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What We Believe

Our beliefs can be summarized as follows—

  1. We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as verbally and plenarily inspired of God and inerrant in the original writing, and that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life.
  2. We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  3. We believe in God’s direct creation of the universe, without the use of pre-existing material, and apart from any process of evolution whatever, according to the Genesis account.
  4. We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit, and born of Mary, a virgin, and is true God and true man.
  5. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, and that all who believe in Him are justified on the grounds of His shed blood.
  6. We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into Heaven, and in His present life there as High Priest and Advocate.
  7. We believe that the Holy Spirit baptizes, seals and indwells every believer at the moment of salvation and that the Holy Spirit empowers every believer for holy living and service.  We believe that the miraculous sign gifts ceased with the end of the Apostolic period.
  8. We believe in the personal existence of angels, demons and Satan.
  9. We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned and thereby incurred not only physical death, but also that spiritual death which is separation from God; that all human beings are born with a sinful nature and are sinners in thought, word, and deed.
  10. We believe that all who receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ are regenerated (born again) by the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God.
  11. We believe in the “eternal security” of the believer, that it is impossible for one truly born into the family of God ever to be lost.
  12. We believe in the personal, pre-millennial, imminent and pre-tribulational return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, when the Church will be gathered together unto Him.
  13. We believe in the literal fulfillment of the prophecies and promises of the Scriptures which foretell and assure the future regeneration and restoration of Israel as a nation.
  14. We believe in bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved, and the everlasting punishment of the lost.
  15. We believe that a local New Testament Baptist church is an organized body of believers, each of whom has been immersed upon a credible confession of faith in Jesus Christ, having two offices, pastor [sometimes referred to in the Scripture as elder or bishop] and deacon, congregational in polity, autonomous in nature, and banded together for work, worship, the observance of the ordinances, and the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel. We further believe in the “church which is Christ’s body,” the spiritual organism consisting of all born-again believers of the New Testament age.
  16. We believe that the Scriptural ordinances of the church are Believers’ Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and are to be administered by the local church; that baptism, by immersion, should be administered to believers only as a symbol of their belief in the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and as a testimony to the world of that belief and of their death, burial and resurrection with Him; and that the Lord’s Supper should be partaken of by baptized believers in the assembled church to show forth His death until He comes.
  17. We believe that God offers redemption and restoration to all who confess and forsake their sin, seeking His mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.  We believe that every person must be afforded compassion, love, kindness, respect, and dignity. Hateful and harassing behavior or attitudes directed toward any individual are to be repudiated and are not in accord with Scripture nor the doctrines of Continental Baptist Missions.