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What
We Believe - Identity in Motion
Our Statement of Faith
WE
BELIEVE that God is the Eternal King He is an infinite, unchangeable Spirit,
perfect in holiness, wisdom, goodness, justice, power and love. From all
eternity He exists as the One Living and True God in three persons of
one substance, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power
and glory.
WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom is everlasting. From His throne, through
His Son, His eternal Word, God created, upholds and governs all that exists:
the heavenly places, the angelic hosts, the universe, the earth, every
living thing and mankind. God created all things very good.
WE BELIEVE that Satan, originally a great, good angel, rebelled against
God, taking a host of angels with him. He was cast out of God's presence
and, as a usurper of God's rule, established a counter-kingdom of darkness
and evil on the earth.
WE BELIEVE that God created mankind in His image, male and female, for
relationship with Himself and to govern the earth. Under the temptation
of Satan, our original parents fell from grace, bringing sin, sickness
and God's judgment of death to the earth. Through the fall, Satan and
his demonic hosts gained access to God's good creation. Creation now experiences
the consequences and effects of Adam's original sin. Human beings are
born in sin, subject to God's judgment of death and captive to Satan's
kingdom of darkness.
WE BELIEVE that God did not abandon His rule over the earth which He continues
to uphold by His providence. In order to bring redemption, God established
covenants which revealed His grace to sinful people. In the covenant with
Abraham, God bound Himself to His people Israel, promising to deliver
them from bondage to sin and Satan and to bless all the nations through
them.
WE BELIEVE that as King, God later redeemed His people by His mighty acts
from bondage in Egypt and established His covenant through Moses, revealing
His perfect will and our obligation to fulfill it. The law's purpose is
to order our fallen race and to make us conscious of our moral responsibility.
By the work of God's Spirit, it convicts us of our sin and God's righteous
judgment against us and brings us to Christ alone for salvation.
WE BELIEVE that when Israel rejected God's rule over her as King, God
established the monarchy in Israel and made an unconditional covenant
with David, promising that his heir would restore God's kingdom reign
over His people as Messiah forever.
WE BELIEVE that in the fullness of time, God honored His covenants with
Israel and His prophetic promises of salvation by sending His only Son,
Jesus, into the world. Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin
Mary, as fully God and fully man in one person, He is humanity as God
intended us to be. Jesus was anointed as God's Messiah and empowered by
the Holy Spirit, inaugurating God's kingdom reign on earth, overpowering
the reign of Satan by resisting temptation, preaching the good news of
salvation, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.
Gathering His disciples, He reconstituted God's people as His Church to
be the instrument of His kingdom. After dying for the sins of the world,
Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day, fulfilling the covenant
of blessing given to Abraham.
In His sinless, perfect life Jesus met the demands of the law and in His
atoning death on the cross, He took God's judgment for sin which we deserve
as law breakers. By His death on the cross He also disarmed the demonic
powers.
The covenant with David was fulfilled in Jesus's birth from David's house,
His Messianic ministry, His glorious resurrection from the dead, His ascent
into heaven and His present rule at the right hand of the Father. As God's
Son and David's heir, He is the eternal Messiah-King, advancing God's
reign throughout every generation and throughout the whole earth today.
WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church at Pentecost
in power, baptizing believers into the Body of Christ and releasing the
gifts of the Spirit to them. The Spirit brings the permanent indwelling
presence of God to us for spiritual worship, personal sanctification,
building up the Church, gifting us for ministry, and driving back the
kingdom of Satan by the evangelization of the world through proclaiming
the word of Jesus and doing the works of Jesus.
WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in Jesus Christ
and that He is our abiding Helper, Teacher, and Guide. We believe in the
filling or empowering of the Holy Spirit, often a conscious experience,
for ministry today. We believe in the present ministry of the Spirit and
in the exercise of all of the biblical gifts of the Spirit. We practice
the laying on of hands for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing,
and for recognition and empowering of those whom God has ordained to lead
and serve the Church.
WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of Holy Scripture
so that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. We receive
the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute
authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
WE BELIEVE that the whole world is under the domination of Satan and that
all people are sinners by nature and choice. All people therefore are
under God's just judgment. Through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus
and the Kingdom of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates,
justifies, adopts and sanctifies through Jesus by the Spirit all who repent
of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. By this they
are released from Satan's domain and enter into God's kingdom reign.
WE BELIEVE in the one, holy, universal Church. All who repent of their
sins and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior are regenerated by the Holy
Spirit and form the living Body of Christ, of which He is the head and
all are members.
WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ committed two ordinances to the Church: water
baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both are available to all believers.
WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom has come in the ministry of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that it continues to come in the ministry of the Spirit through
the Church, and that it will be consummated in the glorious, visible and
triumphant appearing of Christ His return to the earth as King. After
Christ returns to reign, He will bring about the final defeat of Satan
and all of his minions and works, the resurrection of the dead, the final
Judgment and the eternal blessing of the righteous and eternal conscious
punishment of the wicked. Finally, God will be all in all and His kingdom,
His rule and reign, will be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth,
recreated by His mighty power, in which righteousness dwells and in which
He will forever be worshipped.
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