What We Believe

The Bible is God’s infallible, inerrant Word, every word of which is given by inspiration of God, and providentially preserved for use by His people.

As an unparalleled and accurate translation of the Hebrew and Greek Received Texts of Scripture, the Authorized, King James Version is used exclusively in the public preaching of our church.

The one and only living and Almighty God, Jehovah, is one undivided Being in three eternal Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches the doctrine of the Trinity as confessed in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. The Christian life is one of personal fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who united a true, complete, and sinless human nature to His Divine Person when He became Man through His virginal conception in the womb of His human mother Mary. The Council of Chalcedon confessed the truth of Scripture in its doctrine of the one Person of Christ in two natures. Christ died and shed His blood to offer a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. He was buried, rose bodily from the grave the third day, ascended to heaven, and is coming again.

The Holy Spirit is the third eternal Person of the one Triune God. Christ baptized the church with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the Spirit indwells all believers in this dispensation. The Spirit’s filling and fruit are essential for Biblical holiness. The miraculous signs and wonders performed in the first century validated the Apostles and their message, and, with the completion of the canon of Scripture and the passing of the Apostles, have ceased. The modern charismatic movement is not from God.

Creation

God created the world out of nothing. Genesis records the literal account of the origin of the world thousands, not millions, of years ago, and records the literal account of the worldwide flood in the days of Noah. God made mankind—male and female—in His image and likeness.

Sin

As a result of the sin of the first man, Adam, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. All the sons of Adam deserve spiritual and physical death because of the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to all mankind, Christ only excepted. People also deserve condemnation because of the totally depraved and corrupt human nature with which they are born, and the countless personal transgressions God’s holy law which they commit in thought, word, deed, and nature.

Salvation

When, enabled and drawn by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, sinners repent and believe the gospel, they are justified or declared righteous, based on the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, adopted into the family of God, and born again. Salvation is by God’s grace alone, through repentant faith alone, based on the death of Christ alone, and to the glory of God alone. When God gives sinners repentance and faith, they turn from their sins to receive Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King, trusting in and resting upon the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.

Eternal Security

Everyone who is born again is eternally secure—once saved, each Christian is always saved from the penalty and power of sin, and certain of final and complete deliverance from the presence of sin. Christians can have full assurance of their election according to the foreknowledge of God and union with Jesus Christ by the Spirit through faith because of the sufficiency of Christ’s work for them, confirmed by the holy fruits of regeneration in their lives.

Neither Calvinism nor Arminianism represent the teaching of Scripture on the doctrine of salvation. Eternal security is a tremendous encouragement to the Christian’s love for Christ and pursuit of holiness.

Church

Jesus Christ started His church during His ministry upon the earth and has preserved true churches from the first century until today. In modern times, those true churches—assemblies of visible saints—are called “Baptist,” having formerly been called “Anabaptist,” as heirs of the first century churches. Neither Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, nor Protestant denominations have the doctrine or the historical heritage of Christ’s true churches. Christ’s church is an assembly of baptized believers, organized to carry out the Lord’s work. The church is neither universal and visible, nor universal and invisible, but is solely local and visible. The nation of Israel and the church are distinct entities, and Scriptural teaching on the relation of the church and Israel fits much more closely with dispensationalism than it does with covenant theology. Jesus Christ is the sole Head of His church. The human overseers of the church are pastors, also called elders or bishops, and are men who meet the qualifications in the pastoral epistles. Deacons are men who have a special role as servants in Christ’s church.

Disciples are added to the church by baptism—the immersion of the believer in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a beautiful symbol of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, the church commemorates Christ’s death until He comes through the elements of bread and the fruit of the vine. Pouring or sprinkling water on infants or adults is not Biblical baptism, nor are transubstantiation or consubstantiation taught in Scripture. Neither baptism nor the Lord’s Supper brings about the new birth or justification, as justification is by faith alone, apart from all works and religious rituals. Every believer has direct access to God as a spiritual priest.

Christ’s churches have the serious responsibility to preach the gospel to every creature and make disciples world-wide. Christ’s churches offer Him reverent and solemn worship in accordance with His explicit commandment, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and rejecting all worldly and fleshly false worship, including the vast majority of what is termed “Contemporary Christian Music” today.

Prophecy

Biblical predictions about future events should be interpreted literally. Literal interpretation requires that Christ’s second coming is premillennial and pretribulational. Those saved from their sin will live forever in conscious bliss and fellowship with God in the new heaven and new earth. Those who die without having their sins remitted will suffer conscious torment in the lake of fire forever and ever.

Separation

Scripture teaches personal and ecclesiastical separation from all unrepentant doctrinal and practical apostasy and spiritual compromise, so that true churches and Christians earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints and out of love for Christ and others mark and avoid both unregenerate false teachers and even true believers who are committed to spiritual compromise, the latter, however, not being counted as enemies, but admonished as brethren.