White River Baptist Church is a Baptist Church in St. Paul, AR. It is lead by Pastor Kenny Hicks. They are most known for their appearance on the CMT show World's Strictest Parents, which featured the Forsyth family attending services there. It is unknown if any members of the family still attend this church.
Beliefs[]
From the church's website:
The Scriptures[]
The Old and New Testaments containing the sixty-six books from Genesis through Revelation are the complete Divine revelation and communication of the Will of God to mankind and constitute the Word of God. The Bible was recorded by holy men of old as they were moved by the Holy Spirit in such a definite way that their writings were supernaturally and verbally inspired and free from error and have been preserved through the King James Version.
The Godhead[]
God is revealed as self-existent and self-revealing in three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who share the same attributes and are worthy of the same distinct place in the execution of Divine purposes.
The Father[]
God the Father is the first Person in the Godhead and is perfect in holiness, infinite in wisdom, and measureless in power. We rejoice that He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of men, that He hears and answers prayer, and that He saves from sin and death all those who come to Him through Jesus Christ, our only mediator.
The Lord Jesus Christ[]
The second Person of the Triune God is the Son whose name is the Lord Jesus Christ. He existed eternally with the Father and came to earth at the time of His incarnation, and, without change in His Deity, He became a man through the miracle of His divine conception and virgin birth. He lived a sinless, impeccable life, died a substitutionary death of all men, was buried, and arose from the grave physically on the third day. He ascended into Heaven where He is presently fulfilling His intercessory and mediatorial ministry as our great High Priest, and He has promised to return to rapture the saved prior to the Tribulation, at the conclusion of which He will institute His Davidic reign over Israel and the nations of the world for a thousand years on this earth.
The Holy Spirit[]
The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Godhead and is the divine agent in creation, revelation, and redemption. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and He calls, regenerates, and seals the believer. He indwells all who are born again and empowers them for service, illumines their understanding of the truth, and promotes sanctification in all who become children of God through faith in Christ. The ministry of the Holy Spirit in the world today is to point men to Christ and to promote the Savior rather than calling attention to Himself, neither does He lead people in any way contrary to the written Word of God.
Creation[]
We believe in the Genesis account of creation and that it is to be taken literally and not figuratively; that man was created directly by God who fashioned Adam and Eve in His own likeness, and that man did not evolve from any lower form of life; that all animal and vegetable life was made directly by God and that according to the established law of God they bring forth only “after their kind.”
The Fall of Man[]
Man, who was created in the image and likeness of God and endued with personal volition (free will), became sinful and subject to the power of the devil by personal and willful disobedience to the revealed will of God. The resulting depravity or fallen nature has been transmitted to the entire human race so that man is not only a sinner by nature, choice, and practice, but he is guilty before God and possesses within himself no means of recovery or salvation.
The Way of Salvation[]
Salvation is by the grace of God through His free gift which is neither merited nor secured in whole or in part by any virtue or the work of man. The single ground or basis of salvation is the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the two fold condition requires repentance from sin and faith in the risen Son of God. Salvation is accomplished through the instrumentality of the Word of God. Salvation is available to all who will receive it. It is God’s will that all men be saved, and to that end, God made provision for all in Christ’s personal sacrifice for all men. There is only one way of salvation.
The Eternal Security and Assurance of Believers[]
All the redeemed, those who have been once saved, are kept by God’s power and are secure in Christ forever. It is the privilege of believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation through the testimony of God’s Word which also clearly forbids the use of Christian liberty as an occasion to the flesh.
The Church[]
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a visible, localized Assembly of God and continuing with one accord in Scriptural doctrines, pattern themselves after the first church which was started by the Lord Jesus. This is the basis for covenant fellowship as set forth in the Scriptures, and it is the institution of the church which received the ordinances from Jesus Christ Himself. Furthermore, Christ gave the commission to the church which is the only agency authorized by God to propagate the message of redemption to the entire world, discipline the converts at home and forming sister churches of like faith and practice in Judaea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth, teaching them to observe all things that He has commanded. As such, the church is an autonomous, self-governing, theocratic body, answerable to Christ as its head and bound thereby from its own to send forth missionaries (evangelists) whose task it is to represent the Lord Jesus Christ through the church as ambassadors of the grace of God and as arms of that local assembly. Perpetually, it remains the ground and pillar of Scriptural truth and will do so until the end of the age. Hence, the New Testament church has the authority to perform these functions, and it is the Lord’s will that every believer would both identify with and become a part of the ministry of a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper[]
Christian baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances, not sacraments, as they have no saving power, given to the church by the Lord Jesus Christ and are each a memorial, a symbol, and a prophecy. Scriptural baptism is the total immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to show forth a solemn and beautiful emblem the believer’s faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Savior, with its effect in his death to sin and resurrection to a new life. Only a New Testament church has the authority to authorize this ordinance which is also a prerequisite to participation in the Lord’s Supper, in which the members of the local assembly by the use of unleavened bread and unfermented grape juice commemorate together the death of Jesus on their behalf, preceded always by solemn self-examination. Since the Lord’s Supper is a local church ordinance, only members in good standing of the congregation administrating the Lord’s Supper are eligible to participate.
Future Events[]
The Scriptures teach us that at death the spirit and soul of a believer pass instantly into the presence of Christ and remain in conscious joy with Him until the resurrection of the body when Christ comes for His own. At death, the spirit and soul of the unbeliever pass immediately into a place of conscious punishment in hell to await the resurrection of the bodies of the wicked unto judgment. The blessed hope of the believer is the imminent, personal, pretribulational, premillennial appearance of Christ to rapture the saved. His righteous judgments will then be poured upon the unbelieving world during the Tribulation (the seventieth week of Daniel), the last half of which is the Great Tribulation. The climax of this fearful era will be the physical return of Jesus Christ to the earth in great glory to introduce the Davidic Kingdom. Israel will be saved and restored completely to their land. Satan will be bound, and the curse will be lifted from much of the physical creation for the thousand years of the righteous reign of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the earth. Following the Millennium, the Great White Throne Judgment will occur, at which time the bodies and souls of those who did not accept Christ during their lives upon the earth will be reunited, and they will be cast into the Lake of Fire to suffer for eternity.
Ecclesiastical Separation[]
The Scriptures teach total and complete separation from all forms of heresy and apostasy as exemplified in ecclesiastical organizations which include those who sanction theological compromise. We believe ecumenical evangelism which involves apostates violates the principals taught in God’s Word. We further hold that no child of God should remain associated with or continue to hold membership in any organization which is or represents or includes doctrinal heresy, apostasy, or any false religion. Personal Separation, The Scriptures teach that every believer should be separated unto God from the world, and by the aid of the Holy Spirit, should walk in Christian love and holiness, exhibiting qualities of honesty, integrity, forgiveness, and loving-kindness. The Scriptures admonish every believer not to love the world or the things in the world, but rather to flee evil desires, avoid every kind of evil and refrain from questionable practices which destroy one’s testimony, offend one’s brother, and fail to glorify God.[1]