We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally and plenarily inspired by God. The Bible is inerrant, infallible, God-breathed, and complete. The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are the full written revelation of God to man and are the final authority for faith, doctrine, life, and practice.

We believe the Scriptures should be interpreted according to their normal grammatical-historical meaning. The King James Version of the Bible is the official and only English-language Bible used by Sandy Creek Stirrings.

II Timothy 3:16-17; II Peter 1:20-21

We believe in one true and living God, eternally existing in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are coeternal in being, coequal in power and glory, coidentical in divine nature, and possess the same attributes and perfections.

Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19; II Corinthians 13:14; John 14:10, 26

We believe the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. He became man without ceasing to be God, being conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. He came to reveal God and to redeem sinful men.

We believe Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. God was manifest in the flesh, and Christ voluntarily laid down His life on the cross of Calvary. No man took His life from Him; He gave Himself for us.

We reject every teaching that reduces Jesus Christ to a mere man, a created being, a good teacher only, or the archangel Michael. Such views deny the plain teaching of Scripture concerning the deity and person of Christ.

We believe Christ accomplished redemption through His death on the cross as a representative, vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice. His literal, bodily resurrection from the dead secures the believer’s justification.

We believe the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God, where He ministers as our Representative, Intercessor, Advocate, and High Priest.

Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; Luke 1:35; John 1:1-14; John 10:30-33; John 20:28; Acts 1:9-10; Acts 2:18-36; Romans 3:24-25; Romans 8:34; II Corinthians 5:19-21; Galatians 4:4-5; Philippians 2:5-8; I Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 9:24; I Peter 1:3-5; I Peter 2:24; I John 2:1-2; I John 3:16

We believe the Holy Spirit is a divine Person who convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He is the supernatural Agent in regeneration, baptizes believers into the body of Christ, indwells them, and seals them unto the day of redemption.

We believe the Holy Spirit teaches and helps believers understand and apply the Scriptures. It is both the privilege and responsibility of every saved person to be filled with the Spirit.

We believe God gives spiritual gifts to believers according to His will. He uses evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

We believe the sign gifts, such as speaking in tongues and the gift of healing, were temporary. Speaking in tongues was never the common or required evidence of the baptism or filling of the Holy Spirit. While God can and does answer prayer for physical healing, the final deliverance of the body from sickness and death awaits the resurrection.

John 16:8-11; Romans 8:9; Romans 12:3-8; I Corinthians 1:22; I Corinthians 12:4-14, 28; I Corinthians 13:8; I Corinthians 14:21-22; II Corinthians 3:6; Ephesians 1:13-18; Ephesians 4:7-12; Ephesians 5:18; I John 2:20, 27

We believe man was created in the image and likeness of God. In Adam’s sin, the human race fell, inherited a sinful nature, and became alienated from God. All men are sinners by birth and by choice and are unable, in themselves, to remedy their lost condition.

Genesis 1:26-27; Romans 3:22-23; Romans 5:12; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:1-3; Ephesians 4:17-19

We believe salvation is the gift of God, brought to man by grace and received through personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. His precious blood was shed on Calvary for the forgiveness of sins.

We believe sinners must be born again. The new birth is a new creation in Christ Jesus. It is instantaneous and not a process.

We believe salvation is offered to every man, woman, boy, and girl. Every person is responsible before God and must personally receive Christ by faith. We reject Calvinism as unbiblical and harmful to the Gospel, and we affirm that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

John 1:12; Romans 10:13; Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:8-10; I Peter 1:18-19; II Peter 3:9

We believe all who are truly redeemed are kept by the power of God and are secure in Christ forever. The believer may rejoice in the assurance of salvation on the authority of God’s Word.

We also believe Christian liberty must never be used as an occasion to the flesh. The assurance of salvation does not excuse careless, worldly, or sinful living.

John 6:37-40; John 10:27-30; Romans 8:1, 38-39; Romans 13:13-14; I Corinthians 1:4-8; Galatians 5:13; Titus 2:11-15; I Peter 1:4-5

We believe the local church is made up of born-again believers and is the body and espoused bride of Christ. The New Testament clearly teaches the establishment, continuance, order, leadership, and work of local churches.

We believe in the autonomy of the local church, free from outside ecclesiastical control or authority. We believe water baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the Scriptural ordinances of obedience for the church in this age.

Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:41-42; Acts 14:27; Acts 20:17, 28-32; Romans 16:1, 4; I Corinthians 3:9, 16; I Corinthians 5:4-7, 13; I Corinthians 11:23-26; I Corinthians 12:12-14; II Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 5:25-27; I Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-11; I Peter 5:1-4

We believe in the blessed hope: the personal and imminent return of Jesus Christ to rapture His church before the seven-year Tribulation. We reject mid-tribulation and post-tribulation views of the rapture.

We believe in a literal seven-year Tribulation. At its conclusion, Christ will personally and visibly return with His saints to establish His earthly Messianic Kingdom, promised to the nation of Israel.

Psalm 89:3-4; Daniel 2:31-45; Zechariah 14:4-11; I Thessalonians 1:10; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Titus 2:13; Revelation 3:10; Revelation 19:11-16; Revelation 20:1-6

We believe in the bodily resurrection of all men: the saved unto eternal life, and the unsaved unto judgment and everlasting punishment.

We believe the souls of the redeemed are, at death, absent from the body and present with the Lord. There they await the first resurrection, when spirit, soul, and body will be reunited and glorified forever with the Lord.

We believe the souls of unbelievers remain after death in conscious punishment until the second resurrection. Then, with soul and body reunited, they will appear before the Great White Throne Judgment and be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be annihilated, but to suffer everlasting conscious punishment.

Matthew 25:41-46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 16:19-26; Luke 23:43; John 5:28-29; John 11:25-26; II Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:23; Philippians 3:21; I Thessalonians 4:16-17; II Thessalonians 1:7-9; Jude 6-7; Revelation 20:4-15

We believe the Genesis account of creation is literal history. God created all things in six literal, twenty-four-hour days. Man, created in the image of God, was the crowning work of God’s creation.

We reject the gap theory, evolution, the day-age theory, and theistic evolution as unbiblical explanations of origins. God established the pattern of the seven-day week by finishing and resting from His work of creation on the seventh day.

Genesis 1-2; Psalm 33:6; John 1:1-3; Ephesians 3:9; Hebrews 1:2

We believe God has given the church the Great Commission to proclaim the Gospel to all nations. The church must seek to reach every nation, tribe, ethnic group, and language with the message of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.

As ambassadors for Christ, we must use the means available to us to go to the nations rather than wait for the nations to come to us.

Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 20:21; Acts 1:8; II Corinthians 5:20

We believe all saved people should live in a manner that does not bring reproach upon their Saviour and Lord. God commands separation from religious apostasy, worldly and sinful pleasures, ungodly practices, and associations that dishonor Christ.

Romans 12:1-2; Romans 14:13; II Corinthians 6:14-7:1; II Timothy 3:1-5; I John 2:15-17; II John 9-11