showed the importance of Christians being rich and good works.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Because if you just preach and don't have a lifestyle that shows that the love of God dwells within you, it won't hold much water.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: But it just blew me away that that bar would take me aside and say these guys now admire you.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And it was because I'd got into drug prevention work.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: And it also opened up an itinerant ministry because churches hear about me preaching in the local square, which I did daily for 12 years.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, let me tell you how that happened, because I didn't plan to do that.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: When I was 16, I made a speech about surfing in my class and I just dried up in front of my classmates.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: The nightmare of every person is your mind going blank while you're making a speech.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: That happened to me in front of my peers.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: I was humiliated.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I sat down in that classroom and said I'll never open my mouth in public again, ever, ever.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And yet that's the first thing I did when I became a Christian, because I thought this is too important to worry about my feelings.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Now, sitting in a bus as a two-year-old Christian going to work six miles away from our home, and I looked at all these people kind of bouncing along in the bus and I thought most of these people probably are unsafe.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: They die in the sins, they're going to hell.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I've found everlasting life.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I should just stand up on this bus and preach to them, and I thought the bus wouldn't stop and the driver and these people would throw me off.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So I prayed a very dangerous prayer.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I said, oh God, if there was just somewhere where I could preach the gospel, where people could crowd around and listen, I would do it, knowing that there was no such thing in our city.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: You can't gather like that.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: It's called an unlawful assembly.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You've got to have a permit to gather a group of people.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: About two weeks later, they legalized public speaking in our city.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It had never happened before and that was because a man known as the wizard his real name was in Brackle, bittery Channel had started speaking to crowds.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: He would dress as a wizard with a black wizard hat and he was very eloquent and funny.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: He would say things like why do we pay our doctors when we're sick?
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: We should pay them for every month we're well, and then that have an incentive to keep us well.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: And crowds were just so fascinated by his so-called wisdom.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: The city said you cannot do that and they broke up his crowd.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: So he got a chalkboard and began writing to the crowd.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: And the crowd just loved it and the media latched on to it and he humiliated the local city, the council, and so they legalized public speaking in area called Speakers Corner, like Hyde Park in London and I remember seeing that and saying, oh God, two weeks earlier, when you just open up some where I could speak, and thought to myself, what an answer to prayer.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Horrors.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And I was terrified and so I didn't think about it for, I think, another two weeks and I remember opening up a newspaper and seeing a picture of an elderly woman with a violin and underneath it said the Bible lady sharing her Christian testimony in Speakers Corner, and I felt humiliated that a little old lady was doing what I should do, and so I went into that Speakers Corner, stood there, looked at the crowd that was sitting around and I thought this is it and I did it.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: And that was the first time of 3,000 times didn't try out.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Things went fine.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: No one stoned me to death, my fears weren't realized and only once or twice did I get beaten up in 3,000 times.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Ray's obedience to God, even in the middle of his own fear and discomfort, continued to open more doors.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Soon he began to get invitations from all across New Zealand and Australia to teach others in the church how to effectively share the gospel with the unsaved.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Ray eventually shut down his leather shop and began itinerant preaching full-time, mostly in New Zealand, but occasionally traveling as far as Hawaii to share his message with local congregations, which is when he received an interesting call.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I was teaching in Hawaii and a pastor sat in from California, a Calvary Chapel pastor, and he disagreed with what I said at first, until I gave him a whole stack of scriptures to check up and he began to call me in New Zealand and say things like America must hear this message.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Would you come across to the US and teach it in the United States?
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: And the principle of the message was this you never, ever, give someone a cure without first giving them the knowledge of the disease.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: And what modern evangelism had done was that it would always give the cure.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: It would preach Christ crucified.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: It would preach the gospel.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Jesus said preach the gospel to every creature.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: And it had enhanced the gospel with benefits such as Jesus will fix your marriage, help your drug problem, help your alcohol problem, take away your loneliness.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: So what it did is?
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: It messed up the real reason for coming to the Savior.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Sinners come to the Savior to flee from the wrath to come, not to improve their lifestyle.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: You put on a parachute not to improve your flight on the plane, but to save you from the jump to come.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: And so I produced the teaching called hell's best kept secret, where it talked about a man on a plane.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: It was given a parachute because he was told it would improve his flight.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: When the flight got bumpy, took it off, it threw it down and became disillusioned.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: And that's because this motive for putting on the parachute was erroneous.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: The correct reason to put on a parachute if the plane is gonna crash is to save you from the jump that's to come, and the reason we should come to Christ is not to have a better lifestyle already had a good lifestyle before I came to Christ it's to save us from God's wrath on judgment day.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And so this pastor heard the teaching and said come and teach this in the United States.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: So I came over, uprooted everything and took my wife and three kids to Southern California and did nothing for three years.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: What I waited?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: For God to open doors.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: It was very frustrating because nobody knew who I was.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Who's gonna let a stranger into your pulpit?
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: were you question yourself like am I doing the right thing that God wants me to do?
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Like did I make the wrong call coming to the US?
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Was there a moment like that?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: no, never.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And it's because of a principle I've used for many years people wait on God for his will and my whole thought was the starting guns gone, it's blasted.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Go into all the world and preach the gospel every creature.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And I studied Mark 16, verse 15 go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and saw what the original word for go was all and everywhere.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Go in the original Greek means to go, all means all, and every creature means every.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So when Jesus, you go into all the world and preach the gospel every creature, you said go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: So people say how do you know who to witness to?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And my whole criteria is are they breathing?
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: for three years, ray continued to share the gospel with everyone who could, including random strangers on the street, at the supermarket or at the beach.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: But that seemed to be the extent of the doors that God was going to open.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: But then a switch flipped out of the blue and influential pastor heard Ray's simple message about hell's best kept secret and invited him to speak at a conference with over a thousand pastors in California.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Ray's message was turned into a video and screened to another 30,000 pastors the following year.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: But there was one more connection God was going to make which would give Ray the opportunity to share the true gospel with millions.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Welcome to compelled podcast brought to you by our friends at Living Waters.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: We just heard how God was using Ray to teach and minister to tens of thousands of pastors and churches across the US, bringing his training of how to share the gospel to those in need of a savior.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: And one of those individual church members who saw Ray's training hell's best kept secret just happened to be the Hollywood actor Kirk Cameron, best known at the time for his role as a teen star in the 80s sitcom growing pains.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Kirk was already a Christian and he was interested in evangelism, but he wasn't sure how to go about it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: And he said it blew him away.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: He listened to it twice First time, didn't understand it.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Second time he understood it and he said would you combine ministry?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: So we combine ministries?
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: He was frustrated for 12 months, kept saying to me how can we get this teaching to the church?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And he was invited to speak on a large television program and so he took my Bible and preached that sermon live on television and our website got over a million hits.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: The next day it collapsed and so the television network asked if we'd come back and create a program telling people how to share their faith biblically.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And we did, and it's now in its ninth season and it's aired in 190 countries called Way of the Master.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Christian television normally wouldn't touch me with a barge pole, and Kirk has given me permission to say this.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Having Kirk and I as partners in the gospel was kind of like jalapeno being wrapped in candy.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Everyone just said, oh, kirk Cameron, you know everyone loved Kirk, throwing pains, throwing pains and left behind movies.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: So I snuck in and got to preach biblical truths that normally wouldn't get on Christian television.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: And I remember hearing my new pastor.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: He knelt down and we prayed together and he said Lord, get the pastors out of the way.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Let this teaching get to the church, and that's exactly what happened through the Christian television program.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: It went straight to the church worldwide.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Today, ray is still as passionate about his faith as ever before, sharing the gospel with strangers, while also trying to encourage other Christians to share their faith as well.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I go to a local college and I take my camera and I interview people every day and I've seen just so many wonderful divine encounters.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: And by that I mean just yesterday I went and I saw I'm not going to go that way, I'm going this way, completely different direction to the local college.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I saw a girl sitting on grass and I said would you like to be on YouTube Over 248 million views If you're interested?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: She says yeah, I want to ask if there's an afterlife, sat down with her doing a program on aliens at the moment.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: So I started off with that and I said do you believe in God?
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: She says no, I don't.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I said well, that's crazy.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I said an atheist believes the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything Flowers and birds and trees, and seasons, and marvels of the human eye and the miracle of childbirth, male and female.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: It wasn't nothing in the beginning.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: An atheist believes that nothing created all those things.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: And I saw her backslide from atheism immediately to realize that atheism is out of foolishness.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: And then I did what I normally do I appeared to a conscience.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I said if you stand before God on judgment day, are you a good person?
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Are you going to make it there Because the Bible says the wages of sin is death.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: God is giving you death for your sins.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: That's his payment for your sins, the wages, like a judge gives a criminal the electric chair.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: That's what he earned, that's what he deserves.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I said you worthy of the death sentence?
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Do you think God is justified or are you a good person?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: She said I'm a good person and I took her through the commandments.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: She had the gospel with her and ended up praying with her and she just looked at me and said I can't tell you what this is meant to me today and it was a divine encounter.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Really was God leading me to someone whose heart he had prepared?
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: It's almost daily like that and it's just so exciting, and I believe that's what the abundant life is about.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: People think the abundant life is prosperity.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't think so.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Abundant just means full, and the apostle Paul had a full life of beating, stoning, shipwreck, imprisonment and martyrdom.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a happy life for the apostle Paul in that superficial sense, but when you're a Christian, death is lost at sting and God supernaturally guides you to people.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: He's prepared to hear the gospel and that's tremendously exciting.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: While Ray has had the privilege to see Christ at work and countless souls saved, that doesn't mean everyone who hears the gospel is receptive to it.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Far from it, In fact.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Ray has experienced his own share of pushback and heckling and a few times has even been physically assaulted.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: But when Ray feels discouraged, he reminds himself of the truth, about the actual situation.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I get lots of discouragement.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I've battled fear daily.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Fear never leaves you as a Christian, it's always there.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: It's something you just have to realize and overcome.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Like a firefighter, he arrives at a fire and he looks up and the fifth story and the lady is screaming out.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: She's got children clinging to her and there's flames right behind her.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: She's going to die.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Firefighter could say yikes, I'd rather be home with my wife watching a good old black and white movie on TV.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: But he's a firefighter.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: He's got to climb a 60 foot ladder and grab a woman who's almost on fire with her kids while she screams.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Is he going to be fearful?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: But he ignores his fears because he's not thinking of himself.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: He's thinking of that woman and the fate of her children.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we should be like as Christians Jude 23, 24, others having compassion, making a difference, pulling them from the fire, hating them in the garment spotted by the flesh.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: So when fear comes or discouragement comes, when my courage is ripped from me, I take no notice.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I got discouraged the other day.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: My husband and wife walked off on me in the middle of an interview, just said no, we don't care what the Bible says.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: So I take a cue from Jesus with a rich young ruler.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Rich young ruler walked off on Jesus.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: He just walked off sorrowful, he didn't fall on his knees.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: And so we should look at Jesus and realize he was never discouraged.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: The Bible says that in the book of Isaiah he shall not fail nor be discouraged.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: He never lost his courage because he knew he cannot fail, and that's the attitude for the Christian.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding and the labor of the Lord, for you know, your labor is not in vain, and that's what we should take our cue from.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to open air preaching, I absolutely love hecklers.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: They're the best thing that could happen in an open air situation.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: If you look at what happened with Jesus, he had great crowds and you see people asking questions and the Pharisees hated them, and so we read scripture passively, but I'm sure there was anger in their tone sometimes when they called out things to him.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: And that's where we get some of the great truths of scripture, because somebody asked Jesus a question.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: So when I get a heckler, I just remember a soft answer turns away wrath and it certainly does and use the heckler as a springboard for the gospel.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: In fact I encouraged them, I said come and talk to me, get up on the box, I'll give you 20 bucks if you prove to be a good person.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Come on, let's go through the good test and go through those commandments, see how you do, and it really was good.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And we give away money.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Actually, in open air preaching, I take a stack of $1 bills it's called a singles ministry and we just start off by saying to the crowd anyone here know the capital of France?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Anyone?
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, paris, you got it, here's a dollar.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And people laugh because the questions are so dumb and so easy and people are getting money.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And then we just say to the person over here who's got confidence, want to get up on the box some more.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: See if you're a good person, you get 20 bucks.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: If you pass, I'll give you 10 anyway.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I'll give you the 20 anyway, no matter what, for being good sports.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: So hecklers are a real good thing to happen in open air preaching.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Mention about soft answer, turning away wrath, and it really does work when it comes to an angry person.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: If you're open air preaching, just talk softly and try and distract them.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I remember one lady came up to me and she was really mad, she was swearing away and I just said to her that's a nice sweater and she said oh, yes, yes, and she started telling me about the sweater.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: So there are certain things you can do to get out of being beaten up.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite Bible verses is if you're persecuted in one city, flee to the next.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Someone wants to stone me to death.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: They've got to catch me first.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Define beaten up.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Well, it was my fault.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: A woman came up to me and said I don't like what you and she swore what you said.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And I looked at her and I said sounds like there's some demons in there.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have said that.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: And that's when she slapped my face and confirmed it.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: And then another drunk tried to beat me up and he missed.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I was able to.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: He couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: And another guy showed up in the square holding a can of gasoline and started screaming at me get out of my way.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I think he screamed that about 30 times and he's carrying this can of gasoline.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: I thought, lord, I want to be on fire for you, but I don't want to go that way.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Anyway, two police officers showed up and arrested him and took them 20 minutes to get rid of him because he was really full of demons.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: But another time I got beaten up and this was my fault also.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: I was preaching open air in Santa Monica back in the late 1990s, had a crowd of about 30 or 40 people, when a lady or sorry, a woman started cussing at me the F word, the F bomb, and I said Madam, can you watch your language?
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: There are ladies present.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have said that.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: She said I'm a lady.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I said, madam, you may be a woman, but you are not a lady.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: At that she ran at me like a bat out of heaven and started beating me up.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't like scratch, scratch, pull here.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: It was like she was Mike Tyson's sister.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: She has went, got in six punches, laid me out on the ground.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: My team pulled her back, held onto it and as I was getting up she said let me get my handbag.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: And they let her go and she got in a kidney punch.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: It took two weeks for the bruising to go.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Anyway, she doubled my crowd so she could come back anytime.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Wow, that sounds quite exciting.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And that was my fault.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I should have just kept my mouth shut.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: As we wrapped up our conversation, Ray had an encouragement for every believer listening to compel.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I've seen wonderful things happen, but sometimes it takes time.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: All those years preaching in the square, I was sewing in tears, hardly seeing any fruit, lots of hecklers, people saying, get out of here Wasn't like came to the US that I started hearing the people getting saved back in New Zealand.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: It's like God says get out of the way now.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to bring increase back here.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: And so we sew.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: God gives the increase, someone else reaps.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Let me just share something with you.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: That's my biggest weapon when it comes to sharing the gospel, the biggest thing that I use to get rid of my fears, because every Zakeith turns into a Goliath.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: The moment I want to witness to him being extra man in a plane, he's a businessman.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I turn to him and think, oh, what am I going to say to this guy?
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: He becomes a Goliath to me.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: And so I have years, for years, been very nervous about witnessing to people on planes.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I still did it, but I discovered something about 30 years ago that slew Goliath.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And this is it.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I just ask strangers, do you think there's an afterlife?
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's an afterlife?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: I don't mention Jesus, god, heaven, hell, sin, righteousness, judgment, the blood of Christ, all these things that make us and them feel a little uncomfortable.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I just asked for his opinion Do you think there's an afterlife?
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: There's something called relationship evangelism, where you build relationships for a couple of years before you get the right to witness to people.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I believe in that.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll wait up to two, maybe three minutes building that relationship, and this is how I do it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Let's say we're at the ministry and there's a plumber.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: He's fixing something under the sink.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I come walking.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Don't know who the guy is.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I walk up and say hey, how are you doing?
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: He says good.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I say I'm Ray.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: He says I'm Eric.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: I say Eric, do you think there's an afterlife?
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: It's 11 seconds, it's not two years, because he could die while I mess around with my fears for two years.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: And he says I don't know.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: So do you think heaven exists?
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: He says I hope so.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: His I hope so just dissipated my fears.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: He's not anti Christ, he didn't stab me to death.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: He's a human being with a will to live.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: God's put eternity upon his heart and he's hoping to get to heaven.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And so I just said well, are you a good person?
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: You're going to make it there?
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: He says yeah, I think I'm a good person.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Scripture says most every man will proclaim his own goodness.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: It's very predictable.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I said well, let's look at the commandments, see how you're going to do.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: And that's when I say Jesus said if you look at a woman in lust for who, you commit adultery in the heart.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Have you ever done that?
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: He says I do it all the time and his conscience is bearing witness.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Romans 2, verse 15,.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: The work of the law is written upon his heart, the conscience bearing witness.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: And so I have this witness and the help of the Holy Spirit, and that has been an absolute key to me.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Any stranger it doesn't matter whether it's Einstein or just a politician I can witness to him because I'm not going for his intellect, I'm going for his conscience, and that conscience is going to agree with the commandment.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: One thing I would like to say is that often on our YouTube channel, there are comments where people say, oh, I wish you could witness to my husband or my son, who's wayward.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: And I say, well, just use our videos, just send it to them and say hubby, I'd like to know what you think of this.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Don't say, husband, I want you to watch this religious video.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He's going to get his fur up on the back of his neck.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: But if you say to him, I'd like to know what you think of this, you're appealing to his ego and he's more likely to watch it and give his opinion and come under the sound of the gospel.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: So that's one thing I'd encourage people to do.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: If you go to a YouTube channel, watch the videos.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Don't say, oh, that was great.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: My uncle would like to just send it to him and say I'd like to know what you think of this, and that will spread the power of the gospel and let more come into the sound of this wonderful message that we have in Christ.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Amen, ray, thank you for your time, man.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: It's been a joy.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: I will be the first to admit that I can feel intimidated when sharing the gospel with strangers or even friends.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: But Jesus does not make it optional.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: In fact, the very last words he says to his disciples before ascending into heaven are recorded in Matthew 28.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: In verse 19, he says Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: But a little later he provides some encouragement to those that may be fearful by saying behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: You know, a recurring theme that we've seen so many times in compelled testimonies is that the gospel is so often presented by just a regular Christian without some unique gifting or credentials.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: In Ray's case, he heard the gospel for the very first time from a brand new convert.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: The surfing buddy had only been following Jesus for six months prior.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: His friend wasn't especially articulate or prepared, he just shared.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: And God used that moment of faithfulness one night in New Zealand to open Ray's eyes.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: And then God proceeded to use Ray's faithfulness to share the true gospel on a street corner in Christchurch, new Zealand, for 12 years Then, with thousands of pastors in America, millions more on Christian network television and today countless others on YouTube and social media.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: But it all begins with simple faithfulness to share the hope of Christ, and maybe even today, god is prompting you to text a friend or neighbor right now and ask them to meet up so that you can share some good news with them.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: If you've never listened to the compelled podcast before, then we hope you've enjoyed this special season finale brought to you by our friends at Living Waters.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: We have 70 other episodes just like this one, showcasing how God can transform lives, and we'd love for you to listen.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Just search for compelled on your podcast app or visit compelledpodcastcom.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: I'm the host, paul Hastings, and I hope to see you there.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope you found that compelling.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: You can listen to other testimonies at compelledpodcastcom.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, easy, mark and Oscar, and I'll be back next time right here on the Living Waters podcast.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: The ultimate cure for insomnia oh, we've got to get another tagline.