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Statement of Faith

God: We believe there is one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and that He is an individual soul. We believe He alone gives to all life, and breath, and all good things. We believe that He is wholly good and that it is impossible for Him to do evil or to tempt humans to do evil. We believe He alone is to be worshipped. We believe that God is not a respecter of persons because He is the maker of us all. We believe God, who cannot lie, promised eternal life before the world began. We believe He is ever merciful, always kind, and incomprehensibly loving. We believe He creates humans in His image as free moral agents, able to direct their course in life, and although it is His desire that all choose to serve Him, He will never force His will upon us.

Jesus: We believe His son, Jesus the Christ, was sent as a messenger to deliver to humankind the knowledge and method of how to overcome sin and to live a good and fulfilling life. We believe he was in the flesh, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. We believe his death and resurrection symbolize our death to sin and our resurrection to life by the renewing of our minds. We believe the return of Christ, as he promised, is not a literal event, but occurs within individual believers as they apply his message in their lives.

Holy Ghost: We believe the Holy Spirit is the divine presence of God in our lives. We believe the Holy Spirit can dwell within us and produce godly attributes such as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, and many more. We believe the Holy Spirit is an ever present source of strength and help in time of any need.

Soul: We believe each human being is a unique soul with the ability to choose right or wrong, good or evil, righteousness or sin. We believe we are mortal creatures and must actively engage in a process of clothing ourselves with immortality. We believe our choices ultimately determine whether we remain mortal or attain immortality; the outcome depends solely on our decisions.

Sin: We believe all human souls are born holy. We believe we were not born in sin, but rather that sin was born in us. We believe that outward sin, as actions, is the product of inward sin or evil thoughts we received into our minds through words and experiences we were subject to in our lives. We believe those evil thoughts have power over us and keep us in a spiritual bondage. We believe those thoughts are not a permanent part of us, but that we can bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ and, by the power of the spirit of grace and through continual vigilance, eliminate them and their influence from our lives.

Life: We believe as male and female are the foundation for the reproduction of all physical life, that God’s word and spirit are the foundation for all spiritual life. We believe that Jesus was the first born among many brethren, the first human to experience a complete spiritual birth and growth to maturity in God. We believe being born again is a process, not an event. We believe that by receiving and applying God’s word and spirit in our lives that we can lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us and that we too can be born of God and become new creatures.

Death: We believe the idea of death is used in a variety of contexts throughout the Bible. We believe the primary idea of death concerns the consequence of sin entering into our lives, bringing about a spiritual death or separation from God. We believe by eliminating sin, or evil thoughts, from our mind that we can come to life and establish a relationship with our creator. We believe this is the message of the New Testament; that we can overcome sin, be raised up into a new life through our belief and application of the teachings of Jesus and his followers, and become children of God.

Heaven and Hell: We believe in certain contexts of the scriptures that heaven and hell are spiritual conditions determined by our thoughts, heaven being the result of good thoughts and hell the result of bad thoughts. We further believe at other times heaven is referred to in the Bible as a spirit dimension in which God and angels dwell. We believe the kingdom of God is not a place, but as Jesus taught, can be within us and is comprised of sound words and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We believe the quality of our lives is directly proportionate to the quality of our thoughts. We believe the abundant life of which Jesus spoke is the attainment of spiritual well being and that attaining it will clothe our soul with immortality, which will enable us to exist eternally in heaven as do God and angels.

Baptism: We believe that baptism in water was, and is, a symbolic gesture to help people realize their need for repentance. We believe the baptism that Jesus taught was a spiritual baptism or immersion of one’s mind in the Holy Ghost (spirit) and fire (word) of God, making it possible for us to leave behind the old ways of thinking, the old man, and develop new ways of thinking, the new man, whereby our lives may be well pleasing to God.

Salvation: We believe that salvation is a process and not an event. We believe salvation or being saved from consequences of sin and ultimately death is not the beginning of our faith, but rather the end of our faith. We believe the elimination of sin and its effects on us is one part of the process that leads to salvation, while the other part is creating a new man by getting new words and spirit within us. We believe that salvation is available to all, without partiality.

Resurrection: We believe the resurrection, as Jesus taught, is a spiritual resurrection from death to life, which occurs when we apply the Biblical teachings, receive God’s holy spirit into our lives, and through conscious decisions resist the influences of evil, both within us and outside of us, and live in accordance to God’s will.

Judgment: We believe that judgment, as Biblically described, is not a literal event that takes place on a particular day, but is based on the decisions we make as to which ideas or spirit we will follow in any given situation. We believe we are constantly confronted with choices and the result of our choices determines whether we are judging ourselves to spiritual life or to spiritual death. We believe that judgment to life or death is not based on a single event, but that it is a process over the course of one’s life of either choosing good or choosing evil.

The Bible: We believe that both the Old and New Testaments are a guide set forth by inspired human beings. We believe that the Bible in its entirety is not yet perfectly understood, but that it contains precepts and principles that if applied can enhance our life and positively affect the quality of our relationships with other humans.

Our responsibility: We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and that believers should do that which is right, strive to maintain an orderly life, worship together, and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable to all people. We believe that faith should manifest itself in the service of love to all people, to the end that the kingdom of God may dwell within all people.

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This Statement of Faith is by no means an exhaustive list of the ideas promoted by The Word Church, but is a basic outline of some of our core beliefs. We believe that no one person or group of persons has exclusive comprehension of the God who is infinite in His understanding. May we all find His will in our lives and please Him in all of our ways.