1)   Scripture
 
       We believe the Bible is the Word of God and comprises the  
      totality of Holy Scripture and is verbally inerrant in the original    
      text, and remains inerrant, inspired, infallible, and sufficient   
      in all its substance, and therefore, it is the supreme and final  
      authority in faith, theology, and life. We seek to teach the Word  
      of God in such a way that its message can be applied to an
      individual's life, leading that person to greater maturity in
      Christ. (VES affirms the Chicago Statement on Biblical
      Inerrancy)
 
2)   Historicity
 
       We believe in the full historicity and perspicuity of the
      biblical record of primeval history, including the literal
      existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all
      people, the literal fall  in the Garden of Eden and resultant
      divine curse on creation, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge,
      and the origin of the nations and diverse languages at the  
      tower of Babel.
 
3)  God
 
      We believe that the triune God eternally exists in one essence
      and three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; that
      He is essentially Spirit, personal, transcendent, sovereign, life,
      love, truth, almighty, simple (i.e., essentially one without
      parts), timelessly eternal, unchangeable, wise, just, holy,
      relational, pure actuality, dynamic, infallible in all things,
      including His foreknowledge of all future decisions and
      events, and created the heavens and the earth in six literal
      days.

4)   Jesus Christ

       We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human,
      possessing two distinct natures which are co-joined in one
      person; that He was miraculously conceived by the Holy
      Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, lived a sinless and
      miraculous life, provided for the atonement of our sins by
      His vicarious substitutionary death on the Cross, was
      physically resurrected in the same body that was buried in
      the tomb by the power of the Holy Spirit; that Christ
      physically ascended back to the right hand of God the
      Father in heaven, and ever lives to make intercession for us.
      After Jesus ascended to Heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured
      out on the believers in Jerusalem, enabling them to fulfill His
      command to preach the gospel to the entire world, an
      obligation shared by all believers today. (VES affirms the
      Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.)

5)   Holy Spirit
 
       We believe the Holy Spirit is the third person of the
      Godhead who seals, indwells, sanctifies,  baptizes,
      teaches, empowers, reveals, and guides the believer
      into all truth. The Holy Spirit gives gifts to whom He
      will, which are valid for today, and ought to be 
      exercised within scriptural guidelines. We as believers
      are to covet the best gifts, seeking to exercise them in
      love that the whole Body of Christ might be edified.
      We believe that love is more important than the most
      spectacular gifts, and without this love all exercise of 
      spiritual gifts is worthless.
 
 6)   Mankind
 
        We believe that man is created in the image of God;
       however, after the fall of Adam and Eve, all people are
       by nature separated from God and responsible for their
       own sin, but that salvation, redemption, and forgiveness
       are offered as a free gift by the Lord Jesus Christ to all
       based on His grace alone. When a person repents of sin
       and receives Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord,
       trusting Him to save, that person is immediately born
       again and sealed by the Holy Spirit, all his/her sins are
       forgiven, and that person becomes a child of God,
       destined to spend eternity with the Lord.
 
7)    Salvation 
 
        Salvation is initiated, attained, and procured by God
       through the death of Christ on the cross for our sins
       and His resurrection from the dead. The salvation
       Christ offers is available to all, and is received freely by
       grace alone and through faith in Christ alone, apart from
       good works, thereby, justifying and sealing the believer
       once and for all.  
 
8)   Church
 
        The universal Church is an organic body composed of all 
       believers, both living and dead, who have been sealed by 
       the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. 
       The church has the responsibility to worship the Lord and 
       share the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection to 
       the world, making disciples, baptizing believers, and 
       teaching them to observe sound doctrine and live a morally 
       pure life. We believe church government should be simple 
       rather than a complex bureaucracy, with the utmost 
       dependence upon the Holy Spirit to lead, rather than on 
       fleshly promotion or worldly wisdom. The Lord has given 
       the church two ordinances which are to continue until He 
       returns — adult baptism by immersion and Holy Communion. 
       Water baptism is not necessary for salvation, and cannot 
       remove sins, but is a picture of the salvation already received 
       by the believer. We believe the only true basis of Christian 
       fellowship is Christ's sacrificial agape love, which is greater 
       than any secondary differences we possess, and without 
       which we have no right to claim ourselves Christians. 
 
9)   Worship
 
        We believe worship of God should be spiritual. Therefore,
       we remain flexible and yielded to the leading of the Holy
       Spirit to direct our worship. We believe worship of God
       should be inspirational. Therefore, we give great place to
       music in our worship. We believe worship of God should
       be intelligent. Therefore, our gatherings are designed with
       great emphasis upon the teaching of the Word of God that
       He might instruct us how He should be worshiped. We
       believe the worship of God should be fruitful. Therefore,
       we look for His love in our lives as the supreme
       manifestation that we have been truly worshiping God in
       spirit and truth. 
 
10)  Christ’s Return 
 
        We await the imminent rapture of the church and the
       second coming of Christ which will be physical, personal,
       visible, and premillennial. This motivates us to holy living,
       heart-felt worship, committed service, diligent study of
       God's Word, evangelism, and regular fellowship. 
 
11)  Eternity
 
        We believe those who are saved by Jesus Christ will
       spend eternity with Christ in heaven in a conscious
       state of blessedness, reward, and satisfaction; that
       those who do not personally receive the finished work
       of Christ by faith will spend eternity separated from
       God in a state of conscious torment.     
 
12)  Satan
 
        We believe there is a real personal devil of great
       malevolence, cunning, power, and deception, who seeks to  
       tempt, kill, steal and destroy, yet his power is limited by God  
       to only what God permits him to do; that the devil has been
       defeated positionally at the cross of Christ, and will be
       defeated practically at Christ’s glorious second coming
       which will eventuate in the permanent quarantine and
       punishment of the Devil, Beast, and False Prophet, in the
       lake which burns with fire and brimstone.

13) Marriage and Sexuality

        We believe marriage is between one genetic man and one genetic woman only,
       and the marriage bed is undefiled. Sexual relationships outside the bonds of
       heterosexual marriage are both unbiblical and immoral. We also believe that
       the intentional confusion/blurring of genders and functions/manners naturally
       and uniquely given to men and women distort God's established order - which
       functionally places man as the head of woman, Christ the head of man, and
       God the Father the head of Christ.      

14)  We Reject: 
 

(1) The belief that true Christians can be demon possessed and are helpless against the craft and wiles of the Devil; (2) any philosophy or theology which denies that human freewill can be exercised in the receiving of Christ's free gift of salvation; specifically, we reject the belief that Jesus' atonement was limited in its extent, instead, we believe that He died for all unrighteous people and that any perceived limitation rests in one’s free rejection of Christ’s finished work of atonement, and we reject the assertion that God's wooing grace cannot be resisted or that He has elected some people to go to hell; instead we believe that anyone who wills to come to Christ may do so freely as a result of the Holy Spirit’s conviction and wooing persuasion of the heart; (3) "positive confession," (e.g., the Faith Movement, that views faith as a force that can create one’s own reality or that God can be commanded to heal or work miracles according to man's will and faith); (4) human prophecy that supersedes, or is contrary to, the Scripture; (5) any introduction of psychology and philosophy which is contrary to Scripture and is in substance “according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ” into biblical teaching; (6) “Open Theism” or “Freewill Theism” which reduces God’s timeless, unchanging, dynamic nature, and exhaustive foreknowledge of future free decisions, to creaturely modes of being and operation; (7) the “Emergent Church” movement insofar as it departs from the historic orthodox Christian doctrines in favor of postmodernism; (8) the Contemplative Prayer (CP) and Spirituality movement insofar as it incorpoprates alien eastern philosophies of religion, pantheism, and panentheism into a believer's communication with God, or the "emptying" of the mind and the vain repetition of words; (9) the overemphasis of spiritual gifts, experiential signs and wonders to the exclusion of biblical teaching.