As a young man, Ray Comfort
was an avowed atheist. He thought the Bible was a book of myths and going to
church was an insult to his intellect. But through the loving witness of a surfer
friend who shared the simple Gospel, Ray’s defenses were slowly dismantled. Critical
to Ray’s conversion was helping him understand that the Bible was scientifically
accurate. After evaluating the evidence for Christianity, Ray surrendered his
life to Jesus in 1979. (Click here to watch one of Ray's videos)
Ray is now the president of Living Waters Ministries, the author of several books including The Evidence Bible and has made hundreds of YouTube videos of his street evangelism. He notes that the Bible is full of prescience—that is, scientific statements made by Scripture that far exceed the general knowledge of the time. In other words, these scientific truths would not be confirmed for hundreds of years, showing that when the Biblical authors wrote they must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Here are just a few examples:
Ray Comfort
Earth’s free float in
space - Job 26:7 (written 3,500 years ago): “He stretches out the north over
empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.” Many ancient people thought
that the earth sat on a large animal. Yet, way before space travel, the Bible
proclaims that the earth sits in space.
A round earth - Isaiah
40:22 (written 2,800 years ago): “It is He who sits above the circle of the
earth.” Though it once was commonly believed the earth was flat, it was the
Scriptures that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world. He
wrote: “It was the Lord who put it into my mind…There is no question the
inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me with rays of
marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures…”
The Mississippi River
dumps over six million gallons of water per second into the Gulf of Mexico.
Where does all that water go? That’s just one of thousands of rivers. The
answer lies in the hydrologic cycle—something not fully understood until the
17th century, but so well brought out in the Bible. Ecclesiastes 1:7 says, “All
the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which
the rivers come, there they return again.”
Did you know the science
of oceanography began with one man’s Bible study? Psalm 8:8 declares, “…and the
fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas.” Matthew Maury
(1806–1873), considered the father of oceanography, noticed the expression
“paths of the sea” in Psalm 8. Maury took God at His word and went looking for
these paths, and his vital book on oceanography is still in print today. Man
discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850s, but the Bible declared
the science of oceanography 2,800 years ago.
Leviticus 12:3 commanded
the Jews to circumcise their baby boys eight days after birth. Medical science
has only recently discovered that blood clotting in a newborn reaches its peak
on that day. That’s when the coagulating factors in the blood are at optimal
levels: vitamin K doesn’t reach sufficient quantity until after day seven, and
day eight is when prothrombin is the highest, reaching 110 percent of the
normal level. Ancient Jews didn’t know this, but God did!
Are you convinced of the
Bible’s uniqueness? Ray Comfort went from being a skeptic to a preacher, as
have a host of others (Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel, The Apostle Paul).
Denying the existence of God will not simply make Him go away, it merely proves
that no amount of evidence will convince you. -DM
