CONCERNING GOD:
There is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5) who has simultaneously and eternally existed as three co-equal persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This doctrine has come to be known as the Trinity. All three persons are God (e.g. The Father is called God in Philippians 4:20 and elsewhere, Jesus is called God in John 1:1-14 and elsewhere, the Holy Spirit is called God in Acts 5:1-6 and elsewhere) but the Father is not the Son nor is He the Spirit and the Son is not the Father nor is He the Spirit and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son (e.g. at Christ’s baptism all three persons of God are identified as distinct from one another; Matthew 3:16-17). They share the being of God and are yet individual persons (Jesus’ great commission teaches the distinction of the persons and their unity by baptizing people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; Matthew 28:18-20). God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable. He is good, just, holy, righteous, loving, sovereign, compassionate and a great many other things that can be said to describe the absolute perfect being.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is one and the same God as the Father and the Spirit. He existed in eternity past but at a point in time entered into His creation born of a virgin named Mary (John 17:5; Philippians 2:5-11). Jesus has two natures, divine and human, wherein he is both truly God and truly man at the same time. He lived a life of sinless perfection (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21) and perfect obedience to God’s law and He died on the cross as a propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:23-26). On the third day God raise Jesus from the dead. His resurrection was a bodily one although his body was now glorified as He was the “firstborn from the dead” (Colossian 1:18; Revelations 1:5) He appeared to the 12 and then to over 500 (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) others and after 40 days (Acts 1:3) he ascended to the Father (Acts 1:9) and now is at his right hand (Romans 8:34).
The Holy Spirit has also existed eternally as God along with the Father and the Son. He is a person, not a mere power that emanates from God (Note all the personal pronouns used of the Holy Spirit in John 16:7-15). The Holy Spirit has a present day ministry of convicting the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:7-11). The Holy Spirit works in the hearts of the lost and draws them to Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells the believer at the moment they believe the gospel (Ephesians 1:13-14) and also gives each believer a gift that can be used for the edification of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:7).
CONCERNING SCRIPTURE:
The Scripture (the 66 canonical books found in the protestant Bible) is the inerrant and inspired word of God without any error in the original manuscripts and faithfully preserved for us today. It is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be competent for every good work. The Scripture is “theopneustos”, God breathed, meaning it is straight from mind of God and equivalent to words coming from his mouth (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
God moved men by His Holy Spirit to write what He desired them to write while preserving their freedom of style and expression so that while God moved them to write what He intended, even so, the style and personality of the human author can still be seen (2 Peter 1:21). The one mind of God is seen in the conformity of doctrine throughout the 66 books of the Bible written over a period of 1,500 years by at least 40 different authors. No other holy book can claim the consistency of thought and the impeccable transmission of the text throughout the centuries like the Bible can.
The Scripture, as God’s word, is the final source of authority for Christians concerning faith and practice.
CONCERNING CREATION:
In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1). Everything that exists contingently (that is unnecessarily, unlike God who is a necessary being and therefore eternal) came into existence out of nothing by the power and will of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17). God made the universe with phenomenal precision and beauty and in its original state it was perfectly good and without defect (Genesis 1 continually affirms God’s creation as “good”). God made all living creatures “according to their kind” which negates any idea of macro-evolution or common descent. God created human beings, male and female, in His image thereby setting us apart from all other living creatures wherein we are more like God in our nature than any other created thing (Genesis 1:26).
CONCERNING SIN:
While God created the universe free from imperfection and human beings were sinless in their original created state, man made a free decision to rebel against the creator (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve, the progenitors of the human race, rebelled against God and thereby brought about God’s just wrath on mankind. As punishment for humanities sin God cursed the world and all created things which distorted the goodness of creation so that now it is imperfect (Genesis 3 notes that birth pains were increased due to sin and that thorns and thistles would grow and cause difficulty in growing food. Also the male/female relationship and God given gender roles were strained by sin causing difficulty in the most important human relationship of marriage). Scripture tells us that “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22), meaning that because of His rebellion we too were affected by the curse of sin and all of us also sin following in steps of Adam (Romans 3:23). Sin separates us from the relationship with God that humanity was created for which equals spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Because of the state of all people in sinful rebellion against God we all need redemption and forgiveness from our sins. No work of the law nor any amount of good deeds is sufficient to put us back into right standing before God (Romans 3:23-26; Ephesians 2:8-9). Our position before God requires a perfect, sinless substitute that can pay our debt before God, something that we are completely impotent to do ourselves.
CONCERNING SALVATION:
Given the reality of man’s impotence to do anything about our sin before God, which justly invokes God’s wrath and condemnation upon us, our only hope is that God Himself would provide a way back to Him. God has made a way back to Him via His son Jesus Christ. Jesus proclaimed that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus also claimed to be the exclusive path to restoring mankind’s relationship with God stating that He is “the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is God who added a human nature to His divine existence (John 1:1-3,14; Philippians 2:5-11) as such Jesus lived a life completely free from sin (Hebrews 4:15) and he perfectly obeyed the law of God and fulfilled it on our behalf (Matthew 5:17). Christ Jesus, being free from sin and in perfect obedience to God’s law, died on the cross as a perfect substitute for sinners. By faith in Jesus and His work on the cross our sins are taken away and His righteousness (perfect standing before God) is imputed/credited to us whereby our debt of sin against God is cancelled (Romans 3:23-26). All good works in an attempt to earn salvation, all piety and attempts to obey the law or commands of God by us are insufficient because we are sinners, but Christ who knew no sin became sin for us that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). The evidence of justification, that is right standing before God by faith in Jesus, is a life of good works and obedience to the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 2:10; Galatians 5:22-24).
CONCERNING THE CHURCH:
The church has two kinds of expressions in the New Testament. The church is first the entire body of Christ that is baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body through faith in Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). This is the universal church which all believers everywhere and from all generations are a part of by faith in the Lord Jesus. The universal church transcends denominations and creeds insofar as those who are a part have placed their trust in Christ alone for salvation and not in religious systems or other objects.
The second expression of the church is the local church which is a group of believers (who are part of the universal church) who gather together for the purpose of worshipping Christ through the preaching of the word and singing songs of praise, sharing the gospel in the community and doing missions around the world. The local church has had many expressions even up to this day and one local church may hold convictions contrary to another local church (e.g. Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, etc.), but ultimately if we are centered on the gospel of Christ we ought to have more in common in Christ than we have in differences.
CONCERNING ORDINANCES:
The Lord Jesus initiated two ordinances for the church to follow in obedience, namely, the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:14-23) and Baptism of believers (Matthew 28:18-20). Both of these ordinance are for those who are baptized into the church by God’s Holy Spirit at salvation (Ephesians 1:13-14). No unbeliever should take part in either of these holy ordinances they are a symbol of our relationship with Christ Jesus celebrating his shed blood and broken body for us in the Lord’s Supper and celebrating our alignment with Christ’s death and resurrection in Baptism. These are outward symbols portraying historical and spiritual realities, but the ordinances themselves do not impart grace or salvation in any way.
CONCERNING ESCHATOLOGY:
The Lord Jesus did not stay dead, rather, he was raised to life on the third day and was seen by more than 500 witnesses after his resurrection, some of whom did not believe in Him until that point (1 Corinthians 15). The Scripture describes Jesus as “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossian 1:18) and God’s word also promises that those who believe in Him share in His death and will likewise be resurrected as He was (Romans 6:5). So then since we serve a risen savior we have this blessed hope that our God and Savior Jesus will return for us (Titus 2:13) and when he appears we will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4). So then our expectation as believers is that Christ will come again for us and when He does we who are asleep (dead in Christ) will be resurrected to a glorious state and those still living at his return will be caught up to him and translated into glory as well (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). The risen Christ will return to the earth in all his majesty and set up an earthly kingdom where He will reign in perfect justice for 1,000 years and Satan will be bound for that time unable to do his work (Revelation 20:1-6). At the end of the 1,000 years Satan will be released to deceive the nations and muster one last assault upon God’s sovereignty but He will be utterly defeated and tossed into Hell for all eternity never to be released again. Then all those who are not in Christ will be raised from the dead and judged before God and sent into Hell for all eternity receiving their just punishment (Revelation 20:7-15). At this point God will create a New Heaven and New Earth and usher in the final state where those in Christ will dwell with God in His glory and in His joy for all eternity, never to be separated from Christ or our fellow brothers and sisters again.
Concerning the time of Christ’s return no one knows the time or the hour and our attempts to predict His coming are foolhardy (Mark 13:32). Concerning the rapture, the Bible teaches that Christ will only return one time (that is two advents, His birth and His return) and as such a pre-tribulation rapture is not taught in Scripture but is a theological construction of this present age. Jesus words are clear in Matthew 24:29-31:
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Simply taken at Jesus’ word the elect will be gathered to Him when he appears “immediately after the tribulation of those days.”
There is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5) who has simultaneously and eternally existed as three co-equal persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This doctrine has come to be known as the Trinity. All three persons are God (e.g. The Father is called God in Philippians 4:20 and elsewhere, Jesus is called God in John 1:1-14 and elsewhere, the Holy Spirit is called God in Acts 5:1-6 and elsewhere) but the Father is not the Son nor is He the Spirit and the Son is not the Father nor is He the Spirit and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son (e.g. at Christ’s baptism all three persons of God are identified as distinct from one another; Matthew 3:16-17). They share the being of God and are yet individual persons (Jesus’ great commission teaches the distinction of the persons and their unity by baptizing people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; Matthew 28:18-20). God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable. He is good, just, holy, righteous, loving, sovereign, compassionate and a great many other things that can be said to describe the absolute perfect being.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is one and the same God as the Father and the Spirit. He existed in eternity past but at a point in time entered into His creation born of a virgin named Mary (John 17:5; Philippians 2:5-11). Jesus has two natures, divine and human, wherein he is both truly God and truly man at the same time. He lived a life of sinless perfection (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21) and perfect obedience to God’s law and He died on the cross as a propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:23-26). On the third day God raise Jesus from the dead. His resurrection was a bodily one although his body was now glorified as He was the “firstborn from the dead” (Colossian 1:18; Revelations 1:5) He appeared to the 12 and then to over 500 (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) others and after 40 days (Acts 1:3) he ascended to the Father (Acts 1:9) and now is at his right hand (Romans 8:34).
The Holy Spirit has also existed eternally as God along with the Father and the Son. He is a person, not a mere power that emanates from God (Note all the personal pronouns used of the Holy Spirit in John 16:7-15). The Holy Spirit has a present day ministry of convicting the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:7-11). The Holy Spirit works in the hearts of the lost and draws them to Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells the believer at the moment they believe the gospel (Ephesians 1:13-14) and also gives each believer a gift that can be used for the edification of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:7).
CONCERNING SCRIPTURE:
The Scripture (the 66 canonical books found in the protestant Bible) is the inerrant and inspired word of God without any error in the original manuscripts and faithfully preserved for us today. It is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be competent for every good work. The Scripture is “theopneustos”, God breathed, meaning it is straight from mind of God and equivalent to words coming from his mouth (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
God moved men by His Holy Spirit to write what He desired them to write while preserving their freedom of style and expression so that while God moved them to write what He intended, even so, the style and personality of the human author can still be seen (2 Peter 1:21). The one mind of God is seen in the conformity of doctrine throughout the 66 books of the Bible written over a period of 1,500 years by at least 40 different authors. No other holy book can claim the consistency of thought and the impeccable transmission of the text throughout the centuries like the Bible can.
The Scripture, as God’s word, is the final source of authority for Christians concerning faith and practice.
CONCERNING CREATION:
In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1). Everything that exists contingently (that is unnecessarily, unlike God who is a necessary being and therefore eternal) came into existence out of nothing by the power and will of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17). God made the universe with phenomenal precision and beauty and in its original state it was perfectly good and without defect (Genesis 1 continually affirms God’s creation as “good”). God made all living creatures “according to their kind” which negates any idea of macro-evolution or common descent. God created human beings, male and female, in His image thereby setting us apart from all other living creatures wherein we are more like God in our nature than any other created thing (Genesis 1:26).
CONCERNING SIN:
While God created the universe free from imperfection and human beings were sinless in their original created state, man made a free decision to rebel against the creator (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve, the progenitors of the human race, rebelled against God and thereby brought about God’s just wrath on mankind. As punishment for humanities sin God cursed the world and all created things which distorted the goodness of creation so that now it is imperfect (Genesis 3 notes that birth pains were increased due to sin and that thorns and thistles would grow and cause difficulty in growing food. Also the male/female relationship and God given gender roles were strained by sin causing difficulty in the most important human relationship of marriage). Scripture tells us that “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22), meaning that because of His rebellion we too were affected by the curse of sin and all of us also sin following in steps of Adam (Romans 3:23). Sin separates us from the relationship with God that humanity was created for which equals spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Because of the state of all people in sinful rebellion against God we all need redemption and forgiveness from our sins. No work of the law nor any amount of good deeds is sufficient to put us back into right standing before God (Romans 3:23-26; Ephesians 2:8-9). Our position before God requires a perfect, sinless substitute that can pay our debt before God, something that we are completely impotent to do ourselves.
CONCERNING SALVATION:
Given the reality of man’s impotence to do anything about our sin before God, which justly invokes God’s wrath and condemnation upon us, our only hope is that God Himself would provide a way back to Him. God has made a way back to Him via His son Jesus Christ. Jesus proclaimed that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus also claimed to be the exclusive path to restoring mankind’s relationship with God stating that He is “the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is God who added a human nature to His divine existence (John 1:1-3,14; Philippians 2:5-11) as such Jesus lived a life completely free from sin (Hebrews 4:15) and he perfectly obeyed the law of God and fulfilled it on our behalf (Matthew 5:17). Christ Jesus, being free from sin and in perfect obedience to God’s law, died on the cross as a perfect substitute for sinners. By faith in Jesus and His work on the cross our sins are taken away and His righteousness (perfect standing before God) is imputed/credited to us whereby our debt of sin against God is cancelled (Romans 3:23-26). All good works in an attempt to earn salvation, all piety and attempts to obey the law or commands of God by us are insufficient because we are sinners, but Christ who knew no sin became sin for us that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). The evidence of justification, that is right standing before God by faith in Jesus, is a life of good works and obedience to the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 2:10; Galatians 5:22-24).
CONCERNING THE CHURCH:
The church has two kinds of expressions in the New Testament. The church is first the entire body of Christ that is baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body through faith in Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). This is the universal church which all believers everywhere and from all generations are a part of by faith in the Lord Jesus. The universal church transcends denominations and creeds insofar as those who are a part have placed their trust in Christ alone for salvation and not in religious systems or other objects.
The second expression of the church is the local church which is a group of believers (who are part of the universal church) who gather together for the purpose of worshipping Christ through the preaching of the word and singing songs of praise, sharing the gospel in the community and doing missions around the world. The local church has had many expressions even up to this day and one local church may hold convictions contrary to another local church (e.g. Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, etc.), but ultimately if we are centered on the gospel of Christ we ought to have more in common in Christ than we have in differences.
CONCERNING ORDINANCES:
The Lord Jesus initiated two ordinances for the church to follow in obedience, namely, the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:14-23) and Baptism of believers (Matthew 28:18-20). Both of these ordinance are for those who are baptized into the church by God’s Holy Spirit at salvation (Ephesians 1:13-14). No unbeliever should take part in either of these holy ordinances they are a symbol of our relationship with Christ Jesus celebrating his shed blood and broken body for us in the Lord’s Supper and celebrating our alignment with Christ’s death and resurrection in Baptism. These are outward symbols portraying historical and spiritual realities, but the ordinances themselves do not impart grace or salvation in any way.
CONCERNING ESCHATOLOGY:
The Lord Jesus did not stay dead, rather, he was raised to life on the third day and was seen by more than 500 witnesses after his resurrection, some of whom did not believe in Him until that point (1 Corinthians 15). The Scripture describes Jesus as “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossian 1:18) and God’s word also promises that those who believe in Him share in His death and will likewise be resurrected as He was (Romans 6:5). So then since we serve a risen savior we have this blessed hope that our God and Savior Jesus will return for us (Titus 2:13) and when he appears we will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4). So then our expectation as believers is that Christ will come again for us and when He does we who are asleep (dead in Christ) will be resurrected to a glorious state and those still living at his return will be caught up to him and translated into glory as well (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). The risen Christ will return to the earth in all his majesty and set up an earthly kingdom where He will reign in perfect justice for 1,000 years and Satan will be bound for that time unable to do his work (Revelation 20:1-6). At the end of the 1,000 years Satan will be released to deceive the nations and muster one last assault upon God’s sovereignty but He will be utterly defeated and tossed into Hell for all eternity never to be released again. Then all those who are not in Christ will be raised from the dead and judged before God and sent into Hell for all eternity receiving their just punishment (Revelation 20:7-15). At this point God will create a New Heaven and New Earth and usher in the final state where those in Christ will dwell with God in His glory and in His joy for all eternity, never to be separated from Christ or our fellow brothers and sisters again.
Concerning the time of Christ’s return no one knows the time or the hour and our attempts to predict His coming are foolhardy (Mark 13:32). Concerning the rapture, the Bible teaches that Christ will only return one time (that is two advents, His birth and His return) and as such a pre-tribulation rapture is not taught in Scripture but is a theological construction of this present age. Jesus words are clear in Matthew 24:29-31:
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Simply taken at Jesus’ word the elect will be gathered to Him when he appears “immediately after the tribulation of those days.”