At Liberty Baptist Church we believe that sound doctrine is vital to the health and well-being of the church. These are the core doctrines that bind us together as a body. More information as well as biblical defenses for each statement are available upon request.
We believe that the Bible, sixty-six books in the Old and New Testaments, is without error in its original writing, its author was God, using Spirit-inspired men, being thereby verbally and plenarily inspired, it is the sole authority for faith and practice.
We believe that there is one, and only one, living and true God, an infinite, eternal, self-existing, perfect Spirit. He is a personal Being, the creator and upholder of the universe. In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in essence and in every divine perfection, but having distinct work.
We believe in the Genesis account of Creation and that it is to be accepted literally and not figuratively. We believe that the six days of creation in Genesis chapter one were solar, that is twenty-four hour days; that all animal and vegetable life was made directly and God’s established law is that they bring forth only “after their kind,” and that man was created directly in God’s own image and after His own likeness and did not evolve from any lower form of life.
We believe that man, although created without sin, by one transgression fell so that all mankind are now sinners by state, disposition, and act, justly under condemnation.
We believe that the only way of salvation for sinners is by grace made possible by the substitutionary death of the Son of God, who, though eternally God, was born of the virgin Mary, assumed human nature, yet without sin, and lived a perfect, sinless life, shed His precious blood on the cross, arose bodily from the grave, and ascended to reign on high.
The blessings of salvation are made free to all by the Gospel. It is the duty of all to accept them by penitent and obedient faith, and nothing prevents the salvation of the greatest sinner except his own voluntary refusal to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
We believe that all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are justified, their sin is pardoned, and the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed to them. They are regenerated (born again), and are given spiritual life, manifesting repentance and faith; and that such true believers grow in grace and shall persevere to the end.
We believe that sanctification is presented in three phases in Scripture: that believers have been made partakers of Christ’s holiness, that they are being progressively sanctified, and that they will be completely sanctified at their glorification. There is no complete eradication of the old nature in progressive sanctification.
We believe in the Holy Spirit who is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. He is the third person of the Godhead who convicts, regenerates, baptizes, indwells, seals, and fills all believers. We believe Spirit baptism takes place at the moment of regeneration. While we understand that God is able to intervene in human affairs in any way He chooses, we also believe that miraculous spiritual gifts have ceased, having fulfilled their attesting and verifying role.
We believe that a local, visible church is a congregation of baptized believers associated together by a common faith and fellowship in the Gospel, observing the ordinances of Christ and governed by His Word, seeking to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth and that its only Scriptural officers are pastor/teacher(s) and deacons, whose qualifications, claims and duties are defined in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. We believe that the designation of elder, bishop, overseer, and pastor are used interchangeably in the Scriptures and refer to the same office. We believe that Christ is the head of the Church and that the pastor/teacher(s) are a gift of God and are to be obeyed and submitted to as they obey God.
We believe that the local visible church of Christ is a voluntary and independent autonomous group of baptized believers; acting as one body in love. It organically can join nothing, and as the pillar and ground of the truth, it has the power and right within itself to confess its own faith in accordance with the New Testament. Each congregation recognizes its own democratic self-contained government as its highest authority for carrying out the will of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believe that both Christian baptism and the Lord’s Supper are each a memorial, a symbol and a prophecy. We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It shows forth, in solemn and beautiful figure, our faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Savior, as a picture of our death to sin and resurrection to a new life, that it is required by this church for membership because it is a basic command for all believers to be baptized after being saved; in which born-again believers by the use of bread and fruit of the vine commemorate together the death of Christ, preceded always by solemn self-examinations.
We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s Day and is a Christian institution. It is to be set aside for the spiritual purposes of celebration, worship, instruction, and edification of the church as a body, for it commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead; by the devout observance of all the means of growing in grace, both private, and public.
We believe that civil government is of divine appointment, for the interests and good order of human society. Civil authorities are to be prayed for, conscientiously honored and obeyed; except only in the things opposed by the Word of God, which reveals the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Lord of the conscience, and the Prince of the kings of the earth. Church and state should be separate, the state owing the church protection and full freedom. No ecclesiastical group or denomination should be preferred above another by the state; the state should not impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.
We believe that there is a radical and essential difference between the righteous and the wicked; that such only as through faith are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, are truly righteous in His sight. All such as continue in impenitence and unbelief are in His sight wicked, and under condemnation. There will be a resurrection of the righteous and a resurrection of the unrighteous.
We believe the Scriptures teach that at death the spirit and soul of the believer pass instantly into the presence of Christ and remain in conscious joy until the resurrection of the body when Christ comes for His own. The blessed hope of the believer is the imminent, personal, pre-tribulational, premillennial appearance of Christ to rapture the church, His bride. His righteous judgments will then be poured out on an unbelieving world during the Tribulation (the seventieth week of Daniel), the last half of which is the Great Tribulation. The climax of this fearful era will be the physical return of Jesus Christ to the earth in great glory to introduce the Davidic kingdom; Israel will be saved and restored as a nation; Satan will be bound and the curse will be lifted from the physical creation. Following the Millennium, the Great White Throne judgment will occur, at which time the bodies and souls of the wicked shall be reunited and cast into the Lake of Fire.
We believe the Word of God teaches total and complete separation from all forms of heresy and ecclesiastical apostasy. We believe that we must, in obedience to God’s Word, separate ourselves from those who deny the doctrine of Jesus Christ, any so-called brother or sister who persists in living a life contrary to the Word of God, and those who persist in teaching heresy.
We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of marriage and that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, transvestism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery, and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sex. We believe that God forbids any attempt to alter one’s gender. We believe that God has ordained marriage and defined it as the covenant relationship between a man and a woman, and therefore, Liberty Baptist Church will only recognize marriages between one biological man and one biological woman.