The Brant County Ecclesia is a member of the worldwide Christadelphian body.

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Christadelphians believe that Jesus, the son of God, died to save us from sin and death. After Adam sinned by eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden, he, Eve, and all their descendants (that is, all of us) were cursed with mortality and human nature. God had created a perfect Earth, but as humans, we sinned and polluted it.

 

Many years after the Flood of Noah’s time, God called a man named Abram. He left his home of Ur (one of the wealthiest and most comfortable places to live in the world at the time) to travel to an unknown land.

 

God promised this land to him and to his “seed” (his offspring). While this has a secondary interpretation where it refers to all his descendants, its primary meaning, as explained in the New Testament, alludes to Jesus Christ, the singular heir of this promise. In him, all the world would be blessed.

 

Abraham, as his name was changed to, had a son, Isaac. He, in turn, bore Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. From him, the Israelites, including Jews, descended.

 

God sent the Law of Moses to the Israelites after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. This showed mankind how to live acceptably in God’s eyes. Sadly, our human nature meant that nobody was able to keep it perfectly, and thus everyone condemned themselves to death.

 

Around 1,500 years later, Jesus Christ was born to Mary, a virgin, conceived through the Holy Spirit, God’s power. To overcome human nature, God daily worked with His son to strengthen him to fully conquer the temptations he faced throughout his life.

 

He died having never sinned, although the Law still condemned him as one of us for having “hung on the tree”. His unjust death at the hands of the religious leaders was a one-time sacrifice to defeat sin and its consequences.

 

As a perfect man, the grave could not hold him, and he was raised to life on the third day, angels rolling the tombstone aside. He spent the next forty days encouraging his disciples to spread the message throughout the world before ascending to heaven to meet his father and take up his new position at his right hand. Here he remains to this day.

 

By denying our old selves (our nature of our selfish, fleshly way of thinking and behaving) and taking on Jesus’ name instead, we become part of what he accomplished. This is done through baptism, full adult immersion - going down into the water represents the death of the old, and coming up represents the life of the new. 

 

Being baptised means being freed from our past selves and the sin and death that came with it (but this freedom does not give us a free ticket to do whatever we want). It means we have taken on the name of Jesus, we must do all we can to behave like him.

Ultimately, it all comes down to faith, and this is what Christ will judge us on when he returns. But our faith is shown by what we do.

 

In the future, at a time we hope to be very soon, Jesus will return from heaven, where he has been for almost the last 2,000 years. At a time when Jerusalem is surrounded by a fearsome army from the North, he will rush to save them, those of us judged to have been faithful by his side. He will then set up a worldwide kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital, where corruption and injustice will be purged, the poor will be cared for, the sick healed, and the environment restored to its original glory.

 

At the end of 1,000 years of this kingdom, Jesus will hand it over to God himself, who will dwell with us for all eternity. What an incredible picture that is.

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Check out our statement of faith here!