There is one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who has eternally existed in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is light and in Him there is no darkness, meaning He is perfect. He is all-knowing, all powerful and He is everywhere (but not in everything as opposed to Pantheism). God created the heavens and the earth and made mankind in His own image. “The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth.” Exodus 34:6.

The Bible has been given to mankind through the Holy Spirit and is therefore, without error. Written by approximately 40 men, over a period of about 1500 years, it harmonizes perfectly, without contradiction, as it was given by God. The holy Scriptures provide all we need for faith and practice. We believe in the literal interpretation of God’s Word, including the prophetic passages. Whist we acknowledge figures of speech and symbolism in Scripture, they are explained and always teach a literal truth. Just as previously fulfilled prophecies were fulfilled literally, we can be assured that future prophecies will also be fulfilled literally. As God has revealed Himself to us through the Bible, we need His Word to know Him and to grow.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has eternally existed with the Father and Holy Spirit. He was born to a virgin just over 2000 years ago. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life, and by His words, works, and through the testimony of the Scriptures, showed Himself to be the Messiah, the Christ. He voluntarily gave His life as a perfect sacrifice, dying on a cross, was buried and rose to life forever. Christ spent 40 days after His resurrection showing Himself to hundreds of people and teaching His disciples about the kingdom of heaven, before ascending to His Father in heaven, promising to return. At His first coming He came as a suffering servant to bring light to a dark world, to be rejected and to be crucified. He is now glorified in heaven at the right hand of the Father and will return in glory at His second coming to establish His kingdom on earth. The Lord Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man.

The Lord Jesus referred to the Spirit as ‘He’, and Paul taught we can ‘grieve’ the Spirit. Grief requires personality to experience it. Deity is attributed to the Holy Spirit in Acts 5:3 where it is stated the Holy Spirit was lied to, Acts 5:4 states that this was God who was lied to. Paul Enns, referring to 1 Corinthians 2:11, notes “as man and his spirit make one and the same being, so God and His Spirit are only one.” (‘Moody Handbook of Theology’, p.262). Many of the Holy Spirit’s works, teaching, speaking, searching, convicting, regenerating, sanctifying, witnessing, sealing, filling, attest to His personality and deity. All believers are given God’s Holy Spirit as a seal and are baptised with the Spirit the moment a person believes. The Holy Spirit points to the Son, as the Son points to the Father.

Mankind has been created in the image of God, and therefore has unspeakable value. Due to Adam’s sin of disobedience in the garden of Eden, after eating the forbidden fruit he was offered by his wife Eve, his entire offspring (all mankind) has been affected and posses a fallen sin nature, ultimately causing death. Mankind, although dead in sins and trespasses, being spiritually dead, does have the ability to understand and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ and receive His free gift of salvation.

Humans cannot save themselves, not from hell, from the power of sin, or from the powers of darkness. God wants to save us. God is perfect, heaven is perfect, to go to heaven and be with God we must also be perfect. The only way we can be perfect is to believe what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us! To trust that He paid for all our sins on the cross and rose again to give us eternal life. By having faith in the Name of Jesus Christ we receive His righteousness and, although we don’t deserve it – it is an act of God’s love, through the righteousness he freely gives us, we are made children of God and are fit for eternity with Him. Eternal life is available to all because Jesus died for all, not just a select group. He does not want any to perish, but we have a choice – God does not force anyone to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour. We are saved by grace through faith, we cannot earn, deserve or buy salvation.

The moment someone believes, they are sealed with the Holy Spirit, as a pledge, a mark of ownership that we no longer belong to the kingdom of darkness but belong to our heavenly Father forever. The pledge of the Holy Spirit is a guarantee that Christ will raise up from the dead, all those who believe on the last day to everlasting joy, to be with Him.

The church belongs to Jesus Christ, He is the head, the cornerstone, and the foundation. It is a body comprised of all believers, from the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, up to the rapture (see ‘End times’ statement) of the church. There are eternally saved Old Testament and Tribulation saints who will be in the kingdom, but who are not part of the church. The church is distinct from national Israel in the Bible and has not replaced Israel. However, in Christ, Jews and Gentiles are one body, one new man. The moment a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are baptised with the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ which is the church. Christ, being the cornerstone of the church, built His church on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, to whom was given the New Testament to write. The apostolic sign gifts were used to validate apostleship and the new inspired words from God which they taught. The sign gifts were also needed at the time of the apostles because the New Testament was not yet fully written and circulated. We now have the full the revelation of Scripture, therefore the sign gifts are no longer normative today. All Scripture is sufficient to fully equip Christians. The purpose of the church is to worship God, spread the gospel, disciple believers, to be the pillar and support of the truth, and to be  prepared for Christ’s return, whilst being built up in love.

Around one third of the Bible is prophecy. There are roughly 1000 significant prophecies in God’s Word and these are evidence of the divine origin of the Scriptures. Half of these prophecies have been literally fulfilled and there is no credible reason to doubt that the rest will be fulfilled literally also. There will be a literal rapture of the church to meet the resurrected church saints and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself in the clouds. This will happen before a literal 7-year tribulation during which there will be a time of peace ushered in by the anti-Christ who will break his covenant with Israel and declare himself god. There will be a time of unprecedented trouble and chaos, God’s wrath will be poured out, and all this will culminate in the nations of the world taking up arms against Israel. God’s people Israel will miraculously be saved as they acknowledge their Messiah. Christ’s return to earth at the end of the 7-year tribulation period will usher in His eternal kingdom, starting with His thousand-year reign. He will rule in all power as King of kings over the nations with His overcoming saints, administering perfect peace and justice. Satan, being bound and imprisoned during the thousand years, will be released for a short time to lead a rebellion, but will fail and be thrown into the lake of fire for eternity. Those who have rejected Jesus Christ as Saviour will be raised and judged at this time and will spend eternity suffering without God in hell, due to their choice to reject the free gift of salvation. After these things there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and God will dwell with man for all eternity.

The Lord’s supper, or communion, is a memorial, a remembrance of what Jesus did for us on the cross and a looking forward to His return. It also reminds us of our unity as one body in Christ, and Christians are told in Scripture to examine ourselves, understanding how one member of the body affects the rest, before taking the Lord’s supper. The bread and wine are symbols only, and do not confer anything other than God’s blessing as a result of obedience to the partaking. They certainly do not impart eternal life. Water baptism takes place after a person has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. It symbolises the Spirit baptism which took place the moment they believed. Water baptism identifies a person with Christ – symbolising dying with Christ, being buried with Him, and being raised to eternal life. Water baptism does not wash sins away, impart eternal life or make someone a member of the church, these things were accomplished when Christ Himself baptised the believer with the Holy Spirit into His body, the church.