Doctrine

Statement of Faith

• We believe in the original verbal inspiration and eternal preservation of Scripture. We believe that the Bible is preserved in the Masoretic Hebrew Text, the Greek Textus Receptus, and the Authorized King James Version. The Bible is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. The canon, the sixty-six books of the Bible, is complete. Nothing shall be added to it nor taken from it.
   
• We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
   
• We believe that man was created in the image of God, and that he sinned and thereby incurred not only physical death but also spiritual death. We believe that all human beings are conceived with a sinful nature, and, in the case of those who reach moral responsibility, become sinners in thought and deed by choice.
   
• We believe that Satan is a created being who sinned and became the chief adversary of God and His creation. He has, at his command, a great host of fallen angels and demons to carry out his purpose. His doom is sealed in the Lake of Fire forever and ever.
   
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins as a reprehensive and substitutionary sacrifice, and that all who by faith receive Him as their personal Savior are justified on the basis of His blood shed on Calvary and His resurrection from the dead.
   
• We believe that the visible local church is a company of believers in Jesus Christ, baptized on a credible confession of faith, and associated for worship, Bible teaching and preaching, and fellowship. The local church is autonomous and self-governing with no ecclesiastical organization in authority over it. We further believe that there are two ordinances: baptism of believers by immersion and the Lord’s Supper.
   
• We believe that the “Blessed Hope” of the believer is the personal, bodily, pre-tribulational, pre-millennial, and imminent return of our Lord and Savior for His Church (the rapture) and His latter return to earth in power and glory with His saints to set up His Millennial Kingdom. We believe in the everlasting conscious blessedness of the saved and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost.
   
• We believe that believers are called to a life of separation from all worldly and sinful practices and alliances. We believe that a Christian should manifest Christ in a consistent walk, constantly yielding his members to the indwelling Christ.
   
• We believe that the Scriptural stewardship of finances includes the systematic and proportionate giving of the tithe and offerings to support the local church. We believe that God has entrusted to the Christian his life, time, talent, influence, money, goods, and all things he possesses; and, as a steward of these possessions, the Christian is to administer them under the will of God. 
   
• We believe that civil government is established by God for the interest and good of human society. Magistrates are to be prayed for and conscientiously honored and obeyed, except in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the only Lord of the kings of the earth.
  
  
  This is a condensed version of the statement of faith for Shawnee Baptist Church. The Church’s statement explains in more detail the above positions and shall be the final authority in this matter.