What We Believe

 

The following is a summary of what we believe and adhere to on key doctrines. A complete copy is downloadable from this link.

The Scriptures
We hold to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament (66 books) as the verbal, plenarily inspired Word of God in the original writings and that the Spirit of God sovereignly selected certain men to record God's infallible and inerrant truth and that this truth is the supreme and final authority.

God
There is one sovereign Creator, God, eternally existing in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These three having precisely the same attributes, nature and perfections are worthy of precisely the same confidence and obedience.

Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity who exists eternally, and though laying aside His glory to become man, He in no sense laid aside His deity, for He is True-God and True-Man. He was begotten by the Spirit, born of the virgin Mary and as the God-Man lived a sinless life and died on the cross for the sins of the whole world. He was buried and rose again on the third day and ascended to heaven. As provided and purposed by God and as preannounced in the prophecies of the Scriptures, the eternal Son of God came into this world that He might manifest God to men, fulfill prophecy, and become the Redeemer of a lost world.

The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. Though omnipresent from all eternity, He took up His abode in the world in a special sense on the day of Pentecost according to the divine promise. He dwells in every believer, and unites all believers to Christ in one body. As the indwelling One, He is the source of all power and all acceptable worship and service.

Humanity
The creation of the world and all that is therein is the result of the dynamic utterance of God. The work of creation was completed in six, twenty-four hour days with man being created on the sixth day instantly, completely and finally. Creation is sufficient revelation to render man accountable to God. Though man was originally created in the image and after the likeness of God, he fell through sin. This sin resulting in his spiritual death which is separation from God affected both the material and immaterial man. Therefore, man is unable to do anything to save himself.

Salvation
Salvation is by God's grace through our faith in the substitutionary and sacrificial death of Christ; that salvation is the free gift of God, neither merited nor secured in part or in whole by any virtue or work of man, but received only by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all true believers have as a present possession the gift of eternal life, a perfect righteousness, sonship in the family of God, every spiritual resource needed for life and godliness, and have received the divine guarantee that they have been delivered from judgment and condemnation and shall never perish.

Life in Christ
The Scriptures teach that every believer should be separated unto God from the world, and by the aid of the Holy Spirit should walk in Christian love and holiness. Led by the Spirit of God to join together in a local assembly - the church - every believer has the call to present his body a living sacrifice unto the Lord and that by the renewing of his mind through hearing, believing and applying the Word of God, his character and conduct will change. Believers are divinely reckoned to be related to this world as strangers and pilgrims, ambassadors and witnesses, and that their primary purpose in life is to make Christ known.

The Everlasting State
Upon death, the sprits and souls of those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation pass immediately into His presence and there remain in conscious bliss until the resurrection of the glorified body when Christ comes for His own, whereupon soul and body reunited shall be associated with Him forever in glory; but the souls of the unbelieving (after death) remain conscious of condemnation and in misery until the final judgment of the Great White Throne at the close of the millennium, when soul and body reunited shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be annihilated, but to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. Heaven is a prepared place for a purchased people. It is the home of the redeemed of all ages and the abode of the Godhead. It is a place of beauty, holiness, service, worship, glory, life and fellowship.