John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

At the beginning of this new year I said my first effort would be to demonstrate how God communicates with His creation. We have come to a point in this discussion that is the hinge pin of communication. Without it everything falls apart. If you are not born again communication by faith is impossible. Without faith communion is impossible, so the process of this rebirth needs explaining.

Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Time and time again I have heard it said, confess your sins and you will be saved. Not so, not in accordance with the Word given here. We must first confess Christ is Lord and believe in our hearts that He is the risen savior. On the surface this seems simple but all too often preachers and teachers do not go the extra mile to detail exactly what that means.

Deuteronomy 4:35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him.

The first denial within the religious community of His day was that God Himself would take on the form of man, that He would stoop so low as to become one of us. For the religious of the day to say that Jesus Christ was Lord would have been sacrilegious. Heresy would have been the word they used to describe such a claim.

There are hundreds of prophecies about the coming Christ, the Jewish Messiah. I cannot here quote them all and in truth you do not have to know them all to believe Jesus Christ is Lord He is God. Beyond that you will learn through studies of the tupos, or Christ types. Moses is the primary example of a tupos in how Christ would act, which is just as important as the prophecies.

That is just one step in the rebirth process.

Matthew 25:25, 30 And I (a lost sinner) was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. (Jesus says) And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Yesterday I left off with these passages. More can be learned by reading all of Matthew 25 but for the purpose of faith planting, let us deal only with where you place your faith. Place your faith in Christ and you will receive the promises in Christ. Place your faith in anything else and you will only receive the promises made under that authority.

Place your faith in Wall Street. What do they promise? Wealth or bankruptcy. There is no offer of salvation or removal of sins power over your life.

Place your faith in a college degree. They cannot even offer you the promise of a decent job offer, it is beyond their power to control. There is no of offer of salvation or removal of sins power over your life.

Place your faith in government. None of them are perfect, even the better ones. Still no offer of eternal life or removal of sins power over your life.

Place your faith in any religion other than Christianity and you will not find promises that compare to those offered in Christ. None of them offer salvation or removal of sins power over your life. I know this because only Christianity makes this promise.

John 14:19-21 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.