What we Believe

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As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we affirm the following as a summary of what we believe to be basic truths about God and His works. The following Affirmation of Faith was adopted by the newly formed Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada in 1953 and has remained unchanged since our Movement’s inception.

THE BIBLE

We believe the Bible to be the complete Word of God; that the sixty-six books, as originally written, comprising the Old and New Testaments were verbally inspired by the Spirit of God and were entirely free from error; that the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and the true basis of Christian union.
 

GOD

We believe in one God, Creator of all, holy, sovereign, eternal, existing in three equal Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
 

CHRIST

We believe in the absolute and essential deity of Jesus Christ, in His eternal existence with the Father in pre-incarnate glory, in His virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, bodily resurrection, triumphant ascension, mediatorial ministry and personal return.
 

THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe in the absolute and essential deity and personality of the Holy Spirit Who convinces of sin, of righteousness and of judgment; Who regenerates, sanctifies, illuminates and comforts those who believe in Jesus Christ.
 

SATAN

We believe that Satan exists as an evil personality, the originator of sin, the archenemy of God and man.
 

MAN

We believe that man was divinely created in the image of God; that he sinned, becoming guilty before God, resulting in total depravity, thereby incurring physical and spiritual death.
 

SALVATION

We believe that salvation is by the sovereign, electing grace of God; that by the appointment of the Father, Christ voluntarily suffered a vicarious, expiatory and propitiatory death; that justification is by faith alone in the all-sufficient sacrifice and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and that those whom God has effectually called shall be divinely preserved and finally perfected in the image of the Lord.
 

FUTURE THINGS

We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ; in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust; in the eternal blessedness of the redeemed and in the judgment and conscious, eternal punishment of the wicked.
 

THE LOCAL CHURCH

We believe that a church is a company of immersed believers, called out from the world, separated unto the Lord Jesus, voluntarily associated for the ministry of the Word, the mutual edification of its members, the propagation of the faith and the observance of the ordinances. We believe it is a sovereign, independent body, exercising its own divinely awarded gifts, precepts and privileges under the Lordship of Christ, the Great Head of the church. We believe that its officers are pastors and deacons.
 

ORDINANCES

We believe that there are only two ordinances for the church regularly observed in the New Testament in the following order:

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• Baptism, which is the immersion of the believer in water, whereby he obeys Christ’s command and sets forth his identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.

• The Lord’s Supper, which is the memorial wherein the believer partakes of the two elements, bread and wine, which symbolize the Lord’s body and shed blood, proclaiming His death until He comes.

 

THE CHURCH AND STATE

We believe in the entire separation of church and state.
 

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

We believe in religious liberty; that every man has the right to practise and propagate his beliefs.
 

THE LORD'S DAY

We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day and that, in a special sense, it is the divinely appointed day for worship and spiritual exercise.
 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT

We believe that civil government is of divine appointment for the interest and good order of society; that magistrates are to be prayed for, conscientiously honoured and obeyed, except only in the things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the only Lord of the conscience and Prince of the kings of the earth.

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