DO 2626 5/90

1. Jesus Himself compared our spiritual birth & Salvation to the birth of a baby, so there are many likenesses & comparisons found in this parallel. (See Jn.3:3-8, 1Pet.2:2 etc.) First of all, there's the sowing of the Seed of the Truth in their hearts, & when it's received, there's conception, & then there is growth, little by little, very slowly, as more & more knowledge of the Truth is received. Till finally the time comes when the baby has reached the stage that he is ready to be born, truly born into the Kingdom, or, as Jesus put it, "born again of the Spirit," & he comes forth into the full light of day.

2. Until then, he only has a very primitive concept of light. They say that even in the mother's womb, the baby can tell the difference between light & darkness, but it's a very primitive stage of sight & comprehension of light. It's when he finally bursts forth into this World, into the full light of day, then he really "sees the light," so to speak, & the same is true of being born into the Kingdom.

3. Of course‚ in the Spirit it can all happen very quickly! He can receive the Truth the very first time he hears it, & immediately see the Light! Spiritual birth can happen very quickly, but we know that with some people it happens very slowly. They receive & conceive the Truth, or God's Light when they first hear it, sometimes years before they're actually born again. They believed it, they received it, they were conceived, but some people grow very slowly till they come out into the full light of day, the full knowledge of the Truth & the personal acquaintance with, in a sense, the mother.

4. The baby is conceived inside the mother but doesn't really know her yet. He's in the early stages of development. The Seed is sown, the Truth is there & it's been received, conceived, there's a tiny fetus developing, but it has a long ways to go & a long ways to grow.

5. The baby is inside the mother & is gradually getting acquainted with her. He's acquainted with her movements, he is fed from her, he knows the sound of her voice, he knows the sound of the voices of her loved ones. He already becomes acquainted with her environment & its sounds. He's gradually getting acquainted with the environment that he's going to be born into.—And in the case of a soul or spirit, you might say the environment of the Kingdom, or of the Spirit World.

6. In the case of a child or baby, he gradually grows & gradually becomes acquainted with that environment, but he doesn't really burst into the full light of day until he's born; then he's really here! He's actually been here for nine months‚ but he doesn't experience the same environment of the full-grown baby until he is born.

7. You can liken that to the gradual development of a soul, as most people call it, or what's actually a spirit. Apparently, since the Lord Himself compared the spiritual birth to that of a baby‚ it is normally a gradual growth into full development.

8. In some ways your conception of the Lord can be very gradual. Your receiving of the Truth can be gradual, & could be compared to the period between the conception & birth of a natural baby. There can be a gradual conception of the Truth until you make a final & definite decision to personally receive Him & be "born again."

9. So it is with many people who are full-grown before they really realise not only what Jesus is, but Who He is, & receive & acknowledge Him personally as their Saviour.—Really realising that He is what they've been told He is, & how He's been described to them.

10. You may have even heard about the Lord all your life‚ having frequently attended church & Sunday School. Your Christian parents may have taught you about Jesus, read you Bible stories & given you a clear general conception of Who He is. But it's not until you actually go through the crisis experience of spiritual rebirth, that you are truly born again of the Spirit.—That's when you find out that He really is all that you've heard about Him, when you personally receive Him into your heart.

11. Having received the Seed of the Truth‚ you have been conceived in the Spirit, & grown until you're ready to really be truly born into the Kingdom. That's the real crisis time. That's a definite occurrence at some point in time. Then once you're born again, you continue to grow.

12. It's only when a physical baby is actually born into the light of day, that he can actually see his mother. She's the first one he becomes acquainted with. He sees his mother & he feels her on the outside now with touch, & he suckles & nurses from her bosoms. He becomes even more fully acquainted with her all the time. He soon knows what she looks like & how she feels on the outside, & becomes more & more fully acquainted with her & knows her better & better.

13. Apparently the Lord considers that even after our spiritual birth, it is a gradual growth into the full knowledge of Him, & full acquaintance with Him, complete love for Him. I can almost say it's normally a rather slow development into full knowledge & acquaintance with Him & all of His characteristics, & all the things that He is. It may have been very early when you believed in Jesus & received & acknowledged Him as your Saviour, but it's been a lifetime of growth & development to know Him better all the time & become a mature Christian.

14. You're in the Kingdom now, you're not just on your way, & now it's a matter of growth & development into a continually greater knowledge & experience & a greater knowledge of the Lord & an intimacy with Jesus where you can talk to Him personally by name as your closest Friend, your Saviour. You begin to fully understand & you begin to comprehend not just what He is, but Who He is personally. PTL!

UNDERSTANDING BIRTH!

15. It's a very complicated subject, in a way, trying to comprehend it fully. But even a little child can appreciate the birth of his little baby brother or sister. He sees the baby there & knows that it's been born. Even though he may not understand the entire series of steps by which that little brother or sister got there, at least he knows he's there! Even a little child can understand the simple step of receiving Jesus, calling on Jesus as His Saviour, & to know then that he's born again, he's saved.

16. He may not understand the whole complicated spiritual process by which he has become a Christian & become saved.—Just like he may not understand the physical process by which his newly-arrived baby brother or sister got here. But he can understand very simply that first of all, baby is in Mommy's tummy, & then baby comes out of Mommy's tummy.

17. He feels his mother's tummy & he says, "Baby in there!"‚ because Mama teaches him that that's where his little baby brother or sister is, & where it's going to come from. That's simple enough that even a little child can understand it. You don't have to tell him all kinds of silly stories about where babies come from. You can tell him exactly where they come from & keep him in touch with what's developing & how soon the baby's going to be here etc. Even a little child can understand the simple facts of life.

18. But to fully understand the entire complex process by which the baby got here, that's another story! Even science is still discovering new marvels & wonders about the creation of a baby. So it's not usually until children are much older that they begin to gradually absorb & understand the more complex process of reproduction, conception, gestation & birth! The older they grow, the more they know & the more they comprehend, the more they understand. But that's usually a long process of real growth to wisdom & adulthood. It's a long process by which we accumulate knowledge, & then acquire the wisdom to use it properly.

19. Although the big event happens in a few moments when the baby is born, he got that far by a very long series of little events of his internal development. But we usually date the beginning of his life more by the actual birth‚ when he's actually come to the full & is ready & prepared to be born into this life, to the point that he can usually manage to sustain life & have a fair chance of making it, & continuing to grow & develop.

20. So really, although the birth is the main event & considered the real start of life, it doesn't reach that point without many months of gradual development & strengthening. It takes nine full months‚ or 40 full weeks, until it reaches a point where God feels that it's developed enough to be born & it's the mother's time to give birth.

DIFFERENCES IN THE STAGES OF CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT!

21. There are many stages, but the final stage of real genuine birth comes long after the seed has been implanted & taken root & gradually developed into a full–grown baby, ready to be born into the environment outside of the mother's body. With many people who are born again, it's a complex & complicated process, although with some, it may be almost instantaneous! They may receive it instantly & instantly conceive & be born. Through response to that Seed of Truth, they instantly believe it & receive it & are born again, a very quick, almost instantaneous conception & birth all at the same time. Having heard it for the first time, they have believed & received the Lord, & are immediately born again & begin their spiritual growth.

22. Of course, those who have been reared in a Christian home & in a Christian family, such as ours, even before they're born they hear all the sounds of Christian faith—singing & praising—& are literally conceived & grown inside the mother's body in a Christian atmosphere. They usually have a much stronger base for development & are much surer to develop into really strong full-grown Christians more rapidly because they have that background‚ & in a sense are almost born twice at the same time physically & spiritually‚ as I said happened to me.

23. They have a background & a base of a Christian life which is almost unmatched, & which the instant believers who receive the Lord after they're full grown don't always have. Such previously non-Christian instant believers have got a lot to learn & a lot to develop, which the child born in a Christian family has already developed. The child born in a Christian family & reared as a Christian has quite a head-start.

24. It's like Fred once said to me: "Dave, you & I have grown up with two or three generations of strong Christian preachers of the Gospel & workers for the Lord. It'll be surprising if these new instant-believers ever catch up with us!" In other words, we have so much more Christian background & years of generation after generation behind us, & have been reared with that kind of background, that kind of atmosphere, that kind of parents & grandparents etc., we're so far ahead of these late-believers that we're generations ahead of them! I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it would almost be as difficult for them to catch up with us, as it would be to have a grandchild catch up with his grandfather! Do you understand what I'm driving at? Maybe I'm making it too complicated.

25. (Maria: I think in our Family we're a little bit of an exception, because the Lord's doing a new thing in the Endtime because of the shortness of time.) Yes, I'm getting to that! There are such cases where people have believed, received & have been born again, & in a Family like ours, they develop very rapidly. Developing & growing in our greater extended Family‚ they grow much more rapidly than they would in individual Christian families.

26. Maybe I'm making this a little too complicated, but I'm trying to show the difference in the various stages of our development as Christians, believers, & workers for the Lord. And surely in our Family we grow much more rapidly than in the individual Christian families where churchianity is the main drag. They don't emphasise reading the Word & full-time service & witnessing & soul-winning & living by faith & "going into all the World to preach the Gospel to every creature." In our kind of Family you get a huge head-start & you develop much more rapidly—if you follow & obey, of course.

27. So there are all kinds & starts & differences in the beginning & the development of a Christian life. Some receive the Seed of the Truth much more quickly than others. Some began with it at the beginning of their lives; some don't receive it until late childhood. Most Christians who testify to having received the Lord & being born again‚ it's actually been in childhood, with the highest number receiving the Lord around the age of puberty. That's because the church has sort of a delay system by which they don't believe you can really be saved until you're almost full-grown. Whereas we believe even a baby can be saved as soon as he understands the language!—And is already being saved, in a sense, by being born into our Family-type of Christian environment.

28. (Maria: A lot of our older adult Family Members got saved or started the process when they were young. Some testify that they went to Daily Vacation Bible School & had some kind of spiritual experience when they were little. Because they were "chosen before the foundation of the Earth" [Eph.1:4,5]‚ the Lord started doing something for them earlier.) Yes!

29. So in the wonder-world of the Spirit, the sowing of the Seed & the reception of it, belief in it, the conception of the baby can be almost instantaneous, & almost immediately followed by the birth into the World of the Spirit, & there can then be very rapid growth after that.—Even more miraculous than the rather slow growth & development of a physical baby. A spiritual baby can be conceived & born very quickly, almost at the same time, or at least within a few moments‚ instantaneous with the conception, the reception of the Truth. With that voluntary reception, the spiritual baby is immediately born, which cuts down the time a great deal from the physical nine months. But who knows? God may have been preparing that egg for a long time before it finally really broke out into the open.

30. So what I'm saying is that it happens very differently with so many different cases. There may have been a sowing of the Truth & a conception of it perhaps years before they finally really broke out into the open & openly confessed Christ & were born again.—Or in some cases it happens almost instantaneously. But in either case, there's then a growth, & those who have been reared in our Family environment usually grow much faster than those who haven't.

THE ADVANTAGE OF A HANDICAP!—OVERCOMING A NON-CHRISTIAN BACKGROUND!

31. Look at our middle-aged Family adults who have been with us since they were teenagers. Before they joined us, they had to spend years in secular worldly schools etc. where they were influenced & dragged down by that horrible filthy environment, almost corrupted by it. But they came through all that & into our Family & our Godly environment & our type of education & training‚ & have turned out to be very strong, having survived the one & then received the other.

32. For example, those who have been reared in a Jewish environment of complete rejection of Christ & objection to Him, teaching against Him & not to have faith in Him—when a Jew finally survives that & overcomes it & manages to receive the Lord & be born again, they often make much stronger Christians than those who were reared in a totally Christian church environment! And when they're then spiritually reared in our environment, they make really strong Christians!

33. (Maria: It's almost like overcoming bad habits by replacing them with good habits: When you learn good habits this way after having known the bad, in some ways you come out stronger than if you'd only learned good habits from the beginning, as is the case with most of our little children. Because then you know the wrong way & its problems & dangers‚ & you never want to go back to it. You also know from actual experience that the right way is so much better.) In a sense, it's like being born with a handicap.—The advantage of a handicap & overcoming it. Through that you become even stronger. So don't bemoan your handicap, turn it into an even greater strength!

34. (Maria: A good illustration of this can be seen in many of our adults who have been out in the System & know what it's really like. In some ways they are stronger in their convictions & in their loyalty to the Family than their kids. Our adults who have had to go through all that System garbage are in some ways stronger.—Especially when it comes to realising where the System's at & realising what evil is. They never want to touch it or go through it again! They're stronger in their convictions against it, so they're not so easily swayed. Of course, our younger generation has the advantage of having never been corrupted & polluted by all the evils of this wicked World. So there are advantages to both, & the Lord compensates accordingly.)

35. Well, I can certainly understand why our adults who have suffered life in the System have strong convictions that this World is a Hell–Pit & the Family is where they want to stay! Although I was born into a very strong Christian family of hard–working believers, sold-out to the Lord, who had forsaken all & were living by faith, I also endured the Hell of America's anti-Christ public schools.—A horrific dose of the wickedness of the World that made me hate it all the more because of the strong contrast between the family in which I was born & the World that I had to grow up in! So I never for an instant doubted which one was better!

36. I felt like my father did when he was a young man, when he came out of an anti-God lecture by some well-known atheist that he & a friend of his had attended. They came out of the meeting afterward & his friend said, "Well‚ I guess that just about knocked in the head all the things we ever believed & were taught. I guess that speaker just about destroyed all of our beliefs." But my father answered, "No, he didn't destroy my faith. I've seen the reality of the way my parents believe & the way they live.—A reality that no atheist could ever destroy!"

37. I often thought of that story when I was in school & they were teaching Evolution & their so-called science & all of that junk. I thought of my folks & their faith & the miracles that had occurred in our family‚ & none of the System's lies could destroy my faith into which I'd virtually been born. So thank the Lord, I had a strong foundation, very strong, in a sense born in the faith in the very beginning & reared in the nurture & the admonition of the Lord. (Eph.6:4) So as I've testified, I must have been born & born again at the same time, because I've always known the Lord & always had strong faith in Him, which helped to carry me through the wicked World & educational system that I had to attend.

38. My parents obviously didn't seem to even dream of how evil the popular secular public education was! I never complained about it or said much about it. Perhaps if I had complained more about it, they might have sent me to a Christian school. They could see the bad influence public school was having on my brother. By the time he was a teenager they took him out & sent him off to a Christian boarding school, Toccoa Falls Bible Institute in Toccoa Falls, Georgia, & that helped get him out of that wicked atmosphere. But even at Toccoa Falls, a lot of the kids were pretty bad, as they had been taken out of public school too late & put there to try to save them from the evil influences that had already corrupted them.

39. Thank God for the wonderful way the Lord has given us to rear our children! They never have to go to the violent, perverted‚ crime–filled, anti-faith, anti-Christ public schools of this World!—But are always in a good Godly Family atmosphere‚ reared & educated by our own Spirit-filled parents, teachers & Shepherds! They only have to go out into the wicked World to invade it when witnessing. And by then, they should be strong enough to resist its lies & "deceitfulness of riches" (Mat.13:22), having already been taught & shown God's Truth about how evil it is & how awful it is & what an absolute snakepit it is‚ even though it has a deceitful glossy surface!

PHYSICAL & SPIRITUAL GROWTH!

40. So thank the Lord for the Family! Thank the Lord for the birth of our babies, both physically & spiritually. Both are very complicated, complex processes, but in some ways very simple.

41. With good loving parents, our physical babies don't have to worry about whether they're going to grow healthy & develop normally‚ they just do! And in a sense, I would say our spiritual babies also don't have to necessarily personally worry too much about whether they're going to grow spiritually or not. God has brought them into His Kingdom & into His Family, & He's going to see to it that they grow. He's going to teach them & He's going to grow them. And just as surely as a physical baby in the care of loving parents continues to grow into a happy, well-adjusted adult, so will you‚ providing you stay within the bounds of your family & normal growth & activity & obey God's spiritual laws & rules as much as a baby obeys the physical laws & rules.

42. To grow normally & healthfully physically, a baby needs to get proper nourishment, proper exercise, proper rest & proper environment. And the same is true with a spiritual baby: You will continue to grow if you get proper spiritual nourishment in the Word & learning from the Lord & proper rest in Him, faith in Him, & proper exercise spiritually in serving Him & witnessing & winning souls. And if you stay within the proper environment in the Spirit, with a close relationship with the Lord & the Family‚ you will grow into a strong soldier for the Lord. So thank the Lord for the birth of a baby physically, & then the birth of a baby spiritually that can develop & grow into a strong soldier for the Lord! TYJ! Amen! PTL!

QUIZ QUESTIONS:

1 Describe how spiritual development & rebirth is much like the development & birth of a baby. (All)

2 How many weeks does it take a baby to develop in the womb before it's born? (20) Does a spiritual baby have to take as long? Can it take longer? (3,21,29‚30)

3 How does our relationship with the Lord change once we are spiritually reborn? (10b,12-14)

4 Babies need a proper environment, food, exercise & rest in order to grow. What do spiritual babies need? (42)

5 How is it possible, that even if you have heard about the Lord all your life you still may not be spiritually born again? (10) Is coming from a non-Christian background a serious handicap? Explain. (31-39)

6 What advantages do we have over Christians in the System who are not brought up in the Family? (25-27,39)