This is published by permission and Apprising Ministries presents it with just this minimal comment because the author and I agree it will prove beneficial to the Body of Christ. The initial short email introduces the longer letter to which the author refers. My response then follows.

Ken,

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to inform you that I sent the e-mail below to Ingrid regarding her inexplicable stand against the preaching of the gospel. I was further saddened to see you link arms with Ingrid take the same stand over at Apprising in your article entitled ON RAY COMFORT AND WORD FAITH HERETICS.

It’s out of my deep respect in the Lord for both Ingrid and yourself that I pray you’ll read my message below and help me understand why Christians should EVER reject ANY opportunity to proclaim the Lord’s glorious gospel of grace to unregenerate sinners.

In Christ,

A Christian Family Member

Greetings Ingrid,

I read your post over at Slice on Ray Comfort and wanted to share my heart with you on this matter. I do pray that my words won’t come across to you as lambasting or acrimonious because this isn’t my intent, but I do have some hard words to share with you today and therefore I’ve asked the Lord to grant me the grace and humility to share my thoughts in a spirit of truth and love.

Fist let it be known that I’m not some apologist for Ray Comfort as he is more than able to speak for himself as he has demonstrated over at Christian Worldview Network, which I noticed you posted in its entirety at Slice with additional commentary. To me your additional comments represent a small view of the all encompassing power and sufficiency of the One True and Living God; the One who is absolutely sovereign over all things from eternity to eternity. It is He who will have mercy upon whom He will mercy, and His chosen method for the salvation of men’s souls is THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.

Certainly the scriptures teach that true believers are to be separate from the world and we are commanded to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers since light and darkness have no communion. Since it’s a demonstrable fact that the WoF heresy is another gospel — and is therefore accursed — it seems fair to say that it is “of the world”; worldly, fleshy, and sinfully apostate. Yet, according to his words Ray Comfort is not unequally yoking himself with the WoF heretics, instead he publicly denies their prosperity error and in fact plainly states that his sole purpose and goal in going to this event is to preach the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ! The blinded and deceived WoF adherents certainly aren’t going to receive the true gospel of grace from the corrupted wolves in sheep’s clothing who are presently making merchandise of the house of God and mercilessly rending His little flock, therefore I rejoice that Ray Comfort is willing and able to bring the light of the gospel into that den of thieves and that in His divine providence the King of Glory would orchestrate such a wondrous thing!

The REAL Jesus Christ of scripture is absolutely able and will absolutely ensure that all His elect are gathered into His kingdom from all the various streams of the one false and defiled religion of human merit and accomplishment which stands as a perverse idol over and against the one true and pure religion of God’s merit and accomplishment in Jesus Christ which is commonly known as Biblical Christianity. I think in this case you’re guilty of giving far too much credit to the enemy’s power to deceive and far too little credit to the One True and Living God’s sovereign ability to open men’s hearts and minds by the power of His Eternal Gospel. Ray Comfort is being obedient to the Lord as he faithfully proclaims the gospel to anyone and everyone; anywhere and everywhere.

Ingrid, I deeply respect you and your spiritual discernment is usually impeccable, but in this case I believe you’ve gotten it flat wrong and in my opinion you ought to publicly say so. Ray Comfort is evangelizing at the WoF conference in question just as he would evangelize at “a white supremacist conference, a lesbian pride rally, a wiccan convention, or a feminist gathering” to use some of your examples.

Where in the scriptures and under what circumstances are Christians EVER called to NOT evangelize with the true gospel of grace to their hearers? Where in the scriptures are examples of Christians condemning the “leadership” of the false religious cults of their time before they proceeded to share the true gospel of grace? Those very wolves in sheep’s clothing need to hear the gospel just as much as their itching ears hangers on, no? And every man’s response to glorious gospel of grace is in the eternally sovereign hands of the LORD alone, as always.

To preemptively strike at Ray Comfort in the manner you have done is both unacceptable and wrong. Did you actually listen to the messages Ray Comfort delivered that your original Slice post liked to, Ingrid? I did and I wept as I heard Ray Comfort sharing the uncompromised Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact one of Ray’s messages on the site you linked to was specifically focused on some of the very real concerns you yourself have raised regarding false converts and easy-believism in the professing church! I rejoice that such truth is proclaimed to the praise of the glory of God alone!
You lumped Ray in with Ravi’s failure to share the truth of scripture with his Mormon audience, but by doing so you paint with too broad of a brush. Ravi’s decline to apostasy has been long and well known and documented; after all he didn’t suddenly fall off the orthodox bandwagon in front of the LDS faithful. In his public ministry Ray Comfort has never, as far as I can tell, compromised on the purity of the gospel message.

If, after Ray has spoken at the conference, you should find cause in the content of his message to call upon him to publicly repent, then so be it. But for you to take an a priori position and make assumptions based on nothing but your own personal feelings and then proceed to simply cast a wet blanket over Ray — and by extension ANYONE AND EVERYONE — who would go ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE to share the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ is both unchristian and uncharitable and stands in opposition to the Great Commission of our Lord.

I pray that you would publicly reverse yourself on this issue.
In Christ,

A Christian Family Member

Hello,

All of the people I have around me for accountability know that I have told them to speak as frankly with me as they feel led of the Lord without risk of offending me. I am accustomed to straight talk and so I will respond from a position of no offense taken and no intention of causing any. Setting this upfront due to the limitations of the written language.

And now I will say to you that I also pray that my words won’t come across to you as lambasting or acrimonious because this isn’t my intent, but I do have some hard words to share with you today and therefore I’ve asked the Lord to grant me the grace and humility to share my thoughts in a spirit of truth and love.

Further, I want you to help me understand why a Christian would EVER say that I teach we are to reject ANY opportunity to proclaim the Lord’s glorious gospel of grace to unregenerate sinners. The fact is I didn’t say, and never would say, anything of the sort.

As a pastor I am telling you that 2 Cor. 6 says Ray is wrong to be on their platform yoked before the world in their advertising such as he is. What is more I am the one who privately tipped both WOTM first, and then Ingrid, that our critics were already linking this conference publicly.

I left the person’s name to whom I spoke at WOTM out of my post out of respect, but for whatever reason, they did not tell me the truth when I contacted them. And I have corresponded with them before. However, they told me, “Ray accepted this invitation without knowing about the other speakers.” I then told them it would be a good idea for Ray to state publicly what his intentions were at that conference.

The Lord knows I tell the truth that had they simply given me a public statement I would have then published it without any further comment and have been done with it. In the meantime however, I saw another critic had posted from the archives of the conference that this is the 3rd time Ray’s been asked to speak there.

I wrote my contact at WOTM again privately with this information, complete with the links, and they chose not to respond at all. No doubt Ray preached his usual WOTM presentation. Being that he is an evangelist I wouldn’t expect him to be able to articulate what the Word Faith wolves teach and I know he did put in a couple of references against it.

However, having been in the Word Faith early in my Christian life I would have said amen to everything he said because the Word Faith people don’t see themselves using God as Santa, etc. The issue that is being missed here is the same one that Billy Graham slid by on for years with the Roman Catholic Churches, which were always involved in his crusades.

In this case Ray would come in and preach the Gospel as the evangelist and then the sheep are left with the wolves without any clear warning of the grave danger they are in. Somebody isn’t telling the truth at WOTM because this is now the 3rd year Ray has been asked back and it’s stretching to the point of credulity to think that Ray has attempted to correct these Word Faith wolves.

If I was asked to go speak at this conference I would tell the Word Faith guys I will come speak provided I not be censured at all; and, because I do not agree with your version of Christianity, I do not want my name associated with yours in promotion for the event. This clearly Ray did not do and his name is being used to bring in funding for what looks to me to be a Word Faith college, after which this event is named and very likely helps support in some way.

That Ray says he isn’t yoked etc. doesn’t change some facts. 1) He is yoked to them in the advertising for the conference; 2) somebody is lying about his previous involvement, and 3) if it hadn’t been for me contacting WOTM privately there would have been no statement. As it is it took Ingrid and me posting on it before Ray made that statement.

I counter that the Lord led me to contact WOTM in His divine providence because there is more to the story than any of us yet know. And in addition this type of issue now needs to be addressed in the Body of Christ due to the medium of the Internet now making information like this so much more readily available.

Anyone who can read will see I was very gentle in what I said. But the fact is, for whatever reason, WOTM was not forthright or even professional with me. It’s not personal; I didn’t go looking for the original story, nor did I search for the archive web link which proves Ray was there in 2 prior years.

I know he isn’t stupid so he had to know of the other speakers. And because I don’t know where the misinformation comes from I’m not going to speculate. As far as I’m concerned the issue is closed. God wanted me to write what I did and I stand by what I said. The bottom line is: The Bible tells us not to be publicly yoked with unbelievers, which is very likely what these Word Faith guys are, because it gives the impression of agreement to those who look in at the Church.

The person who looks at that website will think, at best: Whatever differences Ray has with those guys they can’t be serious enough for him to break fellowship with them. My piece is very clear that I never questioned Ray’s intent nor do I question his message. However, he is wrong to violate Scripture and in my view the Lord was looking in this situation for us to obey what He has said and not our human feelings.

In the end you have to do what you feel led to do and I have not presented the above as an argument to sway you. It’s simply my position and I am comfortable in the Lord that I have done what I was supposed to do. I’m afraid that beyond this I have no control and I do pray this helps at least ease your concerns.

Sincerely,

Ken