What do we believe? We always start with the Bible. We are a conservative church with evangelical beliefs. Although there are some distinctions from other conservative evangelical churches, our core beliefs are mainstream. Our worship style is mostly traditional, but we do enjoy singing worship choruses along with the great worship hymns of the faith.

 

Obviously, it is impossible to list each and every belief that we hold to at Ebenezer, but here is a sampling of some of our core beliefs:

 

1. We believe in The Triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These three Persons of the Godhead are of one substance, are distinct from each other, and yet are one God.

 

2. We believe that God created the heavens and the earth and that everything that we observe originates as an act of God's creation and not as the result of accident.

 

3. We believe that sin originated with Lucifer, an angel created by God. Because God always creates beings with free will, He created His angels with the ability to reject Him. Thus, God did not create sin; He created beings with free will who were then able to choose sin. God cast Lucifer out of heaven. Lucifer is known in the Bible alternatively as satan, the serpent, and the dragon, and takes on various forms in his agenda to interfere in man's relationship with God.

 

4. We believe that Adam and Eve gave in to temptation from satan and thus sinned in the Garden of Eden as described in Genesis, and that the sin nature is passed from generation to generation. Thus, every person who is born is a sinner by nature and eventually by choice.

 

5. We believe that physical and spiritual death is the only acceptable penalty for sin. "Death" means separation; thus physical death is the separation of the soul and spirit from the physical body and spiritual death is the separation of our spirit from God forever.

 

6.We believe that as sinners, there is no way of our own goodness to ever have a relationship with God. He is perfect, and any sin in us makes us unacceptable to Him. We cannot raise ourselves to God's goodness, but He can lower Himself to raise us up to Himself.

 

7. We believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, that He was born of the Virgin Mary, that He is all God and all man, and that He willingly restrained His attributes. We believe that Jesus lived a sinless life, that He died a literal death on a cross some 2000 years ago, that He was resurrected bodily, that He ascended to heaven as described in the book of Acts, and that He sits at the right hand of God the Father to make intercession for those who accept Him as Lord as Savior.

 

8. We believe that God accepts the payment of Jesus' death for us because He lived a sinless life with no imperfection. Therefore, when we "accept" Jesus as Savior, we are acknowledging that we cannot satisfy God's requirement of sinlessness and we accept that Jesus is the only way for God to receive us into His family.

 

9. We believe that upon accepting Jesus as Savior, we become adopted members of God's family with Him as our Heavenly Father.

 

10. We believe that believers should be baptized after being saved as a public testimony of their new life in Jesus.

 

11. We believe that the Bible commands us to commemorate Jesus' death and resurrection by keeping the Lord's Supper with the bread and the cup.

 

12. We believe that after being saved, we will continue to sin because our flesh is still sinful. However, we also believe that the Holy Spirit (God's Spirit) comes to live with our spirit and enables us to resist temptation and to know more fully God's will. God expects us to live a better life after being saved, but we must always remember that our salvation depends on Jesus, not on our ability to perform good deeds.

 

13. We believe that Jesus is preparing a home in heaven for those who are Christians and that He will return one day to gather all Christians to Himself.

 

14. We believe that those Christians who die before Jesus returns will have their spirits go to be with the Lord immediately while the body remains inanimate on the earth.

 

15. We believe that when Jesus returns, He will cause a bodily resurrection of those Christians who have died (reuniting the spirits of the Christians with a new body from the earth) and that those who are alive and remain will be transformed while living to become new creations in Christ.

 

16. We believe that after Jesus returns, He will establish an earthly kingdom, transform the earth to a new creation and dwell with mankind forever.