We believe in the Trinity, the one eternal Triune God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We believe that each Member of the Trinity is fully God and not a "part" of God, and that each is distinct, the One from the Other, and coequal in all immutable attributes. We believe that the Members of the Trinity are not merely manifestations or modes of God, nor three separate "gods", but distinct Persons of the one and only Godhead.
We believe that the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament comprising the 66 canonical books of the Bible are alone the inspired, "God breathed", Word of God, and that all other writings, including the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha are merely the works of man. We believe that the inspiration of the Bible is plenary (inspiration extends to all parts of the Bible equally), verbal (inspiration extends to the words, letters, tenses and other parts of speech used in Scripture), confluent (the Holy Spirit as the Divine Author superintended and controlled the human authors to use words in their vocabulary, which would precisely communicate God's revelation to man), inerrant (contains no factual error), infallible (never teaches error as truth although it records the sins and folly of man and reveals it as such), authoritative (is the final authority for the believer in all areas of faith and practice) and preserved today in the Hebrew and Greek Texts underlying the King James Version of the Bible, not merely in the original manuscripts.
We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ is fully eternal God and fully sinless Man. We believe that as the Second Member of the eternal Godhead, in the fullness of time, He became incarnate through the virgin conception and virgin birth, accomplished without the agency of any human father as the Holy Spirit quickened the seed of the Virgin Mary by a non-sexual generative act, thus making Him a physical descendant of David, Abraham and Adam, forming and bringing to birth His supernaturally conceived, though truly human body, in the womb of the Virgin Mary through the normal process of human development and childbirth. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ had no sin nature, and that He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet He remained sinless. We believe that Jesus Christ is one Person with two eternally joined, distinct natures, Divine and human, and that at the incarnation He veiled His glory but did not lose his Divine attributes or become less than God.
We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man, came into the world to save sinners from their sins and ultimately from the end results of sin, including but not limited to, physical death, spiritual death, and the second death, which is the Lake of Fire. We believe that to accomplish His redemptive purposes He perfectly obeyed and fulfilled the Law of God, perfectly revealed God to man, and died as an infinite, complete, and final substitutionary sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary to pay the penalty for man's sin, and that no other or additional payment for sin will ever be necessary. We believe that His body was buried and that three days later He physically and bodily arose in the same, though glorified body in which He was crucified. We believe that He gave clear, visible, tangible, objective evidence of His Resurrection to more than five hundred witnesses during a period of forty days, after which He visibly and bodily ascended into heaven to prepare a place for all those who trust in Him alone for salvation.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is a real Divine Person, and not merely a force. He is co-equal with the Father and the Son, and is the active Agent in salvation, conviction of sin, regeneration, indwelling, sanctification, illumination, gifting and placing believers into the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers and motivates believers to lead holy lives pleasing to God. We are opposed to the charismatic movement and believe that the temporary sign gifts listed in the New Testament have ceased - in particular, the gifts of Apostle, Prophet, Healings, Miracles, Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues, and new revelation (Word of Knowledge). All of the spiritual gifts that related to the reception of new special revelation ceased with the close of the New Testament canon.
We believe that every human being, except for the Lord Jesus Christ, is a sinner by nature and by choice, having broken the holy Law of God, and is spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. As a result, each and every person needs to be saved from his or her sins, and from the judgment of God. We believe that salvation is only by God's grace through faith in the Christ of Scripture alone. To receive God's gift of full eternal salvation and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit requires no human effort, works, additional steps or external manifestations following faith. Salvation is eternally secure because human works have nothing to do with salvation. Our "good works" cannot save us, and thus our "bad works" cannot remove our salvation. Obedience, good works and the fruit of the Spirit are the result of salvation, not its cause. Genuine faith necessarily implies a simultaneous true repentance from sin and confidence in the Word of God which reveals Jesus Christ as the one and only God / Man, who died for our sins, who was buried, and who rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. We believe that this is the essential difference between true Christianity and all other "world religions" which depend upon some works of individual sinful men for salvation.
We believe that God created the entire universe, including our planet earth, and all that exists therein, by His Word, out of nothing, in six literal solar days, and rested on the seventh day approximately 6,000 years ago. We believe that God created a literal Adam and Eve, and that they are the first parents of the entire human race. We believe that man was created in the image of God, but chose to sin. Thus, all persons inherit a fallen nature and are lost sinners in need of salvation. We believe in the literal global flood in the days of Noah that killed all living creatures and all men except Noah, his family, and the animals that were with him on the ark. We reject theistic evolution, threshold creationism, progressive creationism, and all other compromise positions.
We are Premillennial and Pretribulational. We believe in the Blessed Hope, the Rapture, by which we mean that our Lord Jesus Christ will return to catch up His Bride, the Church, in the air at the end of this age in the same manner in which He ascended into heaven as promised by the angelic beings at the Ascension. Following the Rapture, the Church will receive eternal rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ in heaven and participate in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, while a literal seven-year period of tribulation occurs on the earth. At the end of the tribulation, Christ will return to earth and establish a literal one thousand year reign on earth. At the end of the thousand-year reign, all the wicked will be judged at the Great White Throne and cast into the lake of fire, never to be consumed, but to suffer eternal torment. The saved will enter the eternal state in joy, thanksgiving and bliss.
We believe that Scripture clearly teaches the eternal reality of heaven or hell as the ultimate destination of all human beings depending on their relationship to Christ. We believe that Christianity is reduced to irrelevancy unless the eternally critical nature of salvation and the eternal destinations, unchangeable after death, of all moral creatures are understood. God is longsuffering toward us and is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. However, He has also made it clear that those who reject His love, offered through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, will be resurrected from the dead and, because of their own personal choice not to trust in Christ alone for salvation, will eternally suffer God's wrath in the Lake of Fire. Those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation from their sins will be resurrected from the dead and spend eternity in the bliss of heaven.
