Hell’s Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort Page 1 of 10
This message was first preached in August 1982. Hell’s Best Kept Secret is non-copyrighted, duplication is encouraged.
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Hell’s Best Kept Secret
In the late seventies, God very graciously opened an itinerant ministry to me. As I began to travel, I found
that I had access to church growth records, and found to my horror that something like 80 to 90% of those making a
decision for Christ were falling away from the faith. That is, modern evangelism with its methods is creating
something like 80 to 90 of what we commonly call backsliders for every hundred decisions for Christ.
Let me make it more real for you. In 1991, in the first year of the decade of harvest, a major denomination
in the U.S. was able to obtain 294,000 decisions for Christ. That is, in one year, this major denomination of 11,500
churches was able to obtain 294,000 decisions for Christ. Unfortunately, they could only find 14,000 in fellowship,
which means they couldn’t account for 280,000 of their decisions, and this is normal, modern evangelical results,
and something I discovered way back in the late seventies; it greatly concerned me. I began to study the book of
Romans intently and, specifically, the gospel proclamation of men like Spurgeon, Wesley, Moody, Finney, Whitfield,
Luther, and others that God used down through the ages, and I found they used a principle which is almost entirely
neglected by modern evangelical methods. I began teaching that principle; I was eventually invited to base our
ministry in southern California, the city of Bellflower, specifically to bring this teaching to the church of the U.S.
Things were quiet for the first three years, until I received a call from Bill Gothard, who had seen the teaching on
video. He flew me to San Jose in northern California; I shared it with a thousand pastors. Then in 1992 he screened
that video to 30,000 pastors. The same year David Wilkerson called from New York. He called from his car. (He
had been listening to the teaching in his car and called me on his car phone.) Immediately, he flew me 3,000 miles
from L.A. to New York to share the one-hour teaching with his church; he considered it to be that important. And
recently I heard of a pastor who had listened to the audio tape 250 times. I’d be happy if you’d listen just once to
this teaching which is called “Hell’s Best Kept Secret.”
The Bible says in Psalm 19, verse 7, “The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul.” What is it that the
Bible says is perfect and actually converts the soul? Why scripture makes it very clear: “The law of the Lord is
perfect converting the soul.” Now to illustrate the function of God’s law, let’s just look for a moment at civil law.
Imagine if I said to you, “I’ve got some good news for you: someone has just paid a $25,000 speeding fine on your
behalf.” You’d probably react by saying, “What are you talking about? That’s not good news: it doesn’t make sense.
I don’t have a $25,000 speeding fine.” My good news wouldn’t be good news to you: it would seem foolishness. But
more than that, it would be offensive to you, because I’m insinuating you’ve broken the law when you don’t think
you have. However, if I put it this way, it may make more sense: “On the way to this meeting, the law clocked you at
going 55 miles an hour through an area set aside for a blind children’s convention. There were ten clear warning
signs stating that fifteen miles an hour was the maximum speed, but you went straight through at 55 miles an hour.
What you did was extremely dangerous; there’s a $25,000 fine. The law was about to take its course, when
someone you don’t even know stepped in and paid the fine for you. You are very fortunate.”
Can you see that telling you precisely what you’ve done wrong first actually makes the good news make
sense.