What We Believe
BIBLE
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We believe the Bible to be the complete Word of God;
that the sixty-six
books, as originally written, comprising the Old and New Testaments were
verbally inspired by the Spirit of God and were entirely free from error; that
the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and the
true basis of Christian union.
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GOD
We believe in one God, Creator of all, holy
sovereign, eternal, existing in
three equal persons; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
CHRIST
We believe in the absolute and essential deity of
Jesus Christ, in His
eternal existence with the Father in pre-incarnate glory, in His virgin birth,
sinless life, substitutionary death, bodily resurrection, triumphant ascension,
mediatorial ministry and personal return.
THE HOLY
SPIRIT
We believe in the absolute and essential deity and
personality of the Holy
Spirit who convinces of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; who
regenerates,
sanctifies, illuminates and comforts those who believe in Jesus
Christ.
SATAN
We believe that Satan exists as an evil personality,
the originator of sin,
the arch-enemy of God and man.
MAN
We believe that man was divinely created in the image
of God; that he sinned,
becoming guilty before God, resulting in total depravity, thereby incurring the
physical and spiritual death.
SALVATION
We believe that salvation is by the sovereign,
electing grace of God; that by
the appointment of the Father, Christ voluntarily suffered a vicarious
expiatory
and propitiatory death; that justification of the Lord Jesus Christ and that
those whom God has effectually called shall be divinely preserved and finally
perfected in the image of the Lord.
FUTURE
THINGS
We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious
return of the Lord Jesus
Christ; in the resurrection of the just and unjust; in the eternal blessedness
of the redeemed and in the judgment and conscious, eternal punishment of the
wicked.
THE LOCAL
CHURCH
We believe that a church is a company of immersed
believers, called out from
the world, separated unto the Lord Jesus, voluntarily associated for the
ministry of the Word, the mutual edification of its members, the propagation of
the faith and the observance of the ordinances. We believe it is a
sovereign, independent body, exercising its own divinely awarded gifts,
precepts
and privileges under the Lordship of Christ, the Great Head of the
church.
We believe that its offices are pastors and deacons.
ORDINANCES
We believe that there are only two ordinances for the
church regularly
observed in the New Testament in the following order:
BAPTISM which
is the immersion of the believer in water, whereby he obeys Christ's
commands
and sets forth his identification with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection.
THE LORD'S SUPPER
which
is the memorial wherein the believer partakes of the two elements, bread and
wine, which symbolize the Lord's body and shed blood, proclaiming His death
until He comes.