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. 

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 earth. 

…male and female, for relationship with Himself and to govern the earth. He also established a blueprint for the marriage covenant, and for His gift of sex in Genesis 2:24. The gift is only to be enjoyed within a marriage between a man and a woman.  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. 

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. 

…and established His covenant through Moses, revealing His perfect will and our obligation to fulfill it.  The law’s purpose is to bring order to 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. 

…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. 

…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 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 lawbreakers.  By His death on the cross, He also disarmed the demonic powers and opened up healing as part of the gospel to be preached. 

The covenant with David was fulfilled in Jesus’ 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. 

…when Jesus breathed upon his disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit.  The baptism of repentance is when this is continued in the history of the Church.  This is the one baptism referred to in 1 Corinthians 12:13, baptizing believers into the body of Christ.  These disciples and others would later receive the “Promise of the Father”: the mighty baptism with the Holy Spirit when He would come upon (“epi”) them.  This was the experience of the disciples (who had earlier received the Spirit when Jesus breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Spirit“) on the Day of Pentecost.  Whereas the receiving of the Spirit on the evening of the resurrection was for life, at Pentecost the Spirit came upon them in power and released the gifts of the Spirit to them.  The Holy 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. 

…and that He is our abiding Helper, Teacher, and Guide.  We believe Jesus is the one who baptizes us in the Holy Spirit, as a conscious experience, for ministry today. We believe that this baptism in the Spirit is almost always subsequent to conversion, that on very rare occasions it comes at the time of conversion. Even with this observation it is difficult to know if it was truly simultaneous or occurred a few seconds after conversion.  We believe the biblical pattern is for this experience to be subsequent, though there is even in the Bible an instance when it wasn’t (the experience of Cornelius in Acts 10, in light of Acts 11:14, “He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved”). 

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. 

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 as Lord and Savior.  By this they are released from Satan’s domain and enter into God’s kingdom reign. 

All who repent of their sins and trust 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.  The Church was established during the ministry of our Lord, received the Spirit, with its regenerating life, on the night of the Resurrection, and received the “Promise of the Father” the Baptism or Filling with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. 

that it continues to come in the ministry of the Holy 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 eternal conscious punishment of the wicked, and the eternal blessing of the righteous.  Finally, God will be all in all in His new heavens and new earth, recreated by His mighty power, in which righteousness dwells and in which He will forever be worshiped.