DOCTRINAL STATEMENT
- The Bible is the inspired Word of God.
- Inspiration of the original manuscripts was plenary and verbal.
- All 66 books of the Bible are inerrant.
- The Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice in all matters to which it speaks.
- There is one God eternally existing in three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- All three Persons possess equally all the same attributes, nature, perfections, and characteristics.
1. His Deity
- Yeshua/Jesus was fully God and fully human.
- He always was, is and always will be God.
- He did not cease to be God at the incarnation.
2. His First Advent
- The Man Yeshua/Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
- He was born of the virgin Mary.
- He possesses both a divine and human nature, both distinct and unmixed.
- He was without sin.
- He died a penal substitution for the sin of all men.
- He was buried.
- He arose on the third day in the same but glorified body in which He lived and died.
- He ascended to the right hand of God the Father.
- By His death, He provided atonement for all men, but it is applied only to those who believe.
3. His Present Activity
- The God-Man Yeshua/Jesus now sits at the right hand of God the Father.
- He functions as the High Priest for all believers, always making intercession for them.
4. His Second Advent
- Yeshua/Jesus will personally, physically and bodily return to this Earth for the Church and for Israel.
- The Ruach HaKodesh/Holy Spirit possesses personality and is fully deity.
- He is the infallible Author and Interpreter of the infallible Word.
- He convicts, regenerates, indwells, empowers, instructs, and guides the believer in living, service, and worship through His gifts.
- In this age, He baptizes and permanently indwells and seals all believers into one body.
- His chief purpose is to witness and glorify Christ.
- His fullness and power and control are appropriated in the believer’s life by faith.
- The dispensations are stewardships by which God administers His purpose on earth through man by varying responsibilities.
- They are chronologically successive.
- They are neither ways of salvation nor different methods of the administration of the Covenant of Grace but are a test of man’s submission to God based on progressive revelation.
- They are a necessary view of Scripture based on:
- literal interpretation;
- a consistent distinction of Israel and the Church;
- the ultimate purpose of God being His own glorification.
- There are not different ways of salvation, but in every dispensation:
- the basis of salvation was always the blood of Christ;
- the means of salvation was always by grace through faith;
- the object of faith was always God;
- the content of faith changed in different dispensations dependent upon progressive revelation.
1. Creation
- God created an innumerable number of sinless beings known as angels, seraphs, and cherubs.
2. Satan
- One of these created beings, “Day-Star, Son of the Morning,” the highest in rank, sinned through pride, thus becoming Satan the adversary.
- He is an actual person with all the characteristics of personality.
- He is the originator of sin.
- He operates today as the prince and god of this world.
- He is the arch-enemy of God and the people of God, and he is the deceiver of humanity.
- He led Adam and Eve into transgression, causing their fall.
- He was judged at the cross, a judgment yet to be executed in the Lake of Fire.
3. Demons
- A great company of angels followed Satan in his fall, some of whom became demons who are active as Satan’s agents in the carrying out of unholy purposes, while others who fell are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
4. Holy Angels
- A great company of angels kept their holy estate and are ministering spirits of God for the carrying out of His purpose, especially to those who inherit salvation.
- Man was created in the image of God.
- He fell through sin and lost his spiritual life.
- He is dead in his trespasses and sins and, hence, is totally depraved.
- This fallen nature is transmitted to every descendent of Adam, except for the man Christ Jesus.
- Man has no spark of divine life and is unchangeable apart from divine grace.
1. The Means of Salvation
- Salvation is totally a work of God’s free grace and not the work of man in whole or in part, nor due to man’s goodness or religious ceremony.
- It is a gift to man received by personal faith at which time the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner, thereby justifying him in God’s sight.
- Those who are saved have been unconditionally elected to salvation in eternity past and have been effectively and irresistibly called by the Holy Spirit.
2. The Extent of Salvation
- At the point of salvation, the sinner becomes totally accepted by God, united totally with Christ and, hence, loved and accepted by the Father as Christ is loved and accepted.
- He is now the recipient of all the riches of divine grace and in possession of every spiritual blessing and, hence, is not to seek a “second blessing” or a “second work of grace.”
3. Eternal Security
- All true believers, once saved, are eternally secure forever because of the nature and work of Christ and the very nature of the divine gift of eternal life.
- It is the privilege of all who are saved to be assured of their salvation from the very moment that they accept Him as Savior.
- This assurance is not based on their own merit, but by the testimony of the Scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit.
4. Sanctification
- Sanctification is a setting apart unto God and consists of three stages:
- positional sanctification, in which the believer is viewed by God as already completed “in Christ,” being united with Him;
- progressive sanctification, in which the believer retains his sin nature throughout this life, needs to grow in grace, continually becoming more and more conformed to the image of the Son of God;
- ultimate sanctification, in which the believer is fully sanctified in his state as he already is in his position, which will only occur when the believer sees the Lord and will be like Him.
- God called unto Himself a people who are the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
- Israel is the Wife of Jehovah, unfaithful in the past, divorced in the present, and to be reunited in the future.
- God has made four unconditional covenants with this elect nation that have remained unfulfilled.
- God intends to fulfill all His promises to Israel in a literal way, just as His warnings and judgments were fulfilled in a literal way.
- In Israel’s history of unbelief there has always been a believing remnant according to the election of grace.
- There will be a national regeneration of Israel, at which time all of the provisions of the unconditional covenants will be fulfilled, including the land, seed and blessing aspects.
1. An Organism
- The Church is the body and Bride of Christ.
- It is composed of all Jewish and Gentile believers from Pentecost to the Rapture.
- Entrance into this body is by Spirit-Baptism.
- It is distinct from Israel.
- While sharing with Israel the spiritual blessings of the Jewish covenants, it neither fulfills them nor has taken possession of them from Israel.
2. Ordinances
- An ordinance is a practice that is commanded by Christ, practiced in the Book of Acts, and expounded in the epistles.
- Only two ordinances exist:
- baptism by immersion;
- communion.
- Both ordinances are limited to believers only.
3. The Believer’s Responsibility
- All believers are obligated to assemble together for the purposes of:
- participation in the ordinances;
- to be taught the Scriptures by gifted men;
- to edify each other;
- to worship God.
- This assembling is to be organized as a local church under authoritative leadership.
- The believer is called to:
- holy living in the power of the indwelling Spirit;
- fight the spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil;
- use his spiritual gifts for the purpose of building up of the local body of Christ.
4. The Great Commission
- It is the responsibility of both the church and the individual believer to evangelize and disciple all nations both actively (doing the work of evangelism) and passively (supporting those doing the work of evangelism).
- The specific procedure for discipling the nations is “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile” and this is also true in both active and passive evangelism.
- Christ will return in the air for the purpose of gathering the Church to Himself, both dead and alive.
- This event is both imminent and pre-Tribulational.
- This is the blessed hope of the Church.
- Sometime after the Rapture, the Tribulation of Israel’s Seventieth Week will occur for a period of seven years.
- It is a time of judgment of all humanity.
- It will bring to an end the times of the Gentiles and result in the national regeneration of Israel.
- Yeshua/Jesus will personally return to the earth:
- at the request of Israel;
- after the Tribulation and before the Millennium;
- visibly and in bodily form;
- in the clouds of heaven with glory and great power;
- bringing His saints with Him.
- Upon His return, He will:
- save Israel from her enemies;
- judge all living Gentiles, deciding who will or will not enter into His Kingdom.
- There will be a literal 1000-year reign of Christ on earth over Israel and the Gentiles.
- The Church will co-reign with Christ.
- The unconditional covenants with Israel will be fulfilled.
- Israel will be restored, along with the resurrection of the Old Testament saints.
- Satan will be bound in the abyss.
- The curse will be lifted.
- The knowledge of God will permeate the world.
- Peace will be maintained by the iron-rod rule of Christ.
1. Personal (The Intermediate State)
- At physical death:
- the believer immediately goes into the presence of God in full conscious fellowship with the Lord, awaiting the resurrection of the body.
- the unbeliever enters immediately into eternal conscious separation from God in Hell, awaiting the resurrection of the body.
2. General (The Eternal Order)
- All saints will eventually be resurrected before the Messianic Kingdom to fellowship with Christ in His Kingdom, first on this earth, and then on the New Earth, in the New Jerusalem, in eternity after the Kingdom.
- All unbelievers will be resurrected after the Kingdom to appear before the Great White Throne Judgment and then to abide for eternity in the Lake of Fire.