Jeff Smith Ministries
Proclaiming The
Gospel Of Jesus Christ Since 1979
KJV
- I Timothy 1:12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
We believe the Bible to
be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
We believe that there is
one God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe in the deity
of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the conception of His body by the Holy Spirit and
His birth by the
virgin Mary, in His
sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death, in His
bodily resurrection,
in His ascension to the
right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
We believe that
salvation is wholly of grace, but conditioned solely on repentance toward God
and acceptance of
Christ by faith. When
the sinner has met these requirements, God justifies and regenerates him.
Justification is a
judicial act absolving
from punishment and restoring to divine favor. Regeneration is the impartation
of divine life
effecting a change in the believer's nature.
By the operation of the Holy Spirit through the Word, he is given a
disposition to obey God.
The Holy Spirit witnesses to this experience.
We believe in the power
and presence of the Holy Spirit, that He personally dwells within and guides
those who are
true believers, and
empowers them for service, giving to them various gifts and producing within
their lives the fruits
of Christian character.
We believe that the Holy Spirit simultaneously baptizes all believers into
Christ,
at the moment they are
regenerated, and also at that moment He comes to dwell within the believer.
The filling of the Holy
Spirit should be a continuous and repeated action. The baptism of the Holy
Spirit is clearly
spelled out in 1
Corinthians 12:13. Any teaching contrary to this statement is not acceptable.
We believe
sanctification is the work of grace begun by the Holy Spirit at the moment of
regeneration and continue
progressively until physical death. We believe
it is not instantaneous or subsequent to salvation in our daily
experience. We believe
the old nature is not eradicated until after death,
but that we must
constantly guard against its influence in our lives.
We believe that at the
return of the Lord the bodies of the righteous dead will be raised and the
living believers will
be changed so that both
will have literal, spiritual and immortal bodies like to Christ's own glorious
body.
Man, His Creation: We
believe that man was created by God and not by an accidental, spontaneous, or
self-
propagated occurrence
action, method, or process; that he was created in the image and likeness of
God, possessing
personality and
holiness, and that he is a free moral agent possessing the power of choice,
and that the purpose of
his creation was to glorify God.
We believe in the
oneness of the
believers both living
and dead, shall be caught up together at His second coming.
We believe the Christian
ordinances are outward rites appointed by Christ to be administered in each
church,
not as means to
salvation, but as visible signs of the facts and realities of salvation.
We believe in water
baptism and that it is to be administered to believers only. We recommend
immersion as the
mode of baptism, but
grant our pastors permission to use other modes when requested by the
candidates.
The Lord's Supper in an
ordinance instituted for observance by His followers until He returns.
It consists in partaking
of the consecrated emblems of bread and wine, and symbolizes the death and
suffering of
Christ for the remission
of our sins and our continual dependence upon Him for our sustenance.
The Lord's table should
be open to all that are in right relationship with God, regardless of
denomination.
We believe that marriage
is a sacred institution ordained of God in the time of man's innocence and that
it is the
mutual union of one man
and one woman and morally binding so long as both shall live, and that
therefore it cannot
be dissolved by a decree
of a civil tribunal, except on evidence that one party is guilty of adultery.
On positive
evidence of such guilt,
the innocent party is free from further matrimonial obligations and justly
entitled to marry
again, but the guilty
party has no such right. We deny the right of marriage to both parties who have
been
divorced for caused
other than adultery. Any person sustaining a marriage relation contrary to that
above
recognized as
justifiable shall be ineligible to enter into the office of the ministry of The
Christian Union.