"Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again,"---Holy Bible John 3:3
he crusade was well-attended and the sitting audience was brim full. The leading pastor was a well on the uptake minister of the Lord and after his moving sermon, he made an alter call. David was at the back of the capacity crowd in the audience and convicted by the Holy Spirit, he made his way to the front. He gave his life to the Lord Jesus Christ that day by reciting Romans 10:9-10 thus: "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." Crusade over and normal life outside the arena continued, but David didn't know he had taken the most important step in his entire life on earth: declaring and standing up for the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The fellow brethren that took his name when he made his open confession of faith for Jesus Christ at the crusade ground sought him out and brought him to their church. Few weeks later, a guest speaker at the local church David attended called those who had given their lives to Jesus Christ at the crusade to come out and he laid his hands on them. David was told to begin "to speak in tongues" because he was now a "born again" Christian. David was a rookie in his new faith, but he was genuinely zealous to know this Jesus Christ he had just accepted as his new master, lord and savior so when he was told to just spew out any words from his mouth which he obviously didn't understand, he complied. He was told that for him to be really called a born-again Christian, the proof of his new identity was him speaking in new tongues. "Just say anything that is in your mind as they come to your mouth, it doesn't matter whether they make sense or not," David was told by the guest speaker;" you are now truly a born again Christian."
Meanwhile, David was still smoking cigarette; he had a hide out somewhere in down turn where he hangs out, was still his usual old self and grappling with serious sins and issues in his life. "Don't worry, everybody does these things, they don't matter," a thought told him in his heart. "After all, you speak in tongues now and you are now a born again Christian." Many genuine seekers of the Gospel and zealous pursuers of the Narrow Truth of the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ have been deceived by matured Christians and Christian leaders into believing that they are "born again Christians" whereas such Christians are only saved. In other words, there is a marked difference between being a saved Christian and a "born again" Christian. Is it possible to be saved and yet not being born again? Absolutely yes and that is the disconnect in Christendom today. Many that troop into churches every Sunday to worship refer to themselves as "born again" but aren't; rather are simply saved Christians. They "speak in tongues" which is erroneous interpretation of the last two gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12: 10). They have been told that the evidence of being a born again Christian is "speaking in tongues" which is biblically false, and because the world thrives on the sensation, this unscriptural teaching and beliefs have permeated modern-day church. This is doing incalculable damage to the spiritual growth of many Christians in the world today. A sister called me for spiritual counseling and I asked her when she gave her life to the Lord and she narrated the incident leading to her salvation. Then I pressed further and asked when she became a "born again" Christian and she narrated the same story again and said she speaks in tongues. I asked her, if she knew the date of her natural birth and without hesitation she answered right away. I asked her how did she know the day, month and year she was born and she referred to her birth certificate given her by her biological parents. Then I asked; if she knew her natural date of birth, why couldn't she know the day she became "born again."
Many in Christendom in the world today are like David and our sister here. As I pointed out in this column in the past, speaking in tongues is not the proof of being born again as a child of the Living God. You can be a born-again Christian indwelled and imbued with the Holy Spirit and still not be able to speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit and a gift is what you are given, but not earned thus, speaking in tongues is not a requirement of being born-gain. Similarly, you can be speaking in tongues and not being a born-again Christian and at any rate, speaking in tongues can be faked. Consequently, Satanists and demonic agents can and do speak in tongues. When a saved Christian speaks in tongues not given by the Holy Spirit, the person is speaking in an unholy tongue and thus constitutes a sin. However, a saved Christian can pray in tongues without being born-again. Instead of today's pastors and knowledgeable and matured shepherds to explain the differences between praying in tongues and speaking in tongues, they muddle the two and since many of the shepherds too are ignorant of the Word of God, it's like the blind leading the blind.
WHAT IS SALVATION? There is only one way to triumph over life's adversities and escape the Eternal Judgment of the True Lord God Almighty and that one way is through belief, faith and trust in Jesus Christ. As the King and Savior Himself forcefully and unabashedly declared in John 14: 6; "Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." There is only one way to make heaven, period! Forget about religion, the New Age, Self Improvement or what Mrs. Oprah Winfrey and her followers are spewing out there. It is not arrogance but the gospel truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. How one enters that only way is by simple faith, belief and trust in His Saving Grace, that is it. The True Lord God Almighty doesn't require more than faith and trust in the saving grace of the blood atonement of His only begotten Son and Savior Jesus Christ, Hallelujah! At what point does a person put his/her faith and trust in Jesus? We take David in our example above. He came out openly at a church crusade and made an open declaration of his faith and trust in Jesus Christ by reciting Romans 10:9-10. He became a saved soul.
You are not saved from your sins by bearing a Christian name, going to church, born into a Christian family or merely assuming that you are saved. When or if you have done what David did above at that crusade, you are a saved and thus a Christian. Your open declaration of faith and trust in Jesus Christ doesn't necessarily have to be at a crusade. It could be in a small congregation, at a conference, a seminar etc but in must be witnessed by at least two or more people beside you when you made that open declaration and confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, because as 1 Corinthians 13: 1 "A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses," which Apostle Paul quoted from the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy 19:1 5 thus: "One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." Supposed a person gave his or her life to our Lord Jesus Christ over the telephone as I have done to several people? The two witnesses are still present nevertheless, because in any communication system between two people, there is a third party; the telephone representative listening, even in a cell phone. But more importantly, the Holy Spirit is present. Why must faith, belief and trust in Jesus Christ be openly made? Because Jesus Christ commanded it on all those who will belief in Him in Matthew10: 32-33:"Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven." In Luke 10: 8-9 He repeated the same for emphasis to all His disciples and followers; that is; you and me: "I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God." Basically, to be saved simply means, a human soul changes his/her mind about the direction of his/her life and becomes convinced that if he/she continued with the trajectory of his/her current lifestyle, he/she will end up on the other track of eternal life. You can't be living your life the way you want and be characterized by these 18 things as listed in Galatians 5: 19-21: "Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,1 Envying, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" and expect to enter heaven. It is not impossible. Consequently, look at your life and if you find any of the above 18 characteristics, then know assuredly that you need salvation. Someone once asked me: salvation from what? What is it that our Lord Jesus Christ is saving us from? There is your answer.
Now back to David in our example above. Was David a born again Christian at that star-studded crusade when he put his faith, belief and trust in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? No he wasn't. He was simply a saved Christian. So when does he become a born again Christian? After he was baptized in the Holy Spirit, which he hasn't at that crusade and how does one know David wasn't baptize with the Hoy Spirit at that crusade? Continue to read and you will find out shortly but certainly in scripture, not when David began to speak in tongues. As a matter of fact, what the guest speaker even made David to do was not even speaking in tongues in biblical sense, but that is another sermon or article on its own. What David needed immediately after he was saved at that crusade was offered by Apostle Paul in the Acts of Apostles this way in .Acts 19:1-7. "And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied. And all the men were about twelve" (KJV). These 12 Jewish believers/disciples spoke in tongues because that was what happened on the Day of Pentecost. What happened here were speaking in tongues which are different from praying in tongues. The Holy Spirit came upon the 12 disciples here at Corinth upon the laying of Paul's hands and He-the Hoy Spirit-gave hose 12 believers the gift of speaking in tongues, because He-the Holy Spirit-wanted other Jewish nationals scattered in the then world to hear about the Good News in their adopted languages apart from the Hebrew Language. Conversely, David did not speak any known language when the guest speaker laid hands on him, because there was no need to speak in another language-tongue-because he hadn't even receive the Holy Spirit yet so how can use the gift of someone you haven't even known and received? John the Disciple un- cryptically sums it up thus in I John 4:13: " This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit," referring to the Holy Spirit.
Read that again; He has given us His Holy Spirit, which means it is an actionable event that is known and requires live experience. In other words, having the Holy Spirit is not a feeling or a tag but the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. David needed the Holy Spirit in order to be able to do away with the behaviors of his former lifestyle listed in Galatians 5: 19-21 referred to above. What David did at the crusade in our example was simply an acknowledgement that he had come short of God' Righteous and Holy Standards and He needed His Power to meet that shortened righteous living. On his own, he didn't have the will power to get rid of lies, fornication, adultery, stealing, smoking, etc because if he could, he didn't need the Saving Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every human being that has been born or will ever be born on this earth must get to that stage that David got to at the crusade to ask Jesus Christ into his or her life. If you have not gotten to that level in your life and haven't come to that consciousness in your life journey, you are spiritually dead and will end up eternally separated from your Maker. That is not complicated at all.
THE TIME BETWEEN SALVATION AND BEING BORN AGAIN
Many Christians and even pastors and teachers of the Word of God don't know or haven't taught this to the body of Christ that there is an intervening period and time between salvation and born again. That David came out in that crusade and became a saved soul didn't make him a born again Christian. But what do we see in many churches today? The congregation shouts, claps and begins to congratulate those who are saved by telling them, they are now born again Christians and these newly converts believe it. Whereas, they aren't yet born-again but are only saved Christians. Simply because you receive a letter of admission from JAMB in Nigeria or any university for that matter to read say Law or Medicine doesn't mean, you are already a lawyer or a medical doctor. Ditto for a saved soul. Apostle Peter and the other ten disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ were saved souls and children of God from the moment they became the followers of our Lord Jesus Christ and throughout His earthly ministry for three years. They performed miracles and were sent out on evangelistic mission. They witnessed the trial, Death by crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but none of them was born again. In other words, none had the Holy Spirit in their life. That was why Apostle Peter denied our Lord Jesus Christ thrice and all of them went underground for fear of the Jewish leaders after the Crucifixion of our Lord and Savior. Someone argued that the apostles were baptized with the Holy Spirit before the Day of Pentecost. That is biblically wrong. If the Holy Spirit was already in the apostles, our Lord Jesus Christ would not have warned them thus in Acts 1:4-5: "On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit didn't precede the Day of Pentecost but came on the Day of Pentecost. If the Holy Spirit was in the lives of the apostles before Pentecost, our Lord and Savior would not have told them "in few days time." There is no controversy in this. THE SEVEN CHARACTERISTICS OF SAVED CHRISTIANS COMPARED WITH BORN AGAIN CHRISTIANS
There are certain behavioral patterns one can see and deduce from Christians that are saved but not born again Christians. Just like Law or Medical Students talk, act and behave like lawyers or medical doctors when they aren't yet graduated, so also saved Christians behave and act like born again Christians but are actually not in- dwelled with the Holy Spirit yet. The first characteristic of saved Christian is their carnality. Here is how Apostle Paul described saved but not yet born-again Christians in 1 Corinthians 3 1-4: "Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly-mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe-as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building." Second, saved but not yet born-again Christians still grapple with sins that lead to death. Here is how Disciple John described them in 1 John 3:4-7: " Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous." We hear in the world today that everyone sins, but born-again Christians are not supposed to sin willfully and are not supposed to grapple with uncontrolled sins and addictions. Like Mr. David in our example above, the evidence of sins such as adultery, fornication, lies, stealing, anger, hatred, bitterness, rage, sexual immorality etc in his life confirm he has not root in him, although saved but unproductive for the work of the Lord, because he isn't born again Christian.
Third, saved but not yet born-again Christians are characterized by selfish ambition, and what James disclosed in James 3: 13-16: "Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." Saved but not yet born again Christians experience yoyo Christian life. Today, they are on fire for the Lord as soon as they do spiritual works determined by them, because they mistook things done through the soul for spiritual works but don't know it is all emotions. Once they do not perform those spiritual works which give them spiritual highs, they relapse into spiritual depression. Again, here is how Apostle Paul describes such carnal Christians in Romans 7: 14-24. ""We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" Saved Christians find themselves in this pitiable dialectical conundrum, because they do not have the Holy Spirit that can offer them freedom from such helpless identity crisis. That was why Paul lamented and cried out: "Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" The answer is: the Holy Spirit, Hallelujah!
The fourth characteristic of saved Christians, but aren't born-again are their reliance on their old ways of thinking as Apostle Paul yet again identified such saved Christians in 1 Corinthians 2: 10b-16. "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, "Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?"[But we have the mind of Christ."
The fifth sign to identify a saved but not yet born-again Christian is the often uttered statement of; "I was once a born-again Christian, but somehow I backslid and then came back to the Lord again." Because they were not even born-again in the first place, they misconstrued the battles they are fighting with sins with backslide, forgetting that the bon-again Christian cannot and never turn his or her back on the Lord as pointed out in Hebrews 6: 4-8: " It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned." The expression "fall away" in the sixth verse in that Hebrews above is what Christians often dub "backslide" but a born-again Christian cannot backslide. Those saved Christians that "fall away" weren't "inside the House of the Holy Spirit" in the first place, because as Disciple John disclosed in 1 John 2: 19: "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us."
The sixth sign of saved but unregenerate Christians is their inability to renew their minds as commanded by the True Lord God Almighty in Romans 12: 1-2: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God-this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will." Since these saved Christians are still battling with sins of the flesh or "carnality" as Apostle Paul called it, they are unable to renew their minds and a mind that is not controlled by the Holy Spirit cannot know why he/she is here on earth in the first place. This leads us to the seventh and last characteristic of saved Christians; they do not know the will and purpose of God for their lives. Their minds are in the right place, but their hearts and brains cannot conceptualize the depth and breadth of the purpose of God for their lives. You hear such saved Christians ask: what is the purpose of God for me? They call on pastors and other men and women of God that are genuinely born again and ask them to find out from the Lord His purpose for them on their behalf. When you are indwelled and imbued with the Holy Spirit Who is God Himself in your spirit, as Apostle Paul disclosed in Ephesians 4:13-14, we will be able to: "� reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming."
WILL SAVED CHRISTIANS GO TO HEAVEN? Many have asked me one-on-one, over the telephone and via email, if a saved Christian will make it to heaven short of being a born-again Christian. The answer, according to the Word of God is two ways; Yes and No. We will continue next week.
OUR PROPHECIES ON AKWA IBOM GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION: On Thursday April 2, 2015, we predicted the following about Akwa Ibom State Governorship Elections in Nigeria as part of our overall prophecies and predictions on Nigeria's Elections 2015 with the headline :SPECIAL NIGERIAN GOVERNORSHIP ELECTIONS 2015 PREDICTIONS...WHO AND WHO WILL BE GOVERNORS IN NIGERIA ON SATURDAY APRIL 11, 2015? thusy: "
