Beliefs
For an expanded description of our beliefs, click HERE.
About the Bible
We believe that the Bible is the very word of God, God-breathed, without error, and entirely trustworthy; and that it is the complete revelation of God to Man. As God has ultimate final authority in the universe, and the Bible is His very word, we believe that the Bible carries His authority and accept it as our final authority in all we believe, all we do, and the way we are to live. We believe that it is the main way that God reveals Himself to us today.
About God
We believe that there is one and only one living and true God. He is the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. 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.
God the Father
We believe God the Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace.
God the Son
We believe Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary at His incarnation. Jesus lived as a man but did not sin, and He revealed God to us. He ultimately laid down His life as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sin of the world, was buried, and rose again the third day, showing that His sacrifice paid for the sins of everyone. He ascended into heaven where He is the Mediator between God and Man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever-present Lord.
God the Holy Spirit
We believe God the Holy Spirit inspired men to write the Scriptures and that He enables men to understand it. He works in peoples hearts to bring them to trust in Jesus as their Savior, after which He comes to live in them and empowers them to live for God.
We make a commitment to leading the nations to Christ, at home and abroad.
We strive to do this by being witnesses ourselves to those we encounter here in our own town, county, state, and nation; as well as through financially, prayerfully and physically supporting church planters here in the United States and missionaries in foreign nations.
John 3:16, John 17:3, Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, II Corinthians 5:18-20, Colossians 3:11, Galatians 3:28
About Mankind
We believe that mankind is a special creation of God, made in His own image; and that He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. God made man without sin, but by his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Consequentially, all of mankind is by nature separated from God (spiritually dead), and are sinful people. We are totally unable to reconcile ourselves to God and free ourselves from the eternal punishment our sin has earned us. Only the grace of God can bring us into a right relationship with God.
About Salvation
We believe that God has made a way of Salvation from our separation from God and the punishment our sin has earned us through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, His burial and His resurrection. We believe that there is nothing we can do ourselves to gain our salvation, but that we receive that salvation by the grace of God through believing in Jesus as our Savior, trusting in His death as the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins and believing that He rose again the third day.
About the Eternal Security of Believers
We believe that everyone who truly trusts in Christ as their Savior can never lose their salvation. We believe that we are saved by the power of God and kept saved by the power of God. Nothing we, nor anyone else, can do can cause us to lose our salvation or cause God to remove our salvation from us.
About the Church
We believe that the church is solely made up of born-again believers and is the body and the bride of Christ. We believe in the autonomy of the local church, and that the Bible teaches that the church is not a democracy but a Theocracy, ruled by God himself, Jesus Christ being the head of the Church.
About Baptism
We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a person who has trusted in Jesus as their Savior; and that it is both the first step of obedience a Christian should take and that it is a physical symbol of what has happened to that believer spiritually when they trusted in Christ.
About the Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of Jesus and anticipate His second coming.
About the Second Coming of Christ
We believe in the personal, imminent return of Christ, Who will rapture His church prior to the seven-year tribulation period. At the end of the Tribulation, Christ will personally and visibly return with His saints, to establish His earthly Messianic Kingdom, which was promised to the nation of Israel.
About the Eternal State
We believe in the bodily resurrection of all men, the saved to eternal life, and the unsaved to judgment and everlasting punishment.
About Creation
We believe in the Genesis account of creation and that it is to be accepted literally, and not allegorically or figuratively; that man was created directly in God's own image; that man's creation was not a matter of evolution, evolutionary change of species, or development through interminable periods of time from lower to higher forms; that all animal and vegetable life was made directly and God's established law was that they should bring for only "after their kind." We believe God created mankind into two genders, distinctly male and female. We believe that God not only created the universe and everything in it, but that He is also the One who holds it all together. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
