What We Believe

We'd like to bring before you what we of Christian Tape Fellowship believe. I think it was about three years ago we made a tape on this subject, but since that time, by God's matchless grace, many more tapes are going out week after week, and I believe it might be timely to inform our listeners of what we of Christian Tape really believe by the matchless grace of God. So if you will bear with me, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, we'll consider today these glorious truths that we have learned by His grace and now pass on to you.

First of all, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I believe this is a very important statement because there are many today who are taken out of the Word of God certain chapters that they bring into question. We, however, by His grace, believe that all the Bible is inspired of God as we find in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16.

I will read that verse to you as the foundation of our faith in God Himself and His Word. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. All Scripture, let me impress those two words on you today as well as on myself.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works. And so today I would like to say at the very start we believe in the complete and full inspiration of the very Word of the living God beginning from Genesis chapter 1 until the very end of Revelation chapter 22. All Scripture, and we accept it in its entirety as the Word of God.

The second thing we believe is that God is living, that He is a living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We believe in the Trinity. We believe we find it in other places, but we only refer to one place, the baptism of the Lord Jesus, where God the Father spoke from heaven and said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, the Son himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, at the river Jordan being baptized of John the Baptist, the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove resting on the person of Christ.

We believe in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. We believe, in the next place, in the creation of the universe by Him, that God created, that God made the universe, that He made the world. And in Colossians chapter 1, verse 16, we read, For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.

All things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. This refers to our Lord Jesus Christ. In Revelation chapter 4, we find Him worshipped in the glory by His saints that at that time are translated to heaven when the Lord comes in the air.

And we find in Revelation chapter 4, He is worshipped as the Creator, and in chapter 5, as the Redeemer. We do not believe in evolution. We reject 100 percent anything to do with evolution, which we believe is of the devil, and we certainly reject it entirely.

We believe in the creation. We believe in the Creator, and we believe He is God. Next, we believe, beloved friends, that God spoke to man.

And in the Old Testament, after the fall of man, which we certainly believe in, we believe that man is a fallen creature. And we believe that the books of Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets and the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation, all tell out plainly from God Himself in His Word that man is a lost, a fallen creature, and that to enter into heaven, he must be born again. He must receive a brand new life from God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So we believe in the fall and the ruin of man. And we believe that man can never save himself, but he can only be saved by the grace of God through Christ's work on the cross. We also believe that Israel was a chosen nation that God chose Israel out of all the nations when the whole world had turned to idolatry.

I will read to you in Isaiah chapter 5 a few verses in this connection. Isaiah chapter 5, verse 1. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill, and he fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it with the choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it.

And also made a winepress therein, and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.

And now go to, I will tell you what I will do in my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. Verse 7. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah his pleasant plant.

And he looked for judgment, but behold, oppression, for righteousness, but behold, a crime. Notice now that of all the nations of the world, Jehovah God revealed himself to the nation Israel. I believe the power that's spoken of in verse 2 would be the religion which Jehovah gave to Israel, revealing himself as Jehovah, the one who to Abraham the patriarch had said, I am almighty God.

To the Jew he said, I am Jehovah, my name is I Am. And we find that Israel completely failed as a nation, as a testimony for God. It's interesting to find in the 15th chapter of John that our Lord Jesus said, I am the true vine.

He was the true vine, the true Israel, the Lord Jesus, the sinless Son of God. We believe that Israel as a nation failed, and after the cross, the apostle said in the book of Acts, because Israel rejected the grace of God, we now turn to the Gentiles. Next, we believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, that he had no beginning, that he ever was, that he always dwells in the bosom of his Father, and that he was sent by his Father into this world.

He came as a little babe. We believe in the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We reject a hundred percent the attempt of the devil and the infidels and the modernist preachers to try to change the word virgin, in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, to a young woman.

We reject it entirely. We stand by the translation, the word of God, that the Lord Jesus was born of a virgin with no human father. We believe that Joseph was not the father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

True, he became after the Lord's birth the husband of Mary. He was the foster father of the Lord Jesus as a man in this world, but he was not the father of the Lord Jesus, for he was born of a virgin with no human father. I stress that.

We believe it a hundred percent. By the grace of God, we will not give it up with God's help. We believe, I say again, in the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we say further that no man that denies the virgin birth of Christ can be a Christian. It's impossible to be a Christian, a child of God, and deny the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We also believe in the sinless life down here in this world, come thirty-three years, the sinless life of our blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus never sinned.

And we also believe that it is wrong to say that while the Lord never sinned, he could have sinned if he wanted to. We deny that statement a hundred percent. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ was God, manifest in the flesh, and God cannot lie, and God cannot sin.

He is thrice holy. And we hold to this truth by the grace of God in our messages that you receive by his grace week by week, time after time it is stressed. Our belief that the Lord Jesus Christ never sinned, and praise God, he could not sin because he was God, a very important truth.

We believe that he performed his miracles, every one of them, that he healed the leper, opened the eyes of the blind, even the man that was born blind in John 9. We believe he healed the cripples, he made the deaf to hear, and all his miracles we believe in. And he never charged one cent, and the healings were instantaneous. There was no waiting, no drugs needed, no doctors, but even in the case of the leper, a touch of his hand healed that leper 100%.

We believe in the three accounts of the Lord Jesus Christ raising the dead. The little girl of 12 years of age and Mark 5, the young man in Luke 7, and Lazarus in Luke 11, John 11. We believe that Christ raised these three from the dead.

We don't deny one thing about it, we believe it, we accept it, it's true, it's the word of God. We believe further, beloved friends, and we say these things again, I repeat, by the grace of God, with absolutely no boasting at all, we believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was rejected by the nation Israel, and he was crucified by Israel and by the Gentiles under Pilate and Herod. If you read the Gospels carefully you will find that the leader of religion, the high priest rejected Christ, Matthew 26.

And Matthew 27, and of course the other Gospels too, the Lord Jesus was rejected by the Gentiles under Pontius Pilate and King Herod. And in the book of Acts, God brings the whole world in guilty, Israel, the Gentiles, Pilate and Herod. We believe that our Savior is a rejected Christ.

We believe further in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus that he was crowned with thorns, spit upon, brutally handled by wicked men, nailed to the cross of Calvary, hung between heaven and earth, rejected. We believe that during the last three hours of darkness he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. We believe that he exhausted God's wrath for our sins so that for the believer, the born again Christian, there is absolutely no judgment in as far as the sin question is concerned.

We believe in the blood of Christ. Oh, beloved friends, let me repeat those words, please, in these dark days of modernism. We believe in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed on the cross as recorded in John 19, verse 34.

We believe there is no salvation outside of the blood. For God says in Hebrews 9, 22, without the shedding of blood there is no remission or no forgiveness of sins. It's the blood.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you. Exodus chapter 12. And the blood of the Lamb of Exodus 12 is a picture of the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God.

Now, this next point is most important. We believe in the physical resurrection of Christ. There are modernists who say they believe in a spiritual resurrection.

We deny that. We believe in the physical resurrection of Christ. The Lord Jesus said in Luke 24 to his disciples who saw the risen Christ, Handle me and see.

For a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have. It was a real man who came out of the grave, the risen Christ, the resurrected Son of God. We believe, I say again, in the physical resurrection of Christ.

Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades. He saw no corruption. If you read the book of Acts, you will find in many places in the early chapters, up to chapter 13 and so on, the resurrection mentioned many times.

You will find, for instance, in chapter 4, that the Sadducees who denied the resurrection attacked the truth of the resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was here as a man, the wicked Pharisees attacked Christ. After his death and resurrection, the devil, Satan, raised up the Sadducees to oppose the truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We of Christian Tape Fellowship believe 100% in the resurrection, the bodily, physical resurrection of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that 40 days after his resurrection, he went back to heaven as a man. You will find four times in the book of Hebrews the Lord Jesus at God's right hand.

I'll mention the places for you. You can look them up and enjoy them. Hebrews 1, verse 3. Hebrews 8, verse 1. Hebrews 10, verse 12.

And Hebrews 12, verse 2. Read those four passages of God's word. We believe that there's a man in heaven today, a glorified man at God's right hand. We believe that 10 days after his ascension, on the day of Pentecost, the 50th day, he sent down to this world the Holy Spirit of God who baptized 120 disciples of that day into one body, the Church, which is the body of Christ.

Ever since then, every born-again believer is joined to that which began on the day of Pentecost. We believe in the second coming of Christ, first in the air, to raise his sleeping saints from the dead or among the dead, and to catch away those who are still alive on the earth. 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 to 18, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 51 to 58, and others.

We believe the Lord himself is coming in the air to meet his redeemed. We believe that some seven years later, the Lord Jesus Christ will appear in glory to judge this world, set his people Israel free, and reign for 1,000 years over this world. We believe in that millennial reign of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe that during that 1,000 years, Satan will be bound and cast into the bottomless pit. We believe that after the 1,000 years ends, Satan will be loosed and will find many rebels who went through the millennium with feigned obedience because the Lord was reigning over the earth, and they were afraid, actually, to sin because if they did, they'd be cut off and die. But after Satan is loosed, we believe they will follow him again and end in judgment as recorded in Revelation 20.

God thus proving that even during 1,000 years of bliss in this world, man is still a sinner, and without the new birth, he will follow the devil every time. We believe, beloved friends, in the judgment seat of Christ when the believers will meet the Lord not to be judged for their sins but to be examined for their works so the Lord can reward each one for his or her faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. He will reward every one, beloved, who has served him faithfully in truth.

We believe in the eternal state when all the redeemed, the heavenly saints and the earthly saints, when this world will be cleared of every trace of sin, when there'll be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. We also believe in the judgment of the great white throne in Revelation 20, verses 11 to 15, when the unsaved dead from Cain's day in Genesis 4 to the very end will be raised from the dead and stand before God, who happens to be the Lord Jesus, because the Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment on the Son, John 5, 22. And so we find that the Lord Jesus is the judge and the unsaved dead will stand in space before him.

The books opened, the book of life scanned, their names not there. They will be cast into the lake of fire. The devil, in verse 10 of Revelation chapter 20, he will be cast into the lake of fire, of course, first.

And before him, his two lieutenants, the Roman beast and the Antichrist and possibly the king of the north, the Assyrian leader. These are the truths of Holy Scripture. If you have any questions to ask, beloved, when you return this message, please insert the question inside the box and we will be very pleased to answer you from the Bible.

We do not use our imagination. We seek to stick to the scriptures, not adding to them or taking from them, but quoting them as the infallible perfection of the word of the living God. We believe in heaven and hell.

We believe there are angels, those who are the holy angels in glory and the fallen angels who will spend eternity with the devil and the damned under the judgment of God forever. This is what we of Christian Tape Fellowship believe, as well as all the other scriptures that are found from Genesis to Revelation. We would value your comments.

We would value your prayers. We know there is only one Savior, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And without Christ there is no salvation for any child of Adam's race.

May God bless his word with our earnest prayer. Amen.