My brother in law is a member of an evangelical church, the Separated Brethren Twice Removed Holiness Church of God in Christ with Signs and Wonders Following, and he says that I must be born again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Is he right? 

Signed, 

Confused

Yes he is.

I suppose I could end the letter right now, but I won’t.

You must be born again, but I suspect you brother-in-law isn't.  I have met a lot of people who claim to be born again who don’t know the first thing about what it means to be born again.  They go to a retreat, or come up for an evangelical style altar call to have a religious experience with goose bumps on their goose bumps, and they think they are born again and automatically going to heaven.  I hope they’re right, but I suspect they aren't. 

A wise old preacher told me years ago that he had been a medical assistant in the navy and, as such, had assisted in quite a few live births.  He realized that no one comes into the world willingly, we come into the world kicking and screaming and leaking.  Birth is not a nice comfy experience that make us feel all warm and fuzzy.  On the contrary, it is the struggle to leave a place of safety and security to enter a place of danger and exposure, and, above all, growth. 

People in the so called born again movement aren't celebrating spiritual rebirth.  They are celebrating spiritual conception, which is just fine if well understood.  Conception is usually an ecstatic moment whether in the physical or the spiritual, but there are many conceived who are never born.  They wither in the womb and never arrive at life. 

Has it occurred to you that you were alive for nine months before you were born  and that those were some of the most important months of your life?   Still, the time came when you had to leave your mother’s womb and be born and enter the fulness of life. 

So it is with our soul.  When we come to know the Lord, in whatever way we come to know Him, we are alive spiritually, but if we don’t continue to the point of birth and growth, we die and are stillborn. 

So yes, you must be born again.  You must allow God to take you out of your religious “comfort zone” and conform you to His own divine image. 

Remember that He said “not all those who say ‘ Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father,” and elsewhere, He says “when you saw me hungry, you gave me no food... so depart from me into the everlasting fire.”  “But Lord, I had a wonderful experience at a retreat and thought I was born again!”  “ No,” the Lord will say, “I never knew you. I gave you new life and you let it wither and die.” 

So, wish your cousin luck and ask him the question he asked you:  Are you born again?

Rev. Know-It-All