Bethesda christian Fellowship

What We Believe

1. The Bible is the Word of God; is Holy Scripture; is fully inspired by God, and is the final authority in all practical and doctrinal matters.

2. The Godhead, is the perfect union of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each person is divine and is co-equal with the others. God, three in one, is absolutely sovereign in all matters concerning creation, providence and redemption. God is Love and desires to be merciful to all men, that all may be saved, through faith in Jesus Christ. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

3. Mankind has become sinful and separated from God as a consequence of the "fall from Grace" in the Garden of Eden and each individual human being requires to be saved (restored / rescued / redeemed) from their sinful condition in order to have peace with God.

4. In Jesus Christ; His full deity; His virgin birth; His real and perfect manhood; the authority of His teaching; the reality of His miracles; His work of atonement for sinful mankind by His substitutionary suffering and death on the cross; His bodily resurrection and ascension into Heaven; His present high priestly intercession for his people at the right hand of the Father; and His coming again at the end of the age.

5. The Salvation (Justification / redemption) of an individual man or woman, boy or girl, is accomplished solely by their exercising personal faith (trust) in the atoning merits and saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not by their own personal works or merit.

6. The work of the Holy Spirit is essential in regeneration, conversion and sanctification and in all ministry and worship. Believers are those who are sealed with the Holy Spirit having been baptised by the Spirit into Christ Jesus. Believers should continue seeking to be filled with the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit. The Indwelling Spirit takes the things of Christ and applies them to the believer's soul and makes them known to his/her understanding.

7. The Church universal is the Body of Christ, with Christ himself as the head. The Universal Church encompasses all those redeemed by God through the good news of Jesus, born of the Spirit, and justified by faith, living in this world or present with the Lord. Local churches are groups of believers and are the visible expression of the universal church; fellowship between such churches manifests the unity of the body of Christ. The local Church is the hope of the world.

8. Believer's Baptism and the Lord's Supper (communion / breaking of bread) are ordinances instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ. An ordinance is a direct teaching of Christ that every local Church in every age must obey. (Baptism however does not convey regenerating grace, neither is the Lord 's Supper a sacrifice for sin, nor does it involve any change in the actual substance of the bread and wine.)

9. Heaven (and Hell). All people will experience a bodily resurrection at the end of the age. The believer will be raised to enter the eternal blessedness of Heaven. People who have not trusted Christ for salvation will also be raised bodily but will come under God's judgment and will not be able to enter Heaven since, by rejecting Christ's offer of forgiveness, their debt of sin against God will remain.