Doctrinal
Statement
The following tenets constitute Chosen
Prophetic Ministry's statement of faith and doctrine:
We believe in the plenary, verbal inspiration
of the original writings of the sixty-six books of the Bible, the Word of God,
and that it is the full and complete revelation of God's will for man, the
supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and practice.
We believe in one God, eternally
existing in three Persons--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--co-eternal in being,
co-identical in nature, co-equal in power and glory, and having the same
attributes and perfections.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ,
the eternal Son of God, became man, without ceasing to be God, having been
conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary that He might reveal
God and redeem sinful men.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ
accomplished our complete redemption through His death on the cross as a
representative, propitiary and substitutionary sacrifice, a redemption made
sure to us by His literal, physical resurrection from the dead.
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ ascended
into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God the Father where, as
our High Priest, he fulfills the ministry of Representative, Intercessor and
Advocate.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is a
divine person, possessing all the attributes of deity, and that in essence He
is equally God.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is the
Supernatural Agent in regeneration and sanctification, baptizing all believers
into the body of Christ, indwelling equally and permanently all believers, and
sealing them unto the day of redemption.
We believe that every unregenerated
person, the moment he exercises faith in Christ as Savior, immediately
possesses the Holy Spirit.
We believe that He is the Divine
Teacher who guides believers into all truth, that He sovereignly bestows a
spiritual gift upon each believer, and that it is the privelege and duty of all
the saved to be filled and controlled by the Spirit.
THE DEPRAVITY OF MAN
We believe that man was created in the
image and likeness of God but through Adam's sin the whole race fell, became
alienated from God and inherited a sin nature, is therefore depraved, possesses
no spark of divine life, and, of himself, is utterly helpless to remedy his lost
condition apart from the grace of God.
However, if human beings will sincerely seek the truth about their
condition with all their hearts, God will answer their quest and reveal the One
who is The Truth, His only Son who was sent to remedy the breach between man
and God and to provide reconciliation for spiritual rebirth.
We believe that salvation is the gift
of God brought to sinful man by grace and received solely by personal faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ who accomplished complete redemption by His substitutionary
death and shedding of His precious blood.
We believe that sanctification is a
setting apart unto God. It consists of
three steps in a believer's life:
(1) Positional: Every believer, by his
being "in Christ" and partaking of all He is, has a complete standing
before God.
(2) Progressive: Yet every believer,
because he retains a sinful nature, lives in a present state that is imperfect
to the extent that he fails to appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit by which
to live the Christian life. Therefore
he is in need of a progressive sanctification by growing in grace unto
spiritual maturity.
(3) Ultimate: Every believer will be
fully and completely sanctified when he shall see the Lord and shall be like
Him.
We believe, because of the
eternal purpose of God, the nature of the Word and promise of God, and the
immutability of the unchangeable covenants of God, that all the redeemed, once
saved, are kept by the power of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and interceded
for by Christ and are therefore secure in Christ forever.
We believe that God, as a Holy and
Righteous Father of all the redeemed, cannot overlook the sin of His
children. And, when they persistently
sin, He will chasten and correct them in infinite love.
We believe that it is the universal
privelege of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation through
the testimony of God's Word, which truth excites within His children filial
love, gratitude, and obedience.
We believe that the universal church,
which is the body and the bride of Christ, is a spiritual organism made up of
all born-again persons of the present age which began at Pentecost and will be
terminated at the rapture.
We believe that the establishment and
continuance of the local church is clearly taught and defined in the New
Testament Scriptures, being composed solely of believers. These churches are free to choose any day of
the week for gathering themselves together as a body for edification,
encouragement, and the worship and glorification of God.
We believe that Israel and the Jewish
people remain the Chosen people of God, "the Äpple of His eye." We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ
and Israel are separate and distinct from each other. We further believe that God has not abandoned His Chosen people,
and when the Church of both believing Jews and Gentiles is raptured, God will
once more turn to the Jewish nation, raise up 144,000 of their number as
evangelists and at the conclusion of the Great Tribulation, Christ will return,
pour out His Spirit upon the nation Israel, and as it is wrtten, "thus all
Israel shall be saved."
We believe God is sovereign in the
bestowment of all His gifts, and that the gift of evangelist, pastor-teacher
are sufficient for the perfecting of the saints today.
We believe that every believer
possesses a spiritual gift for the edifictation of the body of Christ.
We believe that every normal person
possesses two natures. We believe that
the Christian life consists of the positive nature abiding in union with the
living Christ and by living in the power of the indwelling Spirit so that the
fruit of the Spirit is produced in the life in contrast to the lusts of the
flesh.
We believe that all the saved should
live in such a manner as not to bring reproach upon their Savior and Lord, that
separation from all religious apostasy, all wordly and sinful pleasures,
practices and associations is commanded of God.
We believe that every believer should
be a faithful steward of all his substance for the furtherance of the Gospel at
home and abroad.
We believe that it is the obligation
of all believers to witness by life and by word to the truths of Holy Scripture
and to seek to proclaim the Gospel to all mankind.
We believe that Satan is a personal
being, the highest rank of all angelic creatures, that he sinned through pride,
thereby becoming author of sin and the cause of the fall of man, that he is the
open and declared enemy of God and man, and that he shall be eternally punished
in the Lake of Fire.
We believe that the next great event
in the fulfillment of prophecy will be the imminent, personal, pre-tribulation
return of the Lord in the air to receive to Himself into heaven both His own
who are alive and remain unto His coming and also all who have fallen asleep in
Him, and that this event is the blessed hope set before us in Scripture. and
for this we should be constantly looking.
We believe that the translation of the
church will be followed by the fulfillment of Israel's seventieth week of
Daniel during which the church, the body of Christ, will be in heaven. This entire period of seven years will be a
time of judgment on the whole earth, at the end of which the times of the
Gentiles will be brought to a close.
The latter half of this period will be the time of Jacob's trouble,
which our Lord called the great tribulation.
We believe that the period of the
great tribulation in the earth will be climaxed by the return of the Lord Jesus
Christ to the earth as He went, in person on the clouds of heaven, and with
power and great glory to introduce the millenial age, to bind Satan and place
him in the abyss, to lift the curse which now rests on the whole creation, to
restore Israel to her own land and to give her the realization of God's
covenant promises, and to bring the whole world to the knowledge of God.
THE ETERNAL STATE
We believe in the bodily resurrection of
all men, the saved to eternal life, and at the Great White Throne, the unsaved
to judgment and everlasting punishment.
We believe that the souls of the
redeemed are, at death, absent from the body and present with the Lord, where
in conscious bliss they await the first resurrection, when spirit, soul and
body are reunited to be glorified forever with the Lord.
We believe that the souls of
unbelievers remain after death, in conscious misery until the second
resurrection, when with soul and body reunited they shall appear at the Great
White Throne Judgment, and shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be
annihilated, but to suffer everlasting conscious punishment.