Rocky Cape Christian Community

I believe in God the Father

God is a Spirit (John 4:24). God is light (l John l:5). God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). God is a dark red being (Rev. 4:3) whose throne is the heavens and whose footstool is the earth (Isaiah 66:1). God is not a man (Numbers 23:19).

With my human mind I cannot picture God.

No man has seen God and lived (Exodus 3:20) so no man can describe Him to me. For years my spirit groped like a blind man through the dark vastness of space, trying to reach out and touch God. But I could not. I used to catch glimpses of God’s supreme holiness. Through perseverance in prayer I used to come to where my spirit could sense the light and fire of God, blazing above me. I would rejoice to hear God’s mighty voice in thunder, and my soul would be thrilled but never satisfied. Thunderstorms did not last long enough. Ever since I was a small child such displays of natural power, the heavens at night, the sea, majestic music, real beauty, and touching events surrounding birth and death have moved my soul. In them all I would catch glimpses of God’s activity . . . glimpses of the realm of spirits and the world to come. But glimpses were not enough. God still evaded me. He still seemed a million miles away and I had a serious problem talking to Him. It seemed like I was talking to a concept, more than to a living being. (Far back in my childhood I had already discarded the fairy-tale image of a god who looks like an old man and sits on a chair in a “city up in the sky.”) Then I found the good news.

I believe in God the Son

God is a Spirit. God is Light. God is a consuming fire. God is a dark red being whose throne is the heavens and whose footstool is the earth. I believe that God is one God. And—since I have come to believe the good news—I understand that God took of his own essence and put it into a human being. This human being in whom dwells the presence of God is Jesus Christ.

Jesus, the man, is God.

But Jesus is not like God the Father. He is God in a human body. I almost went to pieces with joy and relief the day I found Jesus Christ.

Finally!

Incredibly!

Beyond my highest expectation! Imagine: being able to converse with God as handily as conversing with a fellow human being! Imagine: being able to talk with God like Peter, Thomas, Mary and Martha, the thankful leper, Zachaeus, and scores of other people have talked with him.

God incarnate!

Our God!

Jesus is our scaled-down model of God Almighty, the Creator of the universe, the Everlasting One, made human enough for people to see and touch.

Jesus no longer lives on the earth. We contact him now, spirit to spirit. But Jesus is still a man.

God, in Christ Jesus, is a man.

Jesus is a man—and before reaching manhood he was a boy. He grew up with other youngsters, parents, friends and enemies, like I did. He lived through adolescence and his teen-age years—being tempted in all points like I was. Jesus grew up and shouldered responsibilities. He worked. He got dirty. He loved. He cried. Sometimes he was angry and sometimes joyful or sad. His body got hurt. People made fun of him but he was man enough not to fight back. Then he found out how it is to grope for God and to cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What more could God have done for us humans than to become human himself and find out how it is! Now I can relate to a human-being-God! “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

Jesus talks knows English and German and I ordinarily talk to him in either one. But more important than that, he understands what I tell him. He has been through it, and I can talk to him anytime I need to, from any place on the earth. I go to sleep in his presence and I wake to find his spiritual friendship near me. All day long I walk and talk with him.

But in another way Jesus is not at all like me. He does nothing wrong, and for that reason he stands at the right hand of the Father to intercede (Romans 8:34). He is a lawyer.

Jesus stands in the immeasurable gap between us and God. I feel close to Jesus and have a tendency to think that he stands closer to us than he does to God. But I know that is only because the Father seems so far above me. Our friend, our brother, our rescuer Jesus, actually has rights to the “midst of the Father’s throne” (Rev. 7:17).

God does not expect us to know Him other than through Jesus: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only [Jesus Christ], who is at the Father’s side has made him known” (John 1:18). Making contact with God, trying to talk to God or to picture God in our minds while bypassing Jesus, is a hopeless, frustrating, experience. I tried it for years and it didn’t work. Jesus himself said that no man could do it (John l4:6).

If someone says he has good prayer contact with the Father but can catch only the occasional “side-view” of the Son, I do not believe him. Such a person does not know God at all. No more than the Jews of Stephen’s day knew God. His religion is a fake.

Pious, ignorant, hypocrites! I feel sorry for them. They’ve been cheated—above all by the “Christian religion” itself. For almost two thousand years people who have only imagined that they knew Jesus have treated him like a myth. Presenting Jesus as a pale unearthly monkish saint of some legendary era, they have carved ridiculous statues, wasted tons of paint on horrid pictures of “Christ”, and built hundreds of thousands of fancy temples for a Jesus who is coming soon to demolish them. A Jesus whom they have never known.

Never known!

I am convinced that the average professing “Christian” has never had the remotest personal contact with Jesus Christ. I am convinced, because I know that if they would have, Christianity would not be what it is today.

Stiffness! Formality! Pious songs and quaint, stuffy, prayers. A display of religion by a multitude of hundreds and thousands of squabbling self-pleasing sects. I wonder how Jesus handles the “incense” of their petitions today . . . billowing up from the earth like the smoke of a burning garbage dump to greet him.

I believe it is good to be reverent in our worship services. I am not against order nor formality. I disapprove of the modern religious hullabaloo, but dare we be “formal” inside our hearts? Dare we refrain from shouting and praising Jesus, and singing and playing music, and clapping our hands and sitting down to eat with Jesus within us. . . like the early Christians did? Is Christ within us not our hope of glory (Col. 1:27)?

Well-meaning people have informed me for years that it is “improper” to pray to Jesus. Partially out of respect for them and partially because of the Lord’s prayer pattern I do always address my public prayers to God the Father. But in my heart I am always one-hundred-percent conscious of the fact that I am praying to the man of Galilee. Jesus is our mighty God, our everlasting Father, our great I am, our wonderful Counsellor, our Prince of Peace. How could he be our counsellor if we did not dare to talk to him? How could he intercede for us if we did not tell him what was wrong? How could we be Christians while making light of the privilege to talk to Christ himself?

Jesus is the new face of God (2 Cor. 4:4)—the change from YAHWEH to a much more personal “Son of Man.” So, like the early Christians, we call upon him to receive from God the things we need (Acts 3:6 and 1 Cor. 1:2).

Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), the “radiance of God’s glory” and the “exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3). Only through his name can I be saved (Acts 4:12), and the Father has placed everything in his hands (John 3:35).

I will not, I cannot leave Jesus and live. He is the way, the truth and the life, and I cannot come to the Father except through him.

I believe in the Holy Ghost

God is a Spirit (John 4:24). We cannot worship God (not even our human God: Jesus Christ) other than by being in the realm of spirits with him. Our spirit and the spirit of Jesus Christ must make contact one with another for us to be saved—and for us to talk with one another. This contact can be made only after we repent and after we believe on him.

As soon as the way is clear between us and God (as soon as our sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice of blood) we experience instant, dramatic, overwhelming spirit contact with God. This is the “falling of the Holy Ghost” upon us. This is when we get “born of the Spirit”, “baptized with the Spirit”, “born again”, translated from one kingdom to another. . . or however you want to say it. This is when the light comes on in our hearts (2 Peter 1:19), and we begin to sense the reality of the spiritual realm in contrast to the transient and “unreal” universe in which we live.

I have found the Bible to be the greatest and most powerful medium through which the Spirit of God speaks with my spirit. Therefore I believe that the Bible is indeed an inspired “word of God.” But I do not believe, as some do, that the Bible is part of the Deity: the “Word of God” spoken about in the first chapter of John.

The Living Word is Christ (1 Peter 1:23, Hebrews 4:12).

The Spirit is Christ (2 Corinthians 3:17, Romans 8:9).

God is Christ (Isaiah 9:6, John 10:30).

Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11).

Conclusion

Because I believe in Christ, I believe it is possible for us to live holy lives. I also believe that Christ expects us to co-operate one with another in orderly, local, congregations of believers.

Since my understanding of the New Testament falls in line with many beliefs held by European “Anabaptists” in the sixteenth century I feel inclined to seek formal church membership in a congregation of that type. With my wife and family I am sentimentally and historically attached to the Anabaptist movement. This will obviously be our case as long as we live on the earth, and we do not believe that it should hinder us from following Christ. But we only wish to belong to a congregation:

1. where we are allowed to believe and promote our faith in God, as described above.

2. where sound and adequate teaching is given about Jesus Christ.

3. where converts are helped to personally know Christ.

4. where converts are taught to expect at conversion a miraculous  infilling of the Holy Ghost. (Otherwise they are not really converted.)

5. where converts are clearly taught about life in the Spirit so that they can identify it in themselves and others. (True spirituality is far more than just dry Biblical obedience.)

6. where we will be given practical guidelines on how to live the Christian life.

7. where we will be personally admonished if we fail (Matt. l8:15-20), and scripturally disciplined if we fall into sin and do not repent (1 Cor. 5).

8. where we will not be considered heretics unless our beliefs conflict with the life and teachings of Christ (Luke 9:49-50).

9. where all members know Christ and strive to share the good news with others.

l0. where the atmosphere is not cold, stiff, formal, or dull, but friendly and invigorating. (We need such fellowship to stay alive ourselves.)

ll. where personal conviction is cultivated.

l2. where every member’s reverence for Christ and for the scriptures is valued far above his reverence for a religious sect or customs.

l3. where the local congregation is autonomous: a member only of the universal church of Jesus Christ and not of any other ecclesiastical organization.

l4. where changes for the better are made as the Spirit reveals new truths or long-forgotten truths from the scriptures. (Revival never occurs, and true spirituality never survives in a change-resistant society.)

l5. where obedience to the New Testament and to brotherhood agreements is emphasized, but never at the expense of emphasizing a joyful, motivating, uplifting experience with Christ.

My aim is to return to original, apostolic Christianity, squarely based on thousands of years of Israelite thought and religion, the messages of the prophets, and the God of Abraham. I claim a place, grafted into the good olive tree of God’s chosen race by Jesus Christ. I claim a religion older than Protestantism, than Islam, than Rome or Byzantium. I claim the original Christian faith, and my aim is to return as completely as I can in belief and practice to ante-Nicaean Christianity. Wherever our Anabaptist-Mennonite background helps us to reach this goal (as in many cases it does) I appreciate and accept it. Wherever it gets in the way of my goal, I intend to challenge and overthrow it with the word of Christ.

I give my life to him,

Peter Hoover
Farmington, New Mexico
1989