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Have you truly been born again of water and the Spirit, by Paul C Jong

  • Sarah Nartey
  • United Kingdom
  • 2133
  • 06/01/2022
HAVE YOU TRULY BEEN BORN AGAIN OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT? [New Revised Edition]

English 1

HAVE YOU TRULY BEEN BORN AGAIN OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT? [New Revised Edition]

Rev. Paul C. Jong

  • ISBN9788928261482
  • Halaman369
  • Penilaian

 
Hi,
I would like to tell you about an amazing book entitled, "Have You Truly Been Born Again of Water and the Spirit?" By Paul.C.Jong.
As with all books, I always turn to the back of the book, the blurb to read what the book is about. And this book said, "The message in this book washed away all my sins."
Wow! What a huge statement! I was sceptical but I really hoped it was true.
I began reading the preface, the first paragraph read, "God, when He created the Heavens and the Earth in the beginning also created the eternal worlds Heaven and Hell." Great! straight to the point. This grabbed my attention. I wanted to go to Heaven but I knew I was heading for Hell due to the sins I had in my heart and my conscience was so guilty and ashamed before God.
That`s the very reason that I`d quit attending the church I`d grown up in from a very early age. I was so tried of feeling like a hypocrite, I was weary of praying to God and asking Him to forgive my sins I`d committed, because in no time at all I`d committed them all again. I had wicked thoughts too, and I knew that God knows everything so He knew all about my wicked thoughts too! I wanted to run away and hide from God but of course I couldn`t do that. That was impossible. So I thought the very least I could do was to stop going to church and pretending to be something I was not. Other people at the church seemed to be happy and holy. Perhaps they didn`t sin as much as I did or maybe I was just an evil person. Either way I had to give up, give up going to church and give up believing in God because I just couldn`t do it any longer. 
So back to the book-Heaven and Hell. I really hoped this book was going to do what it claimed to do on the back of the back of the book and wash away all my sins. The first thing that I noticed about the book and was really glad of, was that it was really clear and easy to read. I was grateful for this because I had expected it to be really complicated like I would have to study really hard to understand it. But no, this book was really easy to read. In fact, I didn`t want to put the book down because I was learning so much already. It was explaining what being a sinner actually means. It explained how all human beings were born with 12 kinds of sins in our hearts from even in our mothers womb. I never knew this before. It means that everybody was born equal before God. The book was explaining that as a sinner born in sin, whether we committed a single act of sin or not, we were born heading to Hell because the wages of sin is death. This was fascinating!
Now I also understood why no matter how many times I promised God that I wouldn`t sin again or break His commandments I failed miserably and in not time at all, was committing the same sins that I had just promised not to commit. 
Now I understood why. It was because we are born in sin and can do nothing but sin. This was a revelation to me. 
Sermon 3 explained the real true purpose of the Law of God. I`d lived my life trying with all my might to keep the Law thinking I was supposed to. Yet it only left me feeling hopeless and a failure and it is what led me to give up believing in God. I was really happy to learn that the true and real purpose of God`s Law was to teach us human beings that we are sinners who can never keep the Law. WOW! I never knew this. 
All those years of trying and failing, trying and failing over and over, punctuated with prayers of repentance, "Father please forgive me for the sin I`ve just committed. I won`t do it again". And just repeating this cycle over and over. If only I had learned about the true gospel of the water and the Spirit all those years ago it would of saved me years of guilt, shame and confusion.
Still I was very excited to learn more. 
Every few pages throughout the book, there are what I call `little bubbles` that had a little question in and the answer. They were very good references points and good to look back on and ruminate on what that sermon was about. For instance, when I read this, the bubble said, "What must we realize about the Law? We can never keep the Law."
Amazing! This was the whole purpose of God giving us the Law. It was to show us that we can never keep the Law and to know the punishment of the sins of breaking God`s Law.
And this realisation will lead us to Jesus Christ.
Everything was starting to make sense in my head. Another bubble said, "Who can be saved? Those who give up trying to establish their own righteousness".
This book was really making sense. Everything was so simple to understand. After all these years, my decision to leave church and stop going to church even though I thought it was the worse choice I could ever make in my life, was beginning to sound like it was the best choice I had ever made in my life. I had to continue reading more. What I was beginning to understand while reading this book was that, trying to keep Gods Laws while still having sin in your heart is what it means to establish you own righteousness. It was explaining that this is religion and God has no part with religion. God is all about faith. Interesting! 
In Sermon 4 I thoroughly enjoyed reading the account in the Bible of the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery. I really could relate to her and I was so amazed at the true spiritual meaning of this account in the Bible. It was wonderful! And then, I read in the bubble, "How much sin did Jesus blot out? All the sins of the world". It said that we should all know and believe in the secret of salvation. Jesus took over all our sins with His baptism and has borne the judgement for our sins by dying on the Cross. Suddenly I could feel how the woman caught in the act of adultery felt being saved by Jesus completely and not being condemned anymore. What a relief! Her whole life must have flashed before her eyes and yet in the most dire situation facing death, she was saved. What an absolutely lovely account in the Bible and a lovely explanation clear and simple in this book. I could not put the book down.
The more I was reading the book everyday, the more I was seeing how my own self righteousness, my own standards that I had built up and my own self delusion of who I thought I was, was being all broken down bit by bit. And this was all because I had never know myself before. I did not know what my true sinful nature was. I had lived my whole life without knowing myself. This was eye-opening. As strange as it sounds, I was enjoying being told all about my evil self through reading this book because it didn`t just tell me about my evil self and all my sins, it was giving me the solution to the problem of all my sins by telling me that Jesus was baptized to take away all my lifelong sins even the sins that I would commit in the future. So what more could I ask for? I accepted through this book that yes, I am evil, yes I commit sin on a daily basis, even in my thoughts I commit sin. I couldn`t deny anything that this book was telling me about myself. The book was quoting the Scriptures for me to read also so it wasn`t just the book, I was opening my Bible and seeing, yes, that’s exactly what is says in Mark chapter 7 verses 21-23. It listed all the twelve sins that I was born with. How can I argue with Gods Word? God`s Word is true. But I never knew it before, nor had I heard it in all the years of attending church. Nobody had pointed out my sins before. I was happy to be told about my sins knowing that the solution was through Jesus` baptism and blood. This was the gospel of the water and the Spirit that I had never heard before. This is how Jesus came to this world and how He saved not just me from all my sins but every human being from all their sins too. 
I loved this book and I hadn`t even finished reading it yet. I wasn`t even half way through. 
The book explained from Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 1, how all our sins were engraved on our hearts and the horns of God`s alters. And it explained really well what that meant and I felt what that meant because I had been carrying my sins in my heart for all the years I had been attending church but I didn`t have the solution, never! Not once! 
I learnt how the wages of sin is death and if anybody dies in their sins, they will end up in hell because God`s Law says in Romans Chapter 6 vs 23 that the "wages of sin is death".
I was enjoying being told the truth of my evil self because it was 100% truth that I could not deny. And the book was using Scriptures to show me. 
Next the book explained all about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus. It was excellent! When I used to attend Bible school at the church that we attended growing up, I remember we built a Tabernacle model drawn to scale and it was so intricate and I really enjoyed doing it. However, I was never taught about anything of what the utensils, the building, the materials used, the silver sockets, the bronze fixtures, none of these things were we taught. We were just building a nice model for everybody to look at and say, "oh well done, very good!" But here in this book, it was explaining that every bit of the Tabernacle building and the structure showed how Jesus was going to come to this earth and save us through His baptism, His death on the Cross and His resurrection. It was explaining it. For the first time in my life I was hearing about the laying on of hands-how the high priests would, in order to transfer the sins of the sinner onto the sacrificial offering/animal had to lay his hands onto the animals head and this was how the sins were transferred from the sinner onto the animal. WOW! And that`s how, after that procedure, the blood of the animal was shed and poured on the ground after being sprinkled on the four horns of the altar. This was very intricate. But it explained salvation very clearly. It was amazing, I was blown away about the reading of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. Wonderful! 
Then the book shown how the Tabernacle in the Old Testament foreshadowed the coming of the Messiah Jesus as the Lamb of God and it explained how the Scriptures have their mate. So what happened in the Old Testament in the forgiveness of sins had to happen in the New Testament when Jesus came. And it explained the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and He performed the laying on of hands baptism on Jesus and that`s how all our sins were transferred onto Jesus. Amazing. This was so clear and simple to understand. I loved this book because as I said earlier, I was afraid I wouldn`t be intelligent enough to understand the book. But to my joy and relief, the book is very easy to understand and follow. 
By sermon 5 I was beginning to feel more and more convicted, and dare I even say, confident in my own salvation through the Gospel of the water and the Spirit. It was being confirmed in everything I had read so far, with proof upon proof, with the Scriptures. This book was like a smorgasbord of knowledge and truth and proofs. It was like an all you can eat buffet. It was explaining the importance of John the Baptist, his lineage from the Levitical Priesthood, and his roles of baptising Jesus to pass on all our sins in the baptism he performed in the Jordan River and how he testified to everybody the next day after doing this that, 
"Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" 
Truly, I had found it hard to put the book down and then I couldn`t wait to read it again. 
Quoting 1 Peter 3:21, the book was explaining that it is the sins in our hearts that have been cleansed by Jesus` baptism and blood, not the sins in our flesh. And that the flesh will always commit sin because that is the nature of flesh, but it`s our conscience that is a good conscience toward God when we believe in the water and the blood of Jesus Christ. And that is what helps us to have a good conscience toward God. I had never had a good conscience toward God. This was the best news I could ever hear because all I had known was a guilty conscience before God because of the sins I committed, over and over again, without realising why I couldn`t stop committing them. I also understood for the first time what it meant to have unrequited love for Jesus, and that is the result of religion and believing in God and Jesus incorrectly. That’s how I had felt going to Church every week, but not being sure whether God heard my prayers, whether God loved me, everything was total uncertainty. But this book, was giving me, for the first time, not only hope but conviction and assurance. I`d never had that before.
This book was truly amazing. I was learning what the difference was between religion and faith. There was an analogy in the book of being rescued from drowning by a helicopter, to show the clear difference between believing in God using our own strength and effort, versus believing in God by obeying instructions and relying on Him. Religion versus faith. It was a perfect analogy and I loved it. It helped me to understand the difference very, very well. And I realised that all these years of going to Church every week, trying to keep the 10 commandments, and such, I was living a religious life because I still had sins in my heart and I was trying to be saved by my own prayers of repentance and trying to live virtuously. How clear was this. I was really grateful for this book. It really was highlighting everything that I needed to know. I was learning how to believe in God correctly according to Scriptures and not according to man made doctrines that were taught in the Churches in this world. I read another bubble that said, `Are we saved gradually, or once and for all? Once and for all.` Thank you God. For the first time my conscience was clean before God. I had felt all my sins disappear by understanding and believing in the baptism of Jesus and His death on the Cross and realising how it was foreshadowed in the Sacrificial system. The two married up absolutely perfectly and God said in one of the Scriptures, that every Scripture has its mate. So now I was understanding the laying on of hands in the Sacrificial system and also the laying on of hands of John the Baptist in the Jordan River when he baptised Jesus and that`s how all my sins were transferred over to Him. Not just my sins, but all my families sins, everybody’s sins from Adam to the last person in this world. This book was an absolute treasure. I felt as though I had received the most precious gift in the whole wide world. And it was. It was called the Gospel of the water and the Spirit. 
By Sermon 8, I was learning the reason why Jesus washed Peter`s feet. What a revelation. It was explaining that although our sins have been washed away by believing in Jesus` baptism and His death on the Cross, we will continue to commit sin due to the weakness of our flesh. And it explained what true  confession was for the righteous. Which was to tell God, `Yes, I have committed a sin again because of the weakness of my flesh, but I believe that You was baptised to take away even that sin.` That was the whole reason why Jesus washed Peter`s feet. It was a really important part of the book for me to read because it answered questions that were going around in my head so I was really grateful for that to know what a true confession is. The book said, `Can the righteous ever become sinners again? No.` Hallelujah. How could I ever repay God for this perfect gift of salvation, written in the Bible and explained in this book. It said, `What kind of work is left for us since Jesus blotted out all our sins? All we have to do is to have faith in the Words of God.` Thank you God. I believe I can do this. How could I not. How could I not be thankful for the rest of my life, for You Jesus blotting out all my sins with your baptism and blood. The bubble said, `Do we need to offer a sacrifice for our sins anymore? Never again.` No more miserable, useless, dreaded daily prayers of repentance that only left me feeling utterly ashamed. Now, instead of my sins being engraved in my heart and mind, it is the salvation of being born again of water and the Spirit, the baptism and the blood of Jesus, that is engraved in my heart and mind. Thank you Jesus. 
The book subtitle asked, ` Do you love Me more than these?` “What has made us love Jesus more than anything else? His love for us through His baptism which washed away all our sins, even all our future sins”. Amen. 
I can say from the bottom of my heart that this book is the best book in the whole wide world, aside from the Holy Bible. However, both have the same author, the Holy Spirit. Finding the gospel of the water and the Spirit is like finding something you didn`t realise you were looking for, but once you found it, you knew instantly that it was what you had been looking for, all your life. God bless everyone who chooses to read this book with their Bible. 
Have you truly been born again of water and the Spirit, by Paul C Jong.