You Must Be Born Again: "A Know-So Salvation" and Seven Other Sermons

by John R. Rice

Jesus said, “Ye must be born again.” There is no possible way to go to Heaven without having the new birth, being made into a child of God. And Jesus told how to have this new birth: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
One who admits he is a poor lost sinner and believes that Christ has died for him and is willing to save him, can, in a moment, turn to Christ and trust Him, rely on Him for forgiveness and salvation.
Multitudes are religious but have never been born again. They may live moral lives, they may have been converted or baptized, but that is not enough. One must personally come to put his trust in Jesus as Saviour. And the moment you honestly turn your heart to Christ, trust Him, claim Him as your own personal Saviour, that moment you become a child of God.
Yes, the first chapter here is labeled “A Know-So Salvation.” I shall be humbly grateful to God if readers can see here something of the clear simplicity, the holy urgency, the appeal to sense, the challenge to youth, the tender pathos and strongest warning which the Gospel of Christ has, as preached from our infallible and holy Scriptures.
I have sought to state it so plainly, with such wooing love, with such holy boldness, that men may see how to be saved, may be moved to accept Christ and salvation immediately, and know it from the Word of God, without ever a tremor or doubt. I seek to state that Gospel so that such converts may hereafter live with a resolute, single-minded assurance ever after.
We have had over 18,600 letters from people who wrote to say they found Christ as Saviour through our printed sermons. Oh, we beg you, if you are unsaved, to join this holy company who depend on Christ for salvation and claim Him as Saviour.
Christians, too, need the message of this book. Multiplied thousands who now have no solid assurance of salvation can be led into the glad certainty of salvation, that they are saved and kept by God’s power, and can have this glad assurance bolstered by many Scriptures.
We believe, too, that Christians may learn better how to deal with lost sinners, how to use the Scriptures in getting people to trust Christ.
In Jesus’ dear name, JOHN R. RICE
October, 1977

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Kindle Edition, 182 pages

Published November 28th 2014 by SolidChristianBooks.com (first published 1953)

John R. Rice

John R. Rice (1895 - 1980)

Was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper. Rice believed that the mission of churches was "not to take care of Christians" but to "win souls," a notion his mostly lower-middle-class church members did not wholeheartedly endorse. When Rice spent more time away from his pulpit to hold revivals elsewhere, a supply pastor and his supporters staged a coup. Rice decided to reenter evangelism. Yet before he did so, he encouraged the church to change its name from Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle to Galilean Baptist Church, thus distinguishing his ministry and that of the church from J. Frank Norris.

In 1934, Rice founded The Sword of the Lord, a bi-weekly publication that grew into an influential fundamentalist Baptist newspaper. At first it was simply the publication of his Dallas church, handed out on the street and delivered door-to-door by Rice's daughters and other Sunday School children. The Sword's circulation grew dramatically. It was thirty thousand in 1940, fifty thousand in 1946, and ninety thousand in 1953, surpassing the circulation of the venerable Moody Monthly. Rice regularly published reports from evangelistic campaigns that became valuable publicity tools for approved revivalists. In 1946, he and other prominent evangelists adopted a code of ethics and a statement of faith to prevent "evangelists from being unduly criticized for commercialism and unethical practices." The same year Bob Jones College conferred on him an honorary Litt. D. degree.

John Richard Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas, on December 11, 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie Elizabeth LaPrade Rice. Educated at Decatur Baptist College and Baylor University, he did graduate work at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago.

Although Dr. Rice served as pastor of Baptist churches in Dallas and Shamrock, Texas, in addition to starting about a dozen others from his successful independent crusades, his primary work was as an evangelist. He had been a friend and peer of Billy and Ma Sunday, Bob Jones Sr., W.B. Riley, Homer Rodeheaver, H.A. Ironside, Robert G. Lee, Harry Rimmer, and other leaders of that era. He himself held huge citywide crusades in Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Seattle, and numerous other key metropolitan centers.

Dr. Rice authored more than 200 books and booklets, circulating in excess of 60,000,000 copies before his death--about a dozen of which were translated into at least 35 foreign languages. His sermon booklet, What Must I Do to Be Saved?, had been distributed in over 32,000,000 copies in English alone--8,500,000 in Japanese, and nearly 2,000,000 in Spanish.

In 1934 he launched The Sword of the Lord, which, by the time of his death, had become the largest independent religious weekly in the world, with subscribers in every state of the union, and more than 100 foreign countries. Thousands of preachers read it regularly, and it undoubtedly had the greatest impact on the fundamentalist movement of any publication in the 20th century.

Rice was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper.

Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas in 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie Elizabeth La Prade Rice, and the oldest of three brothers. The death of John R. Rice's mother when he was was six years old left a lasting mark on the man.

Rice did not complete his seminary course but in 1923, took a position as the assistant pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Plainview, Texas. The following year he became senior pastor in Shamrock, Texas, an oil boomtown; but in 1926 he left the pastorate for evanglism. Settling in Fort Worth, he became an unofficial associate of the flamboyant and authoritarian fundamentalist J. Frank Norris, pastor of First Baptist Church, who was preparing to leave the Southern Baptist Convention. Rice himself broke with the Southern Baptists in 1927.

During the next few years, Rice held a series of successful revivals in Texas that were promoted by Norris. Rice made converts during his campaigns and then organized the new Christians into at least a half-dozen churches with the name "Fundamentalist Baptist."

In July 1932, Rice held an open-air evangelistic campaign in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and hundreds made professions of faith. There Rice organized the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of Dallas; but instead of moving on, he pastored the church for more than seven years.

Rice believed that the mission of churches was "not to take care of Christians" but to "win souls."

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