I. The Scriptures: The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God’s
revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author,
salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of err, for its matter. It reveals the principles by
which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of
Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions
should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.
II. God: There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal
Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all
other perfections. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. The eternal God
reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without
division of nature, essence or being.
A. God the Father: God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures,
and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all
powerful, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God
through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.
B. God the Son: Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was
conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and
did the will of God, taking upon Himself the demands and necessities of human nature and
identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His
personal obedience, and in His death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of men
from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the
person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at
the right hand of God were He is the One Mediator, partaking of the nature of God and of man, and
in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and
glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers
as the living and ever present Lord.
III. Man: Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the crowning work of His
creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by His Creator with freedom of
choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the
temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence;
whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin, and as soon as they are
capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God
can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The
sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that
Christ died for man; therefore, every man possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
A. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new
creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of
sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance and faith are inseparable experience of grace. Repentance is a genuine turning from
sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and Commitment of the entire
prsonality to Him as Lord and Saviour. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon
principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings
the believer into a relationship of peace and favor with God.
B. Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to
God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual perfection through the
presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout
the regenerate person’s life.
C. Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the
redeemed.
IV. Salvation: Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who
accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the
believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification.
V. God’s Purpose of Grace: Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He
regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and
comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is a glorious display of God’s sovereign
goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility.
All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His
Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into
sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts,
bring reproach on the cause of Christ, and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be kept by
the power of God through faith unto salvation.
VI. The Church: A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a local body of baptized believers
who are associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances
of Christ, committed to His teachings, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His
Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. This church is an autonomous body,
operating through democratic processes under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In such a congregation
members are equally responsible. It Scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. The New Testament
speaks also of the church as the body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages.
VII. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s
faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and
the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final
resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church
membership and to the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby
members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death
of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.
VIII. The Lord’s Day: The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular
observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in
exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from wordily
amusements, and resting from secular employments, work of necessity and mercy only being excepted.
IX. The Kingdom: The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and
His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King. Particularly the Kingdom is the
realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. Christians
ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. The full
consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.
X. Last Things: God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end.
According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead
will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell,
the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive
their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
XI. Evangelism and Missions: It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every
church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations. The new birth of man’s
spirit by God’s Holy Spirit means the birth of love for others. Missionary effort on the part of all rests
thus upon a spiritual necessity of the regenerate life, and is expressly and repeatedly commanded in
the teachings of Christ. It is the duty of every child of God to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by
personal effort and by all other methods in harmony with gospel of Christ.
XII. Education: The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is coordinate with the causes of
missions and general benevolence, and should receive along with these the liberal support of the
churches. An adequate system of Christian schools is necessary to a complete spiritual program for
Christ’s people. In Christian education there should be a proper balance between academic freedom
and academic responsibility. Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and
never absolute. The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the
preeminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose
for which the school exists.
XIII. Stewardship: God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are
we owe to him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the
gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve
Him with their time, talents, and material possessions; and should recognize all these as entrusted to
them to use for the glory of God and helping others. According to the Scriptures, Christians should
proportionately, and liberally for the advancement of the Redeemer’s cause on earth.
XIV. The Family: God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is
composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption. Marriage is the uniting of
one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the
union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and woman in marriage the framework
for intimate companionship, the channel for sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the
means for procreation of the human race. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since
both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people.
A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide
for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of
her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of
God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband
and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation. Children,
from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate
to their children God’s values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving
discipline, to make choices based on Biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.
revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author,
salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of err, for its matter. It reveals the principles by
which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of
Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions
should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.
II. God: There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal
Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all
other perfections. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. The eternal God
reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without
division of nature, essence or being.
A. God the Father: God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures,
and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all
powerful, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God
through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.
B. God the Son: Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was
conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and
did the will of God, taking upon Himself the demands and necessities of human nature and
identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His
personal obedience, and in His death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of men
from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the
person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at
the right hand of God were He is the One Mediator, partaking of the nature of God and of man, and
in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and
glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers
as the living and ever present Lord.
III. Man: Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the crowning work of His
creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by His Creator with freedom of
choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the
temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence;
whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin, and as soon as they are
capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God
can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The
sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that
Christ died for man; therefore, every man possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
A. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new
creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of
sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance and faith are inseparable experience of grace. Repentance is a genuine turning from
sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and Commitment of the entire
prsonality to Him as Lord and Saviour. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon
principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings
the believer into a relationship of peace and favor with God.
B. Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to
God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual perfection through the
presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout
the regenerate person’s life.
C. Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the
redeemed.
IV. Salvation: Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who
accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the
believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification.
V. God’s Purpose of Grace: Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He
regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and
comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is a glorious display of God’s sovereign
goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility.
All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His
Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into
sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts,
bring reproach on the cause of Christ, and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be kept by
the power of God through faith unto salvation.
VI. The Church: A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a local body of baptized believers
who are associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances
of Christ, committed to His teachings, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His
Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. This church is an autonomous body,
operating through democratic processes under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In such a congregation
members are equally responsible. It Scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. The New Testament
speaks also of the church as the body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages.
VII. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s
faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and
the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final
resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church
membership and to the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby
members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death
of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.
VIII. The Lord’s Day: The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular
observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in
exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from wordily
amusements, and resting from secular employments, work of necessity and mercy only being excepted.
IX. The Kingdom: The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and
His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King. Particularly the Kingdom is the
realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. Christians
ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. The full
consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.
X. Last Things: God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end.
According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead
will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell,
the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive
their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
XI. Evangelism and Missions: It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every
church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations. The new birth of man’s
spirit by God’s Holy Spirit means the birth of love for others. Missionary effort on the part of all rests
thus upon a spiritual necessity of the regenerate life, and is expressly and repeatedly commanded in
the teachings of Christ. It is the duty of every child of God to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by
personal effort and by all other methods in harmony with gospel of Christ.
XII. Education: The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is coordinate with the causes of
missions and general benevolence, and should receive along with these the liberal support of the
churches. An adequate system of Christian schools is necessary to a complete spiritual program for
Christ’s people. In Christian education there should be a proper balance between academic freedom
and academic responsibility. Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and
never absolute. The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the
preeminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose
for which the school exists.
XIII. Stewardship: God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are
we owe to him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the
gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve
Him with their time, talents, and material possessions; and should recognize all these as entrusted to
them to use for the glory of God and helping others. According to the Scriptures, Christians should
proportionately, and liberally for the advancement of the Redeemer’s cause on earth.
XIV. The Family: God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is
composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption. Marriage is the uniting of
one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the
union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and woman in marriage the framework
for intimate companionship, the channel for sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the
means for procreation of the human race. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since
both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people.
A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide
for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of
her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of
God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband
and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation. Children,
from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate
to their children God’s values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving
discipline, to make choices based on Biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.
