01.01. Introduction (1-6)
1. Where do Christians get their faith?
2. What is the Bible?
3. How do Christians know that the Bible is the Word of God?
4. Who is a Christian?
5. What is the Church?
6. What is the Free Presbyterian Church?
1. Where do Christians get their faith?
Christians go to the Bible.
2. What is the Bible? The Bible, called the Holy Scriptures, containing the Old and New Testaments, 66 Books only, is the Word of God and the only infallible source of Divine Truth and Divine Commandment. It is without error and is infallible.
Rome has added other books to the Bible, called the Apocryphal. The Council of Trent (Session 4) enumerated these books "Lest any doubt should arise respecting the sacred books which are received by the Council:
* Tobias
* Judith * The Dream of Mardochai (added to the Book of Esther)
* Wisdom * Ecclesiasticus
* Baruch * The Song of the Three Children (inserted in the 3rd chapter of Daniel, from the 25th to the 91st verse, Douai Bible) * The Prayer of Manasses * and the First and Second Books of Maccabees."
We reject these books:
First, they were never received, acknowledged or admitted into the canon of the Old Testament Scripture by the Jews, to whom, St Paul says, "the words of God were committed" (Romans 3:2); nor are they included in the catalogue of sacred books given to Josephus, the Jewish historian.
Second, not one of the Apocryphal books was written in pure Hebrew.
Third, the Apocryphal books are never quoted by our Lord or His Apostles.
Fourth, they were rejected by the primitive Church (Eusebius: Hist., lib. Iv, c. 26).
Fifth, they were rejected from the canon of inspired Scripture by Jerome, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril, Hilary, Gregory Nazianzen, etc.
Sixth, the Council of Laodicea, held in the year 364, whose canons were received and confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, delivers the catalogue of the canonical books as they are received in the Protestant Church.
3. How do Christians know that the Bible is the Word of God? The Bible manifests itself to be the Word of God by its claim, and the proof of its claim in its majesty, purity, invincibility, infallibility, integrity and authority, but especially the witness of the Holy Spirit of God in the heart which alone is able to persuade that it is indeed the very Word of God.
4. Who is a Christian? A Christian is any person, no matter what his colour, class or creed may have been, who believes the Record that God has given of His Son in the Word of God; accepts the verdict of God upon himself as a sinner; confesses that he is lost and hell-deserving; makes bare his heart and all his sins to God only; asks to be cleansed in the Saviour’s Precious Blood, throwing himself for salvation by faith alone, through grace alone, on Christ alone. The true Christian gladly confesses: "I’m only a sinner and nothing at all, but Jesus Christ is my all in all."
5. What is the Church? The Church on earth is the whole company of all redeemed ones who have believed in Christ alone to the salvation of their souls; whose infallible rule is the Holy Scriptures; and who are seeking, by the Holy Spirit, to win lost souls for Christ. This is the true Universal or Catholic Church on earth.
6. What is the Free Presbyterian Church? The Free Presbyterian Church is a branch of the Universal Church which holds to the Bible as rediscovered at the great Reformation of the 16th century as the only final judge on all matters of doctrine and practice, and which bases its church government upon that of the New Testament.