Kingdom Ready Blog

The term “born again” is widely used among Christians, and the verse that says “You must be born again” (John 3:7) is often quoted. But many Christians don’t understand what it means to be born again, often because they begin by looking at what the epistles say, and fail to base their understanding on the words of Jesus. I was taught that when one is born again, it is “incorruptible” which was taken to mean that once you received it you couldn’t lose it. This is based on a misunderstanding of I Peter 1:23, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” But this verse tells us that it is the seed that is incorruptible, not the person who receives it.

In the last post, I mentioned that the following items appear to be true:

- In order for an individual to be saved, God needs to explicitly “call” that individual;

- God is not calling everyone.

Assuming that the above items are true, that leads us to another question:

Question 5: Why is God only calling certain people? In other words, why doesn’t God just call everyone, so that everyone has the opportunity to be saved?

Many mainstream denominations believe that all human beings have complete control over their salvation. Basically, the belief is as follows: Every single human being can just decide to follow Jesus – and can therefore be saved – without God getting involved at all.

Overall, the belief is that God is not part of the salvation process at all. In other words, the belief is that every single human being can just “decide” to be saved – completely on his own.

Last week I asked a couple of questions to collect a cross section of people’s thoughts on the coming Kingdom of God. While the post has since developed into a discussion of another kind, I wanted to revisit these questions and answers with a few thoughts.

And at long last (sorry for the delay), here’s the conclusion of Homer D. Baxter’s – The Two Adams.

FYI – Here’s direct links to the other three:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

While the first Adam died and returned to dust because of his disobedience (Gen 3:19), the second Adam sits on the right hand of God fulfilling his official capacity as High Priest and Mediator.  He is the link between a righteous God and sinful mankind; mediating in man’s behalf; settling the differences between man and his Creator. When this priestly reign ends, which is better know as the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus will deliver it up to God (1 Cor. 15:24) and will assume his right to become King of Kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16).

Here’s part THREE of the four part booklet – The Two Adams, by Homer D. Baxter.  This is the first half of Part II – with the last half of it (or the final quarter) to come next week.  A fitting topic (The SECOND Adam) to present here this weekend where we celebrate the Resurrection of our Messiah!

I thought this portrayed the divergence between early Christianity and modern evangelism methods. (originally from this blog)

In our dialog on the subject of salvation it is important to recognize that there are three tenses used of salvation in the New Testament. The classic text for salvation in the past tense is Eph. 2.8

Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

I’m working on a strategy to talk to people about the subject of salvation. However, I can’t really remember too many of the verses or arguments used by people who believe in once-saved-always-saved (OSAS). Could you help me out by posting a verse along with some comments indicating how this verse would be interpreted in that system?