Garden State Fellowship of Regular Baptist Churches

ARTICLES OF FAITH

1. We believe in the Divine Inspiration and Authority of the Scriptures. By this is meant a miraculous guidance of the Holy Spirit in their original writing, extending to all parts of the Scriptures equally, applying even to the choice of words, so that the result is the very Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. Moreover, it is our conviction that God has exercised such singular care and providence through the ages in preserving the written Word, that we now have reliable texts in the original languages; and that every essential particular is preserved in the trustworthy translations commonly accepted by the true churches today.

2. We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

3. We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.

4. We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned and thereby incurred not only physical death but also that spiritual death which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature, and, in the case of those who reach moral responsibility, become sinners in thought, word, and deed.

5. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice. We believe that salvation is only in Christ and His shed blood, and that this salvation is a gift of God, receivable through faith alone, apart from any works on the part of the recipient (whose only works up till the time of his salvation have been “dead works” and “wicked works”.)

6. We believe that all who receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God.

7. We believe it is incumbent on believers to maintain good works and provide things honest in the sight of all men; however, not in order to be saved, but because we are saved.

8. We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension to Heaven, and in His present life there for us, as High Priest and Advocate.

9. We believe in the “Great Commission” of our Lord Jesus Christ (to give the gospel to every creature) in both its worldwide and local phases.

10. We believe that at any moment the rapture of the saved may occur, when “the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven” to catch up His people to meet Him “in the air.”

11. We believe in the personal, bodily, and premillennial return of the Lord Jesus Christ to set up His kingdom on the earth.

12. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust – the everlasting felicity of the saved and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost.

13. We believe that Christ left two ordinances for His local church to practice, namely, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We believe that Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, symbolizing said believer’s union by faith with Christ in His death and resurrection. And we believe that the Lord’s Supper is a symbolic memorial feast by which we look back in faith to the cleansing blood of the cross; look up in love to our Heavenly Father as we feast upon the virtues of His Son, showing the Father what we have found in the Son, and we look forward in hope to our Lord’s promised return.

Introduction to the GSF Constitution