Our Beliefs

What We Believe:

• The inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture
• The Trinity (the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit)
• The full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ
• The spiritual lostness of the human race
• The substitutionary atonement and bodily resurrection of Christ
• Salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone
• The physical return of Christ

STATEMENT OF FAITH

(A) The Holy Scripture

The Bible, which consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments is the inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient Word of God. God spoke His written Word through the process of dual authorship in which the Spirit guided the human authors to accurately record God’s Word to man without error. The Bible is the only complete and final revelation of the will of God to man; the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tested.

(B) The Godhead

God the Father is creator of all things, is the absolute omnipotent sovereign ruler of the universe, and is omniscient, and omnipresent in providence over the affairs of this world. He upholds, directs, and governs all things for His glory, though He is not the author or approver of sin. There is one God, eternally existing in three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – each coeternal in being and in nature, coequal in power, glory, and in divine perfection, while executing distinct, but harmonious offices.

(C) The Person and Work of Christ

Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who existed before the creation of all things, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, became man, without ceasing to be God in order that He might reveal God and redeem sinful men. Jesus Christ accomplished the believer’s redemption through His death on the cross as a vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice; and that one’s justification is made sure by His literal, physical resurrection from the dead. He is now exalted at the right hand of God, where, as High Priest, He fulfills the ministry of intercessor and advocate.

(D) The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is a divine person, possessing all the attributes of deity. His sovereign activity includes, but is not limited to His manifestation in creation, the incarnation, the written revelation, and the salvation of men. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; He is the agent in regeneration, baptizing all believers into the body of Christ. He indwells, sanctifies, assists in discerning the significance of the Scriptures for a God-honoring life, empowers for service, and seals the believer until the day of redemption.

(E) Creation

The Genesis account of creation is the literal account of God’s creation in which God completed His creative work in six, literal, successive, twenty-four-hour solar days. Man was created directly by God and in God’s own image and likeness; and was not a matter of evolution or evolutionary change of species, or development through interminable periods of time from lower to higher forms. All animal and vegetable life were made directly, and God’s established law was that they should bring forth after their own kind.

(F) The Total Depravity of Man

Man was created in the image and likeness of God, free of sin to glorify God, enjoy fellowship with God, and live his life accomplishing God’s purpose for him. However, because of Adam’s sin of disobedience to God’s will and Word and because all men were in Adam, man lost his innocence, inherited a sin nature, incurred the penalty of spiritual and physical death, and became separated from God (Jesus Christ being the only exception). Man, therefore, is totally depraved, utterly incapable to remedy his lost condition.

(G) Salvation

Salvation is wholly of God, a gift of God by grace, based on Christ’s shed blood, perfect obedience and faithfulness to God, and His redemption of sinners; it is not based on the works of humans. The repentant sinner is saved when he/she responds in faith to God’s merciful and gracious provision of salvation through Jesus Christ. Those who are saved, the redeemed, are kept by God’s power and therefore, are secure in Christ forever.

(H) The Church

The local church consists of those who place their faith in Jesus Christ, of which Christ is the head. The Church is God’s instrument to fulfill the great commission around the world, to make disciples, to glorify God through worship, and to equip the believers for the work of God and the building up of the body by teaching and knowing His Word, by fellowshipping with one another, and by keeping the ordinances (water baptism and Lord’s Supper). The Church is distinct from Israel, is a mystery not revealed until this age, and is autonomous, free of any external authority or control. The biblically designated officers who serve under Christ are pastors and deacons.

(I) Last Things

At death, there is a bodily resurrection of all men, the saved to eternal life (joyful fellowship with Jesus Christ) and the unsaved to judgment (kept under punishment). Scripture states there is a bodily return of Jesus Christ prior to the seven-year tribulation to gather His Church (rapture) from this earth. The tribulation period follows the removal of the Church, and God’s righteous judgments are poured out on an unbelieving world. Following the tribulation period, Christ will come again (Second Coming) with His saints, to establish the Messianic Kingdom for a thousand years on the earth. Following the thousand-year reign of Christ, Satan is thrown into the lake of fire and the unsaved are judged (Great White Throne judgment) and cast into the lake of fire, committed to conscious punishment and torment. Following the judgment of the unsaved, the saved enter the eternal state of glory with God, dwell and fellowship with God forever in a new earth.

To Learn more about our Church Covenant Click Here.