The Church at Sarasota
“…to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us…that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed."
“And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also."
"..they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so."
- We believe that the Scriptures of the old and new testaments are the word of God and the only rule of both faith and practice. We believe these scriptures are preserved in the extant Masoretic Hebrew and Textus Receptus Greek texts faithfully translated into English and other languages and found in such bibles as the 1611 King James, Geneva, Spanish Reina-Valera, and others faithful to God’s original preserved words in those extant original texts.
- We believe there is only one living and true God, and that there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, which three are one, and of the same substance, equal in power and glory.
- We believe that God created our first parents upright and without sin, yet as mutable creatures by nature of creation, they did not long abide in that honor but did willfully transgress the laws of creation in eating of the forbidden fruit, and by their sinful rebellion, determined and allowed of God, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and all we in them became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all our faculties, both mentally and bodily, our first parents being the root, and by God’s appointment standing in the place of all mankind in them, their corrupt nature was conveyed to all their posterity, so that we are all by nature children of wrath, servants of sin, subjects of death and misery, temporal and eternal. By this original corruption we are wholly indisposed to good and prone to evil.
- We believe that before the foundation of the world God did elect a certain actual number of the human race to everlasting life and salvation, and in pursuance of this gracious design did make a Covenant of grace and peace within Himself to come as the mediator, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Word of God, God manifest in the flesh, the Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace, on behalf of those persons who were committed to Christ’s care by himself as the Father with all spiritual blessings.
- We believe that Jesus Christ is God, one with God and the Word of God, being from everlasting the Everlasting Father and Counselor and Mediator of the New Covenant and Living Way, did engage to be the Surety of His elect people and in the fullness of time really assume human nature, without sin, in which sinless nature He really suffered and died as their substitute in their room and stead, whereby He made all that satisfaction for their sins as “The Lamb of God” which the Law and Justice of God required, as well as procured those blessings which are needful both for time and eternity.
- We believe that the Eternal Redemption Christ obtained by the shedding of His blood is special and particular; that is to say, it was only intended for the elect of God or sheep of Christ, as they only enjoy the special and peculiar benefits of it.
- We believe that the justification of God’s elect is only by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them without the consideration of any works done by them, and that the full and free pardon of their sins, past, present and to come, is only through the blood of Christ as according to the riches of His grace.
- We believe that faith, conversion, regeneration, and sanctification are not acts of man’s free will and power, but of the efficacious grace of God.
- We believe that all those who are chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, shall certainly and finally persevere to the end so that none of them shall perish but have eternal life.
- We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances of Christ, to be continued till His second coming, and that the former is requisite to the latter, viz., that those only are to be admitted into the communion of the congregation who upon profession of faith have been baptized by immersion in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
- We believe it is our duty to assemble together on a day set apart for the public worship of God by prayer, giving of thanks, preaching, hearing the Word of God and singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
- We believe there will be a bodily resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust; and that Christ will come a second time to judge both quick and dead to receive the righteous to everlasting happiness and sentence the wicked to punishment of the same duration.