A Statement of Faith.
These are the doctrines I have given my life to preach, and they are the doctrines this publication is built upon. They are not new, and they are not mine. They are what the Christian Church, in her best moments, has always confessed. Every article you read here grows from this soil.
I believe the Bible — the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments — to be the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God. It is the supreme and final authority for all matters of faith, doctrine, and conduct. It was given by holy men of God as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and it remains the only sufficient rule for the Christian life.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 · 2 Peter 1:20-21 · Psalm 119:105
I believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — equal in power and glory, the same in substance, distinct in office. There is no God beside Him, and apart from Him no salvation is possible.
Deuteronomy 6:4 · Matthew 28:19 · 2 Corinthians 13:14 · Isaiah 45:5
I believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, very God and very man in one Person, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, taught with divine authority, performed mighty miracles, and died upon the cross as a perfect substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the world.
I believe in His bodily resurrection on the third day, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, His present priestly ministry of intercession for His people, and His personal, visible, and glorious return to this earth in power.
John 1:1, 14 · Luke 1:35 · 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 · Hebrews 7:25 · Acts 1:11
I believe in the personality and the deity of the Holy Spirit. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He regenerates the sinner who turns to Christ, baptizes him into the Body of Christ, indwells him, seals him for the day of redemption, sanctifies him, and empowers him for godly living and faithful service.
John 16:7-11 · Titus 3:5 · 1 Corinthians 12:13 · Ephesians 1:13-14 · Galatians 5:22-23
I believe that man was created by God in His own image, in righteousness and true holiness. By willful disobedience our first parents fell into sin, and because of that fall all men are by nature sinful and stand under the just condemnation of God. Apart from divine grace, no man can please God or save himself.
Genesis 1:27 · Genesis 3 · Romans 3:23 · Romans 5:12 · Ephesians 2:1-3
I believe that salvation is the free gift of God, offered to all who place their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — not by works of righteousness which we have done, lest any man should boast. Every soul who turns from sin and trusts in Christ is forgiven, justified, adopted into the family of God, and given everlasting life.
Ephesians 2:8-9 · Romans 10:9-10 · John 3:16 · Titus 3:5 · Acts 16:31
I believe in the universal Church, the spiritual Body of Christ, of which He alone is the Head, composed of every born-again believer in every age and in every place. I believe also in the local church, established by Christ for the worship of God, the preaching of the Word, the observance of the two ordinances He gave — baptism and the Lord’s Supper — the fellowship of believers, and the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.
Matthew 16:18 · Ephesians 1:22-23 · Ephesians 4:11-13 · Matthew 28:19 · 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
I believe every Christian is called to a life of holiness, separated unto God, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, growing daily in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The believer is called to love God with all his heart, to love his neighbor as himself, to bear witness to the gospel by word and deed, and to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.
Romans 12:1-2 · 1 Peter 1:15-16 · Mark 12:30-31 · Galatians 6:10
I believe in the personal, visible, and glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth in power. I believe in the bodily resurrection of all the dead — the saved to everlasting life and the lost to everlasting separation from God. I believe in the final judgment of all men, when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Acts 1:11 · 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 · John 5:28-29 · Revelation 20:11-15 · Philippians 2:10-11
I believe that the chief calling of the Church in this age is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person, in every nation, to the uttermost part of the earth. We do not have the right to be silent. We do not have permission to be ashamed. Until He returns, our work is to preach, to teach, to baptize, and to call the lost to repentance and faith.
Matthew 28:18-20 · Acts 1:8 · Romans 10:14-15 · Mark 16:15
The articles above are not abstractions. If they are true — and they are — then certain things follow. These are the convictions you will find threaded through every article on this site.
Because every human being is made in the image of God (Psalm 139:13-16), every life — from the moment of conception in the womb, with unique DNA separate from the mother, to the last breath of old age — is sacred. Abortion is the taking of an innocent life, and it is to be opposed by Christians plainly and compassionately. The elderly, the disabled, and the unwanted are likewise to be defended. Mercy for the woman in crisis and mercy for the child in her womb are not two competing kindnesses but one.
Sin is real, repentance is real, and forgiveness is real. The gospel does not call evil good or rename consequences as oppression. Every man and woman will give account to God for the life they have lived (Romans 14:12). Grace is offered to all who turn, but no one is forced through the door against his will.
The civil authority bears the sword for good reason (Romans 13). The wrongdoer is owed both consequence and the offer of restoration; these are not in conflict but are both in the heart of God. To love mercy and to do justly (Micah 6:8) is one calling, not two.
Christians are commanded to honor the king, to pray for those who lead, and to live quiet and peaceable lives — regardless of which party currently holds office (1 Peter 2:17; 1 Timothy 2:1-2). Prayer is owed to leaders by office, not by faction. To despise rulers is a sin; to flatter them is also a sin. Honor the office, speak the truth, leave the verdict to God.
The Bible names a particular thing — holy marriage — and gives it a particular shape: the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, instituted by God in the garden before any government existed to define it (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). That is the covenant this Statement of Faith addresses, and that alone.
Civil arrangements outside the bounds of the holy sacrament are beyond the scope of this confession; the Church does not consecrate them and is not asked to. What the State chooses to call “marriage” for the purposes of taxes, contracts, and the law is the State’s business; what God has called holy matrimony is His, and it is unchanged.
Within the covenant God ordained, the home is the first school of faith, and parents are the first preachers of the gospel to their children. Holy marriage is not an outdated arrangement to be reconfigured; it is the design of the Creator, and it remains good.
Every human being, without exception, is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The man whose politics make us flinch, the woman whose lifestyle we cannot approve, the friend, the stranger, the enemy across the table — every one is inherently valuable, every one is loved by the God who made them, and every one is to be loved by us.
We make no distinction by category of sin, for the simple reason that we are all sinners. “There is none righteous, no, not one… for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10, 23). Before grace found us we were dead in our trespasses, deserving nothing but the judgment of God; the grace by which we now stand was not earned and gives us no platform from which to despise anyone (Ephesians 2:1-9; 1 Corinthians 4:7).
Christ’s door is open to every soul. He said it Himself: “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). Our calling is to love one another, to lift one another up, to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15), and together to seek the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 6:33).
This nation has been most blessed when she has honored God, and she has stumbled in proportion to her turning away from Him (Proverbs 14:34). Lone Trumpet stands with gratitude for the heritage God has given this country and with a plain call to repentance and renewal. The cross is over the flag, not the other way around — but the cross over the flag is a beautiful thing, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Some things are right and some are wrong, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only sure ground for telling the difference. This publication does not preach “everyone has his own truth,” because everyone does not. Christ is the truth (John 14:6). Anyone who tells you otherwise speaks comfort to you at the edge of a precipice.
No one has ever earned heaven, and no one ever could. We are all, every one of us, sinners by birth and by choice, and the only thing standing between us and the just judgment of God is the cross of Jesus Christ — His finished work, not ours. “There is none righteous, no, not one… for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10, 23).
This is the meaning of “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith is the empty hand that receives the gift; it is not the price. Heaven is not a wage we earn for trying hard. It is a kingdom we are invited into, freely, by a King who paid the cost Himself.
This is true for every soul — the lifelong churchgoer who prayed first as a child, the broken person who finally believes after decades of running, the thief on the cross who turned to Jesus in his last hour with nothing to offer but “Lord, remember me” (Luke 23:42-43). All come the same way, on the same terms, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
And the church has long taught, with humility, that the grace of Christ reaches further in some circumstances than the bare wording of conscious faith might suggest. It reaches the infant who dies before she could ever speak the Name (2 Samuel 12:23). It reaches the cognitively disabled, who cannot frame the words of faith with the rest of us. The God who said “Suffer little children to come unto me” (Matthew 19:14) is not stopped at the borders of language or comprehension. He alone judges every heart, and He judges every heart justly.
This is not universalism. Christ is the only way (John 14:6). The gospel must still be preached, and souls must still be called to faith. But His grace is wider than our certainty, and the door He has opened is one no man can close.
Every person who has not trusted Christ is lost — not insulted, not lectured at, lost. The Christian’s response is never contempt; it is the same response the Father gave to the prodigal: to watch the road, to run when the prodigal turns home, and to fall on his neck. We are uncompromising on the truth of the gospel and tender as our Savior toward those who do not yet know Him.
That is what I believe. That is what every article on this site is built upon. If the gospel is true — and it is — then nothing matters more than that you hear it, that you believe it, and that you live in the light of it.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” — John 3:16 (KJV)
If you are reading this and have never trusted Christ as Lord and Savior, the door is open today. Confess your sin to Him, believe upon Him, and call on His name. He has promised that whosoever shall call shall be saved (Romans 10:13).
In the service of the only King who matters, Pastor Lyvers