How Can I Know I Have Experienced the New Birth?
1) Direct Answer
You know you have the new birth when the Holy Ghost (the Token) indwells you and bears witness in your heart, changing your nature to believe, love, and obey every Word of God. It is Christ revealed in you. Not a church membership, not a feeling, but the life of the Word living through you.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- Jesus said, “You must be born again… of water and of the Spirit” (John 3:3-8). That’s a birth from above.
- God promised, “A new heart… a new spirit… I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
- “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8:9). “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14).
- “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Old things pass away; a new life begins.
- The new birth comes by the Word: “Born again… by the Word of God” (1 Peter 1:23; James 1:18). The Spirit quickens the Seed of the Word in you.
- It produces obedience and victory: “Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3-5). “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world” (1 John 5:4).
- It bears fruit: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…” (Galatians 5:22-25).
- It confesses Christ rightly: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2), and witnesses in the heart (1 John 5:10).
- The promise is for you: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost… the promise is unto you” (Acts 2:38-39). “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). “After ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13).
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- New birth is not turning over a new leaf, joining a church, or a momentary emotion. Life proves itself by what it produces. The Seed brings forth after its kind. If the incorruptible Seed of the Word is in you, it will live out Christ’s life in you.
- Signs that follow the new birth:
- A clear witness of the Spirit within: assurance toward God (Romans 8:16).
- A new nature with new desires: you hate sin you once loved, and love righteousness you once avoided (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 John 3:9).
- Obedience to the Word, not picking and choosing. You don’t argue against Scripture; you yield to it (1 John 2:3-5; John 14:23).
- Love for God and the brethren (1 John 3:14; 4:7).
- Victory over the world’s pull and a separated walk (1 John 5:4; Galatians 5:24).
- Ongoing leading and correction from the Spirit; you can’t live in willful sin without chastening (Hebrews 12:6-8).
- A hunger for the Word and prayer, and a confession that Jesus Christ is Lord come in the flesh (1 Peter 2:2; 1 John 4:2; Romans 10:9-10).
- If these fruits are absent and sin still rules you, don’t settle for a profession. Come God’s provided way: repent, be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, and ask in faith for the Holy Ghost. He promised to fill the hungry heart (Acts 2:38-39; Luke 11:13; John 7:37-39).
4) Reinforcing statement
Now notice, the Bible makes it simple: the new birth is Christ in you by the Holy Ghost, producing a life that matches the Word. If the Life is there, the signs follow. If you’re unsure, don’t argue—come to Him sincerely, believe His promise, and stay before God until the Token is applied and the witness of the Spirit settles it in your heart.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
A Paradox
63-0801 §9
...I believe that every born-again member of the body of Christ is a paradox in themselves. I believe each one of you Methodists, and Presbyterian, and Lutheran that never had experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, was in some formal church that did not believe in the genuine new birth and has now received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, is a perfect example of a paradox, because something happened to you that changed your whole being. And anyone could look at that and know that ... what a paradox is. A miracle. U...
The Queen of Sheba
60-0401E §50
What did she say? You know what she did? She stood publicly before the audience of the people, and she said, "All that I have heard of you, all the good things that I have heard about you, they were true and more than what I ever heard about you." She had experienced, herself. And if you don't believe the Holy Ghost is real---what you've heard about---just get the experience yourself and see what happens. See if you won't say, "More than what... I used to watch people enjoy the blessings of God. I thought it was al...
Questions and Answers
59-1223 §84
If you're going to depend upon your intellectual conceptions and so forth, you'll never be born of the Spirit of God. You've got to forget, like Paul did, all that he ever knowed, and know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, born anew, afresh. Oh, if I could get it to you. See, it's a birth that makes a new genera... or, a new creation. The very Greek word here, as I was looking it up in the Greek lexicon the other day, the word birth means "creation." When it says, "You are new creatures in Christ Jesus," there...
Why?
59-0813 §30
But as long as there's any hopes for it not to rot, new life won't come. That's why we get up from the altar so many times without the Holy Spirit, because we don't rot enough to our own ideas. We've got to meet God on His level. I like to meet Him there, because that He never has failed me. The new birth is no different from any other birth; it's a mess. You ought to seen what mess I was in when I got it. And every once in a while when it comes upon me again, I get messy again with it. I cry, and boo-hoo, and carr...
Church Ages, part 9: The ten virgins, and the 144,000
60-1211M §27
That's how someone got it the other day... I've got a lot of letters on that "Hybrid Religion," that I made a remark over in... The Bible said that a illegitimate (called bastard child) could not enter the congregation of the Lord for ten generations, which would be four hundred years---that a illegitimate child could not come into the congregation of the Lord. That's how bad that hybreeding was. That was a woman that let another man live with her in order to bring forth a child; that that child was hybrid---not by...