what we believe
A statement of the faith once delivered to the saints, the convictions that shape everything written and shared here. These things we believe, hold, and teach, with conviction, and we offer them with grace.
A statement of the faith once delivered to the saints, the convictions that shape everything written and shared here. These things we believe, hold, and teach, with conviction, and we offer them with grace.
...that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
Jude 1:3We believe that the Bible, comprising all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the complete, sole, and final written Word of God. It is verbally and plenarily inspired, meaning that not merely the thoughts but the very words are God-breathed. Paul tells Timothy that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16); the word he uses is θεόπνευστος (theopneustos), literally “God-breathed”, the Scriptures are the very breath of God put into words.
We believe the Scriptures are therefore inerrant and infallible in all that they affirm, without error in the original autographs, and wholly sufficient for faith and life. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). Holy men of God “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21), the word for moved, φερόμενοι (pheromenoi), is the same picture as a ship carried along by the wind. Scripture is not the word of men about God, but the Word of God through men.
A word on translation
We read and teach from the King James Bible. We do so not from superstition but from conviction: it rests on the texts closest to the original Hebrew and Greek, and it is, we believe, the richest in language and the most faithful in rendering of the English translations. Because the author studies the original tongues, the Hebrew (עִבְרִית) of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New, we weigh the words at their source. We gladly affirm that God can and does use other faithful translations to save and to sanctify; but where we have access to the best, we use the best.
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the same in substance and equal in power and glory. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Hebrew אֶחָד (echad), “one,” is a word that can hold a compound unity, as a man and wife become one flesh. Even in the first verse of the Bible, the noun for God, אֱלֹהִים (Elohim), is plural in form yet governs a singular verb, a seed of the truth that would later flower: “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26).
We believe God is holy, sovereign, eternal, unchanging, all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present, and that He is love. “I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). What He has been, He is, and He forever will be.
We believe in the full deity and full humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. We believe He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), truly God and truly man in one Person.
We believe He lived a sinless life and perfectly fulfilled the whole law of God, never once breaking it in thought, word, or deed. “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” He asked, and none could (John 8:46). He “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22), and He came “not to destroy, but to fulfil” the law (Matthew 5:17).
We believe He died on the cross as the substitutionary atonement for sin, the just for the unjust, bearing the wrath of God in the place of sinners. “It is finished” (John 19:30), one word in the Greek, τετέλεσται (tetelestai), a term written across a paid debt: “paid in full.”
We believe He rose again bodily from the dead on the third day, in the same body now glorified, and that He ascended into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of the Father and ever lives to make intercession for His own (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25).
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Godhead, fully God, eternal, and equal with the Father and the Son. He is not a force or an influence but a Person, who speaks, leads, grieves, and loves (Acts 13:2; Ephesians 4:30).
We believe it is the Holy Spirit who convicts the world “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8), who gives the new birth (John 3:5–6), and who draws sinners to Christ. No one comes to saving faith apart from His work.
We believe that at the moment of salvation the Holy Spirit indwells every believer, baptizes them into the body of Christ, and seals them unto the day of redemption. “In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). His seal is God’s own mark of ownership and the guarantee of what is to come.
We believe He is the great Sanctifier, who indwells, teaches, comforts, and empowers, conforming the believer day by day into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). The Christian life is not lived in our own strength but in His. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
We believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, by the word of His power. The verb of Genesis 1:1, בָּרָא (bara), is used in this form of God alone, He brings into being that which was not.
We believe the creation took place in six literal, twenty-four-hour days, followed by a day of rest, as the plain reading of Genesis 1 teaches and as the fourth commandment confirms: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth” (Exodus 20:11). Each day is marked by “the evening and the morning,” and the Hebrew יוֹם (yom), joined to a number and to “evening and morning,” everywhere means an ordinary day.
On the age of the earth we hold our convictions humbly. We are certain of the how, six real days, but we do not claim to know the precise when. God may well have created a mature world, with systems and stars and soil already functioning, as He made Adam a grown man and not an infant. We hold the six days firmly and the calendar loosely, and we do not divide over what God has not plainly told us.
We believe Adam was the first man, specially created and not descended from any earlier creature, and that there was no pre-Adamic race of men. “The first man Adam was made a living soul” (1 Corinthians 15:45); “by one man sin entered into the world” (Romans 5:12). The only created order of beings before man is the angels (Job 38:4–7).
We believe that God made man upright, but that in Adam mankind fell. The serpent deceived Eve, but the order matters: Eve was deceived; Adam was not. “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). Adam knew better, and yet he ate, and it was through him, the head, that sin and death entered the world: “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Romans 5:12). Sin entered the human race after Adam took the bite.
We believe that as a result every person is born in sin, with a fallen nature, and is by nature spiritually dead and unable to save himself. “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10); “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). This is the bad news that makes the good news good: man cannot climb up to God, so God came down to man.
A word on the doctrines of grace. Some would call us “four-point” in the historic Reformed sense. We affirm the total depravity of man, that sin has touched every part of us and left none able to choose God on his own; and we hold the remaining points of God’s sovereign, unconditional, persevering grace. But we do not hold to limited atonement. We believe Christ’s death was sufficient for all and offered to all: “he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The provision is for everyone; the gift is received by faith.
We believe God created mankind in His own image, male and female (Genesis 1:27). He made biological man and biological woman, two distinct and complementary sexes, by His deliberate design and with no exceptions. This distinction is not a social construct but a created reality: “male and female created he them.”
We believe marriage is the covenant union of one biological man and one biological woman, for life. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; affirmed by Christ in Matthew 19:4–6). It is the union of one person to one other person, not more.
We believe God created sexual intimacy as a good gift to be enjoyed solely within that marriage, between husband and wife. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).
We believe the marriage covenant is meant to be lifelong, and that the one biblical ground our Lord names for the dissolution of a marriage is adultery, sexual unfaithfulness, “saving for the cause of fornication” (Matthew 19:9). The word there, πορνεία (porneia), is the broad term for sexual immorality.
We believe that human life is sacred because every person is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and that this dignity belongs to every human being from the moment of conception to natural death. Life is God’s gift to give and His alone to number; it is not ours to take.
We believe the child in the womb is fully a person, known and formed by God before birth. “Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb... my substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret” (Psalm 139:13–16). Before Jeremiah was born, God said, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee” (Jeremiah 1:5). When Mary, carrying the Lord, came to Elisabeth, the unborn John “leaped in her womb” for joy (Luke 1:41), Scripture treats the unborn as a living person, not a potential one.
We therefore believe that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, and we grieve it. We hold this not with hatred but with sorrow and conviction, standing for the unborn who cannot speak for themselves: “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction” (Proverbs 31:8).
And we hold it with compassion. We know many carry deep wounds and regret in this area, and to them we say plainly: there is no sin beyond the reach of the cross. The same grace that saves anyone is full and free here too. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). We stand for life, and we stand ready to love and restore the broken.
We believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and not by any work of man. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
We believe that those who repent and trust in Christ are born again by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3), justified, declared righteous, the Greek δικαιόω (dikaioo) being a courtroom word, “to declare righteous,” and adopted into the family of God. The Holy Spirit indwells, seals, and sanctifies every believer, conforming them to the image of Christ.
On election and free will. We believe that both the sovereign election of God and the free will of man are taught in Scripture, and that both are equally true. We do not flatten one to protect the other. On the one hand, God has chosen His own: “according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4); “as many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). On the other hand, the call goes out to all, and all who come are received: “whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17); “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). We hold these together as Scripture does, without forcing a system on them. Election is God’s business; the free choice to accept or reject Christ is ours. Where the Bible holds two truths in each hand, we will hold them too, and we will not let go of either to make the puzzle simpler than God made it.
On the security of the believer. We believe that those who are truly saved are saved forever, kept not by their own strength but by the power of God, once saved, always saved. The same grace that saves also keeps. “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). He “which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6), and the believer is “sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” unto the day of redemption (Ephesians 1:13–14; 4:30). Salvation is the gift of God, and “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:29).
A word against the prosperity gospel. We reject the teaching, so common today, that the gospel is a means to health, wealth, and worldly success, that enough faith will make you rich or keep you from suffering. This is a false gospel that trades the cross for a paycheck. Our Lord owned nothing and told His followers to take up a cross, not a credit line: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth” (Matthew 6:19). Godliness is great gain, but only “with contentment” (1 Timothy 6:6), and those who suppose “that gain is godliness” are warned away (1 Timothy 6:5). The treasure of the gospel is Christ Himself, not the things of this world, and He is enough.
We believe the Holy Spirit gives gifts to the church for its building up, and that He still equips believers today with gifts such as teaching, serving, giving, leading, mercy, and evangelism (Romans 12:6–8; 1 Peter 4:10–11). These abiding gifts are very much for the church in every age.
But we draw a careful distinction. We believe the miraculous sign-gifts, the speaking in unlearned tongues, the gift of healing, the raising of the dead, and the receiving of new revelation through prophecy, were given for a particular purpose and a particular time. They were the credentials of the apostles and the foundation-era church. Paul calls them “the signs of an apostle” (2 Corinthians 12:12), and the writer of Hebrews says the great salvation was “confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost” (Hebrews 2:3–4). The Greek word for these is σημεῖα (sēmeia), “signs”, they pointed beyond themselves to authenticate the messenger and the message.
We hold that these sign-gifts have ceased, having served their purpose. Once the message was confirmed and the canon of Scripture completed, the scaffolding came down, for scaffolding is for the raising of a building, not for the finished house. “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away... but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away” (1 Corinthians 13:8–10).
And here is the heart of why we hold this view. If God were still giving new prophecy and fresh revelation today, then His written Word would not truly be complete. To say “God told me” something new, on the level of revelation, is to say that the Bible was not finished, that something is still being added to it. But Scripture presents itself as complete and sufficient, the faith “once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3), and it closes with a solemn warning against adding to it (Revelation 22:18). We believe the canon is shut. God has spoken finally and fully in His Son and in His Word (Hebrews 1:1–2), and we do not look for Him to speak new Scripture-level revelation now. To expect ongoing prophecy is, however unintentionally, to treat the Word as unfinished, and we believe it is finished.
We do not need a fresh word, a private tongue, or a new sign, because we have the complete, living, breathing Word of God, able to make us wise unto salvation and to furnish us thoroughly unto every good work (2 Timothy 3:15–17). What God once confirmed by signs, He has now preserved for us in Scripture. We do not deny that God still heals and still works wonders as He wills, He is sovereign, and may do as He pleases; but we do not believe He has given the church today the apostolic sign-gifts as ongoing abilities, nor should any believer be made to feel a lesser Christian for not possessing them.
We believe the Church is the body of Christ, made up of all true believers across all time, and that it gathers in local congregations for worship, the preaching of the Word, the ordinances, fellowship, and the work of the gospel. “Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body” (Ephesians 5:23).
We believe the local church is God’s appointed home for the believer, not an optional add-on to the Christian life but the family in which we are meant to grow, serve, and be held. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25). Every believer is a member of the body, gifted by the Spirit for the good of the whole.
And yet we hold this with grace. We understand that some believers, for many reasons, genuinely cannot find a faithful local body, sound teaching, a trustworthy pastor, or a congregation that truly sustains them. Some are kept away by distance, by health, by hardship, or simply because there is no sound church within reach. This is a real and painful thing, and we will not heap judgment on those who carry it. Where the heart longs to gather and cannot, there is grace.
We take comfort in our Lord’s own words: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The church is not a building or a crowd; it is Christ present among His people, even the smallest few. A faithful handful is still the body of Christ, and He is there.
And so, while we believe the gathered local church is the ideal God designed, we also recognize that for some, in this season, fellowship may be a small group, a family, or even a gathering online. It is not the ideal, and we would never pretend otherwise, but there is grace in it, and no condemnation. What matters is a heart that seeks Christ and His people, wherever and however it can.
We believe the church exists to glorify God, to build up the saints, and to carry the gospel to the world, holding fast the truth and walking in love until the Lord returns for His own.
We believe that the office of overseeing the local body, the pastor (elder) who governs and shepherds the congregation, is, by God’s design, reserved for qualified men. Paul writes plainly: “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection... I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man” (1 Timothy 2:11–12), and he grounds this not in the customs of his day but in creation itself: “For Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13). The qualifications for the overseer are likewise written for a man, “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2).
We do not hold this as a relic of a patriarchal culture that the modern world has outgrown. We hold it because it is rooted in the unchanging order of creation, and because God does not change, He never has, and He never will (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). What His Word established remains established today.
At the same time, we affirm with equal conviction that this concerns the offices of elder and overseer only. In everything else, women are fully and gladly welcomed into the work and leadership of the body: to teach (men and women alike in countless settings), to disciple, to evangelize and preach the gospel, to serve as deacons, to lead ministries, and to exercise every gift God has given them. The Scriptures honor women laboring in the gospel, Priscilla who helped instruct Apollos (Acts 18:26), Phoebe the servant (διάκονος, diakonos) of the church (Romans 16:1), the daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9). We believe women should be encouraged and placed into the very callings of leadership and service to which God has gifted and appointed them.
We believe the Lord gave His church two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and that they were given as living acts of obedience and remembrance, full of meaning. We grieve that in much of the modern Western church they have been emptied into dead religious rites, performed by habit and stripped of the life they were meant to carry. They were never meant to be that.
On baptism. We believe baptism is by immersion, the picture the word itself paints, βαπτίζω (baptizo) means to dip or immerse, a believer buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). It is a beautiful outward testimony of an inward reality. But we are clear: baptism is not required for salvation. The thief on the cross was never baptized, yet the Lord told him, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Salvation is by faith; baptism is the obedient testimony that follows it.
On the Lord’s Supper. We believe the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of His broken body and shed blood, “this do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24). We are not given a fixed schedule or required frequency; the Lord said “as oft as ye drink it” (1 Corinthians 11:25), leaving the rhythm to His people. What He did warn of is taking it carelessly. To come to the table with unconfessed sin, unforgiveness, or a heart out of order is to eat and drink “unworthily” (1 Corinthians 11:27–28). The call is not to stay away, but to “examine” ourselves, to come with a clean and honest heart.
We believe there is one church, one body, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4:4–6). We are therefore not non-denominational, but cross-denominational: we gladly work with believers and churches across all denominations, including non-denominational ones, wherever Christ is preached and the Word is held.
We believe the deep divisions and rivalries between denominations are, in great part, a work of the enemy, meant to fracture and weaken what God intended to be one unified body. The devil cannot defeat the church, so he tries to divide it. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” (Matthew 12:25). We refuse to make a wall out of what God did not, and we labor instead for the unity our Lord prayed for: “that they all may be one” (John 17:21).
This does not mean we believe all teaching is equal or that truth does not matter, it matters greatly, and we hold our convictions firmly. But on the great essentials of the gospel we extend our hand to every blood-bought brother and sister, of every name and stream, as one family under one Head.
We believe the spiritual realm is real and active, just as real now as it has ever been. Satan is a real being, a fallen angel, the adversary, the deceiver, and for this present age “the prince of this world” (John 14:30) and “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Demons are real, and the believer’s struggle is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers” (Ephesians 6:12).
We believe the Christian stands against the enemy not by spectacle but by the armor of God, truth, righteousness, faith, the Word, and prayer (Ephesians 6:13–18), and by submitting to God and resisting the devil, who must flee (James 4:7). Our confidence is that “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
We do not believe the church today is called to go about “binding” Satan or commanding the powers of darkness as though that authority were ours to wield. That is not our task. Satan’s defeat was sealed at the cross, and his final end belongs to God alone: in His own time, the Lord Himself will deal with him fully and forever, cast down and bound and thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). We rest in that certainty rather than presuming a role God has kept for Himself.
We believe every follower of Christ is sent. The Lord’s command is plain: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). We are to evangelize and disciple, not merely to win decisions but to make disciples who follow Christ.
We believe the word “go” is better heard as “as you are going”, as you live your ordinary life, at work, among neighbors, in everyday conversation. Evangelism is not only a program or a far-off trip; it is the natural overflow of a life that belongs to Christ, carried into wherever you already are.
We believe the Great Commission begins in the home. Before the nations, before the neighborhood, your first mission field is your own family, if God has given you one. The faith is meant to be lived and handed down at the kitchen table first.
And we believe every Christian can always do at least one of three things: pray, give, or go. Not everyone can go to the far side of the world, and not everyone can give greatly, but everyone can pray, and most can do more than one. Sometimes you can do all three at once. There is no believer who is left without a part in this work, and no excuse for sitting it out.
We believe in the personal, visible, and bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we hold to what is often called the pre-tribulational, pre-millennial view of the events to come.
We believe in the rapture of the church. Before the time of judgment falls upon the earth, the Lord will descend and call His own up to meet Him in the air. “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout... and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). The word for “caught up” is rendered in Latin rapturo, from which we have the word rapture. This will happen “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52).
We believe the church will not pass through the tribulation, for God has “not appointed us to wrath” (1 Thessalonians 5:9) and has promised to keep His own “from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world” (Revelation 3:10). After the church is taken, there will follow a seven-year tribulation, a time of unequalled trouble upon the earth (Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:21), during which the events foretold in the book of Revelation unfold.
We believe that at the close of the tribulation, Christ will return to the earth in power and glory, defeating the gathered armies of the world at the battle of Armageddon (Revelation 19:11–21), and will then establish His thousand-year reign, the millennial kingdom, ruling in righteousness from Jerusalem (Revelation 20:1–6).
We believe that after the thousand years comes the final judgment before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15), the resurrection of all the dead, the eternal blessedness of the redeemed, and the eternal punishment of the unredeemed. “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46). Then God will make all things new, and the redeemed will dwell with Him forever, where “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4). “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.
Ephesians 4:15Soli Deo Gloria