STATEMENT OF BELIEFS

1) We believe that a Power greater than ourselves exists, and this Power is called God. God is ever-present and real, although presently unseen in the physical realm. We believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent. We believe that God interacts with the world which He created, humanity, and even in the lives of individuals who seek Him and ask for His intervention.

2) We Believe that God is One entity, but He is known by people through Three distinct identities: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We believe that God revealed and ultimately manifested Himself to man in that order, first as Yahweh the God of The Torah and the Author of the Prophesies, then as Yeshua the Messiah, and finally as the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) that indwells and empowers those who follow the Messiah. We believe that The Holy Ghost is the Promised Comforter, and that He indwells the true followers of the Messiah when they become saved, and He empowers them with special enablements called Gifts. These Gifts include words of wisdom and knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, diverse kinds of languages and language interpretation.

3) We believe that humans are designed in the image of God and also have 3 distinct identities: A mind, a body and a spirit. We believe that animals do not have a spirit, but they have a flesh body. We believe that angels do not have a flesh body, but they have a spirit. We believe that occasionally there are exceptions to these rules and animals may temporarily be possessed of a spirit and angels may temporarily indwell a physical body. People however do not become angels when they die.

4) We believe that this world and everything in it was created by God through original creation. All people are His creations through the process of natural reproduction and that birth defects and other anomalies are the result of pathogens, chemicals and other physical and spiritual agents interfering with the natural process of biological procreation. We do not believe that God presently accurses the unborn in the womb with malformation and sickness. Some sicknesses, even in the unborn, may have spiritual origins but they are attributable to Lucifer and demonic oppressions, not God.

5) We believe that the world is presently in a state of spiritual oppression, and that Lucifer is the leader of a demonic assault upon the earth and that he is the adversary of all humans. We believe that because of human interaction with Lucifer, all people are subjects of his corruption and are completely lost spiritually and are held in a totally indefensible state against him. We believe that many people are possessed and obsessed by demons and evil spiritual powers that cause them to do uncontrollable, unspeakable and unexplainable evil things. We believe that the goal of Lucifer is to deprive man of access to God, kill his spirit, torment his mind, inflict his body with gradual physical decay and death, impoverish him and ultimately cause complete destruction.

6) We believe that poverty, sickness, death and separation from God are indeed curses upon humanity and that God wants to reverse this accursed condition and have fellowship with the people He created, and He wants them to prosper and to live in a state of health and wholeness during this life. We believe that even though we will still die physically God wants us to know Him and to live forever, and we can do so by being "born again" in accordance with the redemption plan which He has provided for us. Through redemption we can be delivered from the ultimate power of Lucifer and the curses against humanity.

7) We believe that all people are wholly corrupted and live in a state of helplessness and depravity. While some people may exhibit behaviors seemingly better than others, we are all the same in the eyes of God. We are all lost and incapable of self redemption. Frankly stated, there are no good people, only people with varying degrees of evil. All people are lost and dead spiritually and need redemption irrespective of the things they do.

8) We believe that God saves people completely by His own grace, and that He withholds punishment from us completely by His own mercy. None of us is deserving of grace and all of us are deserving of punishment. We believe that redemption is a work accomplished completely by God through The Messiah. We believe that this redemption is obtained completely through faith in The Messiah. The biblical formulation for salvation is detailed as follows: 1) The recipient hears about The Messiah and the offer of salvation; 2) They believe the message; 3) The affirm a covenant with God to be saved by confessing it with spoken words; 4) They receive it and continue thereafter to follow The Messiah and to grow and mature in their faith, ultimately exhibiting their faith in the things they do. We believe that people who have obtained this salvation have new life and live in a state of ongoing forgiveness for the duration of this life, even though continuing to be troubled with and by sin, accidentally and incidentally, and that God no longer accounts the guilt and penalty of their sin unto them. While there may likely still exist some consequences for sin, the greatest consequence of spiritual death has been taken away.

9) We believe that all Christians must live by faith. Faith has two essential components: 1) It is a belief founded upon the Word of God and the testimony of other people; 2) It is a reaction based upon those beliefs. Faith will always require an action founded upon belief. If there is action but no belief, there is no faith. If there is belief but no action, there is no faith. There are lots of people who do good things, but they are not followers of The Messiah and do not believe. There are also lots of people who believe, yet they do nothing whatsoever in relation to that belief. Only those who believe and make an exhibition of that belief through their actions have genuine biblical faith.

10) We believe that God´s fellowship, blessings, salvation, healing, and miracles are universally available to all people. We believe that most people don´t receive from God, not because God doesn´t want them to have His provisions, but because of some omission, commission or unaddressed culpability on the part of the recipient. We believe that God is unchangeable and immovable, and that He has provided sufficient information to us so that we all may know His will, purpose and plan. If we choose to remain ignorant to this knowledge it is our own fault.

11) We believe that all essential Christian teachings can be summarized into principles. A principle is a simple contingent promise (do this = this result). These principles include: Priority, Faith, Sowing & Reaping, Prayer & Fasting, Unity, Faithfulness, Purpose, Perseverance, Repentance, The Holy Name, Humility, Forgiveness and mercy. Many people make themselves ineligible to receive from God because they don´t understand these simple principles.

12) We believe that words of prayer, testimony, confession, preaching and prophesy have immense power and potential. These words are like seeds that are sown into the hearts, minds and lives of people. We believe that The Bible contains many such words from holy men. We believe that there is great benefit in both giving and receiving these words, and that there is even greater benefit in the study of The Bible. We believe that God desires for us to propagate these powerful words to the rest of the world. We believe that God wants us to be a witness, both collectively and individually, by sharing His Holy Word and our holy testimony to a lost and hopeless world.

13) We believe that God desires for us to join together in undivided unity and that collectively we are called The Church. The church is not a building somewhere with doors and windows, but it is the gathering of the followers of The Messiah. Within the church God has ordained the establishment of a hierarchy of people to serve as pastors, elders, teachers, deacons, etc. We believe that the real church is both congregational and evangelical. It serves the members inside through ministry and fellowship, and shares the Message outside through evangelism, testimony and example. We believe that all believers are called into personal evangelism. In this present age the majority of new believers will likely receive the Good News Message from a single person, not from mass evangelism or church attendance.

14) We believe that God wants us to be free and completely uncontrolled by addictions, compulsions and temptations. We believe that God delivers people from drugs, cigarettes, gluttony, pornography, gambling, alcohol and every other sinful device of compulsion known to man. He makes people free from perversions, homosexuality, and all other uncontrollable unnatural and immoral sexual behaviors and obsessions. Most people do not seek this remedy from God and are left in an undelivered state, even though they may still be saved from damnation.

15) We believe in observance of biblical Christian rites. We believe that all believers should be baptized in water by full immersion, not to obtain salvation but because of their salvation. We do not believe that unbelievers, including babies, should partake of the rite of baptism. We believe in regularly observing the rite of communion. Communion is a commemoration, a type of memorial to be observed by the followers of the Christ recounting the instruction and teaching provided in the Scriptures, which was given at the Last Supper. The elements of communion consist of wine and unleavened bread, and may be administered in a large gathering or individually. We believe in the presentation of newborn babies to God. We believe in the laying on of hands and anointing with oil.

16) We believe that all people will ultimately end their lives with a personal judgment. The saved will experience something similar to an "appraisal" where rewards will be assigned according to the things done in this life. The lost will give an account of their lives followed by punishment and then eternal spiritual death. There will be varying degrees of punishment relative to the things done in this life and the rejected knowledge about God´s plan of redemption. People who had knowledge of salvation and rejected it will receive the most severe punishment. People who never heard the Gospel Message will receive the least severe punishment. We do not believe that there is a literal physical location of eternal incarceration called hell. The Bible describes a place of waiting called Hades (not hell). The name hell is only found in the late English Bible (a translated text), and the idea of hell as taught in the contemporary western church is quite invalid. We do not believe that a God who refers to Himself as "Love" would send, banish, destine, doom or relegate people to a hell and then torment and inflict them with agonizing pain and suffering for eternity. We believe that those who end up in Hades after they die are awaiting judgment, punishment and then spiritual death. We believe that a loving God shows mercy even in the ultimate judgment of the damned, and that the "eternal torment" described in the Bible in reference to hell is actually describing the everlasting sorrow, regret, irreversibility and finality of damnation, which has its conclusion in spiritual death.

17) We believe that babies have a spirit created at the moment of conception, and that when they die through abortion, miscarriage, sickness or murder they go immediately to be with God without going through the judgment. We believe that babies and even children do not share the same culpability and accountability to God that adults do, and are not responsible until they reach a level of understanding and maturity. Responsibility is assigned relative to knowledge.

18) We believe that God revealed Himself through the Hebrew Prophets, and that ultimately He sent Yeshua the Messiah in fulfillment of those prophesies. We believe that this Redeemer was the final Prophet who brought the final prophesy. Christian prophesy is different than Judaic prophesy. Christian prophesy is an enablement of the Holy Spirit for the express purpose of exhortation, edification and comfort. We believe that The Messiah is a Priest, Prophet and King. He came as a Priest to minister to those who would receive Him, and He was the final Prophet who instituted The New Covenant, and finally He will return to rule as The King at the end of this age. The Bible tells us that there will be no more prophets (revealing new covenants, religions, redeemers, orders, etc.), but that before the return of The Messiah the world would have many false prophets, false religions, false christs and false teachings.

19) We believe (and know for certain with undisputable proof) that the names Jesus, Jehovah, Jerusalem and even Israel, as well as most of the other Bible names are gross mistransliterations. We believe that most of the English Bibles we have today are terribly corrupted, altered and even deliberately biased with certain invalid doctrines. Much of this corruption can be attributed to the translation process between Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and English. We believe it is a terrible thing for man to knowingly alter and change the names of God and the holy people of the Bible. We believe that it is an atrocity to deliberately add, remove or alter the content of the scriptures in order to manipulate people and change the text to support man made doctrines or traditions. We do not believe that there is such a thing as the "old testament". Some of the books that have been assembled into what we call the "old testament" are actually the Hebrew scriptures called the Tanakh. The Tanakh consists of the Torah (law), the Nevi´im (prophets) and the Ketuvim (writings). Yeshua and Paulos both mention these writings in the New Covenant scriptures.

20) We believe that the modern western Christian church is presently being infiltrated with unbiblical teachings, heresy, apostasy, greed, sin compromise and silly religious inventions. We believe that many unconventional new doctrines and philosophies are being propagated today and that an ever increasing number of people are being attracted to them. We believe that people have divided up into multiple sects over time in order to differentiate themselves according to their own invented doctrines, and that many of the key essential teachings of these sects are surely invalid. Many of the things held so dear by many modern churches are unbiblical and not Christian at all, including fly-away rapture doctrines, millionaire prosperity doctrines, church merchandising, contemporary Bible translations, confirmations, stained glass windows, rock concert style eardrum blowing music, grape juice communion, altar calls, holy water, saint veneration, monasteries, deliberate snake handling, tithing, and many other such things. The Messiah warned people against following traditions made by man.

21) We believe that God moves, acts and intervenes in ways that are physically impossible. These are known as miracles. We believe that each of us is required to work hard in this life, utilizing the knowledge, resources and abilities that we have to their fullest extent, and that after doing our part only then can we rely upon God to employ miracles where needed and justified. We believe that during this present era satan is the ruler of Earth and that God is largely silent and uninvolved, intervening in individual lives only when invoked by a follower of The Messiah.

22) We believe that Paulos is the Apostle to the gentiles and that The Messiah and His Disciples were only teaching the Jews at the time of Messiah´s earthly Ministry. We believe that there is a great and distinct difference between the Yehudim (Jews) and Goyim (gentiles). We further believe that there is a great difference between the Covenant of the Law and the Covenant of Faith. These are two distinct and different Covenants, the first being no longer valid or applicable and has passed away. The purpose of the Law at this time is to show people their need for salvation, not to obtain righteousness from keeping it. We believe that as Christians we are not to follow the Torah, but may learn a great deal from the study of it. We believe that The Messiah taught only to His Jewish kinsmen who were (at that time) still under the Law of Moses, and that many of His teachings reflect this disposition. Caution and understanding must be employed even in studying the teachings of Messiah in the Gospels since many of His lessons are applicable only to the Jews He was speaking to at that time. We are to follow the teachings of Paulos, who instituted the New Covenant gentile church and provided great instruction through his writings to the early church. Preachers, Bible teachers and ministers are supposed to know this before presuming to teach others yet many of them are still attempting to teach Jewish Law.

23) We believe that people all over the world have a limited knowledge of spirituality, and that they have consequently invented religion as a way to explain something they would otherwise be incapable of understanding. We believe that in addition to being a way to explain and understand the spiritual, religions are a way of attempting to interact with God. Religion is but a mere exercise of futility and utter vanity. All religion is false and corrupted which at its very best gives a nothing more than a silly false hope and at the very worst inspires people to kill. True Christianity is the opposite of religion. Religion is man trying desperately to reach a god. Christianity is God trying desperately to reach man.

24) We believe that the world is growing progressively more evil, and that life on earth as we know it will ultimately conclude in fulfillment of the prophesies of the end times: the resettlement of the nation of Yisra´el (occurred in 1948), the rebuilding of the Temple on the Mount, the rise of the antichrist and the one world government, the universal hatred and persecution of Christians, the worldwide evangelism effort being concluded, the cashless global economy, the increase of natural calamities and human suffering growing at an exponential rate (disease, wars, disasters, starvation, ethnic tensions, etc), the 7 year Peace Agreement, the invasion of Jerusalem by gentile armies leading to the expulsion of the Jews from their Holy City, and ultimately the return of the Mashiach as the children of Yisra´el cry out from the mountains unto the Mashiach that was rejected by their ancestors 2000 years ago. We believe that there is great significance to Yisra´el in both past and current world events. Politically, economically, militarily, and spiritually and prophetically Yisra´el is the most important nation in the world.

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