What We Believe

We believe and affirm the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and the basis for faith and practice. I believe the Bible to be:
Inerrant = The Bible is true and pure in all of its parts.
Infallible = The Bible has no mistakes and is without error in its entirety.
Complete = The Bible has everything that God intends for it to have and for what He intends for us to know concerning Faith and Practice.
Authoritative = The Bible is God’s final word on all that we need to know and do.
Sufficient = The Bible is clear in what it speaks to that we need no new revelation.
Effective = The Bible accomplishes all that God intends for it to accomplish.
Determinative = How we respond to the Bible determines the essence of our life and our eternal destiny.

There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, fully God, fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever present Lord.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He inspired holy men of old to write the Scriptures. Through illumination He enables men to understand truth. He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He calls men to the Savior, and effects regeneration. At the moment of regeneration He baptizes every believer into the Body of Christ. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which they serve God through His church. He seals every believer unto the day of final redemption. His presence in the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. 

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole person and is freely offered to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. There is salvation in Jesus Christ, alone (John14:6; Acts 4:12).

The New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the Gospel; observing the two ordinances (Baptism and Celebration of the Lord’s Supper or Communion) of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Believers operate under the Lordship of Jesus Christ through the democratic process. Therefore, each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. The New Testament church includes all of the redeemed of all ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.

We believe in the sanctity of human life. Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for men, women, and children; therefore every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love. For this reason, abortion, euthanasia, genocide, human trafficking, slavery, and any other action that destroys or demeans any human life is wrong and evil in the eyes of God.

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption. Marriage is the uniting of one biological man and one biological woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide the man and woman in marriage a framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. 

Satan, like all of creation, was created a perfect angelic being. According to the Scripture, pride entered his heart and he sought to de-throne God. For this reason, he and the angels that followed him were cast out of heaven. He and his demons are at work, now, seeking to deceive humanity and take as many people to hell as he can with him. He is, always has been, and will be subject to God’s authority and rule. Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection has doomed him to hell, destroyed his works, and defeated his plan to rule over all creation. Before he and his demons are cats into hell for all eternity, he will do what all people will do according to Philippians 2:9-11, his knees will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father.