What matters to us

Of inspiration. We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God — every word, not merely every thought — holy men of God speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that they are without error in the words He gave.

2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21; Matthew 4:4; Proverbs 30:5-6

Of preservation. We believe God has not only given His Word but kept it. He promised that His words should be preserved from this generation for ever, that heaven and earth should pass away but His words should not pass away, and that the word of the Lord endureth for ever — and He is able to perform what He promised. We therefore reject utterly the notion that the church of Jesus Christ was without the pure Word of God for any generation, or that it awaited the scholarship of the nineteenth century to recover what God had lost.

Psalm 12:6-7; Psalm 119:89,152,160; Matthew 24:35; Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:23-25

Of the preserved text. We believe that Word was preserved in the Traditional Text — in the New Testament, the Greek Textus Receptus; in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Masoretic Text of Ben Chayyim. These are the texts God kept in the hands of His people and used through the centuries. We reject the critical text assembled from Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, and the versions built upon it, as a departure from the text God preserved.

Of the English Bible. We believe the King James Bible, translated from those texts, is the preserved Word of God in the English tongue, and we receive it as our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. We do not correct it by the Greek, by the Hebrew, by the lexicons, or by the scholarship of men.

We do not claim that its translators were inspired as Moses and Paul were inspired, nor that God gave new revelation in 1611, nor that the English corrects the tongues in which He first spoke. We claim what the Scriptures claim: that God inspired His Words once, that He has preserved them, and that the King James Bible is those preserved Words faithfully carried into English. What God has preserved in the Received Text, He has given us in this Book.

Of other tongues. We believe the same preserved Word may be faithfully carried into every language under heaven, and that a translation made from the Received Text and the Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text, done with fear and with care, is the Word of God to the people who read it in their own tongue. The gospel was never given to English alone.

Acts 2:8-11; Revelation 7:9; Mark 16:15

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We believe in one living and true God, eternally existing in three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — equal in every divine perfection, and executing distinct but harmonious offices in the great work of redemption.

Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19; 1 John 5:7; John 1:1-3; 2 Corinthians 13:14

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We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, very God and very man; that He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary; that He lived a sinless life; that He died upon the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; that He was buried and rose again bodily the third day according to the Scriptures; that He ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of the Father as our great High Priest and Advocate; and that He shall come again in power and great glory.

Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-25; John 1:1,14; Hebrews 4:14-16; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 1 John 2:1-2; Acts 1:9-11

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We believe the Holy Ghost is a divine Person, equal with the Father and the Son, who convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; who regenerates, indwells, seals, and empowers every believer from the moment of salvation; and who guides the believer into all truth by the Scriptures.

John 14:16-17,26; John 16:8-11; Romans 8:9; Ephesians 1:13-14

The gifts have not ceased. We believe the gifts of the Spirit are divided to every man severally as He will, and that no Scripture withdraws them from the church. Where they are little seen among us, we do not conclude that God has withdrawn them; we conclude that we have little faith. The gifts are contingent upon a faith not commonly found in the churches of this land, and the want is ours and not His.

1 Corinthians 12:4-11; Matthew 13:58; Matthew 17:19-20; James 4:2

Of prophecy. We believe prophecy continues in the church as forth-telling and not foretelling — the Spirit-empowered proclamation of the Word already given, which pierces the heart and lays the secrets of it open. We deny absolutely that prophecy is new revelation. The canon is closed and the Book is complete; nothing is added to it, and every utterance claiming the name of prophecy is to be tried by the Scriptures and rejected where it does not agree. Whosoever adds to the words of this Book, God shall add unto him the plagues written therein.

1 Corinthians 14:3,24-25; Revelation 22:18-19; Jude 1:3; Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1; Isaiah 8:20

Of tongues. We believe tongues were given for a sign — and that Scripture states the purpose plainly: "tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not." In every instance recorded, tongues served the carrying of the gospel to men in their own language, that they might hear the wonderful works of God and be saved. So we believe they serve today: a mechanism of soul-winning, given for the unbeliever and exercised toward him. We do not believe tongues are for the assembly of the saints, where God is not the author of confusion but of peace, and where the tongue that edifies no man is silent.

1 Corinthians 14:21-22; Acts 2:4-11; Acts 10:44-46; 1 Corinthians 14:33,40

Of healing and of miracles. We believe God heals, and that He still uses men to do it. We believe He works miracles, and that He still works them by the hands of His servants. These are not credentials for the exaltation of a man; they are signs of His power and His love, given to draw men unto Himself. The sick among us are to call for the elders of the church, that they may pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord — and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.

James 5:14-15; Acts 3:6-8; Acts 19:11; 1 Corinthians 12:9-10; Mark 16:17-18

Of discerning of spirits. We believe this gift is vital to the church and is not to be neglected, for many false prophets are gone out into the world, and Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. We are commanded to try the spirits whether they are of God, and the Spirit gives to some a discernment for the protection of the flock.

1 John 4:1-3; 1 Corinthians 12:10; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; Acts 16:16-18

Of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. We believe these gifts continue, and we define them narrowly, because they are the door by which error most often enters a congregation. There are no extra-Biblical words given. These gifts are the expansion and explanation of the Words God has already given — a Spirit-wrought understanding of the text and its right application, and nothing beyond it. No man among us shall say the Lord told me and thereby bind a conscience with what the Book does not say.

1 Corinthians 12:8; 2 Timothy 2:15; Nehemiah 8:8; Luke 24:32,45; Deuteronomy 29:29

Of the gift of faith. We believe God pours upon some an extra measure of faith beyond that which is common to all believers — not a greater salvation, but a greater confidence for a particular work, so that they attempt and obtain what others do not.

1 Corinthians 12:9; Hebrews 11:32-34; Matthew 17:20

Of order. We believe every exercise of every gift is subject to the order the Spirit Himself laid down by Paul: that all things be done unto edifying, that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, and that all things be done decently and in order. The gift that will not submit to that order is not of Him.

1 Corinthians 14:26,32,33,40

Of fruit. We believe the abiding evidence of the Spirit's work is not gift but fruit — love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — and that a man exercising gifts without fruit is sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

Galatians 5:22-23; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; Matthew 7:16-20

We do not make this article a test of salvation or of Christian fellowship, though we do make it a test of this pulpit. No other assembly is bound by it.

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We believe that man was created in the image of God and by voluntary transgression fell from his sinless state; that all men are by nature and by choice sinners, wholly destitute of any ability to recover themselves; and that all are therefore under just condemnation without defense or excuse.

Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 3:1-24; Romans 3:10-19,23; Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3

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We believe that salvation is the free gift of God, wholly of grace, received through repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, entirely apart from works, baptism, church membership, or any human merit whatsoever.

We understand repentance to be that change of mind wrought by the Holy Ghost whereby the sinner turns from unbelief and self-trust to Christ alone; and we deny that repentance is a reformation of life, a period of sorrow, or any work performed by the sinner as a condition antecedent to the free gift of God.

We believe that all who receive Christ are justified freely, declared righteous by the imputation of His righteousness, adopted into the family of God, and made new creatures in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5; John 1:12; John 3:16; Acts 16:31; Acts 20:21; Romans 5:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17,21; Romans 4:5

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We believe that all who are truly born again are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, and can never be lost; that the believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption; and that nothing in all creation shall be able to separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We believe that this assurance is no license to sin, but the very ground of a holy life.

John 10:27-29; Romans 8:35-39; Ephesians 1:13-14; 1 Peter 1:3-5; Philippians 1:6; Titus 2:11-12; Romans 6:1-2

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We believe that the local church is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the ordinances of Christ; governed by His Word; exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in it by that Word; and having as its scriptural officers pastors and deacons, whose qualifications, claims, and duties are defined in the Scriptures. We believe the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, that its mission is the making of disciples of all nations, and that Christ alone is its Head.

Acts 2:41-42; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18; 1 Timothy 3:1-15; Matthew 28:18-20; Hebrews 10:24-25

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We believe that Christ committed two ordinances to His church.

Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water, following salvation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost — a public declaration of the believer's death to sin and resurrection to newness of life. It possesses no saving power and is required of every believer as an act of obedience and a prerequisite to church membership.

The Lord's Supper is the commemoration of His death until He come, observed with the bread and the cup, and preceded always by solemn self-examination. The elements are memorial and remain bread and cup; no change of substance occurs, and no grace is conferred by the act itself.

Of the Lord's Table. The Scriptures set before the churches three practices respecting admission to the Table, each held by godly men, and we set them down plainly so that any assembly using this constitution may choose according to its own convictions.

Closed communion receives only the members of the local congregation observing it, holding that the Table belongs to the assembled body and that only that body can exercise the examination and discipline which 1 Corinthians 11 assumes.

Close communion receives those who have been born again, baptized by immersion upon profession of faith, and who walk in fellowship with a church of like faith and order — whether members of this congregation or of another.

Open communion receives any professing believer in Christ, leaving the self-examination of 1 Corinthians 11:28 wholly to the conscience of the individual.

This church practices close communion, and states its reasons. We hold baptism to be the appointed door into the fellowship of a local assembly, and we will not open at the Table what we have not opened at the door. We hold also that the body of Christ is larger than any one congregation, and that a brother of like faith and order — a missionary we send, a pastor of a sister church, a member visiting from a congregation walking in the same truth — is not a stranger to be turned away from the Lord's own Table. Close communion honours both: the authority of the local church over its own ordinances, and the unity of the saints who hold the same faith.

We do not bind the conscience of any other assembly in this matter. Each local church, under the headship of Christ and the authority of the Scriptures, shall determine its own practice, and shall be received in charity by the others whatever it determines.

Matthew 26:26-29; Matthew 3:16; Acts 2:41-42; Acts 8:36-39; Romans 6:3-5; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-32

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We believe that all the saved should live in such manner as not to bring reproach upon their Saviour and Lord; that separation from all religious apostasy and from all worldly and sinful practices is commanded of God; and that such separation is to be maintained in the spirit of meekness and love, seeking always the restoration of the erring and never the exaltation of self.

Romans 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 1 John 2:15-17; 2 Timothy 3:1-5; Galatians 6:1; Ephesians 4:15

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We believe that civil government is ordained of God for the interests and good order of human society; that magistrates are to be prayed for, honoured, and obeyed — except only in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Lord of the conscience and the coming Prince of the kings of the earth.

Romans 13:1-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-3; Acts 5:29; Daniel 3:17-18; Matthew 22:21

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We believe that there is a real and everlasting distinction between the righteous and the wicked; that they only who are justified by faith in Christ are righteous in His esteem; and that all who continue in impenitence and unbelief are in His sight wicked and under the curse.

Malachi 3:18; Romans 6:23; Proverbs 14:32; 1 John 5:19; John 3:36

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The seventieth week. We believe that God has appointed one week of years — seven years — yet to be fulfilled upon Israel and upon the earth, beginning when the prince that shall come confirms a covenant with many, and divided at its midst by the breaking of that covenant, the ceasing of the sacrifice and the oblation, and the setting up of the abomination of desolation in the holy place.

Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4

The first half is man's doing. The three and one half years which open that week are marked by deception, by war, by famine, and by the rising of the man of sin — the harvest of what man sows and what Satan drives, and not the outpoured wrath of God. Our Lord told His own plainly, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," and He did not promise His church exemption from the malice of men.

John 16:33; Matthew 24:4-14; Revelation 6:1-8

The Tribulation proper is the second half. From the abomination of desolation forward, there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be — and this is the day of the wrath of the Lamb, the vials of the anger of God poured out without mixture upon a Christ-rejecting earth.

Matthew 24:21; Revelation 6:16-17; Revelation 14:10; Revelation 15:1; Revelation 16:1

The church is taken out before that wrath, and not before. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ shall descend, the dead in Christ shall rise, and the living saints shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, at the midst of that week and before the wrath of God is poured out. We hold this because God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ; because the rapture is declared to be at the last trump, and the seventh angel sounds at the midst of the week with the announcement that thy wrath is come; and because the two witnesses are called up hither at that same hour. We are not appointed to His wrath. We are nowhere promised escape from the tribulation of men.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; Revelation 11:12,15,18; Romans 5:9

The positions men hold. We set them down plainly, that any assembly using this constitution may judge for itself. The pre-tribulational view removes the church before the week begins, resting chiefly upon the promise to keep thee from the hour of temptation. The mid-week view, which this church holds, distinguishes the tribulation men bring from the wrath God pours, and removes the church at the midst. The post-tribulational view keeps the church through the whole week and joins the rapture to the Second Advent. Each is held by men who love the same Lord and hold the same Book.

This church holds the mid-week position, for the reasons stated above, and because we will not divide what Scripture divides, nor join what Scripture separates: tribulation and wrath are not the same thing, and the promises made to the church concern the second and not the first.

The Second Advent and the Kingdom. We believe that at the close of that week the Lord Jesus Christ shall return visibly to the earth in power and great glory, shall destroy the man of sin with the brightness of His coming, and shall reign a literal thousand years upon the throne of David.

Revelation 19:11-16; 2 Thessalonians 2:8; Revelation 20:1-6; Luke 1:32-33

The eternal state. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and of the unjust; in the great white throne; in the eternal, conscious blessedness of the saved in the presence of God; and in the eternal, conscious punishment of the lost in the lake of fire.

John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9

We do not make this article a test of salvation or of Christian fellowship, though we do make it a test of this pulpit. No other assembly is bound by it.

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We believe the Genesis account of creation to be a literal historical record and not allegory, myth, or poetry; that God created the heaven and the earth and all that in them is in six days of ordinary length and rested the seventh, and that He grounded the fourth commandment in that very week, so that the days must be understood as the days of a week are understood; and that the earth is young, as the genealogies given in the Scriptures declare it to be.

We believe that man was created directly by God, in His own image, male and female, and not from any previously existing form of life; that Adam and Eve were historical persons and the parents of all mankind; and that death entered the world by the sin of one man, so that there was no death before sin.

We therefore reject theistic evolution, the gap theory, the day-age theory, progressive creation, and every attempt to accommodate the plain sense of the text to the demand of deep time. We read Genesis as we read Daniel and the Revelation — literally, in its plain sense, and without spiritualizing what God stated plainly.

Genesis 1:1-31; Genesis 2:7,21-22; Genesis 5; Exodus 20:11; Exodus 31:17; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22,45; Colossians 1:16-17; John 1:3; Hebrews 11:3; Mark 10:6

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We believe that God created mankind male and female, that these two and only these two sexes are established by God at conception and are immutable; that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life; that all sexual activity outside such a marriage is sin; and that the family is the first institution God ordained and is to be defended by this church in doctrine and in practice.

Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:18-25; Matthew 19:4-6; Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11,18-20; Hebrews 13:4

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We believe that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, being created in the image of God, and that this church shall uphold the defense of the unborn, the disabled, the aged, and every life the world counts inconvenient.

Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:5; Exodus 20:13; Proverbs 24:11-12; Luke 1:41,44