Baptist Distinctives

You may find this thread interesting. This site seems to be a description of distinctives that most Baptists support: http://allaboutbaptists.com/distinctives.html

 

As you may know, the body of Christ is split between those that believe individuals were predestined for salvation, and those that believe predestination applies to individuals after they have been saved by grace through faith. So faith provides our access to the grace of salvation, and therefore whoever believes in Him shall not perish. Both Baptists and Southern Baptists can be found subscribing to either view.

Baptists believe in the Priesthood of believers, so individuals within a local body usually are allowed to govern the body according to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Other denominations might have a more of top down, autocratic governance.

We believe in Believer's baptism, where believer's are baptized after they profess their faith in Christ, and some also include the need for testimony of a changed life. In any event, we believe water baptism is ceremonial and symbolic of our spiritual baptism into Christ. Thus the immersion symbolizes our baptism into Christ's death, the removal of the body of sin, and then arising as a new creature, born from above. Generally Baptist's do not believe water baptism accomplishes anything except getting wet, nothing is accomplished by water baptism that affects whether or not God saves us. Salvation is by grace through faith and not of works.

We believe in the separation of church and state which means we do not believe those that govern, i.e. have the power of the Law behind their beliefs, should dictate doctrine to other believers.

Thus the Bible is our final authority for faith and practice, and therefore just because Billy Graham or Joe Biden asserts a doctrinal point, only the local body of believers may decide whether to adopt or reject it.

We believe in God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We believe Jesus is God.

We believe in heaven and Hades/Gehenna

 

You are ambitious! I admire your zeal. I've heard that there are over 40,000 christian denominations so where would you like to start? ;-)

I'd like to recommend this series by Andy Stanley. It's an excellent 7 part series about the first church found in the book of Acts. I think you will find that it speaks to what you are looking for in that it gives a good, solid understanding of what 'church' was all about when Jesus started it.

http://www.northpoint.org/messages/big-church

 

Excellent series HT, currently we are involve with "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

 

The link provided by humblethinker is a fairly good summary of basic Baptist beliefs. Van added some that are valuable.

You'll notice that there was no mention of eschatology. There is no distinctive Baptist view. We're all over the place with regard to the end times.

Keep in mind that some Baptist groups are Arminian--that is, they believe that one may fall from grace. Among them, General Baptists, Free-Will Baptists and some United Baptists.

I think it's interesting that most Southern Baptists (and IFB Baptists) also believe in a general atonement and free-will salvation

Most SBCers and IFBers believe in eternal security, but they are neither Calvinist nor Arminian.

Within SBC circles are significant numbers who embrace Calvinism--less so among IfB's.

Rarely, if ever, will you find a General Baptist or Free-Will Baptist who is a Calvinist.

 

Baptists seem to have been redefined.

 

Many find this helpful:
http://www.vor.org/truth/1689/1689bc00.html