THE SCRIPTURES

            We believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible.  The Bible is the inerrant, infallible and complete revelation of God and is therefore, the sole authority for all faith and practice.  The Bible is indestructible and forever settled in Heaven.  God has preserved His words for all generations in the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus.  The King James Version of the Bible is the preserved Word of God for the English language and is the translation used for this church. 

DISPENSATIONALISM

We believe that the Scriptures should be interpreted in their plain, literal, normal, grammatical and historical sense.  When interpreted this way, one plainly sees the seven dispensations.  The dispensations are not ways of salvation, but ways that man is accountable to God throughout the successive ages.

THE TRINITY

We believe there is one Triune God in the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who are co-equal and co-eternal.  They are three distinct persons yet one God. 

THE PERSON AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, became man, without ceasing to be God, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, in order that He might reveal God and redeem sinful men.  There was no loss of His Deity in His incarnation.  We believe the shed blood of Jesus Christ as the only ground of atonement for sins.  Jesus accomplished our redemption through His death on the cross as a representative, vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice.  He was buried, and literally, bodily rose again to be the propitiation of the sins of the whole world. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to Heaven, and is now exalted at the right hand of God, where, as our High Priest, He fulfills the ministry ofIntercessor, and Advocate.  We believe in the imminent, pre-Tribulation, pre-Millennial Rapture of the saints, and Christ’s subsequent bodily return to the earth to establish His Millennial kingdom.

THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead.  He is co-equal with the Father and the Son.  His ministry is to glorify Christ.  He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.  We believe His ministry to believers is to regenerate and baptize into the body of Christ at the moment of salvation, indwell, seal, teach, enlighten, empower, and comfort thereafter.  His presence in, and His filling of the believer is manifested by the fruit of the Spirit.  We believe that the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to believers.  God uniquely uses evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip believers in the assembly in order that they can do the work of the ministry.  We believe that the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit were temporary.

MAN

We believe that man was created by God in His image and after His likeness on the sixth day of creation.  Man was created without sin and had perfect fellowship with God.   He willfully disobeyed God’s Word and became a sinful creature, plunging all men into sin.  Man is a sinner by nature and by choice and is lost and is totally incapable of saving himself.

SALVATION

We believe that God freely offers the gift of salvation by grace to all who place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, Who shed His blood on the cross of Calvary; that salvation is not of works; that whosoever will, may choose to receive or reject Jesus Christ.  We believe that those that receive Him obtain eternal life and are kept by God’s power forever.  We believe that it is the privilege of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation through the testimony of God’s Word, which, however, clearly forbids the use of Christian liberty as an occasion to the flesh.

THE CHURCH

We believe that the visible body of Christ is the local New Testament Church.  The local church is an organized, assembly of born again baptized by immersion believers who are to evangelize the lost, and meet together for worship, preaching, exaltation, edification, fellowship, prayer, and to serve the Lord together.  The establishment and continuance of local churches is clearly taught and defined in the New Testament Scriptures.  Its officers are pastors and deacons.  There are a few references that refer to all the saints from Pentecost to the Rapture, which is the church which is His body. Because all believers are one in Christ, we can have fellowship with other believers and other local churches of like faith and practice.  We believe the local church is an autonomous body who answers to God in matters of membership, policy, government, fellowship, and discipline.  The local church is free of any external authority or control.  Jesus Christ is the Head, and its authority is the Word of God.  We recognize water baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the two ordinances of the local church. 

BAPTIST DISTINCTIVES

We believe the Baptist distinctives are Biblical and therefore hold to the following:

Bible as the only rule of faith and practice

Autonomy of the local church

Priesthood of the believer

Two Scriptural offices – Pastor and deacons

Individual soul liberty

Saved church membership

Two ordinances – baptism by immersion and the Lord’s Supper

Separation

SEPARATION

We believe all the saved are called into a life of separation from all worldly and sinful practices unto a holy, separated life.  We are in this world, but not of this world.  We are also to separate from apostasy, doctrinal compromise, and disobedient brethren.   We should also refrain from all immodest appearances.

THE FUTURE AND THE ETERNAL STATE

We believe in the imminent Rapture of the saints.  All believers will be judged at the Judgment Seat of Christ.  The world will go through the Great Tribulation followed by the return of Christ and His earthly Millennial kingdom.  The lost will be judged at the Great White Throne Judgment.  We believe in the bodily resurrection of all men, the saved to eternal life, and the unsaved to judgment and everlasting punishment.  We believe that the souls of the redeemed are, at death, absent from the body and present with the Lord; where in conscious bliss they await the time, when spirit, soul, and body are reunited to be glorified forever with the Lord.  We believe that the souls of unbelievers remain, after death, in conscious punishment and torment until the second resurrection, when with soul and body reunited, they shall appear at the Great White Throne Judgment, and shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be annihilated, but to suffer everlasting conscious punishment and torment.

CREATION

We believe that God created the universe in six literal solar days (24 hour periods).  We reject evolution, the Gap Theory, the Day-Age Theory, and Theistic Evolution as unscriptural theories of origin.

MISSIONS

We believe that God has given the church the Great Commission to proclaim the Gospel to all nations so that there might be a great multitude from every nation, tribe, ethnic group, and language group who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  As ambassadors of Christ, we must proclaim the Gospel by our lives, our word, the use of Biblically sound mission agencies, and the support of missionaries and church planters to actively evangelize local and foreign nations and not wait for them to come to us.