OUR VISION

The Holy Bible is Church Of The Living Hope’s all-sufficient rule for faith and practice. The following Statement of Faith that Church Of The Living Hope subscribes to, is intended simply to clarify our beliefs to those involved in the Ministries, and to those with whom we interact; so that we all speak the same thing (1Cor 1:10, Acts 2:42). The phraseology employed in this statement is not inspired or contended for, but the truth set forth is held to be essential to a living faith. No claim is made that it contains all biblical truth, only that it covers our need as to these fundamental doctrines.

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I. We believe that the whole Bible of sixty-six books contained in the Old and New Testaments is the Word of God: that it is inspired of God the Holy Spirit; that the inspiration is not the concept only, but that the very words of the original writings were inspired; that they are a sufficient and complete revelation from God to man. We therefore build upon the Holy Scriptures as our rule of doctrine, faith, and practice; they are our final court of appeal.

 

II. We believe in the unity of the Godhead and the Trinity of the persons therein; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

III. We believe that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh, born of a virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit.

 

IV. We believe that when the Lord Jesus went to the Cross and died, while His crucifixion was by man (and that “according to the predetermined counsel of God”) His death was of a deeper character – the laying down of His life deliberately and voluntarily, and that it had a threefold significance, that is to say it was Substitutionary. That is, He who knew no sin was made sin in our place and bore all the judgment and penalty of sin that man might be justified and acquitted through faith in that atoning death. The rejection of this atoning death involves the eternal loss of the sinner.
It was Representative. That is, that when Christ died, in the sight and mind of God, the whole race in Adam as fallen man died in Him. We thus judge that if one died in the place of all, then all died (in Him). Hence the only ground upon which there can be any relationship to God is that of a new birth from above by the operation of the Holy Sprit. It was Victorious. As victorious over sin and the flesh, so over all the powers of Satan. The Cross of Calvary registered the final overthrow of the entire Satanic hierarchy: securing victory in life of the believer now; authority for the Church; and ultimately the destruction of that hierarchy at the time appointed.

 

V. We believe in the personal physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and that He, in bodily presence, showed Himself alive after His resurrection by many infallible proofs.

 

VI. We believe that in the same bodily form He will come again in like manner as He was received up. This coming, we believe, will be pre-millennial.

 

VII. We believe that the Church, according to the word of God, is composed of those who upon a basis of identification with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection by faith, have been truly born anew of the Spirit, baptized by (that) One Spirit into One Body. This Church is not an earthly organization, but a spiritual organism, super-national, super-denominational. We therefore feel that the pursuit or propagation of anything of an earthly sectarian character is contrary to the teaching and spirit of the Word of God, therefore contrary to the Divine mind. Nevertheless, we would strongly disfavor the propagation of this latter view as such, believing, as we do, that any course of action must be taken by all concerned individually upon a basis of the revelation and conviction of the Holy Spirit.

 

VIII. We believe that what are commonly called ordinances are really testimonies to spiritual realities, and that these are four in number; viz.:

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Baptism of believers by immersion: the testimony to identification with Christ in death, burial and resurrection. Romans 6:3-11; Col. 2:12, etc. The laying on of hands. The act of representative members of the Body of Christ, by which a testimony is borne to the oneness of the Body in all its members under one anointing, which is upon the Sovereign Head for all His members. Upon this ground not made by the laying on of hands but testified to believers are sharers in that anointing and are equipped for whatever may have been the foreknown purpose of God in, and through them. The principle also applies to the oneness of the ministry in the Body of Christ or House of God (the same thing). Psalm 133:2; Matt. 3:16; Heb. 6:2; Acts 8:17, Acts 9:17; 2 Tim. 1:6, 14; 1 Tim. 1: 18; 2 Tim. 4: 14; Acts 19: 5, 6, etc. The Lord’s Table. In this testimony all the other testimonies are gathered together, and while the others have to be borne as occasion requires, the Lord’s Table has to be regular and continuous. It sets forth, or proclaims the substitutionary and the representative work of Calvary; His death for us, our death in Him. It declares the corporate nature of the Church His Body One Loaf (1 Cor. 10: 16, 17; 1 Cor. 11: 23-30).It postulates the One life Divine Life life triumphant over death shared by all believers, for the life is in the Blood and the blood is the life. Lev. 17:14; John 6:53, etc.

 

The anointing of the sick. James 5:14. This we believe to be a testimony to the indwelling Christ as the life of His members. He is anointed from eternity to be the life of His people, and to give them life. The anointing with oil testifies to this fact. He, as the Anointed of God by the Sprit has conquered death. As within His members He is, by the Sprit, the Earnest of a full and final deliverance from the bondage of (physical) corruption. This Earnest is manifested either by the healing of sickness, or by a quickening and energizing to transcend infirmity to do the will of God. Which of these two takes place in each individual case is in His sovereign choice, both are seen in the Word of God. This is no mechanical application of a static ordinance but a testimony which can only be virtuous in the power of the Holy Sprit.

 

Note:

reference to the above testimonies we do not feel that it is required of us that we should seek to propagate them as a system of teaching, or as to be blindly obeyed by all; but to give them their place and carry them out as the Lord’s people are enlightened and led by the Holy Spirit in connection with them. The Spirit must lead in every case: and it is ours to expound the Word as led by Him.