1924 Baptist Union Statement of Faith

To be a part of the Baptist Union in South Africa, the churches should at least agree to the 1924 statement of beliefs as reflected down below. The Baptist Union comprises all the Baptist churches that subscribe to the Baptist distinctives.

It comprises of:

BAPTIST UNION OF SOUTHERN AFRICA STATEMENT OF BELIEF Passed in Assembly at Durban in September, 1924

We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in their original writing as fully inspired of God and accept them as the supreme and final authority for faith and life.

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.

We believe that God created man in His own image; that man sinned and thereby incurred the penalty of death, physical and spiritual; that all human beings inherit a sinful nature which issues (in the case of those who reach moral responsibility) in actual transgression involving personal guilt.

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, a substitutionary sacrifice, according to the Scriptures, and that all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus, His ascension into heaven, and His present life as our High Priest and Advocate.

We believe in the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become Children of God.

We believe in the resurrection both of the just and the unjust, the eternal blessedness of the redeemed and the eternal banishment of those who have rejected the offer of salvation.

We believe that the one true Church is the whole company of those who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ and regenerated by the Holy Spirit; that the local Church on earth should take its character from this conception of the Church spiritual, and therefore that the new birth and personal confession of Christ are essentials of Church membership.

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ appointed two ordinances – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper – to be observed as acts of obedience and as perpetual witnesses to the cardinal facts of the Christian faith; that Baptism is the immersion of the believer in water as a confession of identification with Christ in burial and resurrection, and that the Lord’s Supper is the partaking of bread and wine as symbolical of the Saviour’s broken body and shed blood, in remembrance of His sacrificial death till He come.

The following statement was passed at the Assembly in Krugersdorp in 2000:

We believe that God has ordained marriage as a heterosexual relationship between a natural man and a natural woman.