Zion Baptist Church stands in the Reformed Baptist tradition. We espouse the system of theology taught in the London Baptist Confession (LBC 1689) and the Philadelphia Baptist Confession of 1742. We hold to these positions because we believe them to represent the teachings of the Scriptures. We seek, however, to live with grace toward Christians who are not Reformed.
In addition to these confessions, we have a statement that represents our teaching position on various issues not covered in these statements. This teaching position is available upon request.
A Summary of Our Faith
We worship a Personal God who has revealed himself as Three-in-One: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These Three are One God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory (Deut. 6:4; Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 8:6).
The Bible, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, is God’s divine revelation of Himself and was verbally inspired in the original autographs (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21).
Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, God in human flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of Mary while she was still a virgin (Col. 2:9; Phil. 2:5–8; Matt. 1:18–25).
Jesus died upon the cross as a sacrifice for sin (Heb. 9:26; 10:12) and he died bearing the sin of humanity (1 Peter 2:24-25).
Jesus died and was buried and after three days came back to life in the same body, now glorified (Matt. 28:1-8; Mk. 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-13), and later ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Acts 1:9-11).
Jesus will return bodily (1 Thess. 4:16-17; Zech. 14:4) at a time appointed by the Father (Mark 13:32), to judge the living and the dead (2 Tim. 4:1). The righteous he will receive into eternal bliss (Matt. 25:21, 23) in the New Heavens and the New Earth while the unbelieving will endure eternal conscious judgment for sin (2 Thess. 1:8-10).
Man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27) but that image is now tainted and distorted by sin. Through repentance and faith in Christ alone (Acts 4:12), trusting in the work of Jesus, one may be saved from the penalty and power of sin (Acts 13:38-39) and have assurance of eternal life (1 John 5:12-13).
The local church is a community of believers (1 Thess. 1:1-4), baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), who covenant together to worship God (Phil. 3:3), to care for, to love, to pray for, and to serve one another (1 Cor. 12:25; Gal. 6:2; Eph. 4:2; Col. 3:13; James 4:11; 5:9, 16), and to evangelize the unbelieving (Matt. 28:19-20) to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
Please note that this is not an exhaustive statement of our beliefs.