I believe God created the world—and everything else—the way He said He did, and when He said He did.
I believe that when God spoke the cosmos into being out of absolute nothing, this established two levels of reality—God, the eternal and necessary reality that everlastingly was already, and not-God, which was mutable and contingent, entirely dependent upon His will, and all very good.
I believe that God’s almighty and ancient good pleasure and will determined the position, velocity, and number of the first photons as they came into being when He first spoke the word of light, and also determined the number of hairs on the back of the last stray dog on the last day of this preliminary and vanishing world.
I believe that God painted a self-portrait of sorts when He created mankind in the Garden, in His own image, and male and female was His signature.
I believe our first father represented us accurately, but not well, when he ate the forbidden fruit. When our first parents disobeyed, the entire human race was there.
I believe that all of us are consequently entailed in that initial rebellion of his and are, by nature, rebels at heart. Mankind is one tree, with Adam the root, and all of us, as individual leaves, are partakers of that root.
I believe that God did not abandon us after that fatal crash, and promised us that the seed of the woman, the Messiah, would eventually take revenge on the serpent on behalf of the woman. The seed of the serpent would be crushed by the seed of the woman.
I believe that wickedness filled up the antediluvian world and so God filled it up with the water of condemnation instead, while at the same time using that same water to baptize eight in all.
I believe that God confused the languages of men in order to separate the one race of mankind into various tribes, until such time as He would gather out of all those tribes a new race of mankind in His promised Messiah, the prince of a new humanity.
I believe that this promised Christ was designated by God to be the final Adam, the new root of a new mankind, and with all who believe in Him as individual leaves, partakers of the root.
I believe that God promised Abraham that he would inherit the entire world through his starry sky heirs, and that this inheritance would come through the righteousness of faith, and not through law.
I believe that this righteousness of faith is what the sons of Abraham were promised they would be able to use to overpower the world, and all of its customs, manners, and ways.
I believe that the ways of the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—are the same attractions that enticed our first mother in the Garden, in that the fruit was good to eat, pleasant to look on, and able to make them wise.
I believe that God prepared us for the Messiah by marking out his fathers beforehand for us—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David.
I believe that the Scriptures plainly predicted that the Messiah was going to be betrayed into the hands of sinners, crucified, buried, and raised from the dead.
I believe that the first Adam threw us down by disobeying at a tree, while the second Adam lifted us up by obeying on a tree.
I believe that when the Lord Jesus was suffering on the cross, He was primarily suffering under the holy hatred of His Father for our sin, which had been imputed to Him, such that divine wrath was poured out upon Him to the uttermost, thus breaking Him.
I believe that the identification of Christ and our sin was so complete that when He died, that sin died. When He was broken, sin was broken. When He said it was finished, our sin was finished.
I believe that when Christ stretched out His arms on the cross, He did it to take up all our sins, and to gather them to His chest. He sank down into death, and when He rose to life again, He had left those sins behind Him in the grave, never to be heard from again.
I believe that Christ did not die so that we might live. He died so that we might die, and He lives so that we might live.
I believe that if the rulers of this age had known that they were destroying their own shining but vile kingdom by doing what they were doing, they would not have incited the crowds to shout for His blood as they did.
I believe that the penalty Christ paid on the cross is reckoned as the penalty I needed to pay for my sinfulness and sinful deeds, as I also believe that His perfect sinless life is reckoned as the life I needed to have lived instead of the one I did live.
I believe that when the Spirit was poured out on Pentecost, this was the beginning of God’s plan to inundate the world with grace, mercy, and forgiveness, until the whole thing is covered over with fulfilled promises, as far as the eye can see.
I believe that the Christian church, thus empowered, was charged to fan out throughout the entire world in order to disciple the nations, urging them to bring their honor and glory into the New Jerusalem, the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And this, in various fits and starts, is what we have been doing ever since.
I believe the Christ was born among the Jews, the most radically monotheistic people on the planet. At the same time, He was clearly Emmanuel, God with us, and this needed to be accounted for. It took three centuries for us to get our minds around it, but all genuine Christians now answer to the new shema—hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
I believe that as Christian emissaries come to each of these nations to be discipled, the foundational cornerstone proclaimed by them is that Jesus is Lord. The first corollary to this is that Caesar isn’t lord, and so the first gift the Church brings, and the first point of repentance for the established authorities of each nation, is the liberating doctrine of limited government.
I believe that this process of bringing each nation or tribe to Christ is one that depends upon individual sinners being confronted with the immutable law of God which reveals their sin, being convicted by the Spirit of that sin, and looking to Christ in evangelical faith for justification, with a resultant sanctification and salvation that follow necessarily.
I believe that the sole instrument of this justification is faith. This faith is the gift of God, lest any man decide to boast, and as the gift of God, it is the only kind of faith that God efficaciously gives—living faith. As living faith it is also an obedient faith, but only in the sense that the sculpted dust that was to be Adam was obedient when God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. God said live, and so he obediently came to life. The only actions this living and obedient faith perform as the instrument of justification are the actions of resting in and receiving the imputed righteousness of Christ.
I believe that this justifying faith does not vanish after the initial moment of justification, but rather enables the forgiven sinner to walk in Christ the same way he came to Christ. The just shall live by faith, and so the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
I believe the commission to disciple all the nations was a commission attended with great promises from God, such that prior to the final appearing of the Lord in power and glory, all the nations of men will have come to believe in Him.
I believe that Christians must wary about the deceptiveness of our ancient adversary, first with regard to the priests of various local baals, like Joseph Smith, or the Watchtower Society, but especially with regard to the high priests of modernity, meaning Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Rawls.
I believe that the Enlightenment, falsely so-called, was a diseased and rebellious mistake.
I believe that the coming of the Christ fulfilled all of the Old Testament Scriptures, and did so without retiring their moral and spiritual authority over us.
I believe that when Christ returns to earth again in power and with blinding glory, the sky will be rolled up like a scroll and the islands will flee away. The dead will be raised, and the new order of the eternal ages will emerge from the ashes of our soon-to-be restored cosmos. And everlasting joy shall be upon our heads.
I believe that I can know all these things because the Scriptures, all 66 books, are the breath of God Himself.
I believe that reason, the divine gift of God, were given us in order to be eyes, created to receive light. Reason is to be thought of as rods and cones, and not to be treated by us as a lamp, as though it was capable of shedding light autonomously.
Brief Afterthought:
I believe that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.