This page will be updated as we finalize statements about our beliefs. We do not want to publish a statement that has not had been made sufficiently clear.
These beliefs must be extracted from, and in accord with the Holy Scriptures. A denomination's or tradition's interpretation of the Bible does not usurp the Bible itself. We do not seek to read our beliefs into the Bible, but to derive our beliefs from the Bible.
God reveals Himself expressly to man in two ways: General Revelation and Special Revelation.
God reveals Himself through His creation. General revelation is demonstrated in two ways: natural law and the natural universe.
Every civilization has had a concept of a deity or deities and a moral framework similar to the Ten Commandments. There is a reason for that: man was familiar with God at one time, but has since fallen away from God. However far removed from God a culture is, man still bears the marks of this original relationship with God in his heart.
The clouds in the sky, the stars in space, and the change of the seasons on earth all demonstrate a wonderfully complex system that functions without failing. Randomness (or as so-called scientists like to call it, quantum fluctuations) cannot result in something so elegant and comprehensible. All science can do is explain the what of how the physical universe works, but not the why behind it. Indeed, true science only confirms the existence of God.
No matter how hard man tries, he is unable to emulate what God has created. The best of man's technological inventions fail and the greatest of man's artistic works pale in comparison to the simple beauty of God's creation.
The second and more direct way that God reveals Himself to man is through His recorded words, the Bible. The Bible is the 39 books of the Old Testament (Genesis-Malachi) and the 27 books of the New Testament (Matthew-Revelation).
The Bible does not merely contain the Holy Scriptures, the Bible is the Holy Scriptures. It is not the "Word of God" in only an allegorical sense, but is the very Words of God.
It has four qualities: it is given by inspiration, inerrant, infallible, and preserved. We have recorded a lecture called What is the Bible? that is available in our Library that deals with this topic.
When we say the Bible is given by inspiration, we mean that God supernaturally gave us the words of the Bible through man. God didn't give the ideas to man and man wrote them down in man's words. He didn't tell man what He'd like there to be in the Bible and let man put down what man wanted. God, by the Holy Ghost, gave us each and every word of the Bible using men as they were. The words in the Bible are ultimately the words of God. A good explanation of inspiration by Jack Hyles, titled "How We Got God's Words" is available in our Library.
Because the Bible is completely authored by God, it is inerrant (does not contain any errors) and infallible (incapable of erring; it does not contain any contradictions). God has also promised to preserve His words, not only in the original, dead languages they were written in, but even in the living languages that we now speak.
Inspiration is also how God gives us understanding of the Bible. We do not need to know the original languages to find a "hidden" meaning within the Bible. God does not require us to be a "scholar" to understand His words.
We believe that the Word of God can and must be available to people in their own native languages, so that they do not have to rely on any earthly intermediary (such as "scholars") to read and understand God's words. All a person requires to understand the Bible is the Holy Spirit. For English speakers, we believe that God has purely preserved His words in the King James Bible. This doesn't mean that someone can't have God's purely preserved words in a language other than English. The duty of the Church is to spread the Gospel to the whole world and to share God's words in every living language.
This also does not mean that one cannot be saved by reading another translation, but there is a great difference between the King James Bible and the NIV, NSRV, ESV, NAS, etc., which contain errors and thus cannot truly be called the Word of God. In the future, we will record a lecture for our Fundamentals course explaining why there are so many Bible versions. Simply put, there are only two versions of the Bible. One of them is based on corrupted manuscripts (which is what most modern English translations use), and the other is based on the manuscripts that were supernaturally preserved by God. Only the Bibles based on the preserved manuscripts can truly be called the Bible.
We start with this belief since we hold the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice. All of our other beliefs come from the Holy Scriptures. We do not try to push our interpretation onto the Bible, but must base our beliefs on the doctrines of the Bible.
