Our Beliefs

 

THE BIBLE

We receive the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God and as the sole authority in matters of faith and practice. We believe that the Bible, sixty-six books in Old and New Testaments, is without error in its original writing; its author was God, using Spirit-guided men, being thereby verbally and plenarily inspired; it is the sole authority for faith and conduct.
 

GOD

We believe that there is one God, and only one, living and true God, an infinite, eternal, self-existing, perfect Spirit. He is a personal Being, the Creator and Upholder of the universe; in the unity of the Godhead, there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in essence and in every divine perfection, but having distinct functions.
 

CREATION

We believe in the Genesis account of Creation and that it is to be accepted literally and not figuratively. We believe that God created the universe in six literal twenty-four hour periods. We believe that man was created directly in God’s own image and after His own likeness and did not evolve from any lower form of life, that all animal and vegetable life was made directly, and God’s established law is that they bring forth only “after their kind.” We reject evolution, the Gap Theory, and Theistic Evolution as unscriptural theories of origin.
 

SATAN AND FALLEN ANGELS

We believe that Satan is a fallen angel. He was created perfect but sinned and became the arch enemy of God and His creation. He is the chief adversary of God’s children. He seeks to keep man from the Lord, and when he cannot succeed in this, he seeks to weaken the testimony of Christians. He has at his command a great host of fallen angels and demons to carry out his purposes. He is not omnipotent and can be overcome by the power of God. His doom is sealed in the Lake of Fire forever and ever.
 

MAN

We believe that man, although created without sin, by one transgression fell, so that all mankind are now sinners by state, disposition, and act, justly under condemnation.
 

SALVATION

We believe that the only way of salvation for sinners is by grace made possible by the substitutionary death of the Son of God, Who, though eternally God, was born of the virgin Mary, lived a perfect, sinless life, shed His precious blood on the cross, arose bodily from the grave, and ascended to reign on high. We believe that all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are justified, their sin is pardoned and the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed to them; that they are regenerated or born again, and are given spiritual life, manifesting repentance and faith; and that such true believers grow in grace and shall endure to the end.
 

SANCTIFICATION

We believe that sanctification is presented in three phases in Scripture: that believers have been made partakers of Christ’s holiness, that they are being progressively sanctified, and that they will be completely sanctified at their glorification; that there is no complete eradication of the old nature in progressive sanctification, and that speaking in tongues is not a sign of either regeneration or sanctification, nor is the New Testament gift of tongues in existence today but has ceased.
 

THE LOCAL CHURCH

We believe that a local, visible church is a congregation of baptized believers associated together by a common faith and fellowship in the Gospel; observing the ordinances of Christ and governed by His Word, seeking to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth; that its only Scriptural officers are bishops (or pastors) and deacons whose qualifications, claims and duties are defined in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. We believe that the local visible church of Christ is a voluntary and independent autonomous group of baptized believers that is a democracy, which organically can join nothing, and that it has the power and right within itself to confess its own faith in accordance with the New Testament; and that each congregation recognizes its own democratic, self-containing government as its highest authority for carrying out the Will of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 

BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER

We believe that both Christian baptism and the Lord’s Supper are each a memorial, a symbol, and a prophecy. We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to show forth, in a solemn and beautiful emblem, our faith in the crucified, buried and risen Savior, with its effect in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life; that it is prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation; and prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper; in which the members of the church by the use of bread and fruit of the vine commemorative together the death of Christ; preceded always by solemn self-examination.

 

THE LORD’S DAY

We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s Day and is a Christian institution; it is to be kept sacred to spiritual purposes by abstaining from all unnecessary secular labor and recreation, for it commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead; by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private, and public; and by predicting the rest that remains for the people of God.
 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

We believe that civil government is of divine appointment, for the interests and good order of human society; and that government leaders are to be prayed for, conscientiously honored and obeyed, except only in the things opposed to the Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the only Lord of the conscience, and the Prince of the kings of the earth; and that church and state should be separate, the state owing the church protection and full freedom; no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be preferred above another by the state; the state should not impose taxes for the support of any official religion; a free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.
 

THE STATE OF THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED

We believe that there is a radical and essential difference between the righteous and the wicked; that such only as through faith are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and sanctified by the Spirit of our God, are truly righteous in His sight, while all such as continue in unrepentance and unbelief are in His sight wicked, and under condemnation, and that there will be a resurrection of the righteous and a resurrection of the unrighteous.
 

FUTURE EVENTS

We believe the Scriptures teach that at death the spirit and soul of the believer pass instantly into the presence of Christ and remain in conscious joy until the resurrection of the body when Christ comes for His own; the blessed hope of the believer is the imminent, personal, pretribulational, premillennial appearance of Christ to rapture the church, His bride; His righteous judgments will then be poured out on an unbelieving world during the Tribulation (the seventieth week of Daniel), the last half of which is the Great Tribulation; the climax of this fearful era will be the physical return of Jesus Christ to the earth in great glory to introduce the Davidic kingdom, Israel will be saved and restored as a nation; Satan will be bound and the curse will be lifted from the physical creation; following the Millennium, the Great White Throne judgment will occur; at which time, the bodies and souls of the wicked shall be reunited and cast into the Lake of Fire.
 

HERESY AND APOSTASY

We believe in the total and complete separation as taught in the Word of God from all forms of heresy and ecclesiastical apostasy. We believe the Scripture teaches that we are to: (1) Try them. (2) Mark them. (3) Rebuke them. (4) Have no fellowship. (5) Withdraw ourselves. (6) Receive them not. (7) Have no company with them. (8) Reject them. (9) Separate ourselves.
 

HUMAN SEXUALITY

We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged outside of a marriage between a man and woman. We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, pedophilia, fornication, adultery, and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sex. We believe that God disapproves of and forbids any attempt to alter one’s gender by surgery or appearance.
 

ABORTION

We believe that human life begins at conception and that the unborn child is a living human being. Abortion constitutes the unjustified, unexcused taking of unborn human life. Abortion is murder. We reject any teaching that abortions of pregnancies due to rape, incest, birth defects, gender selection, birth or population control, or the physical or mental well­being of the mother are acceptable.
 

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

We believe that the only legitimate marriage is the joining of one man and one woman.

We believe that men and women are spiritually equal in position before God, but God has ordained distinct and separate functions for men and women in the home and the church. The husband is to be the leader of the home, and men are to be the leaders (pastors and deacons) of the church. Accordingly, only men are eligible for licensure and ordination by the church.

We believe that God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. The husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the church. The wife is to submit herself to the leadership of her husband as the church submits to the headship of Christ. Children are a heritage from the Lord and are responsible to obey their parents. Parents are responsible for teaching their children spiritual and moral values and leading them through consistent lifestyle examples and appropriate discipline, including Scriptural corporal correction.