What We Believe

This is what we as a church believe.

The Bible

We believe that the Bible is God’s written word to man. The Holy Spirit spoke through the human authors, resulting in a product that is inerrant, authoritative, and completely sufficient to reveal our fallen, hopeless nature, to direct us to salvation, and to guide us in living according to God’s will, all for His glory.

We believe that the Bible is to be understood through the historical, grammatical, literary hermeneutic, which reveals what the authors intended to communicate to their audience. Because of the divine Author, all passages of Scripture harmonize. There are no contradictions. Only through properly studying Scriptures in this way are we then able to understand how the words of Scripture apply to men and women in the twenty first century.

God

We believe that through Scripture, God has revealed Himself to mankind.

· God is creator and sustainer of everything that exists in the universe. This creation occurred some thousands (rather than millions or billions) of years ago, as described in Genesis 1 and 2.

· Being omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, God knows, controls, and orders everything that has or will happen, from the beginning of time until the eternal state.

· Though one, God exists in three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – each with a distinct and unique role, and each deserving of praise, worship, and obedience. “The only distinctions between the members of the Trinity are in the ways they relate to each other and to the creation” (Grudem, Systematic Theology).

· Although no one Person of the Trinity does any work exclusive of the other two Persons, by way of emphasis a work of God can be said to be “appropriated” primarily by one of the Persons. So, creation can be ascribed to the Father (1 Pet 4:19), redemption to the Son (Rom 3:24, Eph 1:7), and sanctification to the Holy Spirit (2 Thess 2:13, 1 Pet 1:2).

Man

God created man and woman in His image. Man was created free of sin, but by Adam’s disobedience, sin entered creation, and with it came all of sin’s destructive consequences, including death. With sin, man lost the ability to approach and commune with the holy and perfect God.

From the creation account of Genesis 1:26-28, several insights are clear. First, man in God’s image was given dominion, or rule, over the rest of creation. So, just as God has dominion over all aspects of creation, He has placed man as overseers, to manage or rule creation for and under God.

The term image refers to a likeness or a copy. Man, as man and woman, are reflections of God. Of course, in our finite and fallen state, mankind can at best be but a poor reflection of God. The Bible tells us that Jesus, as the only perfect and sinless man, is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). As followers of Christ, believers are, through God working in us, being made more like His Son in the process of sanctification. In this way, we are becoming closer to the image of God as it was prior to the fall.

The extent of man’s depravity is complete – that is, there is no part of man that is not totally depraved. That does not mean that every person is as bad as they can be. Rather, the significance of total depravity is that man is unable on his own to come to God, move towards God, or seek God. It is only by the grace of God that the heart of any man is softened to respond to God.

Salvation

The very idea of salvation implies that man needs salvation from something, and in fact he certainly does. Because of his corrupt nature, man has sinned. This means that he has, in both thought and action, broken God’s moral code. As a result of his sin, man is alienated from God, the creator and sustainer of everything that exists. This is the case for every person, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). The Bible tells us that what we have earned for our sins, our wages, is eternal punishment and separation from God. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

This extremely dire situation is made all the more hopeless, when we realize that there is nothing that man can do to rectify the situation. Through his own efforts, man is entirely incapable of correcting the problem of his alienation from God. The Bible tells us that, without Christ, we were “dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…” (Eph 2:1). Just as someone who is dead is unable to resurrect himself, this passage says that in the same way one who is spiritually dead can do nothing about their lost situation. Even if he were to somehow manage to live the rest of his life in a perfect and sinless way (which is absolutely impossible to do), that still would not resolve the issue of the penalty due for all the sinful behavior prior to this time.

When we truly understand our hopeless condition, we realize that the only possibility for us is if God somehow intervenes. Thankfully, He has. The Bible tells us God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth, becoming man. Jesus was the only man in history to live a perfect life. In His death, Jesus bore the punishment we deserve. God placed the world’s sins on His sinless Son. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Cor 5:21). John the Baptist described Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Christ’s death accomplishes reconciliation: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This work of Christ that accomplishes the restoration of relationship between man and God is known as atonement.

The Bible tells us that salvation, freedom from the punishment of sin, is available to all who believe Jesus is the Son of God, and that in His death He took our punishment, allowing us to be redeemed. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus paid the debt we cannot pay, but we need to trust in him in order to benefit from the atoning work of his life and death. “…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raise him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).

The Bible tells us that, as a result of our faith, man is legally justified, or declared innocent. Since Christ took our guilt and paid the punishment we deserved, God can look on us as innocent. The Bible teaches that this restoration with God is through faith in Jesus Christ, as stated in Romans 3:22, “…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” Just a few verses later Paul again affirms this. “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom 3:28). Other passages affirm this truth of justification through faith in Christ. “…yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ…” (Gal 2:16). “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…” (Phil 3:9).

While justification is immediate and complete at the time of salvation, the process of our lives being changed, being conformed to Christ’s example, is gradual and actually takes our entire lifetimes. This process is called sanctification. Paul instructs us “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24).

The Church

A biblically grounded definition for the church would be “all people, from the time of the events described in Acts 2 (the promised Holy Spirit indwelling believers) until Christ’s return, who have come to saving faith in Jesus, believing him to be the Son of God, accepting him as Lord and Savior, and repenting of their sins.”

The church has a number of purposes. It exists to fulfill the great commission of making disciples throughout the world. In that sense, the church has an evangelistic goal for non-believers, especially within the local region of each localized church body. For believing members, the church exists to equip and build up. It does this through the faithful and accurate teaching of God’s Word, so the body can grow and be strengthened, able to discern between the truth and false doctrines. Perhaps most important of all, the church exists for the purpose of worshiping and glorifying God, through fellowship, prayer, administration of the ordinances (baptism and communion), singing, and the teaching of God’s Word.

Eschatology

We believe that the Bible teaches that the church (the body of true believers from every nation) will be removed from the earth prior to a seven-year tribulation period. This “rapture,” when believers will be “snatched up” is described in 2 Thessalonians 4:13-18, when “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord” (2 Thess 4:16-17).

During the tribulation period, the righteous judgment of God will be poured out on the world, with disasters and terror such as the world has not yet seen. At the end of this seven-year time, Christ will return in glory, which will initiate a one thousand year reign of Jesus on the earth.

This premillennial approach is looking to the future for the fulfillment of the rapture, the seven-year tribulation period, Christ’s second coming, and the millennial reign of Christ on earth, which will then be followed by the eternal state. There is much in Scripture to commend the premillennial view to Christians. One is that it understands Biblical prophecy through the same literal, historical grammatical hermeneutic that is used for the rest of Scripture. The events described in Revelation are seen as being actual, chronologically-separated occurrences, in the order as described in Revelation. Also, Revelation 20:2’s description of Satan being bound is taken as literal, so that all his activities will be completely ceased for the thousand-year millennium.

The premillennial view also seems to best correspond to the world as we see it today. The tribulation catastrophic, judgmental events described in Revelation do not appear to be occurring and have not yet occurred. Satan does not appear to be bound. Jesus is not reigning from Jerusalem.