What do jesus only churches believe

Paul taught salvation by faith alone click here to read more. Jesus taught salvation by faith alone click here to read more. The idea that Acts, a historical narrative, has the capacity to undermine a didactic letter is absurd click here to read more.

In these articles, you will find surgical defenses of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. If I act in the name of a king, I am acting in his authority. It does not matter if I recite the name of the king. The necessity of tongues. You have almost made it to salvation. The last thing that you have to do is be filled with the Holy Spirit, that is necessarily evidenced by speaking with ecstatic tongues. If you do not speak with ecstatic tongues, then it follows that you do not have the Holy Spirit.

Of course, most Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is necessary for salvation. However, for the Oneness Pentecostal, the outward indicator of being filled with the Spirit is that the believer will begin to speak with tongues. They would draw support from the book of Acts, wherein people are filled with the Holy Spirit, being complimented by speaking with other tongues. The problem is that there is no reason to think that speaking with other tongues is normative, or a necessary indicator of salvation.

Indeed, there are instances in Acts where people are filled with the Spirit and do not speak with tongues Acts For a critical examination of this belief, please see my article Are Tongues Necessary For Salvation?

They are a group who align themselves with Christianity, yet deny the trinity, and ensure that their members declare their denial of the trinity through an explicitly non-trinitarian baptism. This is fundamentally what a Jesus Only Church is. If you would like to get in on the discussion about this, join my Theology Discussion Group! Skip to content Ancient diversions from orthodoxy seem to sprout up throughout the generations of church history.

Hello ThereforeGodExists audience! According to WordPress statistics, people are still finding my website from Google or Pentecostalism is energetic and dynamic. Its members believe they are driven by the power of God moving within them. Pentecostal churches stress the importance of conversions that amount to a Baptism in the Spirit.

This fills the believer with the Holy Spirit, which gives the believer the strength to live a truly Christian life. The direct experience of God is revealed by gifts of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing. Pentecostalism is based on a key event in the life of the early Christians: the baptism of the twelve disciples by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Most Pentecostals think that their movement is returning Christianity to a pure and simple form of Christianity that has much in common with the very earliest stage in the life of the Christian church.

Pentecostalism is not a church in itself, but a movement that includes many different churches. It is also a movement of renewal or revival within other denominations. It's not always easy to see if a church is Pentecostal because many Pentecostal denominations don't include the word 'Pentecostal' in their name. Although Pentecostalism is often said to be rooted in experience rather than theology, Pentecostals base their theology on the text of the Bible which they believe to be the word of God and totally without error.

Pentecostalism gets its name from the day of Pentecost, when, according to the Bible, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus' disciples, leading them to speak in many languages as evidence that they had been baptised in the Spirit. Pentecostals believe that this was not a one-off event, but something that can and does happen every day. March Some writers suggest the number is more like million. Pentecostalism is particularly strong in the developing world where it poses a serious challenge to other, more established, denominations.

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: "Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say.

It's only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Peter was quoting this prophecy in the Old Testament Book of Joel, which he claimed was being fulfilled at Pentecost:.

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. Most Pentecostals accept all mainstream Christian beliefs. The exception is the Oneness movement , which does not accept the Trinity.

Pentecostal churches are highly diverse, which makes it difficult to provide a definitive list of Pentecostal ideas. Nonetheless, this section covers a range of ideas and customs that are common to many Pentecostal churches. Pentecostals share with Christian fundamentalists their acceptance of the status of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, but they also accept which fundamentalists do not the importance of the believer's direct experience of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.

A person is sanctified when their life is dedicated to God and they are separated from their past sinful life. When a person is sanctified, they are born again to Christ through the Holy Spirit and turn away from the bad behaviours and thoughts of their old life.

The word holiness is also used by some churches for this concept. Whatever the word, it is something that is essential to living a Christian life:. Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Some Pentecostals teach that believers must experience a once-for-all spiritual event which leads them to "consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" Romans 6: The work of sanctification is carried out by the Holy Spirit.

Other churches teach that believers continue to grow closer to God in a continual process of sanctification, which helps them to live a Christian life. While some Pentecostals believe that sanctification is a necessary precondition for a person to be baptised in the Spirit, others believe that baptism in the Spirit is available to anyone who sincerely gives their life to Christ. This distinction may be lost on non-specialists and it may be simpler just to say that Pentecostals believe that human beings must have come to salvation in Christ before they can receive the baptism of the Spirit.

Pentecostal churches follow scripture in practising baptism by immersion. For Pentecostals water baptism is an outward symbol of a conversion that has already occurred. It is the conversion that is essential; the water baptism is an additional element.

Pentecostal churches do not baptise infants. They regard water baptism as an outward expression of an internal work of grace following an individual's choice to follow Christ. Young children are not able to make such a choice because they do not recognise their need for salvation. Instead, infants in Pentecostal churches are dedicated to God and blessed. This remembers the Bible stories of young children being brought to Jesus to be blessed.

Some Pentecostal churches believe that most children can be ready for water baptism between the ages of seven and ten, and that parents or pastors are able to determine whether a particular child is able to understand the significance of water baptism by discussing it with them.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the central event of Pentecostalism. The name of the movement commemorates the first baptism in the Spirit, of Jesus' disciples on the day of Pentecost. Baptism in the Spirit is not a conversion experience; a person must already have been converted before they can receive baptism in the Spirit.

Pentecostals believe that baptism in the Spirit is an essential part of salvation. Traditionally this is a second baptism that follows conventional water baptism, although some passages of scripture reverse this sequence.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience in which the believer gives control of themselves to the Holy Spirit although not in a way in which they lose their own identity and autonomy. Through the experience they come to know Christ in a more intimate way and are energised with the power to witness and grow spiritually. Spirit baptism is believed to be an action of God's grace, but one that is available only to people who put themselves forward to receive it:.

Analogous with water baptism, a person baptised in the Spirit feels themselves to have been totally immersed in the Holy Spirit. But the analogy fails at that point, because a person who is baptised in the Spirit is also completely filled with the Holy Spirit, in the same way as the disciples of Jesus on the day of Pentecost. The proof of having been baptised in the Spirit is speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues is the only consistent event associated with baptism in the Spirit in the various Biblical accounts of the phenomenon.

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a temporary state of affairs; a person who has been baptised in the Spirit is believed to have the Holy Spirit within them to empower and guide them for the rest of their life. The Baptism is the entry experience introducing the believer to the beauty and power of the Spirit-filled life.

The Holy Spirit will enable the believer to turn away from their old worldly life and live a new Christian life. As St Paul put it:. But as well as giving a new beginning to the believer, baptism in the Spirit gives them gifts of the Spirit which they are expected to use to bring others to faith, and generally to further Christian work.

The gifts of the Spirit are supernatural abilities given to believers by God. These gifts demonstrate the power of God and are used for particular purposes such as healing the sick, and generally helping the believer in their Christian ministry. St Paul listed the gifts of the spirit as love, prophecy, healing, wise speech, faith, miraculous powers and ecstatic speech.

In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. Speaking in tongues means speaking miraculously in a language unknown to the speaker, "as the Spirit gives utterance".

It first happened to the disciples on the day of Pentecost. Speaking in tongues can be either evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or a demonstration of the gift of tongues. Theological texts also use the word glossolalia to refer to speaking in tongues. This word is sometimes restricted to ecstatic speech in non-existent languages.

They do, of course, have rituals and ceremonies like communion and water baptism that other churches treat as sacraments, but Pentecostals refer to these as ceremonies or ordinances.

Who do they say he is? Here are five popular American perceptions of Jesus, based on recent Barna Group research. But, although the character of Jesus has certainly been fictionalized, satirized and mythologized over the centuries, the vast majority of Americans still maintain that he was a historical figure. While the percentages dip slightly among younger generations—only 87 percent of Millennials agree Jesus actually lived—Americans are still very likely to believe the man, Jesus Christ, once walked the earth.

While the majority of Americans report such a commitment, some groups are significantly more likely to have done so than others. And, of course, Millennials are much less likely than any other group to have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today.

Only 2 percent of adults who report a personal commitment to Jesus say they will not go to heaven. Millennials are less likely to believe that Jesus is the path to Heaven than are other generations. Among Millennials who have made a personal commitment to Jesus, only 56 percent say they believe they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Many adults believe, however, that they will go to heaven as a result of their good works. Broadly speaking, this is the most common perception among Americans who have never made a commitment to Jesus—and it is also quite common among self-identified Christians. It is not surprising that Easter brings a range of Jesus-centered entertainment and media programming: Jesus has a built-in audience.

This study also shows the extent of Christian commitment in the nation—more than million Americans say they have professed faith in Christ.