Statement of Faith

CONTENTS

PREAMBLE — The Authority and the Limits of This Statement

	Article		Article
I	The Holy Scriptures	XVIII	Israel and the Church
II	The Godhead	XIX	The Church
III	God the Father	XX	The Ordinances
IV	The Lord Jesus Christ	XXI	Church Offices and Government
V	The Holy Ghost	XXII	Separation
VI	Creation	XXIII	Prayer
VII	Angels, Satan, and Demons	XXIV	The Four Days
VIII	Man and the Fall	XXV	The Day of Christ: the Gathering
IX	Sin	XXVI	The Day of the LORD: the Tribulation
X	The Atonement	XXVII	The Second Coming and the Kingdom
XI	Grace, Faith, and Justification	XXVIII	The Resurrections and the Judgments
XII	Repentance and Saving Faith	XXIX	Heaven and Hell
XIII	Eternal Security	XXX	The Day of God: the Eternal State
XIV	Assurance	XXXI	Civil Government
XV	Why We Do Not Hold the Five Points	XXXII	The Family
XVI	Sanctification	XXXIII	The Great Commission
XVII	Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth	XXXIV	What We Reject

CONCLUSION — The Subordination Restated

PREAMBLE — THE AUTHORITY AND THE LIMITS OF THIS STATEMENT

Before a single article is set down, one thing must be established, and it governs everything that follows.

Nothing on this page stands above the King James Bible. Not this statement. Not its author. Not the church that publishes it.

This is not a formality. It is the difference between a confession and a creed that has quietly replaced the book it was meant to summarise. A great deal of harm has been done in the history of Christianity by documents that began as servants of Scripture and ended as its judges, so that men were finally examined not by what God said but by what a committee said God meant.

We refuse that at the outset.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20)

That verse is the standard by which this statement itself is to be measured. If anything written below is found, on examination, not to speak according to that word, then the fault is in this statement and it must be changed. The Bible is not amended to protect a confession. The confession is amended, or abandoned, to preserve the Bible.

What this statement is

It is a summary. It is the settled understanding of what the Scriptures teach, set down in order so that a reader may know what is believed here, and why, and where it is found in the text.

It exists for four reasons.

For clarity. A person has a right to know what a church believes before he entrusts his soul, his family, or his Sunday mornings to it. Vagueness in these matters is not humility; it is usually evasion.

For accountability. A statement in writing can be checked. A teacher who has committed himself in print can be measured against his own words, and against Scripture, by anybody who cares to look.

For instruction. Ordering the doctrine helps a believer see the shape of the whole, and how one truth bears on another, which is difficult to see while reading a passage at a time.

And for protection. Not the protection of a party or a tradition, but the protection of people from teaching that would take from them the very things Christ died to give.

What this statement is not

It is not inspired. It is not infallible. It was written by a man, and men make mistakes, and the ones they make most confidently are the ones they never think to check.

It is not a substitute for reading the Bible. If this document is read carefully and the Scriptures are not, the exercise has done harm rather than good. Every article below is deliberately built around the text, with references given, so that a reader may go and see for himself. That going and seeing is the point. Anyone who accepts these articles because they are printed here, without checking, has learned nothing except how to trust a stranger.

It is not a test of salvation. Salvation is by trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, and a man may be genuinely saved while mistaken about a great many of the articles below. Some of these matters are essential to the Gospel and are marked as such. Others are matters on which sincere believers have differed for centuries, and where we hold a definite position while recognising that those who hold otherwise may love the Lord as much as we do or more.

It is not a boundary of Christian charity. We will not pretend a man is unconverted because he disagrees with us on the timing of an event, the government of a congregation, or the interpretation of a figure.

The people this is written for

Members and attenders, who should know what they are part of.

Visitors and enquirers, who should be able to find out what is taught here without attending for six months to piece it together.

Other churches and pastors, who may wish to know where we stand before recommending anybody to us or accepting anybody from us.

And the honest critic, who should be able to find our actual position rather than an imagined one. If we are to be disagreed with, we would rather be disagreed with accurately.

On the language used

Certain conventions are followed throughout, and they are not accidental.

Scripture is quoted from the King James Bible, and only from it, for the reasons set out in Article I.

The third Person of the Godhead is called the Holy Ghost, which is the language of the Book we read.

Our Saviour is spoken of as the Lord Jesus Christ, giving Him His full title, because the modern habit of the bare personal name has crept into Christian speech from a culture that treats familiarity as a virtue and reverence as a defect.

Where an apostle is named, he is named as an apostle.

These are not rules imposed on anybody else. They are the habits of this house, adopted deliberately, and a reader who finds them stiff is welcome to think so.

A final word before the articles

There is one more thing to say, and it is the reason this preamble is as long as it is.

Every generation of Christians has been tempted to hold its own summary more tightly than the Scripture it summarises, because a summary is shorter, clearer, and easier to defend. The Pharisees did not set out to replace the commandment of God with the tradition of men. It happened slowly, to sincere people, over a long time, and by the time it was complete they could not see it.

"Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:7)

We are not exempt from that. Nobody is. The only protection is to keep saying, out loud and in writing, that the Book outranks the summary, and to mean it when somebody comes with a Bible open and a genuine question.

"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11)

They examined an apostle. You are invited to examine this.

ARTICLE I — THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

I.1 What the Scriptures are

We believe the Bible to be the Word of God: given by God, not discovered by men; breathed out by Him and written down by chosen men who were carried along in the writing so that what they produced was exactly what He intended.

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

The word rendered given by inspiration of God means God-breathed. It is not that God inspired the men in the way a landscape inspires a painter. It is that the product itself proceeded from Him.

"For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21)

Not by the will of man. The initiative was never human. And moved is a word used of a ship carried along by wind — the men were not passive, for their vocabulary, temperament and circumstances are visible on every page, but neither were they the source of what was written.

We hold this of the whole, not of parts. Not of the doctrinal sections while the historical ones are left to human judgement. Not of the words about God while the words about the world are treated as the opinions of their age. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself treated the historical narratives as history — Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot's wife, Jonah — and staked arguments on the tense of a verb and the presence of a single word.

I.2 The Scriptures are without error

We believe the Bible to be true in everything it affirms.

"The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" (Psalm 12:6)

"Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever" (Psalm 119:160)

"The scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35)

That last phrase was spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ in the course of an argument, and He used it as the settled premise from which the argument proceeded. He did not defend it. He assumed it, in front of men who would have seized on any weakness.

This means we do not hold that the Bible merely contains the Word of God, with the reader left to sift the divine from the human. That view sounds humble and puts the reader above the text, since somebody must do the sifting, and that somebody is not God.

I.3 The Scriptures have been preserved

Inspiration without preservation would be a cruelty. A God who spoke perfectly and then permitted His words to be lost would have given the first generation something He withheld from all the rest.

He promised otherwise.

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever" (Isaiah 40:8)

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35)

"For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89)

"Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever" (Psalm 12:7)

We take these as promises about the text, not merely about the ideas in it. A God who could preserve concepts but not words would be promising something less than what the verses say, and He chose the wording Himself.

I.4 Our position on the English Bible

We use the King James Bible, and we use it exclusively for preaching, teaching, memorisation, and public reading.

We state our reasons plainly, and we state them as reasons rather than as a test of fellowship.

It rests on the received text. The King James translators worked from the body of Greek manuscripts that had been in continuous use in the churches, and from the Hebrew Masoretic text — texts that were copied, read, and preached from by believing congregations across many centuries and many countries. We are not persuaded that a small number of manuscripts which fell out of use, and which differ from one another as much as they differ from the majority, are to be preferred because of their age. A manuscript that survived may have survived because nobody used it.

Its method is transparent. The translators rendered word for word so far as the receiving language allowed, and where they supplied a word for the sense of English they set it in italics so the reader could see the seam. That is honesty in a translator, and it lets a reader check the work. Translations produced on a looser principle require the reader to trust the translator's judgement about meaning, which is a different relationship to a text than reading it.

Its history is public. It was made by a large body of men, over years, under review, with their work checked by others. It was not the product of a committee with a doctrinal programme or a publisher with a market.

And it has been proved. Almost everything in the English language that has fed the church for four centuries — the hymns, the sermons, the doctrinal writing, the missionary movement, the revivals — came from people reading this book.

We are aware that this position is disputed, and we do not pretend the arguments on the other side are stupid. We hold it, we teach from this Bible only, and we are willing to give our reasons at any length to anybody who asks.

I.5 What we do not claim

Honesty requires that this be as plain as the rest.

We do not claim the translators were inspired. They were scholars doing careful work, and they said so themselves in their preface.

We do not claim the English corrects the Hebrew or the Greek. The Word of God was given in those languages. We believe the King James Bible faithfully renders what was given, which is a different claim.

We do not claim that no other language has the Word of God. That would be absurd, and it would unchurch most of the world. For French we use the Ostervald; for those reading in other tongues, faithful translations on the same textual basis exist and are to be valued.

And we do not claim that a person must hold this position to be saved, or to be a Christian, or to be welcome here. Many believers we respect use other translations. We think they are mistaken. We do not think they are lost.

I.6 The sufficiency of Scripture

We believe the Bible is enough.

"According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue" (2 Peter 1:3)

All things that pertain unto life and godliness. Not most things, with the remainder supplied by tradition, by an office, by a later prophet, or by an experience.

This has consequences we hold firmly.

No tradition may overrule it. Where the practice of centuries and the text of Scripture conflict, the practice is wrong, however venerable and however widely held.

No new revelation is to be received. The canon is closed. We do not accept additional scriptures, and we do not accept that any man living speaks with the authority of the prophets and apostles. A person may certainly be led, guided, and impressed by God — but nothing so received is Scripture, and nothing so received may contradict Scripture or be added to it.

"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8)

And no experience overrules it. Feelings, impressions, dreams and remarkable providences are all to be tested by the Book, and never the reverse.

I.7 How the Scriptures are to be read

We hold to the plain, literal, historical, grammatical sense of the text: that words mean what they normally mean, that a figure of speech is a figure of speech and is recognised as such, and that a statement is not turned into a symbol merely because its plain sense is inconvenient.

We read every passage in its context, noting who is speaking, to whom, and under what arrangement — a matter treated at length in Article XVII.

We compare Scripture with Scripture, allowing the clear to govern the obscure rather than building doctrine on a single difficult verse.

And we hold that the Bible is fundamentally about one Person.

"Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39)

A reading of the Bible which produces a great deal of information and does not bring the reader to the Lord Jesus Christ has gone wrong somewhere, however accurate its details.

ARTICLE II — THE GODHEAD

II.1 There is one God

We believe there is one God, and only one: eternal, self-existent, uncreated, the Maker of all that exists and Himself part of nothing.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4)

"Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me" (Isaiah 43:10)

"I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God" (Isaiah 44:6)

"Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any" (Isaiah 44:8)

These verses close every door at once. There was none before Him. There will be none after Him. There is none beside Him. And He knows of none — which excludes the possibility that other gods exist somewhere unknown to Him.

We therefore reject every teaching of a plurality of gods, of gods on other worlds, of men becoming gods, and of God having once been something other than God.

II.2 God is three Persons

We believe that this one God exists eternally as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three Persons, distinguishable from one another, never divided, never three Gods, never one Person wearing three appearances.

The Scriptures name all three together.

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (1 John 5:7)

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19)

Note the singular in that command. Not in the names. In the name — one name, three Persons.

At the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ all three are present and distinguished in a single scene: the Son in the water, the Holy Ghost descending, the Father speaking from heaven. Whatever else that account establishes, it makes it impossible to hold that the three are simply three modes of one Person, since all three are acting simultaneously and one is speaking about another.

II.3 The Persons are each fully God

The Father is God. This is nowhere disputed and needs no defence.

The Son is God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1)

"But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Hebrews 1:8)

"And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God" (John 20:28)

"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9)

The Holy Ghost is God. When the apostle Peter charged a man with lying to the Holy Ghost, he said in the next breath that the man had lied to God (Acts 5:3-4), which settles the matter in two sentences.

II.4 What we are not saying

We are not saying there are three Gods. If the doctrine of the Trinity meant that, it would be false, because Scripture insists on one God and we insist with it.

We are not saying that the one God appears sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Spirit, in the way one man may be a father, a son and an employee. The Persons address one another, love one another, and send one another, which no single Person can do to Himself.

We are not saying the Son is a creature, however exalted. He made everything that was made, which excludes Him from the category of things made (John 1:3).

And we are not claiming to have explained it. The word Trinity is a shorthand for holding together everything Scripture says rather than dropping part of it. It is not a solution to a puzzle; it is a refusal to solve the puzzle by deleting evidence.

II.5 Why this matters

It is not a technical point for specialists.

Salvation depends on it. If the Lord Jesus Christ were less than God, His death would be the death of a creature, and a creature cannot bear the sins of the world. If He were less than man, He could not stand in the place of men. The whole atonement rests on who He is.

Worship depends on it. If He is not God, then Christians have been idolaters for two thousand years, worshipping a created being, which is the very thing Scripture most severely forbids.

And the character of God depends on it. A God who is eternally one Person alone was, before creation, loving nothing. A God eternally existing in three Persons was loving before there was anything to love, and the statement that God is love describes what He has always been rather than what He became when He made somebody to love.

ARTICLE III — GOD THE FATHER

III.1 Who He is

We believe in God the Father: the first Person of the Godhead, eternal, unchanging, holy, sovereign, and personal.

"But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him" (1 Corinthians 8:6)

III.2 What He is like

He is eternal. He did not begin and will not end.

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God" (Psalm 90:2)

He does not change.

"For I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6)

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17)

He knows everything.

"O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off" (Psalm 139:1-2)

He is everywhere present. There is no place a man may go where God is not, which is a terror to one man and a comfort to another, and the difference is entirely in the man.

He is holy. His holiness is not merely His moral excellence but His utter separateness from all that is created and all that is defiled. It is the attribute the seraphim name, and they name it three times.

He is just. He will not clear the guilty, and He is incapable of the corruption of overlooking sin because He is fond of the sinner.

And He is love.

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 4:8)

We hold these together without allowing any to swallow the others. A God who is only holy would be unapproachable. A God who is only loving would be indulgent, and an indulgent God is not good news to anybody who has been sinned against. The cross is where the two meet without either being reduced.

III.3 What He does

He created. Of Him are all things.

He sustains. The universe is not a machine wound up and released; it is upheld continually.

He rules. He is sovereign over nations, history, and the affairs of men, and He is not surprised, thwarted, or improvising.

He sent His Son. The initiative in salvation was entirely His.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16)

He hears prayer. He is addressed by believers as Father, and that address is not a courtesy but a fact of relationship.

And He disciplines His children.

"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Hebrews 12:6)

III.4 Fatherhood: a distinction that must be made

Scripture speaks of God as Father in more than one sense, and confusing them has produced a great deal of error.

He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ in a unique and eternal sense which belongs to no one else.

He is the Creator of all men, and in that sense all are His offspring by making. Every human being bears His image and is accountable to Him.

But He is the Father of the believer by new birth, and that relationship is not universal.

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12)

Become. The verse describes a change of standing that occurs upon receiving Christ, which would be meaningless if everyone already possessed it.

We therefore do not teach the universal fatherhood of God in the sense of a saving relationship shared by all. It is a kindly-sounding doctrine which empties the new birth of meaning, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself denied it to religious men who claimed it (John 8:42-44).

ARTICLE IV — THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

IV.1 His deity

We believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be God: not a god, not a creature however exalted, not a man who became divine, but God the Son, eternally existing, of the same nature as the Father.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:1-3)

That last clause is decisive. If the Word Himself were a thing that was made, the sentence contradicts itself.

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)

Not I was. I am — the name God gave Moses from the bush. His hearers understood exactly what had been claimed, because the next verse says they took up stones.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6)

"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13)

He received worship and did not refuse it, which every servant of God in Scripture refuses without exception. He forgave sins, which the scribes rightly said God alone can do. He accepted the confession my Lord and my God without correcting it.

IV.2 His eternal Sonship

We believe He did not become the Son at Bethlehem, nor at His baptism, nor at His resurrection. He is the eternal Son, and the incarnation was the entrance of One already existing into a condition He had not previously occupied.

"And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5)

Which I had. Not which was promised.

IV.3 His incarnation and virgin birth

We believe He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary, taking to Himself a true human nature without ceasing to be what He had always been.

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14)

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14)

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory" (1 Timothy 3:16)

The virgin birth is not an ornament on the story. If He had a human father, He inherits what every man inherits, and the substitute is himself in need of a substitute.

IV.4 His true humanity

We believe He was and is fully man: possessing a real body, a human soul, and a human spirit; growing, tiring, hungering, weeping, sleeping, and dying.

He was tempted in all points as we are, and did not sin — which means the temptation was real, since a temptation that cannot be felt is not a temptation.

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15)

His humanity was not a costume, and He did not lay it aside afterwards. He rose in a body, ascended in a body, and is at the right hand of God in a body now.

IV.5 One Person, two natures

We believe He is one Person possessing two natures, human and divine, without confusion of the two, without the conversion of one into the other, and without division.

This is why some passages speak of Him as limited and others as unlimited; why He could sleep in a boat and still the storm that woke Him; why He could weep at a grave and call the dead out of it. The apparent inconsistencies are not inconsistencies at all once it is seen that both natures are genuinely His.

IV.6 His sinless life

We believe He never sinned: not in deed, in word, in thought, or in desire.

"Which of you convinceth me of sin?" (John 8:46)

That question was asked in public, of enemies who were watching for anything they could use, and it received no answer.

His sinlessness is not a matter of admiration but of necessity. A sacrifice with a blemish is disqualified, and a man who owes his own debt cannot pay another's.

IV.7 His death

We believe He died a real, physical, substitutionary death upon the cross, by crucifixion, under Pontius Pilate, and that this death was not an accident, a martyrdom, or a defeat, but the very purpose for which He came.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5)

The doctrine of the atonement is treated at length in Article X.

IV.8 His burial and bodily resurrection

We believe He was buried, and rose again the third day in the same body in which He died, glorified — not as a vision, an influence, or a survival of His teaching among His followers.

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

He was seen, touched, and ate in their presence. Over five hundred saw Him at once, and the apostle Paul notes that most were still alive and could be asked.

"And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14)

The resurrection is not an encouraging appendix to the Gospel. It is the Gospel's proof that the payment was accepted.

IV.9 His ascension and present ministry

We believe He ascended bodily into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, where He now ministers as our great High Priest and Advocate.

"Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25)

"And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1)

He sat down, which no priest under the law ever did, because their work was never finished and there was no chair in the tabernacle.

IV.10 His return

We believe He is coming again, personally, bodily, and visibly — first for His church, and afterwards with her in glory. These are treated in Articles XXIV through XXVII.

IV.11 He is the only way

We believe there is salvation in no other, and that all who are saved are saved through Him alone, whether they lived before His coming or after it.

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6)

"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12)

We hold this without apology and without pleasure in its exclusiveness. It is not a claim we invented and it is not ours to soften.

ARTICLE V — THE HOLY GHOST

V.1 He is a Person

We believe the Holy Ghost to be the third Person of the Godhead: not an influence, not an impersonal force, not an energy proceeding from God, but a Person.

He teaches, guides, speaks, forbids, sends, intercedes, and is grieved. None of those can be said of a power.

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26)

"And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30)

You cannot grieve electricity.

V.2 He is God

He is called God directly (Acts 5:3-4). He possesses the attributes of God — He is eternal, everywhere present, all-knowing. He does the works of God, being active in creation and in the giving of Scripture. And He is named with the Father and the Son in the baptismal formula and the apostolic benediction.

V.3 His work in the world

He convicts. Before a man is saved, it is the Holy Ghost who makes him aware of his condition.

"And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8)

He also restrains. There is a work of restraint upon evil in the present age which will be withdrawn at an appointed time, and this bears directly upon the order of prophetic events treated in Article XXV.

V.4 His work in the believer

At the moment a person trusts the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost performs several things at once, and none of them is a later stage for advanced Christians.

He regenerates. The new birth is His work.

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5)

He indwells. Every believer, without exception, is inhabited by Him.

"Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Romans 8:9)

He baptizes into the body.

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free" (1 Corinthians 12:13)

Note that this is stated of all, in the past tense, and is nowhere commanded — which distinguishes it from the filling.

He seals.

"In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians 1:13)

A seal in that world marked ownership and guaranteed that what was sealed would arrive.

And He is the earnest. He is described as the down payment on an inheritance — a portion given now which guarantees the whole.

V.5 The filling of the Holy Ghost

Distinct from the baptism, which happens once and to all, is the filling, which is commanded, repeatable, and evidently not automatic.

"And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18)

It is a command in the present continuous — go on being filled — and its consequences in the following verses are speech, song, thankfulness and submission rather than sensation.

We hold that a believer may be indwelt and yet not filled, because he may grieve the Holy Ghost by sin and quench Him by refusal, both of which Scripture forbids and therefore assumes possible.

V.6 The gifts of the Holy Ghost

We believe the Holy Ghost distributes gifts to believers for the building up of the church rather than the display of the individual, and that He does so according to His own will rather than by request.

We hold that the sign gifts which authenticated the apostles — and which Scripture itself calls the signs of an apostle — served their purpose during the foundational period and are not the normal possession of the church today. This position is set out more fully under Article XXXIV.

We say this without contempt for believers who hold otherwise, and we insist on one thing: no gift, experience, or utterance may be received which contradicts the written Word, and none may be used to establish doctrine.

ARTICLE VI — CREATION

VI.1 God created

We believe that God created the heaven and the earth, and all that is in them, out of nothing, by His word, in six days, and that He rested the seventh.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1)

"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3)

VI.2 We take the account literally

We read the days of Genesis 1 as days: each marked by an evening and a morning, each numbered, and the whole appealed to elsewhere in Scripture as the pattern for a week of ordinary length.

"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:11)

That verse is part of the ten commandments, given by God in His own voice, and it grounds a literal week upon a literal week.

We are aware that other readings are offered by sincere men. We hold to the plain sense, for the same reason we hold to the plain sense elsewhere: because a text which may be reinterpreted whenever its plain meaning becomes unfashionable can eventually be made to say anything.

VI.3 Man was created directly

We believe man was made directly by God, in the image of God, from the dust of the ground, and that woman was made from the man — not that either arose from a lower order of life by any process.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27)

The Lord Jesus Christ affirmed this, and rested His teaching on marriage upon it:

"But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6)

VI.4 Why this matters

It is not merely a question about the past.

The Gospel depends on a historical Adam. The apostle Paul's argument in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 sets one man's disobedience against one Man's obedience. If the first is a figure, the second is weakened by the comparison.

Death entered by sin. Scripture says death came into the world through the transgression of a man. A scheme which requires ages of death before there was any man reverses the order Scripture gives.

And the image of God is the ground of human worth. Every argument this church would make about the value of the unborn, the disabled, the elderly and the stranger rests on their being made in the image of God rather than on their usefulness.

VI.5 The Creator's claim

We hold that creation places every human being under obligation, whether he acknowledges it or not.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20)

ARTICLE VII — ANGELS, SATAN, AND DEMONS

VII.1 Angels

We believe God created a great company of spirit beings, personal and intelligent, who serve Him, worship Him, and are sent to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation.

"Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14)

They are not the spirits of the departed. They are a separate order of creation, and they are not to be worshipped — a point Scripture makes by recording an angel refusing worship twice and directing it to God.

VII.2 Satan

We believe Satan to be a real, personal being: created holy, fallen by his own pride, and now the adversary of God and of men.

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" (Isaiah 14:12)

He is called the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the accuser of the brethren, a liar, and a murderer from the beginning. He is not the equal or opposite of God; he is a creature, on a leash, permitted to act within limits set by Another, as the opening of Job makes plain.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12)

We hold that his most effective work is not the grotesque but the plausible.

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14)

VII.3 Demons

We believe in the existence of fallen angels who serve him, who are real, personal, and hostile, and who are able to afflict and to deceive.

We reject both errors that surround this subject: the modern habit of treating them as primitive superstition, and the opposite habit of finding them behind every difficulty and disappointment, which is a form of superstition of its own and tends to excuse people from responsibility for their conduct.

VII.4 The sons of God in Genesis 6

Because this passage is often attached to the subject of fallen angels, we state our position plainly.

We do not believe the sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels.

The decisive argument is short, and it is not answerable from the text.

Devils are nowhere in Scripture called the sons of God.

Whatever that title means when it is used in Job of the unfallen host standing before Him, the beings described in Genesis 6 are said to have sinned — which would make them fallen. And no fallen angel, anywhere in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is ever given that name. They are called devils, unclean spirits, the angels that sinned, principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness. They are never called sons of God, and it is not a small omission across sixty-six books.

Scripture also states plainly that angels do not marry.

"For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matthew 22:30)

The Lord Jesus Christ says that a condition of the resurrected is to be as the angels, and the specific point of comparison He draws is that they do not marry. An angelic marriage in Genesis 6 would empty His own illustration.

What the passage describes is the corruption of the godly line by intermarriage with the ungodly — a mingling that destroyed the separation God had established, produced a generation in which every imagination of the heart was only evil continually, and brought the flood. It is the same sin forbidden repeatedly afterwards, and the same sin that has weakened the people of God in every generation since.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14)

We reject the angelic reading not merely because we think it wrong, but because it opens a door to a series of further speculations — about hybrid offspring, about the origin of demons, about the reason for the flood — which have no textual basis whatever and which are then taught with a confidence the Bible nowhere warrants.

Where Scripture is silent, we intend to be silent.

VII.5 Their end is settled

We believe Satan and his angels are already judged, that their sentence is certain, and that the place of final punishment was prepared for them.

"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41)

"And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone" (Revelation 20:10)

He is not the warden of that place. He is among the sentenced.

VII.6 The believer's position

We believe the Christian is not to fear the adversary, is not to be ignorant of his methods, and is not to engage him in his own strength.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7)

Note the order. Submission first, then resistance. And note that the resistance is expected to succeed, which is a very different atmosphere from the one produced by much modern teaching on this subject.

ARTICLE VIII — MAN AND THE FALL

VIII.1 As created

We believe man was created by God, in His image, upright, innocent, and in fellowship with his Maker; possessing a real capacity to choose, and placed under a single, plain prohibition.

The image of God in man is not physical. It is that which makes a human being personal, moral, rational, and capable of relationship with God — and it is why the killing of a man is treated differently in Scripture from the killing of an animal.

VIII.2 The fall

We believe that Adam, being tempted, chose deliberately to disobey; that his sin was not a stumble but a rebellion; and that its consequences fell upon the whole race he represented.

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12)

The consequences were immediate and total.

Death entered — spiritual death at once, physical death in due course.

The nature was corrupted, so that men are not merely sinners because they sin, but sin because of what they now are.

The relationship was broken, and man hid, which is what men have been doing ever since in a hundred more sophisticated ways.

And the ground was cursed, so that the created order itself groans.

VIII.3 The condition of man now

We believe that every human being, apart from Christ, is born with a fallen nature, is a sinner both by nature and by choice, and is unable to remedy his own condition.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10)

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)

We hold that this ruin is total in extent — there is no part of a man untouched by it, not his mind, his affections, or his will — while insisting that it does not mean every man is as wicked as he could be, nor that a lost man is incapable of any natural good, nor that he cannot understand and respond to the Gospel when the Holy Ghost brings it to him.

That last qualification is deliberate, and it is where we part company with the Calvinistic scheme. The reasons are set out fully in Article XV.

VIII.4 The consequences of the fall

Man's guilt is real, and God's verdict is already recorded.

"He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:18)

Condemned already. The lost man is not awaiting a verdict. He is under one, with a pardon available.

VIII.5 What man cannot do

We believe no man can save himself by any means whatever: not by good works, religious observance, moral improvement, sincerity, sacrament, ancestry, or ignorance.

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us" (Titus 3:5)

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6)

Note that it is the righteousnesses which are so described — our best, not our worst.

ARTICLE IX — SIN

IX.1 What sin is

We believe sin to be any lack of conformity to the character and revealed will of God, whether in act, word, thought, motive, or omission.

"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law" (1 John 3:4)

"Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17)

That second verse is worth weight. Sin is not only the doing of what is forbidden. It includes the leaving undone of what is known to be right, which is the form of it most respectable people are guilty of and least likely to notice.

IX.2 Sin is against God

We believe that all sin, whatever else it injures, is finally an offence against God.

"Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight" (Psalm 51:4)

David wrote that after adultery and the arranged death of a man. He had certainly sinned against Bathsheba, against Uriah, and against a nation. He is not denying that. He is identifying who the offended party ultimately is, and it is the reason the debt cannot be settled by making it up to anybody else.

IX.3 The extent of sin

We believe sin extends to the whole man and to the whole race.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)

Come short is an archery term. It does not describe wickedness only; it describes the failure of a decent effort to reach the target, which is why the respectable man is in the same category as the criminal though not in the same degree.

IX.4 The wages of sin

We believe the penalty of sin is death: physical, spiritual, and — apart from Christ — eternal.

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23)

The contrast in that verse is exact and worth noticing. Wages are earned; a gift is not. Nobody is surprised to be paid what he has worked for.

IX.5 Degrees, and the absence of degrees

We hold two things at once, and both are in Scripture.

All sin is sufficient to condemn. One transgression put Adam out of the garden, and one broken commandment makes a man a lawbreaker.

And not all sin is equal in gravity or consequence. Scripture distinguishes between sins of ignorance and presumption, speaks of greater sin, and warns that judgement will be measured by light received. The man who has heard often is in a more serious position than the man who has never heard.

Holding only the first produces a flattened moral world in which nothing matters more than anything else. Holding only the second produces a scale on which a man may believe he is doing well by comparison, which is the great comfort of the self-righteous and is answered by the first.

IX.6 The sin of the believer

We believe that a Christian may sin, does sin, and is provided for when he does.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8)

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9)

That provision concerns fellowship rather than sonship. A son who disobeys does not cease to be a son; he ceases, for a time, to walk in the enjoyment of the relationship. The distinction is developed in Articles XIII and XVI.

ARTICLE X — THE ATONEMENT

X.1 What He did

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, in His death upon the cross, offered Himself as a substitute for sinners, bearing in His own body the penalty their sins deserved, and satisfying the justice of God completely.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21)

That verse contains the whole exchange. He took what was ours; we receive what is His. Neither half is a figure of speech.

"Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24)

"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18)

The just for the unjust. The preposition is the whole doctrine: not merely on behalf of, but in the place of.

X.2 Why a death was necessary

We believe God's justice made it impossible for Him simply to overlook sin.

A judge who releases a guilty man because he is fond of him is not merciful; he is corrupt. A debt does not evaporate because the creditor is kind. Somebody absorbs it.

"And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22)

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls" (Leviticus 17:11)

Note who provides the means: I have given it to you. The sacrificial system was not men devising a way to appease God. It was God supplying a way to be approached.

X.3 The atonement satisfies God

We believe the death of Christ was a propitiation: that is, it satisfied the righteous wrath of God against sin, so that God is now able to justify the ungodly without ceasing to be just.

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:25-26)

Just, and the justifier. That is the problem solved. He does not relax justice in order to forgive; He satisfies it, and then forgives.

X.4 It is finished

We believe the work of atonement is complete, and that nothing can be added to it by any man, any church, any sacrament, or any suffering.

"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30)

The word was written across a paid account in the commerce of that day. Not I am finished. Paid.

"By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10)

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12)

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14)

We therefore reject every doctrine of a repeated sacrifice, of merit added by the believer, and of a purgation still to be undergone. A sacrifice which must be repeated is a sacrifice which has not settled the matter, and the letter to the Hebrews makes that argument at length against readers tempted to return to a system of repeated offerings.

X.5 For whom He died

We believe the Lord Jesus Christ died for all men, and that the provision made is genuinely sufficient for every human being who has ever lived.

"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16)

"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time" (1 Timothy 2:6)

"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9)

We reject the doctrine of a limited atonement — that Christ died only for a predetermined number and that the offer of the Gospel to the rest is not a genuine offer. The reasons are given fully in Article XV, but the plain reading of the verses above is the first and the largest of them.

X.6 What the atonement secures

For the one who receives it, the death of Christ secures:

Forgiveness — the debt cancelled.

Justification — a righteous standing declared.

Reconciliation — the enmity ended and the relationship restored.

Redemption — a purchase out of bondage, at a price.

Adoption — a place in the family, with all that belongs to a son.

And access — the veil torn from top to bottom, which is not the end a man could reach.

ARTICLE XI — GRACE, FAITH, AND JUSTIFICATION

XI.1 Salvation is by grace

We believe salvation to be entirely of grace: the unmerited favour of God toward those who have deserved the opposite.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Every clause of that sentence removes a possible ground of boasting. Not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works. Lest any man should boast.

XI.2 Grace and works cannot be mixed

We believe that grace and works are mutually exclusive as grounds of salvation, and that any admixture destroys grace altogether.

"And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work" (Romans 11:6)

The apostle Paul is not saying that grace matters more than works. He is saying the two cannot be combined at all — that adding any measure of work changes grace into something else and destroys it.

We therefore reject every formula which makes salvation depend on faith plus anything: faith plus baptism, faith plus church membership, faith plus law-keeping, faith plus sacraments, faith plus perseverance in good works, faith plus all that we can do.

XI.3 Justification

We believe justification to be a legal act of God in which He declares the believing sinner righteous, on the ground of the finished work of Christ, and reckons to him a righteousness not his own.

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1)

"But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Romans 4:5)

That is one of the most remarkable sentences in Scripture. Him that justifieth the ungodly. Not the improved, not the reformed, not the promising. The ungodly, at the moment of believing, while still ungodly.

Justification is not a process by which a man is gradually made righteous. That is sanctification, and it is a different thing (Article XVI). Justification is a verdict, pronounced once, entire, and not subject to revision.

XI.4 Imputation

We believe that our sin was reckoned to Christ, and His righteousness is reckoned to us. Neither transfer is a legal fiction; both are acts of God who has the right to reckon and whose reckoning establishes the fact.

"Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works" (Romans 4:6)

XI.5 What faith is

We believe saving faith to be trust: a settled reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ and upon His finished work, resting the whole weight of one's eternal welfare there and nowhere else.

It is not mere assent to facts. The devils believe there is one God, and tremble.

It is not sincerity. A man may be sincerely mistaken, and sincerity has never made a false thing true.

It is not a feeling, and it is not measured by intensity. The object of faith saves, not the strength of it. A weak hand on a strong rope is safer than a strong hand on a rotten one.

"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:22)

The Israelites bitten in the wilderness were told to look at a serpent lifted on a pole. Some no doubt looked steadily and some looked in terror, and the difference in the looking made no difference in the outcome, because the healing was in the object.

XI.6 Faith is not a work

We believe faith is not a contribution which earns salvation, and that this must be insisted upon or grace is lost by a side door.

If faith were meritorious, the man who believed would have something to boast of, and the passage which excludes boasting excludes that too.

Faith is the empty hand that receives. It does not pay; it takes. That is why Scripture can say salvation is by faith and also that it is not of works, without contradicting itself.

XI.7 Salvation has always been by grace through faith

We believe there has never been a time, a people, or a dispensation in which men were saved by any means other than grace through faith.

This must be stated because it is denied — sometimes openly, and more often by implication in schemes which suggest that men under the law were saved by keeping it, or by sacrifice, or by a different gospel altogether.

There are not two ways of salvation, and there never were.

"For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" (Romans 4:3)

That is written of a man who lived before the law was given, before circumcision was commanded of him, and before any sacrificial system existed in Israel. He was justified by believing God, and the apostle Paul cites him precisely to prove that justification has never depended on works.

"For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God" (Romans 4:2)

"Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works" (Romans 4:6)

David lived under the law, in the very middle of the sacrificial system, and is produced as a second witness to justification apart from works.

The blood of bulls and goats never took away sin.

"For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4)

Those sacrifices were a picture, pointing forward to a payment not yet made, and the men who brought them in faith were saved by the work those sacrifices anticipated — not by the animals.

What has changed across the ages is the content of what was revealed to be believed, and the point in history from which the cross is viewed. The patriarch looked forward to a promise; the Israelite looked forward through a shadow; the believer today looks back to a finished work. The object of faith has always been God and the provision He revealed. The ground has always been the same blood. The means has always been faith, and never anything else.

Any teaching that divides the Bible into periods with different ways of being saved has divided what God did not divide, and it makes the cross one option among several rather than the only payment ever made for sin.

XI.8 The relation of works to salvation

We believe good works are the fruit of salvation and never the root of it.

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10)

Note the placement. That verse comes immediately after the declaration that salvation is not of works, and it settles the relationship: works are what we are saved unto, not what we are saved by.

Where James says faith without works is dead, he is not contradicting this. He is describing how a living faith may be recognised. The apostle Paul is answering the question how is a man justified before God; James is answering how is a professed faith shown to be genuine before men. Both are true, and the two questions are not the same question.

ARTICLE XII — REPENTANCE AND SAVING FAITH

XII.1 Repentance is required

We believe repentance to be commanded of all men and necessary to salvation.

"And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent" (Acts 17:30)

"I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3)

XII.2 What repentance is

We believe repentance to be a change of mind about sin, about self, and about the Lord Jesus Christ, which necessarily involves a turning.

It is not penance. Nothing is paid or performed to make satisfaction, because satisfaction has been made.

It is not merely remorse. Judas felt remorse, and it destroyed him. Sorrow may accompany repentance and often does, but a man may weep bitterly and change nothing.

"For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death" (2 Corinthians 7:10)

Note that the sorrow works the repentance. They are related, and they are not identical.

It is not reformation of life offered as a qualification. A man cannot clean himself up in order to be received, and the attempt is itself a denial of grace. Changed conduct follows repentance; it is not the price of it.

XII.3 Repentance and faith

We believe repentance and faith are not two separate transactions but two aspects of one turning: a man turns from what he was trusting and to Christ, and neither half occurs without the other.

"Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21)

This is why the Gospel of John, written expressly that men might believe and have life, can call for faith throughout without once using the word repent. The turning is contained in the believing. A man who trusts Christ has, by that act, ceased to trust whatever he trusted before, and that is repentance.

XII.4 What we do not require

We do not require of an enquirer a specified depth of emotion, a particular length of conviction, a promise of future performance, or a surrender of every known sin before he may come.

Scripture invites men as they are.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28)

"Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37)

"And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Revelation 22:17)

We are aware that some fear this makes conversion too easy. It is not easy; it cost God His Son. It is simply free to the receiver, and any condition added is an insult to the price already paid.

XII.5 The evidence of genuine repentance

While we do not make future conduct a condition of salvation, we hold that a real work of God produces real change over time, and that its total and permanent absence is a reason for concern.

"Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance" (Matthew 3:8)

We say this carefully, because it is easily turned into the very legalism we have just rejected. A believer may fall grievously and repeatedly. A believer may go through long seasons of coldness. Neither proves he was never converted. What Scripture does not describe is a person in whom nothing whatever has changed, who has no appetite for God, no discomfort in sin, and no interest in His people, over the whole course of a life.

The remedy for uncertainty on this point is not introspection, which produces either despair or false comfort depending on the mood of the hour. The remedy is to look again at Christ and to rest there — which is what a man does at the first, and what he goes on doing.

ARTICLE XIII — ETERNAL SECURITY

XIII.1 What we believe

We believe that every person who has genuinely trusted the Lord Jesus Christ is saved for ever, kept by the power of God, and cannot be lost — not by sin, not by failure, not by doubt, not by the passage of time, and not by his own weakness.

"And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand" (John 10:28-29)

Read what is stacked into those two verses. The life given is eternal — a life that could end was never eternal. They shall never perish — a double negative in the strongest form the language allows. Neither shall any man pluck them — and then, in case a reader should think of himself as the exception, the same guarantee is repeated from the Father's hand as well.

XIII.2 Why the believer is secure

The security does not rest on the believer, and this is the whole of it. If it rested there it would be worth nothing, because we know what is there.

It rests on the finished work. The debt is paid. A payment accepted cannot be demanded again.

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14)

It rests on the promise of God, who cannot lie.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24)

Three tenses in one sentence, all settled: he hath, he shall not come, he is passed.

It rests on the sealing of the Holy Ghost.

"In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession" (Ephesians 1:13-14)

A seal marked ownership and guaranteed arrival. The seal is not applied provisionally.

It rests on the intercession of Christ.

"Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25)

To the uttermost. Not partly, and not for a period.

And it rests on the new birth itself. A birth cannot be reversed. A man may be a disobedient son; he cannot become an unborn one.

XIII.3 The declaration of the apostle Paul

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39)

The list is deliberately exhaustive, and it closes with a phrase that shuts the last door: nor any other creature. The believer himself is a creature. He is not the exception to a list designed to have no exceptions.

XIII.4 What we are NOT saying

This is where the doctrine is most often misrepresented, and we state the denials as firmly as the affirmations.

We are not saying a Christian may sin freely. The doctrine is not a permission. The apostle Paul raised that objection himself and answered it with horror.

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Romans 6:1-2)

We are not saying sin has no consequences for the believer. It has severe ones — lost fellowship, lost joy, lost usefulness, lost reward, and the chastening hand of a Father who will not leave a son in it.

"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Hebrews 12:6)

We are not saying that a man who professes faith and then lives with no change whatever is certainly saved. Scripture describes people who went out from among the believers because they were never of them. A profession is not the same as possession, and we do not offer assurance on the strength of a remembered decision alone.

And we are not saying a believer cannot fall grievously. He can. The Bible records it repeatedly and does not soften it. What we deny is that falling ends the relationship.

XIII.5 The passages usually raised

Honesty requires that the hardest texts be named rather than avoided.

Hebrews 6 and 10 speak of a falling away and of a wilful sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth. These passages are addressed to Hebrew believers under pressure to return to the temple system, and the warning concerns going back to a set of sacrifices that could never take away sin — trampling underfoot the very offering that had been made. Whatever the precise identification of the persons described, the letter itself states the writer's conviction about his readers immediately afterward: "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation" (Hebrews 6:9).

The branches cut off in John 15 concern fruit-bearing and usefulness, not the possession of life. The subject of the passage is abiding and fruit, stated four times, and the purpose given is that joy might be full.

The man delivered unto Satan in 1 Corinthians 5 is delivered for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus — which is the opposite of losing salvation, and is stated in the same sentence.

And falling from grace in Galatians 5 describes believers being drawn back to law-keeping as a means of standing. The apostle Paul's charge is not that they had lost salvation but that they were seeking to be justified by law and had thereby fallen away from the principle of grace as their ground.

We do not claim these passages are simple. We claim they do not overturn the plain, repeated, unconditional promises quoted above, and that the settled must govern the difficult rather than the reverse.

XIII.6 Why this matters

Not chiefly for comfort, though the comfort is real.

A man who thinks he may be lost tomorrow cannot serve out of love. He serves to keep something, which is the motive of a hired man rather than a son. Uncertainty does not produce holiness; it produces either despair or performance, and often both in the same person.

"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6)

The same hands that began it finish it.

ARTICLE XIV — ASSURANCE

XIV.1 A man may know

We believe a believer may know, in this life and with certainty, that he possesses eternal life; and that God intends him to know it.

"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God" (1 John 5:13)

The apostle John states his purpose in writing, and the purpose is assurance. That settles whether assurance is presumptuous, because a man cannot be presumptuous in receiving what God wrote a letter to give him.

XIV.2 What assurance rests on

It rests on the Word of God, which is objective, external, and unchanged by how a man feels on a Tuesday.

It rests on the finished work of Christ, which is complete and cannot be added to.

And it rests on the witness of the Holy Ghost.

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:16)

XIV.3 What assurance does NOT rest on

Not on feelings. These rise and fall with sleep, health, weather, and circumstance. A believer is no less saved on the day he feels nothing.

Not on performance. If standing depended partly on conduct, certainty would be impossible, because no one can be certain of his conduct.

And not on a remembered experience considered in isolation. The date and the emotion of a conversion are not the ground. Christ is the ground. A man who cannot remember when he came may still know he is resting there now, and a man who remembers a vivid night forty years ago and has rested nowhere since should look again.

XIV.4 Doubt

We hold that doubt is common, is not the same as unbelief, and is not evidence against salvation.

The remedy for doubt is not introspection, which produces false comfort or despair according to the mood of the hour. The remedy is to look outward again at Christ and at the promise, which do not move.

"For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12)

Whom, not what. The confidence is in a Person.

ARTICLE XV — WHY WE DO NOT HOLD THE FIVE POINTS

XV.1 Why this article exists, and how it is written

A system of doctrine summarised in five points is widely held among Bible-believing people, and it must be dealt with, because it touches the Gospel itself.

We deal with it by its content and not by anybody's name. No man is named in this article — not its framers, not its defenders, not its opponents. The question is not who taught a thing but whether the Book teaches it. Naming men turns a doctrinal question into a matter of loyalty, and loyalty to men is precisely what we have refused throughout this statement.

We also state each point in its strongest form before answering it. A position knocked down in a weak form has not been answered.

We say plainly at the outset: many who hold this system love the Lord Jesus Christ, preach the Gospel faithfully, and will be in heaven. This is not a question of their salvation. It is a question of whether the system is what Scripture teaches, and we hold that it is not.

XV.2 The first point: total inability

Stated fairly: man is so ruined by the fall that he is spiritually dead, unable of himself to understand, desire, or respond to the Gospel; therefore he cannot believe unless he is first regenerated.

Where we agree. We agree entirely that man is ruined in every part — mind, affections, and will — and that no man ever comes to God on his own initiative or by his own unaided ability. Article VIII states this without qualification.

Where we differ. We do not find in Scripture that a man must be born again before he can believe. We find the reverse order stated, repeatedly and plainly.

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12)

Believing comes first in that sentence; becoming a son follows. If regeneration preceded faith, the verse would have to be reversed.

"That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16)

"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life" (John 3:36)

In every case, life follows believing.

We hold that the Holy Ghost so works upon a sinner through the Gospel — convicting, illuminating, drawing — that he is genuinely able to respond, and that this enabling is not the same as being already regenerated. Without that work no one would come; with it, a man really may.

"And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8)

The world. Not a selection within it.

XV.3 The second point: unconditional election

Stated fairly: before the foundation of the world God chose certain individuals to salvation, without reference to anything in them, including any foreseen faith; the rest He passed by.

Where we agree. Election is a Bible word and we will not surrender it. God does elect, does choose, and does foreknow. Salvation originates entirely with Him, and no man was ever saved because God noticed something admirable in him.

Where we differ. We do not find that election is the unconditional selection of particular individuals to salvation while others are left without a genuine offer.

"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Peter 1:2)

The election is stated to be according to foreknowledge. That is the order the verse gives, and it is not an incidental phrase.

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29)

Note carefully what men are predestinated to in that verse. Not to salvation — to being conformed to the image of His Son. Scripture's predestination language concerns the destiny of those who are in Christ, not the selection of who shall enter.

And the offer of the Gospel is genuine, or God is not honest in making it.

"Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11)

"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9)

Not willing that any should perish. We take that as a statement of what God wills, made by God, and we are not prepared to explain it into meaning its opposite.

XV.4 The third point: limited atonement

Stated fairly: Christ died only for the elect; His death actually secured the salvation of those for whom He died, and He did not die for the rest.

This is the point at which we differ most sharply, because it touches what was accomplished at the cross.

"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2)

That verse was written by an apostle to believers, and it goes out of its way to distinguish two groups: ours, and the whole world. The distinction is the entire point of the sentence.

"Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time" (1 Timothy 2:6)

"That he by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9)

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29)

"But there were false prophets also among the people... even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction" (2 Peter 2:1)

That last verse is decisive, and it is rarely faced. Men who are described as bringing upon themselves swift destruction are said to have been bought by the Lord they deny. If the purchase were limited to those who are finally saved, the sentence cannot be written.

The objection answered. It is said that if Christ died for all, then all must be saved, or His death failed. We answer that the death of Christ made a full and sufficient provision for all, and that the provision becomes effectual to the individual upon believing. A pardon signed and offered is a real pardon; a man who refuses to receive it does not thereby prove it was never signed for him.

XV.5 The fourth point: irresistible grace

Stated fairly: when God calls a man effectually, that call cannot finally be resisted; the sinner will certainly come.

Where we agree. No man comes without being drawn. We do not hold that any sinner takes the first step unaided.

"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44)

Where we differ. Scripture records grace being resisted, by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in the plainest terms.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matthew 23:37)

I would... ye would not. Two wills are named in one sentence, and they are in conflict, and the second prevailed in the matter described.

"Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye" (Acts 7:51)

"And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:40)

We hold that the drawing is real and necessary, and that it may be refused. That is what makes the refusal culpable.

XV.6 The fifth point: perseverance

Stated fairly: those truly saved will persevere in faith and holiness to the end, and continuance is the evidence of election.

Where we agree. We agree wholeheartedly that the truly saved are kept. Article XIII states it as strongly as language permits.

Where we differ. We differ over what does the keeping, and over what the believer may then conclude about himself.

The system makes final perseverance the proof of genuine conversion, and the consequence in practice is that no man can be certain today, since he cannot know how he will finish. Assurance is deferred to the end of a life. What Scripture offers is the opposite: assurance now, resting on what has been done rather than on what remains to be done.

"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life" (1 John 5:13)

We therefore say: preservation, not perseverance. The believer is kept by the power of God, and the certainty of it rests on Him.

"Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5)

XV.7 What this means in practice

Three consequences follow, and they are the reason this article is not academic.

We preach to every creature, and we mean the offer. We do not tell men that Christ may or may not have died for them. We tell them He died for them, because Scripture says so, and we invite them without reservation.

"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Revelation 22:17)

We do not make God the author of any man's damnation. Men perish because they would not come, and Scripture places the responsibility there without embarrassment.

And we hold both truths that Scripture holds. God is absolutely sovereign, and man is genuinely responsible. We do not resolve that by deleting one of them. Where Scripture states both and explains neither, we state both and explain neither.

ARTICLE XVI — SANCTIFICATION

XVI.1 Three tenses

Scripture speaks of sanctification in three ways, and confusing them causes a great deal of unnecessary misery.

Positional — already complete. The moment a person trusts Christ he is set apart to God, and Scripture calls him a saint, present tense, regardless of his maturity.

"But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30)

The Corinthians, of all people, are addressed as sanctified in Christ Jesus in the opening of a letter written to correct their scandalous conduct.

Progressive — going on now. The believer is being changed, gradually and unevenly, into the likeness of Christ.

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Ultimate — still future. At His appearing the work will be finished at once.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2)

XVI.2 How progressive sanctification happens

By the Word.

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" (John 17:17)

By the Holy Ghost, not by resolve.

"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16)

The order is worth noting. It is not stop fulfilling the lust of the flesh and then you will walk in the Spirit. The occupation comes first, and the not-fulfilling is its consequence.

And by ordinary means — prayer, the gathering of the saints, obedience in small things, and the discipline of the Father.

XVI.3 What we deny

We deny sinless perfection in this life.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8)

We deny that sanctification is the ground of acceptance. A believer is accepted in the Beloved from the first day, and his growth adds nothing to his standing.

And we deny that it is automatic. It is commanded, pursued, and resisted, which would be meaningless if it happened regardless.

ARTICLE XVII — RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH

XVII.1 The command

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15)

The verse assumes the Bible has divisions to be recognised, and that a workman may handle it wrongly by failing to recognise them.

XVII.2 The principle

All Scripture is FOR us. Not all Scripture is TO us.

Every part is profitable, given by God, and written for our learning. But not every command was addressed to us, and reading a letter addressed to somebody else as though it were addressed to us produces confusion and, in some cases, bondage.

Three questions settle most difficulties:

Who is speaking?

To whom?

Under what arrangement between God and man?

XVII.3 Dispensations

We believe God has dealt with men under distinguishable arrangements across history, each marked by a particular revelation, a particular responsibility, and a particular outcome.

We hold these distinctions because Scripture makes them, and we hold them with two guards firmly in place.

First guard: the way of salvation has never changed. As stated in Article XI.7, salvation has always been by grace through faith. Dispensations describe how God administers His dealings with men; they do not describe alternative ways of being saved.

Second guard: we do not multiply divisions beyond what Scripture warrants, and we do not treat the scheme as a key that unlocks everything. It is a tool for reading carefully, not a system to be imposed on the text.

XVII.4 Worked examples

The law was given to Israel, at Sinai, as a national covenant. It is holy, just and good, and it is not the rule of life for the believer today, who is not under law but under grace. We read the law with profit; we do not read it as our covenant.

The Sermon on the Mount was preached by the King, presenting the character of His kingdom. It is neither a ladder to climb for salvation nor an irrelevance. Read as the portrait of a King and His reign, it is one of the most searching passages in Scripture and it drives an honest man to grace.

The promises to Israel are Israel's. Land, city, temple and throne were promised to a nation, and they are not to be quietly transferred to the church. This is developed in Article XVIII.

The epistles are addressed to the church, and it is there that the doctrine and practice of the Christian life is chiefly to be found.

XVII.5 The guard against a real danger

Accuracy without charity is not a virtue. A man may divide the word correctly and use it to divide the people of God, and the second undoes the first.

"Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth" (1 Corinthians 8:1)

ARTICLE XVIII — ISRAEL AND THE CHURCH

XVIII.1 They are distinct

We believe Israel and the church are two distinct bodies with two distinct programmes, and that the one has not replaced the other.

"Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God" (1 Corinthians 10:32)

Three categories, named side by side, in a letter written after the cross. If the church had become Israel, the verse would have two categories, not three.

XVIII.2 What Israel is

A nation, chosen by God, descended from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, to whom God gave unconditional promises concerning a land, a city, a throne, and a coming kingdom.

"For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Romans 11:25)

Blindness in part. Until. Both words forbid the conclusion that God has finished with the nation.

"I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid" (Romans 11:1)

The question is asked directly and answered in the strongest negative the language has.

XVIII.3 What the church is

A body, not a nation; made of Jew and Gentile together in something that did not previously exist; begun at Pentecost; a mystery not revealed in the Old Testament.

"Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit" (Ephesians 3:5)

"For to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace" (Ephesians 2:15)

One new man. Not Gentiles absorbed into Israel, and not Israel enlarged. Something new, and the word is doing real work.

XVIII.4 What we therefore reject

We reject replacement teaching — that the church has inherited Israel's promises and that the nation has no future. It requires the promises of blessing to be transferred while the promises of judgement are left where they were, which is not an honest way to read a document.

And we reject, absolutely and without qualification, every form of contempt for the Jewish people. They are beloved for the fathers' sakes. Any teaching, joke, insinuation or attitude that disparages them is contrary to Scripture, is forbidden here, and will be dealt with as sin.

"For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:29)

XVIII.5 One way of salvation for both

The distinction between Israel and the church concerns programme, not salvation. A Jewish person today is saved exactly as a Gentile is: by trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no separate arrangement, and the Gospel is to be carried to them as to all men — indeed, to the Jew first.

ARTICLE XIX — THE CHURCH

XIX.1 The word

The word translated church means an assembly, a company called out and gathered. It never means a building, and in Scripture it never means a denomination.

XIX.2 Two senses

The body of Christ — every believer of this age, everywhere, living and dead, entered by new birth rather than by application.

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free" (1 Corinthians 12:13)

The local assembly — believers gathered in one place, who meet, know one another, and are answerable to one another. Most of the New Testament letters are addressed to one of these.

A man is in the first by birth. He is in the second by choice, and Scripture assumes he will make it.

XIX.3 When it began

The church did not exist in the Old Testament. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of it as future — "upon this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18) — and it began at Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came and men were baptized into one body for the first time.

XIX.4 What the church is called

A body, with Christ as the head, which means it has no other head and every member has a function.

A bride, purchased at a price and to be presented.

A building, with Christ as the foundation and believers as living stones.

A flock, with Him as the Shepherd.

And a household — the house of God, which is a family word rather than an institutional one.

"That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15)

XIX.5 What the church is for

Worship — the assembly turned toward God rather than toward its own needs.

Teaching — the systematic opening of Scripture, so that believers are not permanently infants.

Fellowship — the sharing of life, burdens and resources, which is far more than conversation after a service.

And the Gospel carried outward.

A church that does only the first three becomes a club with good doctrine. A church that does only the fourth burns out its people. All four were given together, and every one of them is a means rather than an end.

"Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:21)

ARTICLE XX — THE ORDINANCES

XX.1 Two, and only two

We believe the Lord Jesus Christ gave two ordinances to His church and no others: baptism and the Lord's supper.

Neither conveys grace. Neither saves. Neither adds anything to the finished work. Both are pictures, and both were commanded.

XX.2 Baptism

Who. Believers only. In the book of Acts the order never varies: they heard, they believed, they were baptized. There is no instance of anyone being baptized who had not first believed.

How. By immersion. The word itself means to dip or plunge; the accounts describe going down into and coming up out of the water; and the picture requires it, because the thing pictured is a burial.

"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4)

When. Promptly after believing. In Acts it is measured in hours, not months.

Why. As an act of obedience and public confession, declaring what has already happened inwardly. The act says what happened to a man before it happened to the water: he went down as a dead man and came up alive.

What it does not do. It does not wash away sin, does not regenerate, and is not necessary to salvation. The thief on the cross was never baptized and was told, that day, that he would be in paradise. We baptize because we are saved, not in order to be.

XX.3 The Lord's supper

What it is. A remembrance, instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ on the night He was betrayed, in which the bread and the cup set forth His body given and His blood shed.

"For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-24)

What it is not. It is not a sacrifice. It is not a re-offering of Christ. The elements do not become His body and blood; He was sitting with them in His body when He said this is my body, and no disciple present understood Him to mean otherwise. It confers no grace and forgives no sin, because sin was dealt with once for all at the cross.

Where it looks. In three directions at once — backward to a death, forward to a coming, and around, at the others holding the same loaf.

"For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26)

XX.4 When and how often we observe it

We observe the breaking of bread weekly, upon the first day of the week, and in the evening.

We hold this from the practice recorded in Scripture rather than from custom, and we state the grounds.

It was weekly, and on the first day of the week.

"And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight" (Acts 20:7)

Note what the verse says was the purpose of the gathering. Not that they came together and afterwards happened to break bread — they came together to break bread, and the preaching is mentioned as what accompanied it. The breaking of bread is given as the reason the assembly met, and the day is named.

It was in the evening.

The same verse settles this without needing another. The speech continued until midnight, and the following verses describe many lights in the upper chamber, a young man overcome with sleep at a window, and the breaking of bread taking place afterwards, with the company continuing until break of day. This was a night gathering, and no reading of it makes it a morning one.

The institution itself was at night.

"The same night in which he was betrayed" (1 Corinthians 11:23)

He instituted it at a supper, after dark, at the close of a day, and He called it a supper. Scripture calls it the Lord's supper — not the Lord's breakfast, and the word was not chosen carelessly.

"When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper" (1 Corinthians 11:20)

Why we hold to it. Because the pattern given is a pattern, and because we would rather follow what is recorded than what has grown up. Observing it weekly keeps the death of Christ at the centre of the church's life rather than making it an occasional feature. Observing it in the evening follows both the institution and the recorded practice, and it preserves the character of a supper, which a wafer at the end of a morning service does not.

What we do not say. We do not say that a church observing it monthly, or quarterly, or in the morning, has no part in Christ. That would be to make our practice a test of fellowship, which is precisely the error this statement is written to avoid. Many faithful churches differ from us here. We hold this position because we believe it is what Scripture records, we teach it, and we practise it — and we receive at the table every believer who comes in the Lord.

XX.5 Who may come to the table

Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who is walking in obedience and is not under discipline for known, unrepented sin.

The warning attached to the supper concerns the manner, not the worthiness of the person. Nobody at that table is worthy. The apostle Paul's concern was a church treating it carelessly while despising the poor among them, and his remedy was self-examination, not staying away.

"But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup" (1 Corinthians 11:28)

Let him eat. The instruction after examination is to come, not to abstain.

ARTICLE XXI — CHURCH OFFICES AND GOVERNMENT

XXI.1 The local assembly is autonomous

We believe each local church is self-governing under the headship of Christ, answerable directly to Him, with no council, headquarters, hierarchy, or bishop over it.

Every New Testament letter to a church deals with that church and expects it to act. There is no appeal to a higher body anywhere in the New Testament, and no such body exists in it.

XXI.2 Two offices

Scripture names two, and only two.

Elders — also called pastors and bishops. These are three words for one office, used interchangeably in the same passage of the same men.

"Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28)

Read what is said to them. They are to feed, and the flock is not theirs — it was purchased by somebody else at a price they could not have paid.

Deacons — servants of the assembly, whose office arose from a practical need and whose qualifications are given alongside those of elders.

XXI.3 Oversight is plural

"And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed" (Acts 14:23)

Elders, plural, in every church, singular. The New Testament norm is several men sharing oversight of one assembly, not one man over several assemblies and not one man alone over one.

This arrangement is a protection, and its absence is where a great deal of harm has entered. A single man with no peers, answerable to nobody present, is in a position Scripture never designed and few men survive.

XXI.4 The qualifications are character

Read the lists given to Timothy and Titus. Almost every item is a matter of character — blameless, temperate, sober, of good behaviour, not given to wine, not greedy, patient, not a brawler, ruling his own house well. Only one is an ability: apt to teach.

Nothing is said about charisma, education, eloquence, or success.

XXI.5 The purpose of leadership

"For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12)

The men given to the church are given to equip the saints for the work — not to do the work while the saints watch.

XXI.6 The priesthood of the believer

We believe every believer is a priest, with direct access to God, requiring no human mediator.

"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people" (1 Peter 2:9)

There is no priestly caste in the New Testament, because there is no further sacrifice to offer. The veil was torn from top to bottom — which is not the end a man could reach.

XXI.7 Soul liberty

We believe every person is directly accountable to God, and that faith cannot be coerced. No church, state, or individual may compel belief, and no man is to be forced into a profession he does not hold.

ARTICLE XXII — SEPARATION

XXII.1 What it is

We believe the believer is called to be distinct from the world in conduct, in affection, and in association, while remaining in it for the sake of the Gospel.

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2)

"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you" (2 Corinthians 6:17)

XXII.2 What it is NOT

It is not isolation. The Lord Jesus Christ ate with sinners, was accused of it, and did not deny the charge. A church that has no contact with the lost has misunderstood the command.

"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John 17:15)

It is not a list of external prohibitions substituted for a changed heart. Separation that produces a distinctive appearance and an unchanged character is Pharisaism, and Scripture is harder on it than on open worldliness.

And it is not a licence to despise anybody. A man may hold a doctrine firmly and speak to those who differ with courtesy, and if he cannot, the fault is in him.

XXII.3 Separation from error

We believe a church must separate from teaching that denies the fundamentals of the faith — the deity of Christ, His atoning death, His bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the authority of Scripture.

"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8)

We distinguish this from separation over secondary matters. A denial of the Gospel is not the same as a difference over church order, and treating them alike has fractured the people of God repeatedly and without profit.

XXII.4 The measure

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5)

Separation which does not produce Christlikeness has produced something else, whatever it is called.

ARTICLE XXIII — PRAYER

XXIII.1 The pattern

We believe prayer in this age is to be offered to the Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6:9)

"And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13)

"Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit" (Ephesians 6:18)

Each Person of the Godhead has a distinct part, and the pattern is consistent throughout the epistles.

XXIII.2 What prayer rests on

Not on eloquence, length, posture, or repetition. It rests on access purchased at the cross.

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16)

Boldly. Neither presumptuously nor cringing — the confidence of a child who knows whose house he is in.

XXIII.3 Kinds of prayer

Scripture names several and expects all: supplication for needs, intercession for others, thanksgiving, confession, and worship, which asks for nothing.

XXIII.4 Hindrances

Scripture names them plainly: regarded sin (Psalm 66:18), wrong motives (James 4:3), an unforgiving spirit (Mark 11:25), and the mistreatment of one's wife (1 Peter 3:7).

XXIII.5 When the answer is no, or nothing

We hold that God answers every prayer of His children, and that the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes not yet, and sometimes no — and that a refusal is not a sign of His displeasure or of defective faith. The Son Himself asked in Gethsemane and did not receive what He asked, and Scripture says in the same breath that He was heard.

We hold also that God is sometimes silent, that this is a recognised condition in Scripture rather than a modern complaint, and that the believer's business in it is to keep praying without demanding an explanation he has not been promised.

"The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever" (Deuteronomy 29:29)

XXIII.6 The prayer meeting

We believe corporate prayer is a normal and necessary part of the life of a local church, that it is not a lesser meeting, and that its neglect is one of the surest marks of a church living on its own resources.

ARTICLE XXIV — THE FOUR DAYS

XXIV.1 Why this article comes first among the prophetic articles

Scripture does not speak of one great future day. It speaks of several, each with its own name, its own programme, and its own people — and almost every error in prophetic teaching begins by collapsing two of them into one.

We set them out first, because every article that follows depends on the distinction.

XXIV.2 The four days named

MAN'S DAY — the present time.

"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self" (1 Corinthians 4:3)

The phrase rendered man's judgment is literally man's day. It is the age now running, in which men judge, men rule, men decide, and the church is being gathered while the Gospel goes out.

THE DAY OF CHRIST — the day of the church.

"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6)

"That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ" (Philippians 1:10)

"Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain" (Philippians 2:16)

Notice what is associated with this day everywhere it appears: the completion of a work in believers, reward, rejoicing, and the presentation of the saints. It is never associated with wrath, with judgement upon the nations, or with the destruction of the wicked. Not once.

This is the day of the gathering to Himself, and of the judgment seat where His own are assessed for reward.

THE DAY OF THE LORD — the day of Israel and of the nations.

"For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low" (Isaiah 2:12)

"Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come" (Joel 1:15)

"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven" (Malachi 4:1)

Notice what is associated with this day everywhere it appears: wrath, darkness, destruction, judgement upon nations, the humbling of the proud. It is never associated with reward for the church.

This day covers the seven years of tribulation, the return of Christ in glory, and the kingdom that follows.

THE DAY OF GOD — eternity.

"Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat" (2 Peter 3:12)

"Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13)

This is the eternal state, following the dissolution of the present heavens and earth.

XXIV.3 The distinction is in the names

We hold that the Holy Ghost did not scatter these titles carelessly.

The day of Christ carries His personal name and concerns those who are His by grace.

The day of the LORD carries the covenant name of God as He deals with Israel and judges the earth.

The day of God concerns the eternal state, when all things are put under Him and God is all in all.

A reader who treats these as interchangeable synonyms has removed the very distinctions the Holy Ghost placed in the text, and he will inevitably assign to the church what belongs to Israel, and to Israel what belongs to the church.

XXIV.4 What follows from this

Two things, and they govern the next three articles.

The church is not appointed to the day of the LORD. She has her own day, and it comes first.

The order is not arbitrary. Man's day is running now. The day of Christ interrupts it. The day of the LORD follows. The day of God follows that. Each has a beginning, and they are not the same event described four ways.

ARTICLE XXV — THE DAY OF CHRIST: THE GATHERING TO HIMSELF

XXV.1 What we believe

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will come for His church — personally, bodily, and suddenly — raising the dead in Christ and catching up the living together with them, to meet Him in the air; and that this occurs before the day of the LORD, before the seven years of tribulation, and before the outpouring of wrath upon the earth.

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

"Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18)

Doctrine that cannot be spoken at a graveside is not being held correctly. This one is given expressly to be said out loud there.

XXV.2 The ground of the church's escape

Here we must be exact, because the ground is commonly misstated.

The church escapes the tribulation not because she is removed early on a timetable, but because that period is not hers.

The seven years are God's dealing with Israel, to purify her and to bring her to her Messiah. That is what Scripture calls it.

"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it" (Jeremiah 30:7)

Jacob's trouble. Not the church's.

"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city" (Daniel 9:24)

Thy people and thy holy city — spoken to a Hebrew prophet, concerning Israel and Jerusalem. The seventieth week of that prophecy is the tribulation, and it belongs to the same people as the sixty-nine that preceded it.

And the promise to the church is explicit.

"For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:9)

"And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come" (1 Thessalonians 1:10)

The ground is dispensational, not chronological. The church is not exempted because she is fortunate in her timing. She is exempted because the programme in question is not hers, and because the wrath of God against sin was already borne for her at the cross.

XXV.3 A necessary guard

Exemption from that wrath is not exemption from suffering now.

We say this plainly, because the doctrine is sometimes taught in a way that promises Christians an easy passage, and believers who then meet hardship conclude the Bible failed them.

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33)

Christians have been imprisoned, impoverished, driven from their homes, and killed in every century including this one, and none of that contradicts a word of this article. The wrath the church is promised deliverance from is the outpoured wrath of God upon a rebellious earth in a specific period. It is not the ordinary trouble of living in a fallen world, and it never was.

XXV.4 The order of events — stated exactly

We believe Scripture gives an order, and we set it down in the terms Scripture uses:

The falling away → the man of sin revealed → the gathering unto our Bridegroom the Lord Jesus Christ in His day → the restrainer taken out of the way → that Wicked revealed → the tribulation.

That order is not assembled from scattered hints. It is the argument of one chapter, taken in the sequence the chapter gives it.

XXV.5 The chapter, and the verse the argument turns on

The Thessalonian believers had been shaken by a report that the terrible day had already begun and they had somehow been left in it. The apostle Paul writes to settle them.

"Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand" (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2)

The reading is the day of Christ. That is what the preserved text says and what our Bible says, and the whole argument of the chapter depends on it.

His answer is not you have missed nothing because that day comes without warning. His answer is that certain things must happen first, and they had not happened.

"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition" (2 Thessalonians 2:3)

That day shall not come, except. Two conditions are named, and both precede the day in question.

XXV.6 Two revealings, two titles, two audiences

This is the point most often missed, and missing it is what produces the confusion the chapter was written to prevent.

The same chapter describes the man being revealed twice, under two different titles, at two different times, to two different audiences.

First — in verse 3, as that man of sin.

"And that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition" (2 Thessalonians 2:3)

This revealing is placed before the gathering. The church is present to see it. At this stage he has no dominion; he is identified, not enthroned.

Then — in verse 8, as that Wicked.

"And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming" (2 Thessalonians 2:8)

And then. The Holy Ghost supplies His own timing mark, and He places it after the removal of the restrainer described in the preceding verse.

"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way" (2 Thessalonians 2:7)

He who now letteth is the restraining Person, and letteth in the English of our Bible means restrains. When He is taken out of the way, the second revealing follows.

One person. Two stages. Two audiences.

The church sees the man of sin. The church does not see that Wicked, because by then she and the restraining Holy Ghost in His present ministry are gone.

XXV.7 The objection: "that makes two men"

It does not, and the chapter itself forecloses the objection.

The same figure is in view throughout — the son of perdition, the one who exalts himself, the one whose coming is after the working of Satan, the one whom the Lord shall consume at His appearing. There is one man, described in one chapter, in one continuous argument.

What differs is not the man but the moment and the manner. Scripture repeatedly describes one person under different titles at different stages of the same career, and does so without confusion.

A man may be identified by those watching closely long before he is unveiled to the world in power. That is exactly the distinction between verse 3 and verse 8, and it is the Holy Ghost's own arrangement, not ours.

XXV.8 What the first revealing will look like

We are careful here, because Scripture gives less detail than curiosity would like.

He is revealed — that is, made known, identified, recognised for what he is by those with eyes to see. He is not yet worshipped, not yet in the temple, not yet exercising the dominion described later in the chapter. The events of verse 4 and following belong to the period after the restrainer is removed.

We do not name him, guess at him, or attach the description to any living figure. Every generation that has done so has been wrong, and the practice has brought the doctrine into contempt.

XXV.9 The interval, and the precedent for it

Between the first revealing and the second there is an interval, in which the gathering occurs and the restrainer is removed.

Some object that Scripture would not leave an interval unmeasured. But there is precedent within the very prophecy that gives us the seventy weeks. Sixty-nine weeks ran to the cutting off of Messiah. The seventieth has not yet run. Between them lies the whole of the present age, unmeasured and unmentioned in the prophecy itself.

If God can place an unmeasured gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks, an interval within the sequence of 2 Thessalonians 2 is not a difficulty.

XXV.10 Why this matters pastorally — and it matters greatly

This is not a refinement for specialists. It is the reason the chapter was written.

Consider a believer who has been taught that the gathering may occur at any second with no preceding sign of any kind, and who then lives to see the man of sin revealed while he is still here.

He has two conclusions available to him, and both are catastrophic.

Either the Bible failed — because he was promised he would see nothing and he is seeing something.

Or he was left behind — because he was told the church would be gone before any of this, and the church is not gone.

That is precisely the panic 2 Thessalonians 2 was written to prevent. The believers there had been shaken by exactly this kind of report, and the apostle Paul's remedy was to give them the order of events so that they would not be shaken again.

The chapter is a lifeline thrown to frightened Christians. The teaching that removes the prerequisites cuts the rope before the lifeline is thrown.

Men have abandoned the faith over less. We hold this doctrine carefully because souls are attached to it.

XXV.11 What we do not teach

We do not teach post-tribulationism. We hold, with full conviction, that the church will not pass through the day of the LORD.

We do not teach mid-tribulationism or a pre-wrath removal.

And we do not teach strict imminence — the doctrine that the gathering may occur at any moment with no discernible event preceding it. We hold that Scripture names prerequisites, that it names them in order to comfort, and that a doctrine which removes them removes the comfort with them.

We say clearly that those who hold strict imminence also hold that the church escapes the wrath. The disagreement here is not between pre-tribulation and post-tribulation. It is a disagreement within the pre-tribulation position, about whether anything precedes the gathering. Anybody who describes our position as post-tribulational has misunderstood it, and anybody who describes those who differ from us as denying the escape has misrepresented them.

XXV.12 The character of the hope

The hope is not the escape. The hope is the Person.

"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13)

"And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3)

A doctrine of the coming which produces chart-making and speculation rather than purity has been held wrongly, whatever its details.

ARTICLE XXVI — THE DAY OF THE LORD: THE TRIBULATION

XXVI.1 What it is

We believe that following the removal of the church there will come a period of seven years — the seventieth week of Daniel's prophecy — during which God pours out judgement upon the earth, deals with Israel to bring her to her Messiah, and brings the present order to its end.

"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be" (Matthew 24:21)

That is not the language of ordinary hardship. It is stated as unique in all history, before and after.

XXVI.2 Its purposes

To judge a rebellious world. The judgements of Revelation are described as the wrath of God and of the Lamb, poured out upon those who have refused Him.

To purge and preserve Israel. It is the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. The nation enters it in unbelief and comes out of it looking upon Him whom they pierced.

"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him" (Zechariah 12:10)

Note who is speaking in that verse, and who is pierced. The LORD says me whom they have pierced. The deity of the Messiah is carried in a single pronoun.

And to bring the man of sin to his end — permitted his hour, and then consumed at the appearing.

XXVI.3 Salvation during that period

We believe great numbers will be saved during those years — a multitude out of every nation, and a remnant of Israel — and that they will be saved as everyone always has been: by the grace of God, through faith, on the ground of the blood of Christ.

Many of them will die for it.

XXVI.4 What we do not do with this doctrine

We do not set dates. We do not identify current figures with prophetic ones. We do not build charts more detailed than the text, and we do not preach the tribulation as entertainment.

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36)

ARTICLE XXVII — THE SECOND COMING AND THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM

XXVII.1 He comes with His saints

We believe that at the close of the tribulation the Lord Jesus Christ will return to the earth personally, bodily and visibly, in power and great glory, accompanied by His saints and by the armies of heaven.

"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him" (Revelation 1:7)

"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matthew 24:27)

There is nothing secret about this coming. Every eye shall see Him.

XXVII.2 The distinction from the gathering

The two are not the same event.

At the gathering, He comes for His saints, in the air, and they are taken to be with Him.

At the second coming, He comes with His saints, to the earth, and He remains.

The first is a rescue; the second is an arrival in judgement and in rule. The two are separated by the seven years described in the previous article.

XXVII.3 The place is named

"And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley" (Zechariah 14:4)

The mountain is named, the direction is given, and the geological result is described — and the verses that follow say the people will flee through that valley. Men do not flee through a figure of speech.

XXVII.4 The kingdom

We believe that He will then establish a literal kingdom upon the earth, reigning from Jerusalem for a thousand years, with Israel restored to her land and the nations under His government.

"And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years" (Revelation 20:4)

The period is stated six times in that chapter. We take it as it stands.

During that reign, the curse is lifted in large measure, righteousness governs, and the promises made to Israel concerning land, city and throne are fulfilled to Israel — which is one of the strongest reasons for holding that those promises were never transferred elsewhere.

"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4)

That sentence is carved on a wall in New York. It has never once been true, and it will not be true until the One who can enforce it is present.

XXVII.5 The end of the kingdom

At the close of the thousand years Satan is loosed for a season, a final rebellion is gathered and crushed, and he is cast into the lake of fire.

The rebellion at the end of a thousand years of perfect government settles a question that has been argued for centuries. Men do not sin because of poor environment, bad government, or lack of opportunity. Given a perfect King and a perfect world, the human heart will still rebel when given the chance.

ARTICLE XXVIII — THE RESURRECTIONS AND THE JUDGMENTS

XXVIII.1 There are two resurrections, not one

"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation" (John 5:28-29)

"But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection" (Revelation 20:5)

The two are separated by the thousand years.

XXVIII.2 The judgment seat of Christ

We believe every believer will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, in His day, to be assessed for reward — not for condemnation.

"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10)

The word rendered judgment seat is the raised platform on which a judge sat at the end of a race, to award. Nobody was condemned there.

What is not in question: sin, salvation, and acceptance. All three were settled at the cross.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1)

What is in question: what was built.

"Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is" (1 Corinthians 3:13)

"If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15)

He himself shall be saved. The work may go; the man does not.

XXVIII.3 The judgment of the nations

Following the second coming, the living nations are judged, and this is distinct both from the judgment seat and from the great white throne.

XXVIII.4 The great white throne

We believe that at the close of the thousand years the unbelieving dead of all ages will stand before God to be judged, and that their judgement will be according to their works and will result in the second death.

"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Revelation 20:11-12)

"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:15)

Note the ground of the sentence. Not the scale of a man's sins, but the absence of his name from a book. No believer will ever stand there, and no unbeliever will ever stand at the judgment seat of Christ.

ARTICLE XXIX — HEAVEN AND HELL

XXIX.1 Both are real, and both are eternal

We believe in the conscious, eternal blessedness of the saved and the conscious, eternal punishment of the lost.

"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal" (Matthew 25:46)

The same word describes both destinies in the same sentence. If the punishment is temporary, so is the life. Nobody wants that conclusion, and it is the price of the other reading.

XXIX.2 Hell and the lake of fire

Scripture distinguishes them, and the distinction matters.

Hell is the present holding place of the lost dead. The lake of fire is the final destination, into which death and hell themselves are cast.

"And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death" (Revelation 20:14)

XXIX.3 What we do not teach

We do not teach annihilation. The lost do not cease to exist. Destroy in Scripture does not mean annihilate — a ruined garment is destroyed and still exists — and everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord describes a separation, which requires two parties who still are.

We do not teach purgatory. If the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin, there is nothing left to be purged.

We do not teach universal salvation.

And we do not teach that hell was prepared for men.

"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41)

Men who go there go to a place made for somebody else, and they go by a route God went to extraordinary lengths to close.

XXIX.4 The manner in which we hold it

This doctrine is not to be held with satisfaction, preached with relish, or used as a weapon. God Himself declares that He takes no pleasure in it.

"Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11)

A man who can discuss this subject cheerfully has misunderstood something.

XXIX.5 Heaven

We believe the saved go immediately at death to be with Christ, conscious and at rest; that they will be raised in glorified bodies; and that the final state is a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

"Absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8)

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4)

The centre of it is not the streets or the gates.

"And they shall see his face" (Revelation 22:4)

ARTICLE XXX — THE DAY OF GOD: THE ETERNAL STATE

XXX.1 The present order dissolved

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (2 Peter 3:10)

XXX.2 A new heaven and a new earth

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea" (Revelation 21:1)

We note that the eternal hope of Scripture is not an escape from the earth into a disembodied existence, but a renewed creation, with resurrected people, in a city God brings down.

XXX.3 God all in all

"And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28)

This is the end toward which everything in this statement has been moving, and it is the reason the day is called the day of God.

ARTICLE XXXI — CIVIL GOVERNMENT

XXXI.1 Government is ordained by God

We believe civil government is appointed by God for order and for the restraint of evil, and that believers are to be subject to it, to pray for those in authority, to pay taxes honestly, and to be good citizens.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1)

XXXI.2 The limit of that obedience

Obedience to government is not absolute. Where the command of the state conflicts with the command of God, the believer obeys God and accepts the consequence without rebellion, violence, or contempt.

"Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29)

XXXI.3 Church and state are separate

We believe the church and the state are distinct institutions, that neither is to govern the other, and that the state has no authority over conscience.

The church is not to seek civil power, and the state is not to establish, fund, or direct the church. Where the two have been joined, both have been corrupted, and the persecution of believers has almost always followed.

XXXI.4 Our posture

We are not a political organisation and will not become one. We will speak where Scripture speaks, on matters of righteousness, life, and truth, and we will not bind the conscience of any believer to a party, a candidate, or a national interest.

ARTICLE XXXII — THE FAMILY

XXXII.1 Marriage

We believe marriage was instituted by God at the creation, before the fall and before any nation or church existed; that it is the union of one man and one woman; and that it is intended to be for life.

"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?" (Matthew 19:4-5)

The Lord Jesus Christ grounds His teaching on marriage in the creation account, which is one further reason we take that account as history.

XXXII.2 The home

We believe the home is the first institution God established and the primary place where the faith is passed on; that children are a heritage of the LORD; and that parents bear the responsibility for the instruction of their own children, which cannot be delegated wholly to a church or a school.

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4)

XXXII.3 The character of the home

Headship in the home is not licence. The instruction to the husband is to love his wife as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it — which sets the standard at a man who died for her, and removes any ground for harshness, domination or cruelty.

We state plainly that abuse of a wife or a child is sin, is never to be covered, and is never to be excused by an appeal to any verse in the Bible.

XXXII.4 Singleness

We believe singleness is an honourable state, commended in Scripture, and that a single believer is a whole member of the household of God, lacking nothing of standing, usefulness, or dignity.

ARTICLE XXXIII — THE GREAT COMMISSION

XXXIII.1 The command

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:19-20)

"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15)

XXXIII.2 It is given to the church, not to specialists

The commission was not given to a missionary society, a class of professionals, or a department. It was given to the disciples as the church, and it belongs to every believer.

XXXIII.3 The message

The message is the Gospel: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day. It is not a moral programme, a political vision, or an invitation to a better life. It is news about what has happened, and it is to be delivered as news.

XXXIII.4 The manner

"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men" (2 Corinthians 5:11)

We persuade. We do not manipulate, pressure, deceive, or count decisions. A man persuaded by the Holy Ghost through the Word will stand; a man pressed into a decision by technique will not.

XXXIII.5 The scope

Every creature. Every nation. Including those who differ from us, those who oppose us, and those whose systems this statement has examined and rejected — to whom we go with the Gospel and not with contempt.

ARTICLE XXXIV — WHAT WE REJECT

We state these plainly, and we state them without naming any person who has taught them. The question is never who said a thing, but whether the Book says it.

XXXIV.1 Concerning the Bible

We reject the view that the Bible merely contains the Word of God, that it errs in matters of history or science, or that any part is myth.

We reject the addition of any book, revelation, prophecy, or tradition to the closed canon.

We reject the claim that the English translation corrects the Hebrew or the Greek, or that the translators were inspired. That claim is not required by our position and is not supported by Scripture.

XXXIV.2 Concerning God and Christ

We reject every denial of the Trinity, in every form.

We reject every denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, of His virgin birth, of His sinless life, of His substitutionary death, or of His bodily resurrection.

We reject the teaching that God was once a man, that men may become gods, or that there are gods on other worlds.

XXXIV.3 Concerning salvation

We reject salvation by works, by sacraments, by church membership, by ancestry, or by any combination of faith with human contribution.

We reject baptismal regeneration.

We reject the teaching that a genuinely saved person may be lost.

We reject the doctrine of a limited atonement, and the doctrine that the offer of the Gospel is not genuine to all who hear it.

We reject the teaching that there has ever been more than one way of salvation, or more than one gospel, in any age.

We reject sinless perfection in this life.

We reject purgatory, prayers for the dead, prayer to the dead, and the mediation of anyone but the Lord Jesus Christ.

XXXIV.4 Concerning prophecy

We reject the identification of the day of Christ with the day of the LORD.

We reject the teaching that the church will pass through the tribulation.

We reject strict imminence — the doctrine that nothing whatever precedes the gathering — for the reasons given in Article XXV.

We reject amillennial and postmillennial schemes which deny a literal thousand-year reign upon the earth.

We reject the teaching that the church has replaced Israel.

We reject all date-setting and all identification of living persons with prophetic figures.

XXXIV.5 Concerning the church

We reject hierarchy over the local assembly, whether by council, synod, bishop, or headquarters.

We reject a priestly class standing between God and His people.

We reject the ordination of women to the office of elder, while affirming without reservation the honour, gifting and indispensable service of women in the church, and noting that women were the first at the tomb and the first to carry the news of the resurrection.

We reject the union of church and state.

XXXIV.6 Concerning speculation

We reject the teaching that the sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels or devils. Devils are nowhere in Scripture called the sons of God, and Scripture states plainly that angels do not marry. The reasons are given in Article VII.

We reject every racial doctrine. All men descend from one man and are of one blood, and any teaching which attaches spiritual standing, curse, or inferiority to ancestry is contrary to Scripture.

We reject, absolutely, every form of contempt for the Jewish people. God has not cast away His people.

We reject the practice of building doctrine on silence, on numerology, on private impressions, or on speculation presented with a confidence Scripture nowhere warrants.

XXXIV.7 Concerning practice

We reject the promise that faith guarantees health or wealth. That teaching is not merely mistaken; it is cruel, and it is cruellest to those it reaches when they are weakest.

We reject manipulation in evangelism and the counting of decisions as though they were conversions.

We reject the treatment of secondary doctrines as tests of salvation.

And we reject the naming of any man as the authority for what is taught here.

CONCLUSION — THE SUBORDINATION RESTATED

We have now set down, in thirty-four articles, what is believed and taught in this place.

It is time to say again what was said before the first article, because it is more important than everything between.

Nothing in this document stands above the King James Bible. Not one article. Not one sentence. Not the man who wrote it.

If any part of this statement is shown from the Scriptures to be wrong, it will be corrected. That is not a courtesy offered to critics; it is the only position consistent with what we have claimed about the Book throughout.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20)

We have deliberately named no teacher, no theologian, no movement and no man. Not because such men have not existed or have not been useful, but because the moment a name is attached, a reader begins weighing a man instead of examining a text — and the whole design of this statement is to send him to the text.

"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11)

They examined an apostle, and were commended for it. Examine this.

Take a Bible that is not published by anybody with an interest in the outcome of your enquiry, and read it. Where we agree with it, receive what is written here. Where we do not, follow the Book and let this page go.

The Scriptures do not exist to be systematised. They exist to bring a man to a Person.

"Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39)

"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3)

To the glory of God our Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.