About Alive Church Ephrata
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Welcome to the web page of Alive Church Ephrata in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. We believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself - baptism as a symbol of entrance into the body of Christ and the Lord's Supper a regular reminder of the death, resurrection, and return of Christ. Baptism symbolizes the believer's death to sin and new life in Christ. Those baptized are done so in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Together they are simultaneously God's pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things.
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God's truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God's revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God's pledge, in all that it promises. As God's people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
About The Sacraments: We believe in partaking of the sacrament of Baptism in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit following a person's profession of faith in Christ. We believe in Communion, the receiving of the Lord's Supper (bread and grape juice representing the Body and Blood of Christ) as a remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross.
About The Scripture: The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct. 2 Timothy 3:15-17, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, 2 Peter 1:21