Our Statement
WE BELIEVE
- In the Scriptures of the Old and NewTestaments in their original writings as fully inspired of God, and accepts them as the final authority for faith and life;
- in one God, eternally existing in three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
- in Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and is therefore True God and True Man;
- that God created man in His own image; that man sinned and thereby incurred the penalty of death, physical and spiritual;
- and that all human beings inherit a sinful nature, which issues (in the case of those who have reached moral responsibility) in actual transgression involving personal guilt;
- that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, a substitutionary sacrifice according to the Scriptures, and that all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood;
- in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, His ascension into heaven, and His present life as our High Priest and Advocate;
- in the Personality and Godhead of the Holy Spirit, His indwelling of the Believer in Christ from the time of conversion, and the necessity of His work in making the death and resurrection of Christ effective to the individual;
- in the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church, which is the Body of Christ, of which Christ is the Head, and which is manifest locally
in the gathering together of believers in obedience to Christ alone; - that the Lord Jesus Christ appointed two ordinances – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper – to be observed as acts of obedience and as perpetual witnesses to the cardinal facts of the Christian faith;
- that Baptism is the immersion of the believer in water as confession of, and identification with Christ in burial and resurrection;
- that the Lord’s Supper is the partaking of bread and wine as symbolical of the Saviour’s broken body and shed blood in remembrance of His sacrificial death, “till He come”;
- in the priesthood of all believers; in the personal return of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the eternal blessedness of the saved, and the eternal punishment of the lost; 14. that God has sanctioned marriage between a man and a woman, therefore we believe in heterosexual relationships between a natural man and a natural woman within the confines of lawful matrimony.
Adherence to this stated principle of sexual behaviour is an inherent requirement for membership with the Plumstead Baptist Church.