Thank you so much for the many encouraging emails regarding the New York atheist debate. Your kind words meant a lot to Kirk and me. The following is typical:

"Thanks so much for your debate on ABC's Nightline. I watched several portions on the website, and our radio station is promoting your "way of the master" website now too. Praise the Lord for the words that you shared which were VERY eye-opening and revealing and had a huge world-wide audience . . . I KNOW many lives are being reached through your commitment to Christ, and this opportunity which you knocked out of the ballpark." D.P. (WA).

While most have understood why we did this debate, there have been a number of Christian arm-chair quarterbacks who are publicly saying that we miserably failed--calling it "the way of the disaster," and saying that we went into the debate totally unprepared. There have also been accusations from Christians and atheists saying that I didn't keep my word. For those of you that have read what our critics are saying, I would like to address these issues.

Our primary goal in doing the debate was to preach the gospel to the countless people who would be watching in their homes, because it is the gospel that is "the power of God unto salvation" (see Romans 1:16). I have noticed that often Christian apologists present wonderful arguments at debates that sweep the floor with their opponents, but they fail to preach "Christ and Him crucified." So our strategy was that we would first present clear and solid evidence of God's existence through creation (Romans 1:20 says that creation is what leaves the world without excuse), and then focus on preaching the moral Law and the gospel. Again, our primary goal was to preach the gospel and then (where possible) support our preaching with apologetics, reason, logic, with a loving demeanor. That is what we tried to do.

We studied hard, but we had no idea what they would throw at us. So we prepared ourselves to give rational answers to questions such as why the Old Testament says to cut the hand off a woman who interferes in a fight between her husband and another man, why God told Joshua to kill every Canaanite man, woman, and child, why God condoned slavery and even the beating of slaves, why a rebellious youth was to be stoned to death, etc. We were also ready to answer questions about anthropomorphic statements in the Bible, Scripture's use of hyperbole, geocentricity, who it was who imprisoned Galileo and was behind the crusades and the Spanish inquisition, and a lot more. We thought we had all the bases covered, but one or two came out of left field for which we hadn't prepared--about "entropy" and whether or not the universe is eternal. Ironically, I have faced thousands of questions from heckler's over the years, and it was the first time I had heard that question. (I have a book coming out in a couple of months called, The Atheist Delusion, which addresses each of these questions).

While we recognize that not every Christian will agree with our approach (primarily preaching the gospel), we wanted you to understand where we were coming from. OneNewsNow.com did a survey asking: Did Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort prove the existence of God to your satisfaction? The results show that over half of those taking the survey did understand.

Look at how the Law (going through the Commandments) caused the arguments of this atheist to become a non-issue:

"I was sent this test on line . . . It started asking me 'Are you a good person?' I thought, 'Sure, I'm a good person. I haven't killed anybody.' As I took the test, something started happening. The Law (as I figured out later on), was cutting through my stony heart at the time. It was quite miraculous. It was totally unexpected. I had heard the typical gospel message before but never like this. I had never heard this before. I didn't know where it was taking me. I didn't even understand what was happening to me at first. But as I was taking that test, all these problems I had with the Bible--whether it was right or wrong, all that stuff fell away. It just fell in the background and disappeared. And pretty soon I started realizing I was in big trouble!"

So, our tactic was to share three main points:

• Creation scientifically proves there is a Creator.
• Conscience tells us there is a moral Law and therefore, there must be a Law-giver. This Law is written on the heart, and tells us we are in big trouble with the Creator.
• Conversion: Becoming a new creature in Christ is an incredibly powerful argument for Christianity.

We must have reasonable answers, for reasonable people; however, these atheists were not reasonable -- they were angry and hostile. So we wanted to keep our eye on the gospel and not allow the debate to degenerate into the Jerry Springer show. It was because of this that we decided not to break away from the format given to us by ABC. Unfortunately this was seen by a number of Christians to be weakness on our part. In hindsight, if we have one regret, it is that we should have countered them a bit more than we did. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Not Keeping my Word

There seems to be some confusion about the structure of the debate. A press release headline was changed, stating this would be a "Bible-less debate." That was never the case. In fact, I provided Brian (the atheist) with a copy of my outline some time before the debate. He knew that I would begin by demonstrating God's existence without using the Bible or faith (ie. creation proves there is a Creator). He then knew that I would then open up the Ten Commandments (ie. conscience proves there is a moral law and thus a Law Giver). Finally, he also knew that I would end with the gospel. He knew I planned to move from a presentation of the general evidence of God to specific proof about Jesus Christ. So it greatly puzzled us that Brian feigned "shock" when he heard it.

Despite these accusations, I am deeply thankful to God that the full gospel was preached on ABC's Home Page (they get 19 million visitors each month), and it is still going out all over the Internet, and will do for years to come. What an incredible opportunity we were given. Only eternity will tell what took place.

Thank you for your prayers.

Until the nets are full,
Ray Comfort

P.S. To see the debate through our cameras (and never-before-seen behind the scenes clips) go to YouTube.com/TheWayOfTheMaster