Concise Statements of Faith

1. Revelation
   God reveals himself to humanity through revelation. In the Old Testament, God revealed
   himself to people in various ways, including dreams and natural phenomena like earthquakes.
   Revelation is the universal knowledge of a moral code common to all men. Due to their sinful
   nature, humankind feels a void they seek to fill through God or self-reliance. When a man
   becomes a believer, he gets the redemptive awakening through the scriptures that make him fill
   the void and find salvation through Jesus Christ.
   2 Timothy 3:16 “Scripture is profitable for teaching, proof, and correction for teaching the
   righteous.”
   2 Peter 1:3 -4: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,
   through the knowledge of him who called us to his glory and excellence, by which he has
   granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become
   partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of
   sinful desire.”
   John 1: 9 “True light which gives light was coming into the world.”
   (Zaspel, p. 160)
2. Sin
   The sinful nature of humans started when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge of
   good and evil. Such resulted in humanity forfeiting the perfect nature of God-awareness for a
   corrupt self-awareness. Man became rebellious and disobedient and separated from God. The
   desire to eat the fruit gave birth to sin. The implication is that man became mortal after sinning.

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Since God is the beginning of life and works with principles, the wages of sin became death and
eternal separation from God.
Genesis 3:5, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be
like God, knowing good and evil.”
James 1:15“Then desire when it has conceived birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings
forth death.”
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”
(Erickson, p. 189)

3. Reconciliation
   The fall of man and his sinful nature separated him from God. The wages of sin were
   death, and God could not overlook this principle. However, God’s steadfast love for humankind
   made him send his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross as a propitiation for human sins. Through
   faith in Jesus Christ reconciled man with God. Besides, through reconciliation, the calling of any
   believer in Christ is to reconcile themselves with other men through the ministry of Jesus that
   God himself established.
   Isaiah 59:1-2 states, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull,
   that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.”
   1 John 4:9-10, “In this the love of God was manifested among us, that God sent his only Son into
   the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that
   he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
   2 Corinthians 5:17–20: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has
   passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself and
   gave us the ministry of reconciliation through Christ.”

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(Wright, p. 207)

4. Creation
   The creation story is founded on what God did, but its essence is why He did it. He
   breathed life into man and placed him in the Garden of Eden. One attribute of God is love, and
   the nature of love is to pour forth. Creation was the ultimate result of God’s work and desire for
   humankind. Although man eventually corrupted God’s creation, His steadfast love made Him
   send Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, to renew and bring reconciliation with humankind.
   Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
   Genesis 2:7–8: “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into
   his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a
   garden in Eden, in the east, where he put the man he had formed.”
   Ephesians 1:4: “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be
   holy and blameless before him. In love.”
   (Miller, p. 91)
5. Eschatology
   Eschatology is the belief that end times started as life, death, resurrection, and ascension
   of Jesus Christ. Therefore, Christ is the firstborn of the dead to those born in Christ, and they are
   responsible for spreading the Gospel so all might be saved. Believers should focus on the present
   as they await the return of Christ, where the dead will be raised, there will be judgment, and God
   will live among his people in the new kingdom.
   Colossians 1:18: “And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn
   from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

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Mark 16:15: “He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole
creation.”
James 5:7: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer
waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the
late rains.”
(Agapegeek, p. 123)

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References

Agapegeek (2010). What in the World is God Waiting For? 3 Things God Is Waiting for Before
Jesus Returns!
Erickson, M.J. (2001). Introducing Christian doctrine (2nd ed.). L.A. Hustad (Ed.). Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Miller, J. J. (2011). God made us love
Wright, N. T. (2006). The road to new creation.
Zaspel, F. G. (2010). The theology of B. B. Warfield.