What We Believe
We believe and teach these important Bible doctrines. If you have additional questions you may reach us through one of the options on our Contact webpage.
The Bible
The Bible was given by inspiration of God* such that it is the very words of God. The Bible is without error, and all prophecies and claims found in the Bible have, or will, come to pass without fail. The Bible has been preserved by God for all generations of Christians to live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” We only use King James Bible as it is the only trustworthy, published English translation which both uses the Greek Received Text, was translated using formal equivalence methods, and is based on the belief that God has preserved His Word.
The Bible is the final authority for all aspects of life and is the only authoritative source for doctrine & theology. The Bible is superior in authority to all other authorities (governmental, religious, family, etc.)
* Biblical inspiration is not to be understood in the common usage of the English word “inspiration”. Biblical inspiration speaks to the fact that the words of the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures were “breathed out” by God Himself and are therefore the words of God. In His power and sovereignty God sometimes used the thoughts and mannerism of the human writers to give the scriptures certain styles, yet God inspired every word that was written.
God
God is revealed in the Bible as one God and, within the one God, as three persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We call this the doctrine of the Trinity. All three Persons in the Trinity are equal in nature, power and glory. For example, Jesus Christ (God the Son) willingly subjects Himself to God the Father, not because he is inferior to God the Father, but rather, to fulfill the plan of God.
God is all powerful, all knowing and omni-present. God is holy and separate from sin. God cannot lie and cannot fail. God is able to perfectly manage every aspect of existence without any limitations of mental capacity. God is timeless and is sovereign over all situations and all things. God has perfect foreknowledge of all events, both potential events and actual events whether past, present or future, and in His sovereignty God uses the free-will choices of people (including their sinful choices) to flawlessly accomplish His own plans and purposes.
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is revealed in the Bible to be God in a full and proper sense (e.g. John 20:27-29) receiving worship of men as God (e.g. Luke 24:52). Jesus Christ is not a “lesser” god. As member of the Trinity (see above) Jesus Christ is eternal having always existed as the eternal, timeless, almighty God. Jesus is call the “Son of God”, not to imply that He came into existence by being born to God the Father, but rather, revealing his role in the Trinity.
Jesus Christ humbled Himself and generally laid aside his abilities as God and became a man (Philippians 2:5-8) without ceasing to be God and retaining his fully divine nature (e.g. John 10:17-18). He was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit and thereby did not inherit a sin nature as other men (e.g. Act 4:27; see also “Mankind” below). Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life proving that He was the eternal God (Mark 10:18).
As the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ satisfied the justice of God by willingly suffering, shedding his blood and dying on the cross for the sins of all mankind (1 John 2:2). We refer to this as a vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice. God the Father laid upon Jesus Christ the sins of all men and He became the sacrifice for our sins (Isaiah 53:5-6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). After three days and three nights in the grave (Matthew 12:40) Jesus Christ was raised from the dead bodily by the power of God.
For 40 days after His resurrection, Jesus showed Himself alive to witnesses which were chosen of God (Act 10:40-14; Acts 13:31) with “many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3) both eating and drinking with them and allowing them to handle his body and touch the wounds in his hands and side (John 20:27-30). These approximately 500 witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) include the apostles of Christ who by special revelation taught the doctrines of Jesus Christ and His church that we follow today. God approved their teachings with signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 2:3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:12). (See “The Church” below for more.)
Mankind
God created man in His own image (Genesis 1:27) as a three part being with a body, a soul and a spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). God made man for his own pleasure (Revelation 4:11), and as the Creator He expects each person to seek after Him (Act 17:26-27), to fear Him and to obey Him (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). God made man without sin (Gen 1:31) while giving each person a free will to chose right or wrong (e.g. Joshua 24:15).
God placed Adam and Eve, the first man and woman in the garden of Eden with a single command (Genesis 2:16-17). When they both disobeyed God’s command (Genesis 3:6) sin entered the world (Romans 5:12). This resulted in both their spiritual death (e.g. Ephesians 2:4-5) and their physical death (1 Corinthians 15:54-56). Each person born inherits a sinful nature (e.g. Job 14:1-6), and God testifies that all men have sinned, choosing to do that which is wrong according to God (Romans 3:10, 23, 5:12). As an example, God testifies that all men have sinned against Him by telling lies, “… yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;…” (Romans 3:4).
The Judgement of God
As the creator of all things (John 1:1-3), God claims authority over all people (Is 45:9-11). This fact is the foundation of all objective morality (Acts 17:25-27; Revelation 4:11), and it is basis on which God will one day judge all people (Job 40:1-2).
The Bible teaches that all men will one day stand before God and give an account for their choices and actions, their “works” (Acts 17:31, Romans 2:6). Physically dying is not the end; after death comes the judgment (Hebrews 9:27; Luke 12:20). Being religious, claiming to be “Christian”, being a leader or worker in a church, or considering oneself sufficiently moral will not be enough (Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 13:23-30). Every sin will be judged and condemned (E.g. Matthew 12:36-37). God’s judgment will be according to truth and no sinner will escape (Romans 2:1-11, 3:19), unless he comes by faith to Jesus (see below).
God’s judgement for sin will result in sinners being cast into the lake of fire and brimstone (Revelation 20:10-15; 21:8), being condemned to shame and everlasting contempt (to be abhorred by God forever; Daniel 12:2), being punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9), being cast into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41), being sent into everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), forever separated from God and denied entrance into the kingdom of God (Revelation 22:11-15), and being condemned to tribulation and anguish (Romans 2:9).
Salvation
To be accepted into His eternal kingdom, God’s standard is perfection. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” (Galatians 3:10b) There is no man who can ever attain to this standard (Mark 10:18). All of mankind has fallen short of God’s standard and, if judged by their own merits, will be condemned by God on judgement day.
And yet, God desires that all men be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). God is “not willing that any should perish…” (2 Peter 3:9) In order to both satisfy His justice and show His love to all the mankind, God sent Jesus Christ His Son to become a man (Philippians 5-8), come to earth and offer Himself as a perfect, sinless blood sacrifice for sin on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53; Hebrews 9:11-28). The animal sacrifices of the Old Testament could never take away sin (Hebrews 10:1-4). They were a picture of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:1, 11-12; 1 Corinthians 5:7), “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29, 36) In dying on the cross, Jesus bore our sins in his body (Isaiah 53:5-6) and satisfied the wrath and judgment of God against our sins (Isaiah 53:10).
Jesus died for all mankind (John 3:16; Hebrews 2:9; 1 John 2:1-2), but, like a pardon which must be accepted (John 1:11-13), God offers the free gift (Romans 6:23) of forgiveness of sin and eternal life in His kingdom to all who will freely accept by repenting of their sins and putting their trust in Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Through faith in Jesus Christ we are judicially declared righteous (Romans 5:1), are forgiven of our sins (Ephesians 1:7), are made alive spiritually (a.k.a. “born again”; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:1-5), become the children of God (1 John 3:1-2), are make partakers of the divine nature through Christ (2 Peter 1:3-4), will be resurrected bodily with an eternal body as Christ was (1 Corinthians 15; Philippians 3:21), and will live forever in God’s eternal kingdom (Daniel 12:2-3; Revelation 21:6-8, 24-27).
Salvation is completely undeserved by those who receive it. It is not earned by doing good works whether in part or in whole (Romans 4). There is nothing we can do to deserve it. It is all given through the grace of God (the undeserved favor of God) (Ephesians 2:8-9). There is no religious act or ritual which must be performed such as water baptism. Salvation is given the moment someone understands (Romans 10:13-14) and puts their faith in the God of the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth [present tense] on him that sent me, hath [present tense] everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed [present tense] from death unto life.” John 5:24
Biblical repentance is turning from sin. (Matthew 3:1-9; Matthew 9:13; Luke 15:7, 10; Luke 24:46-47; John 10:27; Acts 3:19, 26; Acts 8:22-23; Acts 20:21; Acts 26:20) This does mean that in order to be saved someone must do good works. No one can do good works that are acceptable to God until they are saved. (Mark 10:18; John 8:31; Romans 7:18; Romans 8:1-8; 1 John 2:3-4; 1 John 3) Repentance is an agreement with God that your sins are vile and evil and that His commandments are good and perfect. It’s choosing to turn away from your sins and turn to God in belief, calling upon God to save and cleanse you from your sins. When Jesus, His apostles and John the Baptist preached repentance, they did not redefine it from how it was taught in the Old Testament which clearly describes turning from sin. (2 Chronicles 7:14; Psalm 51; Isaiah 55:6-9; Jeremiah 3:12-15; Ezekiel 18:30-32; Joel 2:12-13; Hosea 14:1-2) Although repentance and faith are not the same thing, they are intimately connected and go hand-in-hand.
When a person is saved, becoming a “new creature” in Christ, they are “given” the Holy Spirit to indwell them (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) as the earnest (guarantee) of their resurrection and entrance into the kingdom of God (Ephesians 1:13-14). They are made alive spiritually (Ephesians 2:5-6) and given the promise of God that they will always be alive spiritually (John 3:14-16; John 10:27-29)—this is described in the Bible with terminology such as ‘eternal life*’. That salvation cannot be lost, is shown in the fact that believers are predestinated by God to be his children and obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of God (Ephesians 1:5, 11; Titus 3:7). This cannot be said if salvation is lost by some believers. (See also 1 Peter 1:2; Acts 13:48.)
* Eternal life, by definition can never end. It’s not an eternal ‘thing’ that is possessed and can be taken away. When it’s described as a gift, it not a gift in the sense of a physical or spiritual object or substance, but rather the gift of being made alive forever. Spiritual life is a state of existence, the state of being alive spiritually. Therefore, by definition, enteral life cannot be “lost”.
The Church
The Bible word for church is the Greek word ekklēsia, which by definition means an assembly. An assembly, by definition, must be local (i.e. an assembly of people has a location or it’s not an assembly.) Therefore, a Biblical church cannot be an organization that spans multiple location (whether world-wide or across a smaller region.) We see this in scripture when it describes churches (plural) when speaking of the regions of Galatia or Asia (the Roman province) (Galatians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 2:14; Revelation 1:4, 11).
As patterned in the scriptures, the church is an assembly of saved, baptized believers (Acts 2:41, 47). Each congregation (church) is independent (e.g. as seen by each church operating independently and being separately held accountable by Jesus in Revelation 2-3). Jesus Christ is the head of each local church (Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18), which is accountable to Him alone. Although, God has ordained the government and we seek to submit to governmental ordinances for the Lord’s sake (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17), the government neither has authority over the teachings and biblical practices of the church, nor does it have the authority to restrict the members of the church from obeying Christ (Acts 4:18-20, 23-31; Acts 5:26-29).
The church is what God instituted to carry out his work on earth and take the Gospel to the world (Ephesians 1:22-23; Matthew 16:15-19; John 20:19-23; Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 24:44-49; Acts 1:4-15; Acts 2:1-4, 14-47). As much as we appreciate the work of other Christian organizations whether they be seminaries, apologetics ministries, etc., God’s plan for accomplishing his work on earth is the local church. God’s desire is that every believer should be faithful to, grow spiritually in, and minister through a local church (Ephesians 4:11-16: Hebrews 10:25; 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 7-8).
Every church is to take a stand on the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), to shine the light of Christ to the world (Philippians 15-16), to openly rebuke the works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11-13), to try (test) those who say that they are apostles or spokes people for God, and to reject and rebuke those who teach that which is false (Revelation 2:2, 6, 14-15, 20; 2 Corinthians 11:12-15; Romans 16:17-18; Galatians 2:3-5, 5:1-12; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 33).
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
The Greek word for baptism in the Bible is baptizō, which means to immerse. The only way to follow Christ’s command to baptize is to immerse (Matthew 28:19). Water baptism is a picture of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3-6). Water baptism does not save anyone from their sins. The people who were baptized in the Bible were described as either believing, being filled with the Spirit, or repenting which demonstrates that only saved people were baptized. (See Salvation above.) Water baptism of believers is a picture of what happens spiritually when they are saved, and in submitting to water baptism a believer is associating with Christ (Romans 6:3-6).
The Lord’s Supper is something we observe as a church to remember the death of Jesus on our behalf (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The observation of the Lord’s Supper does not impart saving grace because salvation by grace is through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), not by an outward observance (e.g. Galatians 2:3-5, 3:1-5, 5:2-6, 6:15).
The End Times
God is sovereign in the world and history (Psalm 24:1; Psalm 89:11; Daniel 2:20; Daniel 4:34-36). God is able to both give people freewill while also working out his plan for history (Genesis 5:20; Isaiah 37:21-29). We are living in the last days (e.g. 1 John 2:18) in a time that students of the Bible have labeled the ‘church age’. Concerning the future, we interpret the bible using a historical-grammatical (“literal”) approach, therefore we believe the Bible teaches something we label as a dispensational, premillennial position.
The Bible describes several events that are yet future. First, the ‘rapture’ of all people who are saved, an event in which all people from the past and present who believed by faith are raised to meet Jesus “in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57). That saved people today are not appointed to wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11) but look for the blessed hope of Christ coming for us (Titus 2:13), laboring that our works may be acceptable by Christ (1 Corinthians 15:53-58; 2 Corinthians 5:9), shows that the hope of the ‘rapture’ is imminent and will occur before the great tribulation. Second, the great tribulation (Matthew 24:21; Revelation 6-19) and times of “Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7) will come upon the all the world as God pours out his wrath upon men for their rebellion against him (Revelation 6:15-17). And yet, for all that they will not repent of their sins against God (Revelation 9:20-21). Some people will repent and be saved and will experience great persecution from the rulers of the earth (Revelation 6:10, 7:14, etc.) Third, although no man knows the day nor the hour (Mark 13:32), Jesus Christ will return to earth at the end of the 7 years of tribulation (Matthew 24:27, 30; Revelation 19). Christ will judge the nations and then reign upon the throne of David for a thousand years (a.k.a. the millennial reign of Christ), while Satan is bound in the bottomless pit (Revelation 20:6). Fourth, at the end of the thousand years, Satan will be loosed for a short time in which time God will defeat the armies of Satan once and for all (Revelation 20:7-10). Fifth, at the great white throne God will judge people out of his books. All those whose names were not written in the book of life will be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11-15). Sixth, God will destroy this sin cursed universe and create a new heaven and a new earth (2 Peter 3:10-13, Revelation 21-22). Sometimes referred by Bible students as the eternal state, all people who are saved by the blood of Jesus will live in the the new heavens and the new earth in God’s eternal kingdom.