All
members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Staff (Directors)
shall sign (annually) and shall subscribe fully and unreservedly to the
following Statement of Faith.
3:1.
THE SCRIPTURES: We believe in the divine
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. By this is meant a miraculous
guidance of the Holy Spirit in their original writing, extending to all
parts of the Scriptures equally, applying even to the choice of words,
so that the result is the very Word of God, the only infallible rule of
faith and practice. Moreover, it is our conviction that God has exercised
such singular care and providence through the ages in preserving the written
Word, that the Scriptures as we now have them are in every essential particular
as originally given and contain all things necessary to salvation.
3:2.
THE TRINITY: We believe in the one God,
revealed as existing in three equal Persons, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit.
3:3.
JESUS CHRIST: We believe in the deity of
the Lord Jesus Christ; His incarnation, including the divine conception,
virgin birth and true humanity without sin; His death, bodily resurrection,
ascension and visible second-coming, the sufficiency of His substitutionary
atonement for the sins of the world, and the free justification by faith
in Him alone of every sinner who repents, believes in and receives Him
as personal Savior; our present Advocate with the Father.
3:4.
THE HOLY SPIRIT: We believe in the Holy
Spirit as a Divine Person a personality distinct from the Father and the
Son, His ministry (work) in regeneration, baptizing (positional into Christ),
indwelling, sealing, filling (source of power for Christian life and service),
intercession, teaching, restraining against sin and convicting of sin
and of righteousness and judgment.
3:5.
MAN: We believe that as through one man
sin entered into the world, and death through sin; so death passed unto
all men, for that all sinned.
3:6.
SALVATION: We believe in the death of Jesus
Christ as a true substitute and that His death was a sufficient propitiation
for the guilt of all men.
We
believe that Christ arose from the dead bodily and that those who receive
Him by faith have given to them a new life from God that brings victory
over sin.
We
believe that men are justified by faith alone and are accounted righteous
before God only through the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We
believe in the everlasting conscious blessedness of the saved and the
everlasting conscious punishment of the lost.
3:7.
ESCHATOLOGY: We believe in the visible,
personal and imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church.
3:8.
MISSIONARY MANDATE: We believe it to be
the supreme responsibility of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to
make His Gospel known to all men.
Directors
must be able to have true fellowship with all God's children holding these
doctrines, even if differing in their judgment as to points of Church
polity. If aware that their belief differs in any of the above points,
they are expected to state this candidly, or if their views become changed,
they must inform the Board of Directors and be prepared, if required,
to resign their connection with the Corporation.
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