The Godhead

We believe the Godhead eternally exists in three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – and that these three are one God having precisely the same nature, attributes, and perfections, and worthy of precisely the same homage, confidence and obedience (Matthew 28:18-19; Mark 12:29; John 1:14; Acts 5:3-4; II Corinthians 13:14; Hebrews 1:1-3, and Revelation 1:4-6).

We believe God created an innumerable company of sinless, spiritual beings, known as angels: that one, “Lucifer, son of the morning” – the highest in rank – sinned through pride, thereby becoming Satan; and that a great company of the angels followed him in his moral fall, some of whom became demons and are active as his agents and associates in the prosecution of his unholy purposes, while others who fell are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Isaiah 14:12-17; Ezekiel 28:11-19; I Timothy 3:6; II Peter 2:4; Jude 6).

We believe Satan is the originator of sin, and with the permission of God, he thoroughly subtly led our first parents into transgression, thereby accomplishing their moral fall and subjecting them and their posterity to his own power; and he is the enemy of God and the people of God, opposing and exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; and that he who in the beginning said, “I will be like the most High,” in his warfare appears as an angel of light, even counterfeiting the works of God by fostering religious movements and systems of doctrine, which systems in every case are characterized by a denial of the efficacy of the blood of Christ and of salvation by grace alone (Genesis 3:1-19; Romans 5:12-14; II Corinthians 4:3-4; 11:12-13; Ephesians 6:10-12; II Thessalonians 2:4; I Timothy 4:1-3).

We believe Satan was judged at the Cross, though not then executed, and that he, a usurper, now rules as the “god of this world”: and at the second coming of Christ, Satan will be bound and cast into the abyss for a thousand years, and after that “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,” where he “shall be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Colossians 2:15; Revelation 20:1-3, 10).

We believe that a great company of angels kept their holy estate and are before the throne of God, from whence they are sent forth as ministering spirits to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation (Luke 15:10; Ephesians 1:21; Hebrews 1:14; Revelation 7:12).

We believe man was made lower than angels, and that in His incarnation, Christ took for a little time this lower place that He might lift the believer to His own sphere above the angels (Hebrews 2:6-10).

We believe man was originally created in the image and after the likeness of God, and he fell through sin, and as a consequence of his sin, lost his spiritual life, becoming dead as trespasses and sins, and he became subject to the power of the devil.  We also believe that his spiritual death, or total depravity of human nature, has been transmitted to ensure the expected and hence that every child of Adam is born into the world with a nature which not only possesses no spark of divine life, but is essentially and unchangeably bad apart from divine grace (Genesis 1:26, 2:17, 6:5; Psalms 14:1-3, 51:5; Jeremiah 17:9; John 3:6, 5:40, 6:35; Romans 3:10-19, 8:6-7; Ephesians 2:1-3; I Timothy 5:6; I John 3:8).