What Makes Vandament Avenue Baptist Church Distinctively Different?
There are Churches everywhere in America today, and Yukon, Oklahoma is no exception to the rule. With so many Churches to choose from, why should anyone visit Vandament Avenue Baptist Church? Is there anything that makes this Church different from the others?
Yes, there are many distinguishing characteristics of our Church that make it nearly unique. What I want to address today is, perhaps, the most important and primary of those characteristics.
At Vandament Avenue Baptist Church we consider the Authorized 1611 King James Bible to be the sole authority for all faith and practice.
If you visit other Churches today, you will find that many of them use a plethora of Bible versions. The RSV, the NIV, the NKJV, and many others are among the most popular. At Vandament Avenue Baptist Church we use only the original King James Version. We hold this version to be God’s choice for the English-speaking peoples of the world for many reasons.
The King James Bible was translated from God’s preserved text. The group of documents known as the “Textus Receptus”, or “Received Text”, is comprised of those books and readings that have always been accepted by Churches throughout history as the authoritative Word of God. In the English language, only the King James Version contains all the words of Scripture. Literally thousands of changes, deletions, and additions have taken place in other versions. There was never a question about what constituted the Bible until the late 1800’s. To us, there still isn’t. At Vandament Avenue Baptist Church, the old King James Bible is our only textbook.
The Bible says of itself in 2 Tim. 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” We believe the words of the Bible are ‘Divinely inspired’, or ‘God-breathed’. Thus, it is important that the Bible we use contain them all.
The Bible says also in Psalm 12:6-7, “The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” God has undertaken the responsibility to preserve the very words of Scripture. Therefore, it is important for us to ensure the Bible we study has those words He so diligently preserved through time, persecution, and translation.
When the Sadducees sought to entrap Jesus in His words through subtlety, the Lord let His whole argument that there is life after death rest on the tense of one ‘be’ verb. In Mark 12:26-27 Jesus said, “And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him saying, I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.” The point the Lord makes of course is, if there were no life after death, God would have said, “I was the God of Abraham…” However, He said, “I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM…” If even verb tenses are so very important, then we ought to make certain that our copy of the Word of God contains all God intended it to contain.
If you visit Vandament Avenue Baptist Church, you will find we only teach, preach, and memorize the Old King James Bible. Remember what Baptists used to be? We still are.
Vandament Avenue Baptist is ‘the end of your search for an old-fashioned Church.’