Shenandoah Baptist Church, as a local congregation of the Church universal (see paragraph 10), has from its beginning adhered to the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith and stands with uncompromising commitment to the Old and New Testaments as the divinely inspired Word of God and the authority for doctrinal beliefs.
1. We believe the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God, the written record of His supernatural revelation of Himself to man, absolute in its authority, complete in its revelation, and final and without errors in its content (Exodus 34:27; Jeremiah 30:1-2; II Timothy 3:16; II Peter 1:21; Revelation 22:18-19).
2. We believe in one God, sovereign, almighty, holy, unchanging, and eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:16, 17; 28:19; John 14:16-17).
3. We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:16; John 1:1-2; Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 1:3), His virgin birth (Matthew 1:18-20), His blood atonement (Matthew 26:28; I Peter 1:18-19; I John 1:7), His sinless perfection (Hebrews 4:15; 7:26), His bodily resurrection (Luke 24:20, 51; Acts 1:9), and His present life in heaven for us as High Priest and Advocate (Mark 16:19; Romans 8:34; Hebrews 4:14; 6:20; 7:25; I John 2:1).
4. We believe in the personal, premillennial, and imminent return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:27; John 14:3; Acts 1:11; I Thessalonians 4:13-18).
5. We believe the Holy Spirit is a person of the Godhead, and that He is sent by the Lord Jesus Christ from God the Father to convict the world of sin, to regenerate, seal, indwell, guide, teach, anoint, and intercede with each believer, and to baptize each believer into the body of Christ (John 15:26; 16:7, 13; Ephesians 1:13; I John 2:20, 27; I Corinthians 12:13; Romans 8:27).
6. We believe man, in his natural state, is spiritually lost, alienated from God, and is incapable of any personal effort or merit for the attainment of salvation (Romans 3-5).
We believe that God wonderfully foreordains and immutably creates each person as male or female in conformity with one’s biological sex. Gender is therefore a purpose of God’s good creation (Genesis 1:26-27), and a rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of this purpose for his or her life.
We believe that the term marriage has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture (Genesis 2:18-25). We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other (1 Corinthians 6:18, 7:2-5; Hebrews 13:4). We believe that God’s command is that there be no sexual intimacy between a man and a woman outside of or apart from marriage.
7. We believe the salvation of man is by grace, a free gift of God, received through faith in the Lord Jesus (Romans 3:23-25; Ephesians 2:8-9), who “died for our sins according to the scriptures,” and who is “the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (I Corinthians 15:3; I John 2:2). Without His death and the shedding of His blood, there is no remission of sins (Romans 5:9; Hebrews 9:22; 10:19-20). Those who receive Christ by faith (John 1:12) have their sins forgiven (Ephesians 1:7) and are baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:13), thereby becoming children of God (John 1:12).
8. We believe that all true believers have eternal life as a present possession, being “sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30), and can therefore have full assurance of salvation for time and eternity (John 3:16; 5:24; 10:28-29; I Peter 1:3-5; I John 5:12, 13; Jude 24).
9. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust (John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15; I Corinthians 15:51-52; I Thessalonians 4:16-17), the everlasting blessedness of the saved (I Thessalonians 4:17), and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost (Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:12-15).
10. We believe the Church is the company of believers baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:13); that the duty of each believer is to faithfully identify and serve through a local church whose mission is the fulfillment of the Great Commission as stated in Matthew 28:18-20, and whose power to fulfill that mission is the power of the indwelling Christ (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 1:6; 4:13; II Peter 1:3).
11. We believe baptism (immersion) in water is a symbol signifying the union of the believer with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life (Romans 6:3-11).
12. We believe the Lord’s Supper is a memorial signifying the offering of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, for the sins of the world, and a reminder of His promised return (Matthew 26:26-30; I Corinthians 11:23-26).
13. We believe every child of God is commanded to live a life of obedience to God and separation from evil. We believe that the beginning evidence of this life of obedience and separation is repentance from sin (Romans 12:1-2; II Corinthians 6:14-18; I John 2:15) and that the power for such a life is provided by the indwelling Spirit of God (Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 5:18).
Our Statement of Faith is not exhaustive of all of our beliefs. The Bible, as the inspired and infallible Word of God, speaks with absolute authority regarding the proper conduct of mankind and is the unchanging foundation for all belief and behavior. The Elders of Shenandoah Baptist Church hold final interpretive authority on biblical meaning and application with regard to faith, doctrine, policy, practice, and discipline.
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