Doctrinal Statement

ARIEL MINISTRIES DOCTRINAL STATEMENT

The Scriptures

We believe that the Scriptures are the inspired Word of God; that inspiration of the original autographs was plenary and verbal and, hence, the sixty-six books of the Bible are inerrant; that it is the sole authority for faith and practice in all matters to which it speaks.

The Godhead

We believe there is one God eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that all three possess equally all the same attributes, nature, perfections, and characteristics of personality.

Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus The Christ

Section One – The Deity of Christ
We believe in the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ who always was and will be God and did not cease to be God at the incarnation.

Section Two – The First Advent
We believe that the Man Christ Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit; that He was born of the virgin Mary; that He possesses both a divine and human nature both distinct and unmixed; that He was without sin; that He died a penal substitution for the sin of all men; that He was buried; that He arose on the third day in the same but glorified body in which He lived and died; that He ascended to the right hand of God the Father; that by His death He provided atonement for all men, but it is applied only to those who believe.

Section Three – The Present Session
We believe that the God-Man Jesus Christ now sits at the right hand of God the Father; that He functions as the High Priest for all believers ever making intercession for them.

Section Four – The Second Advent
We believe in the personal and physical and bodily return of Christ for the Church and for Israel.

Ruach HaKodesh, The Holy Spirit

We believe in the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit; that He is the infallible author and interpreter of the infallible Word; that He convicts, regenerates, indwells, empowers, instructs, and guides the believer in living, service, and worship through His gifts; that in this age He baptizes and permanently indwells and seals all believers into one body; that His chief purpose is to witness and glorify Christ; that His fullness and power and control are appropriated in the believer’s life by faith.

The Dispensations

We believe that the dispensations are stewardships by which God administers His purpose on earth through man by varying responsibilities; that they are chronologically successive; that they are not ways of salvation nor different methods of the administration of the Covenant of Grace but are a test of man’s submission to God based on progressive revelation; that they are a necessary view of Scripture, based on a literal interpretation, a consistent distinction of Israel and the Church, and that the ultimate purpose of God is His own glorification; that they are not different ways of salvation but in every dispensation the basis of salvation was always the blood of Christ, the means of salvation was always by grace through faith, the object of faith was always God, but the content of faith changed in different dispensations dependent upon progressive revelation.

Salvation

Section One – The Means of Salvation
We believe that salvation is wholly a work of God’s free grace and not the work of man in whole or in part, nor due to man’s goodness or religious ceremony; that it is a gift to man received by personal faith at which time the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner, thereby justifying him in God’s sight; that those who are saved have been unconditionally elected to salvation in eternity past and have been effectively and irresistibly called by the Holy Spirit.

Section Two – The Extent of Salvation
We believe that at the point of salvation, the sinner becomes totally accepted by God, united totally with Christ and, hence, loved and accepted by the Father as Christ is loved and accepted; that he is now the recipient of all the riches of divine grace and in possession of every spiritual blessing and, hence, is not to seek a “second blessing” or a “second work of grace.”

Section Three – Eternal Security
We believe that all true believers once saved are eternally secure forever because of the nature and work of Christ and the very nature of the divine gift of eternal life; that it is the privilege of all who are saved to be assured of their salvation from the very moment that they accept Him as Saviour; that this assurance is not based on their own merit but by the testimony of the Scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Section Four – Sanctification
We believe that sanctification is a setting apart unto God and that it is threefold: positional sanctification, in which the believer is viewed by God as already completed “in Christ,” being united with Him; progressive sanctification, in which the believer retains his sin nature throughout this life, needs to grow in grace, continually becoming more and more conformed to the image of the Son of God; and ultimate sanctification, in which the believer is fully sanctified in his state as he already is in his position, which will only occur when the believer sees the Lord and will be like Him.

Israel

We believe that God called a people to Himself who are the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that Israel is the Wife of Jehovah, unfaithful in the past, divorced in the present, and to be reunited in the future; that God has made four unconditional covenants with this elect nation that have remained unfulfilled; that God intends to fulfill all His promises to Israel in a literal way just as His warnings and judgments were fulfilled in a literal way; that in Israel’s history of unbelief there has always been a believing remnant according to the election of grace; that there will be a national regeneration of Israel at which time all of the provisions of the unconditional covenants will be fulfilled, including the seed, land, and blessing aspects.