"What We Believe"

We believe the Bible, the Old Testament and New Testament, was inspired of God, has been preserved for us as the Word of God and is the final authority in faith and life.

We believe in the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His manhood, His sinless life, His miracles, His atoning death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and His personal return to earth.

We believe in the personality of the Holy Spirit and His ministry as convictor of sin, revealer of Jesus Christ to man, regenerator of repentant sinners, sanctifier of the redeemed, and infiller for power in Christian life.

We believe that salvation from man’s guilt is only available through repentance and faith in the righteousness and atonement of Jesus Christ as a personal savior and is the free gift of God because of His love and grace.

We believe that the eternal destiny of man depends upon whether or not he has experienced the new birth and that the saved will be resurrected to spend life everlasting with God in a literal Heaven and the lost will be damned to be tormented forever in an actual Hell.

Scripture has its origin in the eternal God, not in the impulses of man. Men were moved by the Holy Spirit to write down God’s own words chosen by Him to express His ideas (II Peter 1:21). It was the Holy Spirit who supervised the writing of the Bible and He is the one who has preserved it for us.

He instructs, regenerates, sanctifies, and comforts believers (John 3:5, 14-16, 16:13-14, I Peter 1:2). The Holy Spirit is the revealer of all divine truth (John 16:13). He exercises guidance in the administration of the church and calls men to various offices and endows them with qualifications for the work of service (Acts 13:2, 15:28, I Cor 12:4-11). The Holy Spirit in this age performs a special work in every believer the moment he exercises saving faith in Jesus Christ. He baptizes the believer into union with other believers in the Body (I Cor 12:13) and into union with Christ (Rom 6:3-4). He also indwells every believer perpetually (John 14:17, Romans 8:9, I Cor 6:19-20) and seals every believer until the day of redemption (Eph 1:13-14, 4:30). In addition, the Holy Spirit fills the believer when after conversion the believer is open and willing to revive the filling or baptism with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). The baptism with the Holy Spirit was the norm rather that an option for the early church and that speaking in tongues was also normative. The baptism is evidenced in general by an overflowing of fullness of the Spirit by supernatural gifts and by a deeper reverence and consecration to God (Gal 5:22-25, Eph 3:16-19, I Peter 4:10-11).

Man is sinful by nature, therefore guilty and stands condemned (Rom 7:18). Man is separated from God and unless something happens, he will be eternally separated as it is appointed unto man to die and after death the judgment (Heb. 9:27).

The local church should gather for the express purpose of worshiping the Lord, for attending to teaching of the Word, and for ministry to each other (I Cor 14:26-33). It is a time when the various gifts of the Spirit should function for the building up of the body (Eph 4:11-16, Heb 10:24-25, I Peter 4:10). As individuals and as a unit, the local body has been commissioned to carry out the command of Christ to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:18-20, Acts 1:8).

When the Holy Spirit stirs the heart of a sinner, it brings conviction and awakens faith. For conversion to take place the sinner must repent-see his past sins, be sorry, and turn away from sin (Rom 3:20, II Cor 7:10). Turning away from sin results in turning to God in faith. The assurance of the believer rests upon the truth of the Word of God (I John 5:10-13) and witness of the Holy Spirit. He stands justified before God (Rom 5:1) because his guilt has been removed. We believe that no individual, once the recipient of the saving grace of God will ever fall totally and finally from that estate, but that he shall be “kept by the power of God through faith into salvation( I Peter 1:5(. They, whom God has accepted in the Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally or finally fall away from that state of grace, but will certainly persevere to the end and be eternally saved.

Man has an eternal destiny, either he accepts Jesus Christ and goes to heaven to live eternally with God or he pays the price of his sins and goes to the eternal hell to be tormented forever (Rom 6:23)