What I Believe

I believe in the Holy Bible as the complete and perfect Word of God.

I believe that Adam and Eve were the first creation from which we are descended but not because they were the only humans on the earth at the time but because Noah was descended from Adam and Noah's family were the only survivors after the great flood.

I believe that Adam was created as a fallible human being whose relationship with God was perfect because he had never chosen to be unfaithful. When Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and made a choice to break that relationship, the perfect state between God and mankind was broken forever.

I believe that death is not what we think it to be. It is not the cessation of breathing and heart beat, it is separation from God. Adam and Eve's decision to break faith with God brought them instantaneous death...they were separated from him. I believe that the Old Testament is God's love story, teaching his children the seriousness of death through the law and its symbolic representation of how far away from God sin makes us. What the law really was was impossible. It taught us that it is impossible for us to restore life into our own dead spirits.

I believe that the death brought by sin (ie the separation from God) is not reversible by human hands. Sin does not require death; it is death. In order to save us from eternal death, God gives us a picture we can comprehend. He trades the death we have brought upon ourselves for another death. The death does not go away, it is transferred.

In the Old Testament, the priest could transfer the sins of the people onto the sacrificial animals and so the death remained but was placed from the people onto the animal as the people watched. This way they were reminded of the consequence of breaking faith with God.

The laws of the Old Testament were a picture we can understand of how impossible it is for us to achieve holiness. Again, it cannot be realized by human hands.

In the humbling lessons from the Old Testament, mankind was prepared to understand that never again could we trust our own instincts to maintain holiness and that the price would not be easily paid.

I believe that in the New Testament Christ died to bring all of the Old Testaments lessons about sacrifice and death to its final perfect conclusion. Instead of continual death, the death of the perfect sacrificial lamb offering himself becomes the only transfer of death that will be acceptable to God for all human beings after that time. Jesus is allowed to die the death our sin causes.

I believe that giving up the laws of the Old Testament only makes sense when it is because we finally realize the law is so hard to keep because we just can't do it. This is why God provides the Holy Spirit, to wrap around our unholy spirits and enable us to do what we cannot begin to understand on our own...how to have the relationship with God that Adam had before he broke faith.

I believe that every person must recognize and take responsibility for their own sin and inability to make themselves right and they must accept the blood of Jesus Christ with sober gratitude that it was his death that prevents each of us from dying if we choose to receive the gift he offers.

I believe that we must invite the Holy Spirit to be the voice that speaks louder than our unholy spirits. Not because we are so very bad. But because we realize how very holy God is and we want so much to please him, we put aside our pride and allow ourselves to be shaped back into that man, like Adam, who could comprehend a God of creation who loves us.

I believe that Jesus is my death and therefore my life and I accept him.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is my interpreter and my guide and I will listen to him.

I believe that those who have not accepted Christ are already dead despite the air they breathe.

I believe God sees me through Jesus and now he receives me as perfected through his perfect son.

I believe God loves me and has all of my life in his hands.