I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
The Father יהוה (YHVH) commonly translated, as LORD, is the supreme sovereign ruler of all creation. He is the self-existent one without beginning or end, who sustains all His creation.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Jesus Christ is the divine, eternal Son of God (the Word) who created all things. He created the universe by simply speaking things into existence. Matter-energy and space-time emerged out of information created by the Word of God.
Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man;:
Jesus left heaven and came to this earth to redeem mankind of their sins.He is both divine Son of God and human Son of Man, 100% God and 100% man. He was born of a virgin and He is the only person to ever have lived a perfect sinless life.
As the God-Man Jesus is the fulfillment of the entirety of Scripture. He is the Seed of the woman who crushed Satan. He is the Seed of Abraham, the Sceptre of Shiloh, The Prophet like unto Moses, and He is the Son of David and Heir to David’s throne
Man was created by God in His image and likeness. Sinless man enjoyed a perfect relationship with God in the Garden of Eden until sin entered humans through Adam and Eve’s disobedience, severing their relationship with God. As a result, everyone has been born with a fallen sinful nature inherited from Adam and therefore needed salvation. However, God did not leave mankind without hope as He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ into this world to redeem mankind from their sins.
We believe salvation is a gift from God. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation comes by the works or merits of Jesus Christ, not by our good works or effort. It is impossible to be saved by living a good life because we are all sinners and have broken God’s law. Salvation is a work of God as He initiates the process by sending the Holy Spirit to draw us to Jesus. When a person repents of their sins, puts faith in Jesus Christ, and gives their heart to Him, Jesus will forgive their sins and come to live in the believer’s heart. Everything changes for the believer on the day they get born-again as God places them in Christ and gives them a new nature, and a new identity. The Holy Spirit regenerates us as we are born-again, and God adopts us into His family, as we become a child of God, a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
Christ was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
Jesus fulfilled the law, was crucified on a cross for mankind and atoned for our sins through the shedding of His blood. He was the substitutionary sacrificial Lamb of God. Jesus took our sins upon Himself paying the penalty for our sins as He went to death, hell, and the grave.
He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; :
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
Christ is now seated at the right hand of the Father, and lives to make continual intercession. Jesus Christ in the one and only true mediator between man and God. He is the way, the truth, and the life.
From thence He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. :
We believe in the visible bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, known as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Christ is coming to execute judgment on the wicked nations of the world, ending the current regime of oppression. Jesus will rule and reign on the earth for 1,000 yearsas the heir of king David, in the Millennium Reign during a time of peace, prosperity, and blessing. We believe in a final judgment where the eternal status of both saints and unbelievers will be determined. There will be a resurrection of the saved and the lost, one to everlasting life and the other to everlasting death. We believe in the final eternal state of the new heavens, the new earth and the new city for the saved, and the lake of fire for the lost.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
The Holy Spirit, by virtue of proceeding from both the Father and the Son, shared the same essencewith all of the same essential attributes. The divine essence also includes a set of relational attributes as three distinct eternal persons, the Father, the Son (or Word), and the Holy Spirit. Each person of the Godhead has a distinct purpose or function, yet all are in complete unity and harmony with the same attributes, purpose, will, and nature/name.
It is the Holy Spirit that gives revelation to the saints. He is the intermediary through which the Word of God came to the Church. It was through His agency that Christ, the living Word, was conceived in Mary. It was through His agency that Scripture was breathed through full verbal plenary inspiration. We believe the Bible, containing both Old and New Testaments is the inspired, infallible, inerrant, eternal, authoritative Word of God. It is without contradiction, and its origin is from the heart and mind of God. The Bible is the source of all Christian doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. It cannot be added to, subtracted from, or superseded in any regard. The Holy Spirit also engaged in providential preservation of the text so that believers at the end of the age could have access to the same oracles of God as the first believers. He also gives us insight into the meaning of the text to guide proper hermeneutics. When studying the Bible, our objective is to find God’s intended meaning of the scriptures. No scripture should ever be taken out of context. Some scriptures are literal, some figurative and some historical. To understand the Bible, one must use proper and solid principles of Biblical interpretation while depending upon the Holy Spirit to give the revelation of the Word of God.
The revelation ministry Holy Spirit also reveals all that is in Christ to believers. The Holy Spirit is manifested through a variety of spiritual gifts to edify the church, demonstrate the validity of the resurrection, and confirm the power of the Gospel. All believers are commanded to earnestly desire the manifestation of the gifts in their lives. These gifts always operate in harmony with the Scriptures and should never be used in violation of Biblical parameters. Divine healing and deliverance are integral parts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as other major spiritual gifts such as the gift of prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, discernment, miracles, the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge.These gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit are to remain operational until the church attains full maturity in Christ at His Coming.
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The catholic church here means universal church composed of all who believe in Christ as Lord and Savior. All saints have been redeemed by the blood of Christ to be Kings and Priests and have been placed in the extended body of Christ in an organic communion with each other with Christ and with God through Christ.
This communion of saints is agnostic concerning socio-economic, racial, cultural, national, and ethnic distinctives. The identities that matter in the Church are the condition of humanity as created in God image and for whom Christ died and our identity in Christ.
This communion inside of the body of Christ includes placement in a specific roles in the body. To this end, the Holy Spirit has established offices to the church to equip the saints so that everyone can minister fully according to their gifts and spiritual maturity. This involves three short term goals
- EQUIP THE SAINTS
- Teaching the whole counsel of the Word of God.
- Modeling a Christ-like personality for emulation by the Saints.
- Demonstrating and imparting the Gifts of the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ.
- The WORK OF THE MINISTRY.
- Reaching out to the backslidden and unsaved in order to bring them to Christ.
- All of the wonderful things listed in Isaiah 61:1-11.
- The EDIFYING OF THE BODY OF CHRIST.
- Building up and improving the condition of the Body.
- Encouraging the Saints to fight the good fight of faith.
These three Short-Term Goals are to be implemented until the Body of Christ reaches the Four Final Long-Term Goals. The Long-Term Goals will be achieved when the ENTIRE BODY reaches the following conditions:
- The UNITY OF THE FAITH.
- The KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD.
- The church comes to a “PERFECT MAN” CONDITION.
In other words, the Bride finally MATCHES THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF THE GROOM so that the two of them can be EQUALLY YOKED, just as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. And attains to what Paul calls the MEASURE of the STATURE of the FULLNESS of CHRIST.
The forgiveness of sins:
The Shedding of Christ’s blood upon the Cross completely destroys the guilt of sin, the power of sin, and the power of Satan. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. The forgiveness of sins is just the beginning of the process of salvation that, while it can occur all at once, often involve multiple crisis events in the life of a believer that transforms the soul of the believer, “conforming him into the image of His son.” This process involves progressive sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Those whom God foreknew, He predestined, those whom He predestined, He sanctified, those whom He sanctified He glorified (Romans 8:29).
The forgiveness of sins immediately follows repentance away from sin toward faith in Christ. Jesus Christ comes to live in the believer’s heart. He is planted in our hearts as the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. This Word of God is our spiritual DNA and contains the reality and substance of every aspect of our salvation experience from our new birth to full maturity in Christ. This DNA has not had full expression at the new birth, hence the need for ongoing sanctification.
Repentance should be promptly followed through with water baptism We believe every believer should be water baptized through immersion. This is a separate experience after salvation, not necessary for redemption from the penalty of sin since that comes only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Water baptism is not just a symbolic religious ritual, an ordinance or a liturgy that signifies the believer’s public profession of faith. Rather, It is in water baptism that the new believer identifies with Christ in his crucifixion, His death and resurrection life. The Bible clearly states that Jesus directed us to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and Peter said, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins”.
We must also pursue sanctification of our life experience. This is grounded in fundamental reality of our life in Christ. The Bible says we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God. We are placed in the beloved Son of God to receive His imputed righteousness and holiness. From this point, all believers are called saints rather than sinners, because when God looks at us, He sees His Son.
However, we must learn to grow in Christ. Our journey toward sanctification and spiritual growth begins with this understanding that we need to grow to become more like Christ. All believers have a carnal soul with a lifetime of bad memories and habits, so the soul needs to undergo a process called progressive sanctification for the rest of our lives. Progressive sanctification and spiritual growth are the ongoing processes of yielding to God’s Word and His Spirit to complete the development of Christ’s character in us. This is done through faith and confession that focuses on what God’s Word says about us. Man cannot possibly sanctify himself or make his own soul holy; this is a work of God’s grace in the believer’s life as faith is transformed into righteousness and confession is transformed into salvation.
Water baptism prefigures the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which should be pursued by every believer. We believe that God has promised the baptism of the Holy Spirit to all believers subsequent to salvation, though not all believers will seek this gift. This experience is not required to be saved from the penalty of sin, but God makes this gift available to the believer for power to overcome sin and witness boldly for Jesus Christ. The evidence of this infilling is God’s love poured into and flowing out of the believer’s heart to others. We believe that all who experience this will be able to speak in a spiritual or heavenly language that the Bible calls unknown tongues (not to be confused with “the gift of tongues” which always follows with an interpretation, I Corinthians 12).
11. The resurrection of the body:
Flesh and blood cannot handle our full glorification, so its is necessary for us to receive an immortal, perfect resurrection body. Those who are “dead in Christ” shall rise first, then those of us who remain shall be transformed into immortal resurrection.
And the life everlasting. Amen.
After the Millennium, the old heaven and earth shall pass away – get quantum erased – We shall live forever in a new heavens and a new earth free from evil forevermore.
Marriage & Family
We believe that family is an important component of the Church, and we promote and embrace the Christian Biblical family order. New Covenant Church of the Apostles believes in the sanctity of the marital union, between one man and one woman, as defined in the following Scriptures: The holy institution of marriage is between one man and one woman, rooted as it is in God’s creation of man and woman in His image and in the relationship between Christ and His Church, Matthew 19:4-6, Ephesians 5:22,23. God created the first marriage as a sacred covenant relationship between one man and one woman for the purposes of procreation, companionship, and dominion over creation in keeping with the covenant relationship that God Himself established with His own creation, Genesis 2:15-24, Romans 1:16-32. Society historically has embraced this traditional definition of marriage, eschewing all other unions as unnatural, inappropriate, and anti-social, and has advocated the family unit of husband and wife and their children as the chief building block of society. Leviticus 18:22-30, Psalm 127: 3-5; I Corinthians 7:1,2; Hebrews 13:4. New Covenant Church of the Apostles recognizes that marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. Accordingly, this Church, its pastors, staff, and members will not participate in same-sex unions or same-sex marriages, nor shall its property or resources be used for such purpose.