ABOUT USServices ServicesWe warmly invite you to attend any of our meetings (especially our Sunday worship meetings) if you live locally, or if you are passing through or on holiday in our vicinity.
(* during school terms) Elders
How to Find UsWe are situated in High Street, Caeharris, Dowlais, diagonally opposite the Antelope Hotel, on the A4102 road to Merthyr Tydfil town centre, about 600 yards from the Asda junction of the A465 ('Heads of the Valleys') trunk road. There is public parking behind the Antelope Hotel, and very limited street parking (please consider our neighbours). Who we areThere has been a Baptist Church at Hebron Chapel, Caeharris, Dowlais for over 150 years. During this time Dowlais has seen massive changes: the railways and their stations have gone, the coal and steel industries have disappeared, the population has halved, hardly any Welsh is spoken, a close-knit community has fragmented, and religion is generally out of fashion. Yet week by week a large number of people of all ages and backgrounds continues to gather at Hebron to worship God. The people at Hebron believe the same truths as those who built the chapel in 1846, because there are some things that never change. The Living God, our Creator, does not change or go out of fashion, The Bible is still up-to-date: its truth is completely reliable, and it is God's message to human beings today just as much it was 150 years ago, or 2000 years ago. The message is the good news of how God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into the world to deliver us from our sins by His death and His rising again from the dead. He comes to restore us to a real relationship with God, to forgive our sins and to give us a solid foundation for life in this world and the next. The marvellous thing about the Christian faith, which sets it apart from every other religion, is that at its centre is a living Saviour, Jesus Christ. The facts of His earthly existence, death and resurrection are amongst the most solid and dependable facts in human history. Dead politicians, dead prophets, dead religious leaders cannot help you to deal with sin: but a living Saviour can. Christians can testify to the reality of a living God at work in their lives. One of the purposes of this site is to introduce you to the same living God, who has shown us just how much He loves us by coming down to earth in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Those of us who meet at Hebron are ordinary Merthyr people who have found in Jesus Christ the key to life. For us He is "The way, the truth, the life". We really do want to share this Good News with you. We believe the Christian message is of the utmost importance for ourselves, our children and everyone else in the world. BeliefsOur trust deeds declare us to be "Protestant Dissenters of the Denomination of Particular or Calvinistic Baptists", and gives the following summary of the doctrines we are to believe and teach:
This declaration and summary link us historically with the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (also known as the Second London Confession). This was based on the First London Confession of 1644, rewritten in 1677 to agree as much as possible (baptism being the principal distinctive) with the Westminster and Savoy Confessions of Faith, in order to demonstrate substantial unity with Presbyterian and Independent Christians. We believe and teach these things because God has revealed them to mankind in His written Word, the Holy Bible. Because the Bible places the greatest emphasis on the Gospel or Good News of Jesus Christ, we refer to ourselves as Evangelical (= 'of the Good News'). Every member of Hebron has experienced the power of this Good News in his or her own life. We have all - by God's free favour and sovereign power - turned from sin and put our trust in the Lord Jesus alone to save us from our sin and all its consequences. Knowing the joy of total forgiveness, of eternal life already begun, and of intimate, personal knowledge of the Lord God Almighty, we wish all mankind to experience the same. So we encourage you to attend one of our worship services, to contact us by e-mail, or to follow some of our resource links. HistoryThe 1904 Revival in Dowlais – unpublished personal memories
Extracts from the Testimony of Price Davies, 1881-1966, kindly sent by his grandson, Roy Davies, St
Luke's Campus Librarian,
The Welsh Revival So the Revival
went on, like a mighty Prairie Fire all over
GOD DEALING WITH SEVERAL MEN INDIVIDUALLY IN ANSWER TO PRAYER. T. E. Lewis and I were brought up together on Dowlais Top, and only a few Years ago, (not long before he died) while we were standing outside Woolworths Stores in High Street Merthyr he related to me how and where he was saved. Every Saturday
night he and his friends spent, their time drinking in different pubs
until eleven-o-clock Stop Tap; after this they used to take drinks with
them to one or another of his friend’s homes, and drinking until the early
hours of Sunday morning. He told me he never went home
until about two-o-clock in the morning. He was going
home drunk one Sunday morning alone along
Sam Brown, another friend of mine, was converted down in the Colliery - Number two Pit Bedlinog - there alone between two ventilator doors. Praise God! I had an
adopted brother, married and living in Dowlais Top, his hobbies were
drinking, gambling and fighting. Many of those he
knew, who had lived the same kind of life, were at this time converted and
he used to go with them to the meetings in
Two of the men
picked him up, one under each arm, and took him down past his house to the
meeting in
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