Our Statement of Faith We believe that the Bible is God’s Word, fully and verbally inspired without error. It is our supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice. We believe in one God – the divine Trinity, Father, son and Holy Spirit- eternally existing, equal in essence and attributes; yet distinct in office and activity. We believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, in His pre-existence; His virgin birth; His incarnation; His sinless life; His miracles; His substitutionary, atoning death on the cross; His bodily resurrection from the grave; His high priestly work in heaven; and His personal, visible, glorious, imminent, pre-millennial return to earth to set up His kingdom. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, who convinces the world of sin, righteousness and judgment and regenerates, leads, comforts, enlightens and sanctifies believers. We believe that man was made in the image of God, originally sinless and pure, but sinned in Adam as the natural head of the race and is now sinful by nature and by choice and in need of salvation. We believe in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, apart from human works or ceremonies. We believe spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to each believer when he is saved. Those gifts are given for the unification and edification of the church, never for its fragmentation. We believe that the universal church of Christ is a spiritual body of which He is the head and of which all regenerated people are members. We believe that the local church is a company of believers in Jesus Christ, immersed on a credible profession of faith, and voluntarily associated for worship, work and fellowship. We believe that to these local churches were committed for perpetual observation the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and that God laid upon these churches the task of proclaiming to a lost world that Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe in two church ordinances: baptism, being the immersion of the believer in water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, thus symbolizing the believer’s previous experience of regeneration through faith and his union in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as set forth in Romans 6:3-11; the Lord’s supper, instituted by Christ, being a symbol of His atoning sacrifice. We believe that the local church is independent and autonomous and its Statement of Faith must be free from interference by any ecclesiastical or political authority and that, therefore, church and state must be kept separate as having different functions. We believe in the resurrection of the body, the eternal existence of all men either in heaven or hell, in divine judgment, in rewards and punishment and the certain fulfillment of all Bible prophecies. We believe that we “should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints”, and that we should preach the Word, being urgent in season, out of season, reproving, rebuking, exhorting with all longsuffering and doctrine (Jude 3; II Timothy 4:2). |