WordPress stripping out BR tags, need assistance

Im having a problem where WP for some odd reason is stripping out my BR tags. Ive looked online and have read a few solutions that people offered including the installation of TinyMCE advanced plugin and still….the same thing.

The problem is that not matter what i do, even if i go to the html tab and manually insert a br tag, it isn’t creating any space between content. The code im testing now is this below:

The code that has this looks like this

this is sentence one<br>
this is sentence two <br/><br/>
this is sentence three &nbsp;
this is sentence four &nbsp;&nbsp;

which should appear like so

this is sentence one

this is sentence two


this is sentence three 


this is sentence four 

but when seen on WP front end, it shows like a long sentence.

here is the link: http://tightlineinternetmarketing.com/mike-dev/thp2/?page_id=1930

Also on that page, whilst testing, you will see that the same code i put on that post, i hard coded it onto the page.php just to test. and the hard coded part appears as it should whilst the same code but generated from WP does not appear as it should.

its driving me nuts.

I even installed another version of WP on my local wamp environment and still the same problem. I’ve also tested code on W3C validator(s) (html/css) and no real errors (except 3 from the nav menu which are minor).

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

EDIT**

this is the post loop im using

<?php
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>    
<div class="midSecContActual">       
<h1 class="page-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

<!--<div class="entry-date"><?php the_date(); ?></div> --> 

<div class="theContent"><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>"><?php the_excerpt(); ?></a></div> 
</div><!-- midSecContActual ender -->
<?php endwhile; endif; wp_reset_postdata(); rewind_posts(); wp_reset_query();   ?>