Book: God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life: The Myth of the Modern Message
Author: Ray Comfort
Published: Living Waters, May 2012
Review by: Chris Poblete
Ray Comfort’s God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life: The Myth of the Modern Message, is a short, punchy book on a very timely topic.
Possibly the most frightening passage in Scripture
Ray Comfort considers Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7:21-23 “possibly the most frightening passage in Scripture.” In it, Jesus spoke of many who would consider themselves Christians and yet are not saved. He warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven…I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
Today’s church statistics confirm this bleak reality
According to God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life, a 2003 survey found that of all those in the U.S. who profess to be born-again Christians, 49% enjoyed sexual fantasies about other people, 33% thought it was okay to kill a baby while it is still in the womb. Other surveys concluded that 53% of the men belonging to a large Christian organization visited porn sites every week, and 30% of 6000 pastors surveyed had viewed Internet porn in the last 30 days.
The book also cites a Barna Group survey conducted in 2009 which found that among individuals describing themselves as Christian: close to half believe that Satan does not exist, one-third contend that Jesus sinned while He was on earth, two-fifths say they do not have a responsibility to share their faith with others, and one-quarter deny that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
How did we get here? What is our way out?
In God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life: The Myth of the Modern Message, Ray Comfort argues that this is all a result of “the enemy subtly diverting our attention away from our core message.” He argues:
Instead of preaching the Good News that sinners can be made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come, we have settled for a “gospel” that implies that God’s primary purpose in saving us is to unfold a “wonderful plan” for our lives: to solve our problems, make us happy in Christ, and rescue us from the hassles of this life.
The book is, quite simply, a call away from “modern evangelistic methods” to what Comfort argues is the Biblical one. According to Comfort, the issue of man’s blindness to his need for a Savior is not so much a lifestyle issue as the “modern myth” argues; nor is it a philosophical issue or intellectual issue. Ultimately, it is a moral issue. Man needs to know of his depravity—that he is guilty in sin.
So what is is this Biblical method of evangelism?
Appealing to Galatians 3:24, Comfort tells us that the Law is a “a schoolmaster to bring sinners to Christ, just as it brought Israel to Christ.” He shares with readers the story of how he came to this epiphany and how he learned that this is a method of evangelism that has been used for centuries. He tells of how he “began to study Scripture as well as the gospel proclamation of men like John Wesley, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Moody, Luther, and others whom God had used through the ages.”
Jesus and the Law
Comfort reminds us that the Old Testaments said that the Messiah would “magnify the law and make it honorable” (Isaiah 42:21). Jesus Himself used the Law to bring sinners to repentance and point to Himself as the only one and true Savior of the world (Matthew 5). Comfort is careful to emphasize that the Law does not account for our justification (Galatians 2:16). Only the precious blood of Christ and the power of His resurrection can do that. “The Law’s rightful purpose is simply to act as a mirror to show us that we need cleansing,” says Comfort.
After laying these foundations, Ray Comfort spends the rest of his short book explaining how one can—practically speaking—use the Law as a schoolmaster to lead others to Christ.
If you have any desire to see the lost convicted of sin and saved in Jesus Christ (and as a Christian, you should!), then this short, 120-page book will serve as a great tool for Biblical evangelism. We highly recommend it.
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