BASIC ELEMENT OF A COMPLETE BORN AGAIN EXPERIENCE

BASIC ELEMENT OF A COMPLETE BORN AGAIN EXPERIENCE

Jesus answered and said unto him verily, verily I say unto thee; except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdoms of God. (John 3:3)

The scripture clearly reveal to us that for a person to say that he/she is genuinely born-again, there are three basic elements that must be true in his/her life. These three basic elements are missing in the life of many who are claiming to be born-again today.

Also, many churches/denominations have neglected sound teaching of these three basic elements and where they are present, they are either wrongly taught, practice or not fully practice and taught.

In this blog, the Lord is leading us to show His children the reality of this three basic elements and call for their full restoration in the body of Christ that we may be qualified to enter into the next move of God which many have been praying for on earth; The kingdom Of God.

BELIEVE, REPENT AND BE BAPTIZED

It is important for us at this time and hour that God is planning a major move on earth - A move that that would cause the Kingdom of God to come upon the earth and destroy all other kingdom that men has built and are still building, to re-examine the basic truth of the foundation of our Salvation (i.e our Born again experience) that you and I may know if the foundation of our salvation is fake or genuine.

The Scripture admonish us in II Corinthian 13:5 that:

Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.

Test yourselves. Do you not know yourself that Christ is in you? - Unless indeed you are disqualified (N.K.J.V )

If after reading this blog, you are assured in your spirit by the Holy Spirit that the foundation of your salvation is true and complete, thank God and I pray that the Lord will help you to continue steadfastly in Him. If you are not sure of the originality or completeness of the foundation of your salvation, this is another opportunity being given to you by the Lord Jesus Christ to be born - again, again.

I believe also that this message is also for those that are called to ministered to sinners, so that they can check the foundation of the message of salvation that they are presenting to sinners whether it is of God or Flesh or Satan.
This is also to help them to know if the foundation they are laying in the new convert is complete or incomplete.
The issue of foundation is a paramount issue in the scripture that cannot be neglected. Psalm 11:3 says:

if the foundation be destroyed what can the righteous do?

The righteous has to go back to the foundation and relay it.

Every foundation that is not properly laid on the Rock (Christ) would go down the drain in the hour we are in. That is why God is taken time to help His willing children who will hearken to His call in Mathew 11:28-30 that they may not be partaker of the coming judgment nor suffer loss.

I pray the Lord will give you a hearing ear and understanding heart so that you can run to Him for help.

God is coming to try every foundations of our experiences in Him and those that are built on sand (Carnality, Human philosophy and doctrines that have replaced sound biblical truth, blocking the well of life, like the Philistine blocked the Abraham’s well with sand) shall collapse when the flood begin to move against them and the wind begin to blow vehemently upon them and great will be their ruin. (Luke 6:46-49)

May the Lord help you and I to open up ourselves to the grace of God so that we can escape the coming judgment in Jesus name (Amen).

Now let us look into those basic elements one after the other.

There are three basic elements that must be present in every genuine and complete born again experience.

These are “Believe”, “Repentance” and “Water baptism”. The yoke by which this three are tightly joined together is the Holy Ghost sponsored Conviction.

BELIEVE

John 3:16 says:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son that WHOSOEVER BELIEVE in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Romans 10:6-13 clearly show the picture of what it mean to believe in Christ it says:

Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven? (That is to bring Christ down from above) or who will descend into the abyss? (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead) But what doe it says? The word is near you, in YOUR MOUTH and IN YOUR HEART (that is, the world of faith which we preached) “That if you CONFESS WITH YOUR MOUTH the Lord Jesus and BELIEVE IN YOUR HEAR that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.

For with the HEART ONE BELIEVE UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation…WHOSOEVER BELIEVE IN HIM will not be put to shame for whosoever call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

This basic truth preached by Paul the Apostle to the gentiles in Romans is almost extinct from many denominations today. This is because “while men (ministers of God called to watch over the truth) slept, the enemy came in to sow tares into the field.

''These tares are the philosophy of Satan, Human doctrines and concept of salvation laid on the foundation of vanity and mere seduction''.

Particularly verse 10 of Rom 10, which is the cardinal point in the gospel of salvation, has been tampered with.

The passage no longer says: For with the HEART one believes unto righteousness.
Many have turned it around and gave that passage their own version. For some the passage reads, “For with the MIND one believes unto righteousness” and many people today are receiving mental salvation. The gospel has no root in their heart but in their mind.

The manner and ways by which some preachers rubber stamped people for salvation show that the gospel is no longer touching the heart. It has become an emotional, sensual and deceptive appeal to the mind and purses of men.

Worse still some have interpreted that passage to read thus

“For with WORK (donation of money, joining worker, attending church services) one believe unto righteousness”

''Many who ought to go and seek the Lord for salvation are being nominated by many denomination to their board of directors (elders) some were even being honor with pastoral post because of their eloquence, numerous donation and activeness in service. These are the things that cause the word of faith that lead to righteousness which Paul preached in Romans 10 to be eroded from many ''churches'' through human and Satan’s doctrines, philosophies brought in by generation of men that knew not the Lord”.

This the is time to restore the truth of Roman 10 back.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BELIEVE?

I will show you in practical term what it means to believe. When someone come to you and tell you about Jesus, showing to you how He (Christ) offered himself for you on the cross to pay for your sins. He showed to you how much He (Christ) love you and how He is waiting to receive you and forgive you of all your sins. He shows you the free grace of God, which is able to save and to deliver, and you receive those words to be true, because the Holy Ghost mixed with the words to bring Conviction into you heart. And you saw your sinfulness and the need to receive Christ into your life.
If this was your experience, you have just entered the firsts phase of what it mean to believe in Christ.

The expression of the conviction that comes through the mercy of God and the power of Holy Ghost is the first evidence that you believe.

So if you were convicted of your sins and for living without Christ by the Holy Ghost through the word of God that came to you. And you saw the love of God for you standing against your sinful life. You desired a change of life; you desired to be born -again and be led to Christ Jesus. It shows that, truly, God has touched you in your heart and the “Word (Christ) is near you” and He is “in your mouth” waiting for you to confess Him “and in your heart” because, by believing the gospel that was preached to you the door of your heart has been made open for Him to come in through the Holy Ghost.

This however, is not the end, verse 9 of Romans 10 says:

“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and BELIEVE in your heart that God has raised Him from the deed you shall be saved”.

If your conviction does not lead to confession and further believing in your heart that Lord Jesus has resurrected to life from the dead that you may also have life, your salvation is not complete.

Example of a man who experienced conviction that comes by the Holy Spirit through the word of faith preached to him but do not allow it to work salvation in him was King Agrippa, who confessed in Act 26: 28 to Paul that “Almost thou persuaded me to be a Christian”.

So you see believing that comes by conviction would lead to confession.

You cannot say you believe without confessing what you believe. If truly you believe Christ at the time the massage of salvation came to you, you must have confessed Jesus as Lord and Saviour to be saved. You must have confessed that you believe He died and resurrected.

Satan cannot read you heart. If you believed and you do not confessed it, Satan would not recognized your faith

“For with the heart one Believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation “

Rom 10: 10.

II Cor 4:13 says:

“since we have same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believe and therefore I spoke. We also believe and therefore speak”

The speaking here mean “Confession”, “declaration of our faith” in that which is spoken concerning Christ love, death, burial and resurrection, for the sake of our salvation.

So the person who preached to you must lead you to confess that you believe that
“Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Lord and the Saviour”. And that you believe the truth you heard about His love for you and accept Him as your Lord and Saviour.

When you do that, in heaven, it is recorded that you have received Jesus into your life and that you have rejected Satan.

Many receive the message which brought conviction to them, but do not go further to receive Jesus. The word that should have given them life would then become instrument of guilt and death to them.

This is why it is very important not to just receive the word preached to you alone, you should receive Christ by fulfilling Rom 10:10.

That is what it means to believe and be saved.

John 3:17-18:

For God sent not His Son to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

However, the package of salvation or born- again experiences are far from complete without the remaining two elements.

Also, I must say that there are many who claimed to believed but are lying. They only believed because of what to eat, drink or wear. They believe because they want to be part of the glamour they saw in a religious group or Christian organization. The foundation of their believe is faulty because, the Holy Ghost convicted them of their sins and of the love of God for them but they only believe Jesus as Lord and Saviour in their mind. Their heart is very far away from Christ, because all they are interested in is what God can do for them and they are not ready to give up their sinful ways.

1 John 2:15-16 says:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world - The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the father but of the world.

To know this kind of people you will realize that the second element of a true Born-again experience is absent from their life.

REPENTANCE

Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles, men and Brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them REPENT…” Act 2:37

The second step after a man has heard the gospel, the Holy Ghost convicts him and he believed the truth and confessed his belief in Jesus Christ; is to repent.

In other word, conviction, which comes by the hearing of the gospel, would make a man to believe in Christ and this believe will lead to repentance.

So, if you say you are born-again and you have never at any time repented of your sins, your salvation is not genuine.

There are various ways of repenting. God alone by the Holy Spirit could dictate how an individual would repent and this is based on the power of conviction that comes through the word of faith by the Holy Spirit.

To some, to repent mean to cry out to God for the forgiveness of the evil of what they have done and ask for mercy. To others it is simply to change side. As we go on you will see this two categories of people in the scripture.

After a person has been lead to Christ as explained above, one of the way to know the gospel has touched him is that after he has received the gospel and accepted Christ into His life, he will become sober, and would go in-door to have a personal time with God and thoroughly repent and surrender all to Christ. He would make moves to make right the past wrongs.
Here in this experiences, the sorrow for his past sins/ways come to him and he feels the burden to clear them out. So, he would pray, confessing those sins out loud to God. This goes beyond confessing Christ as Lord and Saviour as seen in Romans 10, but it involve actual repentance from specific sins. This is the beginning of what the scripture in Hebrew 6:1 called “repentance from dead work.”

In most cases, it is in the place where the person is being preached to that he (the new convert) falls under the conviction for his sins, by the power of Holy Ghost. He would begin to experience a deep sorrow for his sins:“for godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (II Cor 7:10 NKJV) – and cry out to God for mercy and repent.

May I say this, it is not your duty to lead a person in prayer of repentance, yours is to lead him to confess Christ and be saved.

Once he(the new convert) did that, the issue of repentance is a personal issue and it is deeper than what can be fully discussed here or be handled by anyone.

If that person is deeply touched, it is in that place you are preaching to him that he will begin to confess his sins. Don’t stop him let him pour out his heart unto God, then properly lead him to confess Jesus Christ if he has not. Some as they burst out into prayer they confess Jesus and repent of their sins. This is what the power of conviction that comes through the Holy Ghost could do. All you need to do is to discern by the Spirit of God on what you must do and how to handle the situations as they come.

When Apostle Peter preached on Pentecostal day, the people believed the message, they opened their heart for Christ to come in and the readiness to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour was already in their lips according to the testimony of Paul in Romans 10:8. Therefore they cry out “men and brethren what shall we do? Peter said “Repent!” because he knew that they have believed the truth that he preached to them in their heart.

To repent also mean to turn back from the old way and this can also be expressed in your confession of Christ. We see instance in the scripture where God operated with the elements of “Believe” and “Repentance” tightly joined together and then followed by the third element, which is “water Baptism”

The Eunuch in Act of Apostle Chapter 8 saw himself as a righteous man because he is a Jewish proselyte and he believes in the living God, but when God sent Phillip to preach Jesus to him, he saw the difference between Judaism (religion) and Christ
(Life). His eyes were open to the present truth as Christ was shown to him and he believed in Him. By believing and confession Christ, he immediately turn back from Religion (Judaism) to Christ.
This he demonstrated when he said to Phillip “This is water what stop me from being baptized” Phillip “If thou believest with ALL THINE HEART thou mayest” and he answered and said “I BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD”

That is how repentance can be expressed through confession of Christ. That is what it means to believe and repent for some, especially innocent people that are trapped in the web of religious error in our time.
Whatever in your life that contradicts the truth is what God would ask you to repent from. The Eunuch and Cornelius are example of those whom God would ask to repent from religion into Christ in our time.

For the Eunuch and Cornelius, their case is not of sin, but of which side they were. They worship God in the old, Apostate way and were ignorant of the ever new and true way. But when they heard of Christ that He is the Son of God, they believed and were saved.
God confirmed that Cornelius was a righteous man, but he was yet to know the Prince of righteousness. When he heard the gospel of truth from Peter, his heart was open and he believed. God confirmed his faith in Christ by sending His Holy Spirit upon him and his household.
Look at the testimony that God gave concerning Cornelius in Act 10:2 A devout man (devoted to God), and one that fear God with all his house which gave much alms to the people and pray to God always. In verse 4 the angel that God sent to him said: Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God.

This man by his devotion to God has fulfilled God’s requirement from men in Ecclesiastic 12:13-14. He has fulfilled the golden law in the book of Luke chapter 10: 25-28. What he lacked was the Revelation of Christ. There are many like Cornelius and the Eunuch in various religious institutions and denominations today. If you are one of them and you are reading this message, I want you to know that your self-righteousness is not enough to save you. All your righteousness before God is like a filthy rag. It is unacceptable in this age and dispensation of grace. You need true and complete experience of salvation and this message is for you.

So, if you say you believe in Christ, the foundation of your salvation is not complete if you have not repented and turn away from your old life.
Dear Reader, can you boldly say, you have repented from your old way? Is the experience of repentance described here really fit into you situation? If you answerer is yes, then give God the glory, but if you have not repented of your sins or you are mechanically led to Christ without true conviction then, I must tell you that, you need to be Born-Again, again.

Don’t patch it up, you need a new beginning!!

WATER BAPTISM

… When once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the Ark was a preparing, wherein few that is, eight souls were saved by water the like figure where unto even baptism also now doth save us ( not the putting away of filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ who is gone into heaven and is now on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him. (1st Peter 3:20-22.)

After a man has given his life unto Christ i.e he believes in Christ and genuinely repented of all his sins, he should be immediately baptized. It is not scriptural to have such convert to wait for 2-3 months and pass through teachings upon teachings before he is baptized.

This show lack of faith in God who is able to save and it is not the principle or stand of the scripture.


If a man is genuinely born again in an evangelistic meeting or through person-to-person witness, he should be baptized without much delay (immediately). If you preached to a person and he is born-again, you will know except, what you preached to him was religion or your denomination. People who preach religion and denomination to people would always want to subject people to their denominational creed and doctrine before they are baptized.

I know many are doing it out of pure conscience and ignorance but it is not scriptural.

Looking at the scripture we could see that Water Baptism is closely package with other element of true born- again experience.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said in Mark 16:15-16 that

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will not be condemned”.

You see that believing in Christ, which leads to Repentance, would also lead to Water Baptism. To have a full salvation you must believe, repent and be baptized in water for the remission (Forgiveness) of Sins. This truth cannot be compromised if your foundation must stand the test of time.

Peter said in Act 2:38.

Repent and let every one of you be BAPTIZED IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of Holy Ghost.

Once a person genuinely gives his life to Christ let him be baptized.

The following passages show that baptism should be immediately after one has given his life to Christ, by believing in Him and Repentance.

This perspective is however from the point of view of a person just coming into Christ. For those who have being ''born-again'' but have a wrong foundation laid for them, as we would discover later in this blog, your case would need a proper spiritual diagnosis to exempt other spiritual complication that may have come into your life over the year as a result of this wrong foundation.Your foundation that has been laid needs repair.

But for a new convert that is just coming in to Christ. His spiritual foundation is just being laid. He has not received Jesus before, he just received Him and repented so it must be done as soon as possible.

1 Act 2:41 says “Then they that gladly receive his word were baptized and the same day there were added to them about three thousand souls” You see that it was the “same day” this is because the Apostles knew that baptism is part of the package of a true and complete born-again experience.

2 Act 8:35-39 this is the passage where Phillip baptized the Eunuch immediately he believed in Jesus and turn away from religion by confessing Christ as the son of God.

3 Act 9:10-18. This is Paul conversion and baptismal experience verse 18 says “immediately there fell from his eyes some like a scale and he receive his sight at once, and arose and was baptized. Paul is an example of men bound by a strong religious spirit, stronger than that of the type of Eunuch and Cornelius. It would takes the removal of the scale of religion covering their eyes for them to succumb to true and biblical water baptism. His baptism was also immediately.

4 Act 10:34-48 here Peter commanded that Cornelius and his household to be baptized. This also was immediately

5 Act 16:25-28 Speaks of the conversion of the Jailor and his baptism which also was immediately. The scripture said “and was baptized, he and all his (household) straightway”.

You have seen from the scripture that salvation of a man is not complete unless the three elements are complete. Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter is established. I have shown you five instances in the scripture to show that water baptism is part of salvation package. Without water baptism there is no remission of sins. “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins

The issue of water as well as other element of true born again experience has been forgotten and buried in many denomination because people called to be shepherds over God’s sheep have left their duty post and they have gone after the world and it pursuit.

Many so called ''churches'' have become a business center where salvation is cheapened and sold on the platform of membership. Repentance that comes through godly sorrow has been replaced with merry making. The generation of shepherds who do not know the God of the sheep has crept in and they are killing, eating and making merchandise of the sheep of the Lord.

I thank God that there are still faithful shepherds and many are being raised by God to retake the field that the enemy have taken and polluted and uproot the tares that the enemy has planted in the body of Christ.

Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first work or else I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. Rev. 2:5.

My prayer for all that are polluting the way of the Lord for their selfish purpose is that, they will repent and return to the Lord like the prodigal son that they may escape the coming judgment.

1st Peter 4:17 - 18 says:

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinners appear?

(extract from THE REAWAKEN NEWS LETTER by Solomon David. O).
Credit to my dear brother in Christ: Solomon O. David who made this message available for me to post in the blog