Really?

February 11, 2025

My question to you further along is going to be, “What really happened to you? Anything?”

There are some interesting phenomena occurring these days in the world of evangelism (small “e”).

First, the elephant in the room — and it’s a big fat dead one: Evangelicals have traded in their duty of a glorious Gospel evangelism, spreading the Good News of Jesus, for a paltry political evangelism. This latter type, being a false gospel that leads to spiritual death, in my amazement, is being given primacy over the true Gospel of Jesus — which, by the way, leads to life and that, life everlasting…

Did I write that correctly? Do you see what I am trying to get at?

Maybe this illustration will help clarify my point:

Standing before Pilate, the Governor representing his political superior, Caesar, and sitting in the Roman Empire’s Judgment Seat, Jesus had been accused of many things by the Jewish Religious Leaders. Now, the primary reason for them demanding Jesus’ execution was that He called himself a king. In Roman Law, this meant a sentence of crucifixion…

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’ ” — John 18:36, New International Version (NIV).

To which Pilate had this reaction:. “… he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, ‘I find no basis for a charge against him.’ “ — John 8:38, ibid.

This begs the question, “Are God’s purposes for evangelism about finding deliverance achieved in some political world system and leader, or is it all about Jesus’ promises about the Kingdom of God?”

Here is an important concept I am going Galatians 6:13: “Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.”

Here is that same idea in modern culture, a paraphrase to support my message which I am writing about: “Not even those leaders of the politicized Evangelists keep to their Christian doctrine, but they want you all to join with them so that they can boast about the size of their political movement or the size of their church membership.”

Did I say this correctly? Did I relate the idea of the Scripture accurately?

Is the point I am trying to make clear enough?

Now, the second problem there is, is this:

Many churches do not have any understanding of what it means to be born again. They only just imagine it to be all about becoming a church member. In this itself, is not when you become born again.

This is where my original question comes in:

“What really happened to you? Anything?”

First and foremost, the phenomenon is all about being introduced to and entering into a personal relationship with God by what Jesus accomplished. Being born again is only obtained through the accomplishment of Jesus — His life, His death, and His resurrection. It has nothing to do with what we might accomplish or attain by ourselves — like earning church membership, or attaining a ThD in Seminary, or by being “good” and doing good deeds, or whatever…

Achieving God’s stamp of approval by repeating someone else’s words as a rote prayer, or by blathering gibberish in some garbled effort at glossolalia (an overachieving effort of a person to speak in Biblical tongues “as the Spirit gives utterance”), or endless memorizing of Bible verses, or giving money away to some stranger in order to get back a huge profit… etc. etc. etc…

It’s not about justifying ourselves but about searching for Jesus until we find Him — finding Jesus and receiving His gift to Mankindand to each and every one of us… He is looking for you in this estranged world — to redeem us and to restore us, taking us back into a family in the Garden — which is what God had intended for us in the first place… So why not give Him a holler?

Again, if you think you have been born again, I ask, “Did anything really happen to you? Did you meet the person, Jesus? Was there a dynamic and an outstanding change that swept over you? Or did nothing happen… but peer pressure prevented you from admitting that nothing happened?

Look. When you get ahold of Jesus, He gets a hold on you! This is, after all, God the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all of Mankind who we are talking about — it’s not just a friend of your cousin’s sister who lives in Pembroke way across the country somewhere…

Something should happen, don’t you think?!?

Yay? Nay?

My wife and I have published many essays about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Many of those are our personal testimonies of those proofs affirming and documenting our dynamic personal experiences in real life, in real time, and in everyday life, regarding the involvement of God, Jesus, and the Bible.

Finally, I suppose, it is what you choose to do with these things we have written…

Do you write us off as nut jobs or more politely, as well intentioned but delusional or mentally unstable?

Are we just lying through our teeth?

I think that sometimes all of us use mental gymnastics to avoid difficult questions altogether. I certainly have a long time ago.

Nevertheless, we want to ask”Are you, born again?”

“Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again” ‘ “ — John 3:5–7, ibid.