Church of the Nations

OUR STATEMENT OF FAITH We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that they only constitute the Divine Rule of Christian faith and practice. We believe there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver and Governor of all things and who is the only proper Object of Worship. We believe there are three Persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; undivided in essence and co?equal in power and glory. We believe that Jesus Christ was God made manifest in the flesh, truly and properly God and truly and properly man, and that He, by His suffering and death, made atonement for sin and that by His resurrection, there is eternal life for all who believe. We believe that since the fall of our first parents, man is entirely unable in his own strength, to find salvation and reconciliation with God and that he is wholly dependent upon God's grace and mercy. We believe that salvation, by God's grace, depends upon repentance, faith in God, cleansing by the shed blood of Jesus and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. We believe that baptism in water is a personal and dynamic meeting with God and a sign of the believer's death, burial and resurrection in Christ Jesus. We believe it is the privilege of all believers, in response to the command of God's Word, to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live holy and victorious lives, and that the Holy Spirit operates through gifts, ministries and manifestations to glorify Jesus through His Body to the world. We believe that Jesus Christ, at the time of His ascension into Heaven where He now sits at the right hand of the Father, gifted the Church with living ministry expressions of Himself through apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, for the building up of the Body of Christ and the equipping of the believers to the work of service. We believe that neither ritual, tradition, ceremony or rite can replace conversion, relationship with God, or true worship, and that nothing less than the Lordship of Christ upon a life is the mark of a Christian. We believe in the continuance of the Lord's Supper, consisting of the elements of bread and the fruit of the vine, as instituted by Jesus with His disciples, so that we may truly discern the Body of Christ in its totality, unity and authority, and that this celebration stands as a memorial of Christ's suffering and death and as a prophecy of His coming, and as such is commanded to all His followers until that Day. We believe in the physical, triumphant return of Jesus Christ to an overcoming and glorious Church. We believe it is the commission of the Church to go into the whole world to preach the gospel and extend the Kingdom of God, knowing that "this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached to the whole world for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come." We believe in the judgment of God, in the eternal punishment of the wicked and in the everlasting happiness of the righteous. http://www.cotn.org/