Restoration Ministries International

• To mutually establish a biblically-based way of life free from slanted Bible interpretations and heresy, read:   

“General Rules of Biblical Interpretation.”

• Please download God’s Newer Testament Commands which we discovered on the Internet. You’ll find it very helpful in grasping the way of life which the 1,050 commands in the Newer Testament require of you. One of the foremost commands by our Lord Jesus for the genuinely born again to live tenacious as His redemptive ambassadors.

• To remain free of the bitter hatred of contemporary politics and have the heart of our Lord Jesus, read:   

“True Patriots Are Bible-based Constitutionalists.”

February 5, 2025

Home Fellowships are for the Genuinely Born Again

Dear Friends in Christ Jesus our Lord, 

To download Abide #2 in our new series, The Genuinely Born Again Are In God’s Kingdom, please click on the title, There Is No True Fellowship Without Ongoing Repentance. In Abide #1 we discussed the first of the non-optional heartfelt requirements of our Father: child-like obedient trust. In Abide #2 we present another non-optional, heartfelt requirement of our Father: ongoing repentance. For over 40 years we've been directed by the Holy Spirit to instruct and admonish Christians concerning the divine requirements of child-like obedient trust and ongoing repentance. It's out of our Father's abundant love and grace that each person who is genuinely born again in Christ is called to live this way!

It grieves us that our efforts in insisting on biblical repentance among people who are mired in Humanist-infiltrated institutional Christianity have been mostly to no avail. This has been especially true when it comes to self-identified Christians who persist in attitudinal sins against other people. They are deluded in believing that they have a right to hold onto bitterness and resentment toward any other human being or "category" of humans for whom our Lord Jesus shed His blood. These persistent sinners within institutional Christianity are the devil’s captives, and they far outnumber the genuinely born again among them. The bitter and resentful in their midst may be a major reason that the genuine have left institutional Christianity. You can recognize bitter and resentful people in institutional Christianity because they readily bad-mouth the individuals or categories of people they despise. They enjoy the perceived power they exercise in their slander and insults of certain people. But by doing so, they disqualify themselves in serving our Lord Jesus as His loving redemptive ambassadors. 

If you are genuinely born again, then it’s essential that you realize that institutional Christianity is not synonymous with following Christ. The scriptural requirement for repentance has perished since the 1950s. Humanism and the self-centered obsession that it blatantly fosters are now rampant among both nominal Christians and those who persist in sin but still regularly occupy pews. Please ask the Spirit of our Lord to confirm for you this biblical reality: There can be no authentic fellowship between the genuinely born again and the nominal and persistent sinners because they have no fellowship with our Father and Lord Jesus. If you are genuinely born again, then you need to abide by our Father’s lines of demarcation between genuine followers of Jesus and those in Christianity who live according to their own will, desires, goals and values. Only the genuinely born again who live by His grace with ongoing repentance and child-like obedient trust meet our Father’s criteria for true fellowship.

(For insight into why repentance became doomed beginning in the 1950s, please read “Make America Great” Is Possible If We Repent! , pages 2-5 in our Prophetic Insight, Sharing Inconvenient Truths Takes Courage, Part 4.) 

“Explain what kind of behavior goes along with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).

Biblically speaking, “doctrine” is instruction that affects your way of life, the way of our Lord Jesus in those who belong to Him. From the standpoint of our Lord, hearing and putting into practice is what “doctrine” means (see Matthew 7:24; Luke 8:21; Philippians 4:9). Other people can see your doctrine based on our Lord’s commands being lived out in you because of your love and obedient trust. 

“Creeds and creedal persuasions”, on the other hand, are an evil disease which has destroyed so much of the life application that's intended by biblical doctrine. Formulated and established by theologians and Church Councils over the centuries, creeds and their subsequent systems are the man-made postulates with which you must mentally agree in order to belong to a particular denomination or sect. Keep in mind that someone can mentally agree with a particular creed or creedal teaching without any need to put anything into practice. 

If you’ve participated in institutional Christianity, then you know that no one held you accountable to put our Lord’s commands into practice. If anything, you’ve had far more creedal and denominational teaching emphasized to you than being instructed in our Lord’s commands and being held mutually accountable out of love and obedient trust in Him to put them into practice. This too is why many genuinely born again have fled institutional Christianity. They are fleeing academic Bible instruction by individuals who persistently sin against our Lord Jesus. These teachers are failing to emphasize and confirm that His commands are put into practice by the ones who are being taught. 

Mike: Throughout my walk with my Lord Jesus I've developed a huge disdain for the academic approach to the Bible which pervades much of institutional Christianity. When I would hear people extolling their pastor's teaching, or that their Sunday school class or Bible study was "going through" the book of Romans or the book of Daniel or whatever, my heart was sickened. I knew that most often the people who were telling me this were indeed adding to their academic knowledge about God's Word. But they gave no thought to actually putting it into practice and then being mutually accountable to others in Christ to report how they were applying His commands to their lives. As inspirational as it may be for you to get further insight into the books and the history of the Bible, the real clincher for the genuinely born again is what our Lord Jesus prescribes: “If you love Me, keep My commands” (John 14:15; see also 14:21;15:10; 1John 5:3). And one of the clear indicators that you're putting our Lord’s commands into practice is that you are growing in His heartfelt character qualities of love, forgiveness and compassion. 

From the moment you are genuinely born again until you receive your salvation at the end of your life pilgrimage and are welcomed into heaven by our Lord Jesus, it’s your heartfelt relationship with our Father and Lord Jesus that enables you to experience heartfelt child-like obedient trust and ongoing repentance. If you’re genuinely born again, we hope that what we write encourages you to live a genuine way of life which displays the abundant grace of Father and Lord Jesus at work in and through you by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Mike & Sue

“We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, Who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:9-12).

January 24, 2025

Home Fellowships are for the Genuinely Born Again

Dear Friends in Christ Jesus our Lord, 

To download Abide #1 in our new series, The Genuinely Born Again Are In God’s Kingdom, please click on the title, Home Fellowships of Child-like Trust. In this first Abide  we focus on a key characteristic of the genuinely born again: your heart motives and attitudes, beginning with your child-like trust in our heavenly Father. Please take into your spirit this truth about living genuinely born again: It's your love-based grateful appreciation which motivates your heart motives and attitudes because of what our Lord Jesus accomplished on your behalf — the sacrifice which our heavenly Father fully accepted for your sake. 

FYI: For over 40 years we’ve been led by the Holy Spirit to write to both the genuinely born again as well as to “nominal Christians” — those who are “Christian” in name only and have never experienced new birth into Christ. Now, however, the Holy Spirit has released us from trying to clarify His messages for people who are bent on intentionally sinning even while they practice a "form of godliness". Instead He is directing us to focus His messages on strengthening and encouraging the genuinely born again. We're grateful for this change in direction since we know that many who may superficially skim over these messages are still putting self-will over Father's will. And they have no intention of putting His messages into practice in their own lives.

Our deepest sense in why the Holy Spirit has given us this new directive is that people who live nominally as Christians, especially those who intentionally keep sinning, are in deep spiritual jeopardy but don't realize it. Our previous materials may have made for "novel reading" but it's had no impact on their lives. Therefore the Spirit wants us to focus on the genuinely born again who deeply desire to walk in Father's grace and do His will especially in this period of time leading up to the Dark Days. (Our previous Potpourri offered a serious warning for you to avoid intentional sinning. It's especially important for the genuinely born again to take care that they aren't being seduced into sin. The devil is crafty. He's using people within Christianity who are given to intentional sinning to entice you to compromise.)

We want to share with you the thoughts of two other followers of Jesus concerning how the genuinely born again should be living. Don’t be too quick to discard wisdom from the past when its message is timeless. 

Arthur T. Pierson says in God and Missions Today: "The whole church of God should be a great body of evangelists… members should say to their minister, 'Let us alone and go after the lost.’"

Corrie ten Boom: "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15,16, emphasis added). Lord, open our eyes to the world around us. Use us to warn people and tell them that when we walk hand in hand with You we are safe, even in the midst of a storm, and that there is an eternity to lose or gain.”

Paul's words are our prayer for the genuinely born again reading this. Especially take note of all the purposeful actions and outworking of abiding in Christ and doing our Father's will: “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Colossians 1:9-12; see also Ephesians 4:20-32). 

What a joy for the genuinely born again to hear one day these glorious words of welcome, “Well done, good and faithful servant! ... Enter into the joy of your Lord”!

Mike & Sue

Colossians 1:28