Who and What is First Harvest Ministries? What do we believe?

Who and What is First Harvest Ministries? What do we believe? Shane Vaughn ——— First Harvest Ministries International 1 Hello, I'm Pastor Shane Vaughn with First Harvest Ministries and I want to take a very brief amount of time and introduce this ministry to you. Maybe you have heard some of our sermons, maybe you've heard people talk about us, maybe you're just curious and you want to know more about us. Number one, we are a Bible believing fundamental follower of the Messiah of Israel. Now, we have a great appreciation for the Bible, the word of God, in its original original format and its original text. Now, because of that, we have a great affinity for the original languages of the scripture. 2 We refer to God by his name and that confuses a lot of people. Don't be confused. God is a noun, whereas we call him Yahweh, which is a true proper noun. We refer to the son of God by what his mother called him, what the angel called him, Yeshua. But for many Christians, that is off-putting and it should not be. However, First Harvest Ministries, we have tried to align ourselves as closely with the scriptures as we can. Do we have it all right? Hardly. But, are we striving to get it right? Yes, we are. 3 Many people have asked, "What do we believe?" First of all, we are firm believers in the shed blood of the Son of God. We do not believe we are saved by works as many people mistakenly believe. We believe there is no other way to be saved than through the Son of God himself, Yeshua the Messiah, also known as Jesus Christ. We firmly believe that none of us will ever keep any amount of laws that will save us. However, we do believe that if we have truly been converted by the blood of the Son of God, then it will lead us down a life of obedience. 4 To find that obedience, we have to go back to the very beginning where God gave us his law in the Torah. Now, we understand that we cannot keep every one of those laws. We are not ignorant of that fact. We know that times and circumstances have changed. But, we have found out that behind that law, there is an intent or a spirit of the law that the Father intended for us to understand in the nuances of the law. We know we may not be able to keep all of the details, but we can definitely keep the intent. What the Father was trying teach us. 5 Now, because of that desire to obey Torah, many Christians do not understand us. That's okay. We we've been where you are. However, we would ask you if you have felt a drawing to know God, Yahweh, in a more intimate way, we believe there's more for you than maybe you have been taught before. I'll give you an example. Most every church you will ever go to, every church you've ever been to, they do a splendid job of teaching you how much God loves you. However, there's a second part that we believe they miss. This love of God is a two-way relationship, is it not? 6 It wouldn't be any good if he loved you and you didn't love him. So, our ministry not only wants to tell you how much Yahweh loves you, but we want to teach you how to love Yahweh. To make that relationship two ways. And Yeshua, his son, made it very simple. If you love me, keep my commandments. How do we do that? If you'll follow this ministry, we'll do our very best to teach you. And don't be alarmed. We try our best to keep a balance. We try our best not to go in the extreme directions that many of the Messianic movement have gone. We believe in spirit and truth. 7 We are a spirit-filled congregation. We believe in dynamic, exuberant worship and praise. We believe in the in-filling of the Holy Spirit according to Acts chapter 2 and verse 38. We believe in water baptism in the name of Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah. So, we're not really as different as you might have thought. We believe a lot like you do. But, we do believe there is much more that is being revealed in the last days before the coming of Yeshua. Yes, we believe in a literal physical return of the Son of God to establish his kingdom right here on Earth. Of course, there's so much more than that. 8 So, I would advise you, if you're still with me and you're still interested, I wrote a book many years ago called The Dream Team. This book is available on Amazon. And in this book, 300 pages, I believe, or 200 and something, that will tell you a lot of what we believe. Also, you can go to our website, firstharvestchurch.org, and go to the section called ebooks. When you get there, you're going to find many of these smaller booklets that's very easy to read, and you can download them free of charge right there at firstharvestchurch.org. 9 There's no reason to be in the dark about what we believe. We would love to explain it to you. And when we're done, if you don't believe it the way we do, we're going to love you just the same and look forward to meeting you in the kingdom of God Yahweh. Thank you for watching.