Central Bible Church

THE BELIEFS OF CENTRAL BIBLE CHURCH

The following is a summary of our major beliefs.Those beliefs which are required to be a member of the church will be indicated by an asterisk (*), while the other beliefs are those which represent the theological stances from which God's Word is understood and taught.

The Scriptures

We believe the Holy Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments, to be the inspired word of God. God superintended the human authors of the Bible so that they composed and recorded without error in their original writings, His message to mankind.

The Godhead* 

We believe in the eternal existence of the Godhead in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that these are the one God, having precisely the same nature and attributes. We hold to a Christian understanding of God, simply expressed as "three persons, one essence."

The Father*

We believe that God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, has decreed for His own glory all things that come to pass and governs all creatures and events. His fatherhood involves both His designation within the Trinity and His relationship with mankind. As Creator, He is Father to all men, but He is the spiritual Father only to believers, whom He adopts as His own.

The Son*

We believe that the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, was born of a virgin as the perfect man Jesus Christ, yet He retained His absolute deity, being at the same time very God and very man. He became man for the express purpose of dying as a sacrifice for our sins. Through His resurrection, He conquered sin and death, and became the Redeemer of all those who place their trust in Him. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. We believe in His personal return to earth to rein for 1,000 years and to judge the living and the dead.

The Holy Spirit*

We believe that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, though omnipresent from eternity, took up His abode in the world in a special sense on the day of Pentecost, and that He seals and indwells every believer. By His baptism, He unites all believers in Christ in one body and He is the believer's source of all power and all acceptable worship and service.

Mankind*

We believe that man was originally created in the image and the likeness of God, and that he fell through sin, which in some way marred the purity of who he was created to be while still retaining, in another since, the image and likeness of God. Man, as a consequence of his sin, lost his spiritual life becoming dead in trespasses and sins. This spiritual death has been transmitted to the entire human race, such that every child of Adam is born into the world with a nature essentially and unchangeably bad apart from divine grace.

Salvation*

We believe that, owing to universal death through sin, both physically and spiritually, no one may enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born again. This new birth is a gift of God enacted in the lives of "the called," those chosen by God in His sovereignty and grace. This calling by God occurs when the Holy Spirit draws the elect and transforms the will of man from a will which was once opposed to God to one which now desires a relationship with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. Man then is capable of expressing this desire through faith in the finished work of Christ on the Cross and from His resurrection from the grave.

Election and Eternal Security

We believe that, in eternity past, God, in His sovereign good pleasure, and not based upon any foreseen merit in them, chose certain people (the elect) to be recipients of eternal salvation. God ensures that the elect come to believe in Christ and their salvation is secure for eternity. Because of His grace in election, man who was spiritually lifeless and hostile to the things of God is given life by the Spirit and in this new birth then calls out for his Father in faith and by his own free will.

Dispensations

We believe that God has dealt with man at different times in different ways. This belief stems from a literal-historical-grammatical, contextual interpretation of scripture, using the normal sense of language. This effects our views on all other areas of Systematic Theology and the importance we place on studying the Bible.

The Church

We believe that all who are born again through faith in Jesus Christ are members of the church universal, which is the bride and body of Christ, who is its head. God has ordained the formation of local churches, where believers are to be equipped for their work of service through the oversight of pastors and elders. Two ordinances are given to the church: Water Baptism and the Lord's Table. These are reserved for and to be observed by those who profess their faith in Jesus Christ.

The Christian Walk

We believe that Christians are called with a holy calling, not to walk after the lusts of their sinful natures, but after the Spirit, and so to live in the power of the indwelling Spirit. It is the responsibility of all believers to be witnesses of the saving grace of Christ and to exercise their spiritual gifts for the building up of the saints.

Future Things

We believe in the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the air to receive to Himself all those, dead or alive, who belong to Him. At the end of the present age, initiated after the rapture of the Church, the earth will undergo a time of judgment or "Tribulation" for seven years. The culmination of the Tribulation will be the personal return of Christ to the earth to establish the "Millennial Age," the time during which Christ will reign, Satan will be bound, Israel will be restored, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. The final judgment will occur at the end of the Millennial Age. The unsaved will be cast into the Lake of Fire to be punished with everlasting separation from the presence of the Lord. The saved will enjoy conscious blessedness forever in the presence of the Trinitarian God while dwelling in the New Heavens and New Earth.