Our Core Beliefs

Everything we teach rests on one starting point: the oldest known, authentic copies of the original Scriptures, the texts closest to what Yahweh actually inspired, before centuries of translation, revision and institutional editing came between the reader and the source. Two congregations can disagree about what a verse means. Our difference with most of traditional Christianity and Judaism goes one step further back: it is about which text is being read in the first place. What follows are the beliefs that grow from that foundation.

 

1. Yahweh, our Creator, and His name

There is one supreme God, the Creator of all things, and He has a personal name: Yahweh. It appears some seven thousand times in the original Hebrew. “God” and “Lord” are titles, descriptions of a role that many beings, real and imagined, have been said to hold. A name belongs to one. Yahweh’s promise to answer prayer is tied to calling on Him by that name: “They will call on My name, and I will answer them” (Zechariah 13:9; Jeremiah 29:12; Psalm 91:14-15).

 

2. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Yahweh the Father alone is the one supreme God. Yah’shua the Messiah is His literal, begotten Son, distinct from the Father and subject to Him: “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). The Holy Spirit is Yahweh’s own power and will in action, not a third person. We do not hold to the Trinity. The word appears nowhere in Scripture, and its best-known proof-text (1 John 5:7-8) is a later insertion missing from the oldest manuscripts. Father and Son are the head of one Family, the Family of Yahweh, into which the faithful are being brought as sons and daughters.

 

3. Yah’shua the Messiah

His name is Yah’shua, meaning “Yahweh saves.” He is the promised Messiah; “Christ” is simply the Greek translation of that title. He was conceived by Yahweh’s Spirit, lived as a man without sin, and was an Israelite of the tribe of Judah and the house of David. He died as the sacrifice that pays the penalty of sin, was raised from the dead, and will return to establish Yahweh’s Kingdom on this earth.

 

4. The Bible: our Creator’s instructions

We read the Bible as something close to an owner’s manual: instructions from the One who made us, explaining how we are built and how we are meant to live and worship. Yahweh warned against adding to His Word or taking from it (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19). Yet the record shows deliberate changes: His name removed, words rendered to support later doctrines, and more than 450 English versions that each had to differ from the last in order to be copyrighted. The Bible was written by Israelite prophets and entrusted to the Israelite people. We hold that the New Covenant was first written in Hebrew. Our own Bible, the Natural Faithful Remnant Version (NFRV), is not a new translation but a work of preservation and correction. It restores Yahweh’s name and the original terms wherever the record of a change can be shown, and it is free of copyright, because no one may own His Word.

 

5. Yahweh’s law and the two Covenants

Yahweh’s law, summed up in the Ten Commandments, existed long before Sinai; Abraham “kept My commandments, My statutes, and My laws” (Genesis 26:5). The Old Covenant was a marriage agreement between Yahweh and the nation of Israel. Its ending could not undo a law it never created. The New Covenant, sealed by the Messiah’s blood, does not abolish that law; it writes the same law on the hearts and minds of His people instead of on stone tablets (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10). We speak of the Old and New Covenants, not “Testaments,” because covenants are what they are.

 

6. The Sabbath and Yahweh’s Holy Days

We keep the seventh-day Sabbath, as Yahweh commanded, and the seven annual Holy Days of Leviticus 23: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and the Last Great Day. Together they lay out Yahweh’s plan for mankind, from the Messiah’s sacrifice to the final judgment. We do not keep Christmas or Easter, which were adopted from pagan festivals long after the apostles. We hold that the Messiah was crucified on a Wednesday and rose three days and three nights later, at the end of the weekly Sabbath, exactly as He foretold (Matthew 12:40).

 

7. Man, death and the grave

Man does not have an immortal soul; man is a living soul, a mortal being formed from the dust and given the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The dead are asleep, unconscious, awaiting resurrection (John 11:11-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15). There is no conscious torment in an ever-burning hell and no purgatory. The English word “hell” hides three different original words: the grave, the restraint of fallen angels, and the final destruction of the wicked. Those who finally reject Yahweh will not be tormented forever. They will cease to exist: “the second death” (Revelation 20:14).

 

8. Resurrection and eternal life

Eternal life is real, but it is a gift Yahweh grants, not something every person already has. It comes by resurrection. At the Messiah’s return, the faithful will be raised to immortality in the first resurrection, to reign with Him on earth for a thousand years. Afterwards comes a second resurrection, in which everyone who never had a true opportunity to know Yahweh will receive one (Revelation 20). No one is lost for having been born in the wrong place or time.

 

9. Salvation and being born again

Salvation is reconciliation with Yahweh the Father, made possible by the Messiah’s sacrifice. It calls for two things: genuine repentance, a real turning from breaking Yahweh’s law, and belief in the Gospel the Messiah Himself preached, the Gospel of the Kingdom of Yahweh (Mark 1:14-15). Those who repent and believe receive Yahweh’s Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). That is the baptism that matters. Water baptism is not required for salvation, though it may be kept as a voluntary sign.

 

10. Who we are: Israelites, and Yahweh’s Congregation

The Israelites are the descendants of Jacob through all of his tribes, not only Judah, and “Israelite” and “Jew” are not the same word. We hold that the so-called lost tribes of Israel can be traced among the nations today. The “church” in Scripture is the ekklesia, the “called-out ones”: a congregation, not a building, a denomination or a state-registered corporation. Its membership is registered in heaven. That is why we are not incorporated, have no clergy, and use no religious titles, for “One is your Teacher, the Messiah, and you are all brethren” (Matthew 23:8).

 

11. The Kingdom of Yahweh

The Gospel is the good news of a real, coming government, the Kingdom of Yahweh, to be set up on this earth when the Messiah returns. The faithful are not promised a home in heaven, for “no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven” (John 3:13). They are promised a place in that Kingdom.

 

12. Prophecy and the age we live in

Every prophecy fulfilled so far has been fulfilled precisely, and much remains to be fulfilled. We believe we are living near the close of this age, and that Scripture’s warnings to end-time Israel are meant for our time. Like the remnant described in Revelation, the faithful of the last days are marked by two things: they “keep the commandments of Yahweh, and have the testimony of Yah’shua the Messiah” (Revelation 12:17).

 

Test everything. We do not ask anyone to accept these beliefs because we hold them, or reject them because few people do. The size of a following has never been evidence of truth. Like the Bereans, search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:11).

Read our full statements:

• Getting to Know Who & What We Are (on our About Us page): our full identity statement, and why we are called The Faithful Remnant.
• Our Teaching Foundation: why our starting text matters, and how it compares with traditional Christianity and Judaism.
• The Seven Christian and Jewish Religious Groups (at the end of our Contrast-Compare page): what each of the seven major traditions teaches, in its own words, side by side.

 

To go deeper: Contrast-Compare sets out what we believe on forty specific questions, side by side with seven other traditions. Our Articles Library holds the full studies behind every point above.