Doctrine
What we believe
Ten subjects, straight from Scripture. On each one, MannaFest says plainly what it believes. Then it shows you the strongest version of every other view, named and credited: because a belief that can only beat a weak opponent is not worth much.
The claim · where this site stands
How to read every page under this one
- The claimthis site's tradition
- The objectionanother reading, at full strength
- The answerwhat that reading costs
- Scripturequoted plain, never slanted toward any side
Where everything else has to stand.
The ground
- ScriptureWhat is the Bible, and why trust it?Sixty-six books, written by real people in their own voices, breathed out by God, true, authoritative, and enough for everything God means us to know about being saved and living for him.
- GodWhat is God like?One God, eternally existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, self-existent, holy, loving, and sovereign; the God who names himself I AM and who is both everywhere at once and particularly present with his people.
What God did, what we are, what went wrong, and how it is put right.
The rescue
- Jesus ChristWho is Jesus, and what did he do?One person with two natures, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin, sinless, crucified in our place, raised bodily, ascended, praying for us now, and coming back.
- The Holy SpiritWho is the Holy Spirit, and what does he do now?He is God himself, a person and not a power: the one who convicts, gives new birth, lives inside believers, grows Christlike character in them, and still gives gifts to the church today.
- Being HumanWhat is a human being?A creature made in the image of God (body and soul together, male and female, given real work to do and made for relationship with him) and therefore of a worth that cannot be earned, increased, or lost.
- SinWhat is wrong with us?Sin is not only the wrong things people do but the condition underneath them: a real rebellion that entered history with Adam, damaged every part of every person, spread to the whole creation, and ends in death.
- SalvationHow is a person saved?By grace, through faith, on the ground of what Jesus Christ finished at the cross, received as a gift, never earned by works, and evidenced by a life that begins to change.
The people the rescue makes, the end it is heading for, and the unseen world it runs through.
What comes of it
- The ChurchWhat is the church, and what is it for?The church is not a building or an event but a people: everyone God has called out of the world and joined to Jesus, gathered in local congregations to worship, to be taught, to love one another, and to carry the good news to everybody else.
- Last ThingsHow does it end?Jesus Christ will come back: personally, bodily, and visibly. The dead will rise, everyone will be judged, and God will make a new heaven and a new earth where his people live with him forever. The end of the story is not the world's destruction but its healing.
- Angels & the Unseen RealmWhat else is out there?A real created order of spirits (some serving God, some in rebellion) and a war we are told just enough about to stand in, and not enough to satisfy our curiosity.
The whole dispute, laid out
The first battleground: a passage the church has fought over for two thousand years
This page worksat a different scale from the ten subjects above: one passage, its full verse chain, the ancient witnesses, the manuscript evidence, and every historic reading set out at its strongest. MannaFest’s own reading is marked on it.