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A MESSAGE TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – When I was newly born-again, I thought all Christians were the same. I guess it was a hold-over belief from when I was an atheist, only instead of wanting to avoid all Christians (like I did as an atheist), I wanted to be near Christians and interact with them. I saw them all as my brothers and sisters, and I loved them all and accepted them all without question.
Then hard cold reality intervened in the form of denominational Christianity. Because I’d been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant, I started attending mass at Roman Catholic churches shortly after my rebirth. God let me go there because it was what I needed at the time, which was a daily dose of scripture and to be around people who at least believed that he and Jesus existed. So, for three and a half years, I attended Roman Catholic churches pretty much every day, until one bright sunny winter morning, God invited me to leave. It wasn’t for me anymore.
I then found myself without a church to attend.
I tried on several Protestant denominations for size, but none of them fit. They all had carved-in-stone creeds that they’d recite and which I didn’t necessarily believe. To be honest, I’m not sure what I was looking for in a church in those days, but I was certain that when I found it, I’d know.
In my long quest to find a church where I felt at home, I’d take comfort in reminding myself that Jesus didn’t have a place to go to either and that he was even kicked out of his hometown synagogue. He kind of synagogue-surfed after that (like I church-surfed), using the local synagogue of whatever town he was passing through as a pop-up classroom to teach people about the Kingdom. But he didn’t identify as a Pharisee or a Sadducee or any of the other splinter groups that had formed over the years into quasi-denominations of Judaism, much like Christianity has splintered in denominations over the centuries. Jesus stood alone in God’s Kingdom, which is God’s Church on Earth.
God’s Church is also where I stand.
But Jesus didn’t bash denominations, and it’s important that we realize he didn’t. (I had to learn that the hard way, but at least I finally learned it lol.) He occasionally schooled believers on the fallacy of some of their creeds, like he schooled the seven churches in Revelation, but he didn’t bash them. Each group has a perspective that suits certain believers, and God lets those perspectives exist. In the same way, God allows the four gospels to exist, some of which conflict with the others. God allows conflicting details because how many demoniacs kept breaking their chains (was it one or two?) ultimately isn’t important: what is important is the core belief of believers.
Which brings me back to when I was a newly born-again believer and saw all Christians as my brothers and sisters. In those days, I made no distinction between Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic or Russian Orthodox or Anglican or Baptist or any of the now hundreds of denominations that identify as Christian. All I saw was my family of believers.
I know that God sees us like that, too. He looks on our heart, not on our creeds. He looks to see if we truly believe or just say we believe. God will know we believe because we’ll keep his Commandments and do as Jesus taught us to do. That’s how you can tell believers from unbelievers, not by the denominational church they attend or the things they recite while they’re there. If they do what Jesus taught them to do (love your neighbours, love your enemies, treat others as you want to be treated), then God knows they’re genuinely his children and he accepts them as such.
I guess I wasn’t far off the mark when I was newly reborn, thinking that all Christians were the same. All genuine Christians, at their core, are the same, as they all strive to follow God’s Commandments and live as Jesus taught them. Their rituals may differ, their stated beliefs may differ, but their core is the same, and that’s all that matters to God.
I wish that we, as Christians, could look past our differences of rituals and stated beliefs and get back to seeing each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of God. We sorely need to come together as a family, so that we can do what families do, which is to love and support each other. But most of all, we need to come together as a family for the sheer pleasure of just being with each other and enjoying each others’ company, which is what God wants us to do. Like a good and loving Father, God loves family get-togethers more than anything else, which is why he’s planning a big party for us for when we get Home.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if believers of every denomination would just get together and worship God as believers rather than as Roman Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, etc.? In God’s Church, which exists in the spiritual realm, that’s how we appear – stripped of our denominations, clad uniformly in clean white linen, and united by our love for God and Jesus. There are no denominations in God’s Church. I wish there weren’t any here in the earthly realm, either, but since there are, I wish we could look past them.
So this is what I pray: that before everything goes to hell in a handbasket (which it will, according to scripture), we’ll all get together as one family of believers, leaving our denominational differences behind and embracing and loving each other as the brothers and sisters we are, as the family God made us.
How powerful our witness would then be!
BORN AGAIN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 25, 2015 – What does it mean to be ‘born again’?
Ask that question to anyone who claims to be a Christian, and you’ll get some interesting answers. But more than anything you’ll get blank looks and averted eyes.
And silence.
By very definition, a Christian MUST be born again. A Christian who is not born again is, by definition, not Christian.
To resolve this dilemma of their flock generally not being born again (which, were it not resolved, would mean forfeiting a tidy sum of money), mainstream “Christian” organizations have devised their own answers and mechanisms around what it means to be born again. In other words, they’ve redefined it.
Roman Catholicism claims that you’re born again at baptism, an event which usually occurs when you’re three weeks old. Evangelicalism claims that you can become born again at a mass altar-call, when you’re ‘slain by the holy spirit’ after voluntarily coming forward to receive said spirit. Other denominations claim that you just have to ‘pray’ the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and then, like magic, you’re born again (even if you don’t really feel born again).
Given the lack of authenticity of these ‘rebirths’, it’s no wonder that mainstream Christianity is in the state it’s in. Mainstream Christianity comes across as fake because it is fake.
To be spiritually reborn means to have God’s spirit come and live with you, not just sometimes (as with the Old Testament prophets) but all the time (as with Jesus). God’s spirit replaces the worldly (demonic) spirits in you. Those spirits are driven out and God’s spirit comes in. No other spirit can share a place in your soul with God’s spirit.
You either have God’s spirit, or you don’t.
You’re either born again, or you’re not.
There’s no middle ground here. There’s no “I think I am” or “We say you are, so you are.”
If you’re born again, you know it. There’s no faking it. There’s no thinking “maybe I am, maybe I’m not”.
Your life changes dramatically for the better.
When you’re born again, you increasingly see as God sees, and you experience ongoing joy that grows and grows and grows and grows the closer your will aligns with God’s. You align your will with God’s by choosing what you know is God’s will (i.e., doing the right thing). You do the aligning, not God. God’s job is to guide you into doing the right thing, not force you into doing it.
You can also choose not to align your will with God’s, but this would not be wise. Do this enough, and you’ll lose grace. Jesus tells us about a room that is swept clean of demons, only later to be filled with more and worse spirits. This can happen to any born-again. Be warned. Being born again is spiritual rebirth, spiritual rebirth is grace, and grace can be lost.
Be warned.
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Being born-again is an exorcism and the true starting point of your journey to heaven. But because those who are born again are yet in the world, they are still ‘burning off’ what doesn’t belong in heaven and can’t be taken there. Being born again doesn’t mean you’re automatically perfect like God or that you’ll never again sin; it means you’re striving for perfection and that you’re less likely to sin than someone who is not born again.
As long as you have free will, you can sin. Being born again doesn’t take away your free will. You’ll have free will as long as you’re in a mortal body, so as long as you’re in your mortal body, you’ll have the capacity to sin.
This doesn’t make you a ‘sinner’. It makes you a saint with the capacity to sin. Big difference there. Jesus had the capacity to sin, but nobody in his or her right mind would call Jesus a sinner. When you’re born again, you become like Jesus. Anyone who calls born-agains ‘sinners’ does not know what he/she is talking about and is actually blaspheming the holy ghost (which is not, according to Jesus, a recommended course of action).
Born-agains are saints, not sinners.
When you’re born again, your values reflect God’s values. This doesn’t happen by learning; it happens automatically with no effort on your part. For me (being born again from atheism), my values changed instantaneously, 180 degrees, 100%. No-one preached to me; my values simply changed.
I used to think as the Western world thinks and value what the Western world values (pro-homosexual rights, pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, etc.) because I had the world’s spirits (demons) in me. Suddenly, after God exorcised me and his spirit entered me, I rejected everything I used to hold as self-evident or “enlightened” or “modern”. These changes came as part of the package deal of being born again. They took no effort on my part and have remained ‘who I am’ since the day I was reborn.
When you’re born-again, your sins are wiped clean away. Your soul is a ‘clean slate’. Jesus died so that you can be born-again, so that God’s spirit can take its rightful place in your soul. You have been reunited with God. The kingdom has come. God’s spirit is with you night and day, helping you do the right thing (i.e., make the right choices) so that you can make it to heaven. Being born again doesn’t mean you’re automatically getting into heaven. Being born again is a prerequisite for getting to heaven, not a ticket there.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
There are lots of liars who call themselves Christians. Some of them lie on purpose (wolves in sheep’s clothing) and some of them lie because they’re genuinely clueless about the kingdom (blind leading the blind). Paul says to test the spirits; don’t believe everything you’re told; test what they say against scripture and against what God’s spirit teaches you, one on one.
Don’t be fooled.
You are to follow only Jesus, not people. You are to be dependent only on God, not people. You are to look only to God for help and healing and comfort, not people.
Be like Jesus. That’s what it means to be born again.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 