To promote Biblical obedience, peace, unity, love, joy, and compassion among all men, and to secure for ourselves and future generations the blessing of God Almighty, we hereby enter into a Solemn Covenant, grounded in the following declaration:

God, eternal Creator, Author of liberty, has spoken with reason, accuracy, and clarity concerning justice, truth, and reality in Heaven and on Earth,

In bold defiance of God's Word, the Bible, the fallen race of man has perverted justice, truth, and reality, leaving a painful legacy of negligence, confusion, chaos, and exploitation; and, thus, has created a compelling need for correction and redemption by out merciful God. In this twentieth century, evil has so multiplied that all life and liberty are at risk of destruction by the godless or by the judgment of God,

The Church of Jesus Christ, now grown lukewarm and indifferent in pursuing its redemptive priestly ministry and corrective prophetic authority, largely has tolerated or participated in the dominant evils and errors of this sin-filled age, further adding to out planetary crisis.

That future generations of God's children and nations yet unborn may learn of righteousness and judgment without suffering the cost of repeated sins, we declare with brokenness the record of our grievous transgression of the Divine Law,

We humbly and openly confess that too often, as a people and as individuals;

1. We have failed to care adequately for the souls of men who will spend eternity in the fires of hell if they fail to receive for themselves the atoning blood of Christ, bowing their knees before Him as Lord of their lives and King of the universe,

2. We have disobeyed God's clear commands in Scripture;

3. We have built our own egos rather than advancing the Kingdom of Christ;

4. We have, all too often fallen short of the integrity, faithfulness, and total honesty with each other that God requires of us before the watching world;

5. We have failed to confront falsehood and unrighteousness consistently in the Church or in the world because of our fear of man and of losing prestige or security;

6. We have been content to reduce the power of the transcendent gospel to mere creedal form devoid of spiritual content or present reality by our harlotry with the idols of personal peace and affluence;

7. We have neglected our God-ordained duties to be the world's salt, light, teachers and example; as a result, the world is in desperate trouble and western civilization stands on the brink of self-destruction;

8. We, and our fathers, have settled for a substandard false version of Christianity in our local churches and denominations;

9, We have tolerated sin within our ranks when we should have administered church discipline and excommunication;

10. We have allowed heresies to creep into out churches and institutions of higher learning, failing to demand of our teachers that they teach and stand upon the faithful and inerrant written Word of God,

11. We have heaped to ourselves teachers and pastors to tickle our ears with pleasant falsehoods and entertaining fables rather than convicting us of sin and demanding that we live righteous lives of obedience to the Bible;

12. We have sold our children's minds and souls to the godless influences of secularized education and the media;

13. We have allowed our churches to become irrelevant, powerless ghettos while those who hate or neglect God and His righteous standards for society have stolen the America of our founding fathers out from under our slumbering eyes;

14. We have allowed misguided policies, flagrant sins, and hideous atrocities to be enacted by our elected and appointed officials--legislative, executive, and judicial--without rising up en masse, and demanding that they be corrected In the name of God and for the sake of justice;

15. We have permitted both Christian and non-Christian men of our society to fail in leadership becoming emasculated, tamed, dependent, self-centered, and soft; and, in the opposite extreme, we have allowed some men to abuse their authority by their lack of sacrificial love for their families;

16. We have lived beyond our means by misusing credit, so trading our liberty for financial bondage; 17.

17. We have adopted the covetousness and materialism of our surrounding culture, seeking the approval of man and neglecting the fear of the Lord;

18. We have been caught up in a self-centered, false version of Christianity, focusing on our own needs and desires rather than on God's glory and on sacrificing ourselves for the needs of our Christian brothers and fellow humans,

19. We have concerned ourselves more with Heaven, the future, and escaping this world at Christ's Second Coming, than with preparing His Bride to be spotless, beautiful, glorious, and pleasing to Him when He comes;

20. We foolishly have allowed Satan to divide us from other members in His Body through pride, jealousy, and competitions through a lack of humble serving of one another, and by concentrating on divisive minor issues rather than the clear Biblical articles of faith upon which we agree;

21. We have rested, idle and uncaring, while Satanically inspired Marxist Communism, and a revival of pagan religions has enslaved two-thirds of our planet, causing massive, needless suffering to the peoples under their sway;

22. We have failed to conduct our lives or manage our affairs in the conscious certainty that God's eternal standards for personal and social righteousness are unchanging and inexorable in their absolute cause-and-effect relationships, thus dishonoring God and playing the fool in our personal lives and social policies;

Therefore:

I. In brokenness and humility, we cast ourselves before the throne of Almighty God, beseeching Him to forgive these sins of ours and our fathers that we have so grievously and callously committed against Him, against each other and against the dying world. We call upon our Father in Heaven to apply to these out sins the purifying, atoning blood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

2. In repentance and sorrow we ask our fellow Christians- all whom we have offended, ignored, and despised; before whom we have not been honest, open, vulnerable and tender; and whose ministries we have falsely believed we could do well without--to forgive us in the name of Jesus and for the sake of His glory and the unity of His Body. Ws hereby declare that we forgive all Christian brothers and sisters who have so treated us,

3. In shame and sorrow, we ask forgiveness of those follow humans who have not bowed their knee to Jesus as King of the universe or yet come under the saving power of His shed Blood, Forgive us for caring so little for your souls that we have not ministered more aggressively and lovingly to you about your eternal destiny and your fear of death.

Forgive us for our attempts to evangelize you that have been impersonal, mechanical, or insensitive,

Forgive us for displaying before you ugly, uninspiring lives devoid of God's integrity, compassion, and power,

Forgive us for being such poor examples of Christ's love by our disunity that you have rejected both Him and us, to your own spiritual impoverishment.

Forgive us for our failure to demonstrate to you Biblical answers for your difficulties and problems in life.

Forgive us for failing to occupy our proper position as servants in the affairs of law, government, economics, business, education, media, the arts, medicine, and science as the Creator's salt and light to the world, so that those spheres of life might offer you more help, Justice, hope, peace, and joy,

We have failed you miserably and we beg you to forgive us in the name of the great God who created us all for His glory,

And now, 0 God, forgive our willful disobedience, hardness of heart, and selfish indulgence, Hear our prayers, forgive our sin, and heal our land, 0 Lord; thus fulfilling the merciful promise of your Word,

"O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! 0 Lord, listen and take action! For Thine own sake, 0 my God, do not delay, because Thy people are called by Thy name." (Daniel 9:19)

Now, for the Glory of God, having repented of our sin and counted the cost of true discipleship, willing either to be martyred or to reign with Him, we hereby solemnly covenant with Almighty God and with one another, to live henceforth in full, serious obedience to all the Bible's commands that apply to us today, to the best of our ability and in dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit, from now until the day we die, so help us God,

We hereby voluntarily invite others in the family of God to hold us accountable to live in full obedience to the Bible, and to show us with demonstrated love whatever discrepancies they observe between out lives and what is written in the Bible, We submit in advance to Biblical church discipline as described in Matthew 18:15-20,

We commit ourselves in the presence of God Almighty and of our Christian brothers and sisters;

...to live to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever--the chief reasons for out existence in time and eternity;

---to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to be used as God wills to build up the Body of Christ on earth that it may become Biblical, holy, strong, courageous, unified, and effective in fulfilling its commissioned task on Earth;

---to do all we can, in the lives of our fellow humans and in the societies in which we live, to see God's will done on Earth as it is in Heaven, insofar as that is possible between now and the physical return of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Whereas, our souls are burdened with the unbiblical, Laodicean state of the Body of Christ in our age; and,

Whereas, the Body of Christ on earth has failed to be the salt, light, and teacher of a dark and dying world; and,

Whereas, we believe that we, the sleeping, uncaring, uncourageous, and unholy members of the Body of Christ bear much of the blame for the fact that our own society and Western civilization are on the brink of self destruction;

We therefore declare;

That a broad acceptance by the Bible-believing Church of the basic Biblical affirmations stated herein should be considered essential, primary, foundational, and non-negotiable by all Christians who wish to work and pray toward the revival of the Church and the reformation of society; and,

That the Body of Christ, in order to fulfill her Lord's Great Commission to make Bible-obeying disciples of all nations, needs to commit itself to the following statements of truth and plans of action.

A. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH MUST LEARN WHAT IS REALITY:

1. Inerrancy of the Bible

We affirm that the original manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible were so inspired by God, that the human authors wrote the exact words and sentences God inspired them to write without error and without misrepresenting God, history, or the created world in any way. What the Bible says, God says, Those inside and outside the Christian Church who teach that the Bible Is partly true and partly false, and that it is up to us humans to decide which parts are which, stand in opposition to the view of the Bible held by Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, the early Church, the Reformers, and all of mainstream Christianity) down to the last century, and are, by their destructive teaching, undermining the faith of the next generation,

2. The Bible is the Final Test of All Truth Claims

We affirm that this God-inspired, inerrant Bible is the only absolute, objective, final test for all truth claims, and the clearest verbal picture of reality that has ever come into the hands of mankind. By it, and it alone, are all philosophies, books, values, actions, and plans to be measured as to their consistency with reality, visible and invisible. Whatever statements or values are in opposition to the statements and values of the Bible err to the degree of their opposition.

3. The Bible States Reality for All Areas of Life and Thought

We affirm that the Bible is not only God's statements to us regarding religion, salvation, eternity, and righteousness, but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the spheres of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science. All theories and practices of these spheres of life are oily true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible, The Bible furnishes mankind with the only logical and verbal connection between time and eternity, religion and science, the visible and the invisible worlds.

4. Cause and Effect Relationship of God's Commandments

We affirm that God built the universe and man in accordance with the laws of His own Being in such a way that there is a cause and effect relationship between obeying the laws and commandments deposited in His Word and being blessed by God, Those people or nations that live In opposition to Biblical laws and commandments will, sooner or later, be cursed and destroyed, This is not to say that we can force God's hand to bless us, but rather that it is always best for us to obey His will,

It is, therefore, to the great benefit of all mankind, Christian and non-Christian alike, to bring every society's judicial and legal systems into as close an approximation to the laws and commandments of the Bible as its citizens will allow,

5. Worldview

We affirm that the Bible presents God's own worldview, which is consistent and practical and answers all of the basic life questions of man. To function properly In the Church and in the world, Christians must seek to understand, to the best of their ability, the full theological worldview presented in the Bible. They must be willing to measure all points of their own theology by the Bible and, in submission to the Bible, to make whatever changes are called for in their own theology.

6. The 42 Articles of The Essentials of the Christian Worldview

We affirm that the Coalition On RevivaI's 42 Articles of The Essentials of the Christian Worldview states the basic doctrines of historic Christianity and can serve as a theological test and guardrail to keep an individual or a church from heresy,

B. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH MUST LIVE UNDER THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST AND, THEREFORE, IN FULL OBEDIENCE TO THE BIBLE

7. Lordship of Christ Non-Optional

We affirm that living under the total Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of life is not optional for those who would call themselves Christians, Though obedience to the Bible's commands does not earn or retain salvation, still the Bible is clear in its teaching that no one who lives a life of deliberate, consistent disobedience to the Bible's commands ought to call himself a Christian. We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone, devoid of obedience.

8. Living Above Deliberate Sin

We affirm that it is possible and expected by God that Christians will and must live above conscious, deliberate choices to sin, We are capable of this because of out new nature, the indwelling Holy Spirit and the ability of Christ's shad blood to break the power of canceled sin. This is not to say that the most holy of us do not need daily to say, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,"

9. The Great Commission

We affirm that the Great Commission is a mandate by our Lord to go forth into all the world and make Bible-obeying disciples of all nations. Getting men's souls saved is only a preliminary part of fulfilling the Great Commission. Our work is incomplete unless we teach them to obey all He commanded, The words of the Lord's prayer for God's will to "be done on Earth as it is in Heaven" are another way to state the essence of the same Great Commission.

10. Christ's Lordship Extends to the Entire Universe

We affirm that a full understanding of the Lordship of Christ is to realize that, when Jests stated, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me," He was declaring that whatever power Satan held over the world was broken by His death on the cross and His victorious resurrection. As Son of God and representative man, Jesus regained authority over the earth which Adam, as representative man, lost, This is the meaning of His being seated at the right hand of God, When Jesus returns, He will gain no greater authority over this earth and the forces of Satan than He had from the moment He ascended to and sat upon His throne, though He will exercise His authority in full power, then, in a way He is not fully exercising it now.

11. Christian Maturity

We affirm that all Christians must be nurtured by those who are their spiritual leaders if they are to reach their full level of Christian maturity, No Christian or group of Christians has the right before God to live year after year on a spiritual plateau, stagnating in Christian immaturity, Christian maturity is capable enough of definition that the apostles categorized their people as either mature or immature, It is measured by the extent of one's conformity to the image of Christ, made visible by biblical obedience in every area of life,

12. The Necessity of Human Accountability

We affirm that because of our infinite capacity for self-deception, all of us who strive for Christian maturity and a biblically obedient life need to be held accountable to live in obedience to the Bible by loving, trustworthy brothers and sisters. Apart from this our obedience must always fall short of its potential, This brother-to-brother accountability should be entered into mutually by voluntary association.

13. The Need For Confrontation

We affirm that in a life where there exists "the world, the flesh and the devil," there is need for loving confrontation over matters of falsehood and unrighteousness in the Church and in the world, It is impossible for any group of people to live truly biblically obedient lives without applying to each other regular confrontation, exhortation, rebuke and church discipline. Church discipline must be an on-going part of any congregation that chooses truly to live according to the Bible.

C. THE CHURCH MUST LIVE IN LOVE AND UNITY WITH EACH OTHER

14. Only One Body

We affirm that although there are many denominational and theological divisions within the body of Christ, in reality there exists only one Body of Christ to which all true Christians of all denominations belong, This central fact must be exemplified by churches and pastors at a local level and in a visible way. The desire in Christ's heart is that His Body demonstrate visible, real Body unity, love, and interdependence,

15. Local Pastors' Prayer Fellowships

We affirm that the unity of the Body of Christ must be demonstrated and can be greatly aided by local pastors praying together in honest fellowship for each other's lives and ministries. Their prayer and fellowship must go deep, to the point of sincere love, sacrifice, and experiencing joy at each other's success.

16. Humility Required

We affirm that before local body unity will be real or have a large effect, pastors and Christian leaders must be willing to allow others to get credit for, or have control of Joint projects, and to work in programs under the name of another church or leader, Humility and faithful servanthood are essential for true body unity, locally and nationally,

17. Loyalty and Support of Leaders in the Body

We affirm that within any local church or para-church organization there must be a real and visible unity of spirit, purpose, and leadership, Struggles for power and poorly defined organizational chains of command must be seen as problems not to be tolerated, except for temporary periods, until the unity around the proper leadership can be defined and established, A pastor or para-church leader needs his staff and board to be deeply loyal and unified around his leadership) without his vision being forced to compete with other visions within the church or organization.

D. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH MUST BE SALT AND LIGHT TO THE WORLD

18. Light and Salt are to Influence the World

We affirm that to be salt and light to the world means to influence it for good and to show it the way to live and conduct its affairs, In short, it means getting God's will to "be done on earth as it is in heaven" and to "make disciples of all nations) teaching them to obey whatsoever I have commanded you," Christ instituted the Church as the world's teacher, The world will not know how to live or which direction to go without the Church's biblical influence on its theories, laws, actions, and institutions, To be salt and light, the Church cannot exist in a Christian "ghetto" or have a dichotomous view that falsely divides life into the spiritual versus the physical-historical-measurable,

19, Storming the Gates of Hell

We affirm that part of the task of the bearers of the Christian gospel is to identify, bind, cast out, and break the Satanic power of demons over those to whom we minister. All Christian ministers inside and outside the institutional church must know how to deal with and overpower demons that oppress or harass people in their care, They must do this in the name of Christ and by the power of His presently effective blood.

20. Social Evils To Oppose

We affirm that all Bible-believing Christians must take a non-neutral stance in opposing, praying against, and speaking against social moral evils such as the following:

A. Abortion on demand, infanticide, and euthanasia

B, Adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bestiality and other forms of sexual perversion

C. Pornography, prostitution, sexual entertainment, rape and other crimes of exploitation and physical, emotional or sexual abuse

D. Drug abuse

E. Unjust treatment of the poor and disadvantaged

F. Criminal injustice

G. Racial discrimination

R. Theft, fraud, and violence not in self defense

I. State usurpation of parental rights and God given liberties

J. Statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth

K. Atheism, moral relativism, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint In public schools

L. Communism/Marxism, fascism, Nazism and the one world government of the New Age Movement

NOW THEREFORE,

in hope of God's mercy and blessing upon His Church and a needy world, we humbly call on all who name Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and every Bible believing church on earth to join us in these acts of repentance, in ratifying this covenant with God and His Church, and in embracing these fundamental and non-negotiable truths and mandates, to the great end that God might be glorified and His will might be done,

May we live to glorify God, May we fellowship with Him eternally. May we offer ourselves a living sacrifice to God and our fellow men, May we be salt and light in the world, May the fruit of our labor, as much as is possible, be the working of God's will on Earth as it is in Heaven,

May God give us His strength, wisdom, holiness, justice, love and power in full measure. And may God multiply those who enter herein,

[In witness of this Solemn Assembly and Covenant, we do hereby set our hands this fourth day of July in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred eighty six, in the city of Washington.]

In witness of this Solemn Assembly and Covenant, we do hereby
set our hands

this day of in the year of our Lord

in the city of

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Copyright Coalition on Revival, 1986