About

Our Faith

What we believe about…

…God

There is only one true God. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. Thus, He is all powerful and all wise. God has manifested Himself by many names in the Old Testament. We believe in the trinity in unity.

…Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh. He was virgin born and perfectly sinless. He came to Israel to confirm the promises made to Old Testament fathers. He died for all mankind.

 

…The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is also God. His activity today is to indwell all believers and enlighten them to the glories of Christ through the written word of God. He edifies, convicts, empowers and comforts the believer. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals all believers at the point of regeneration. Evidence of His indwelling is found in Galatians 5:22.

 

…Man

Man is a direct creation of God. He was made in God’s image but lost that image by the fall. He is totally depraved and incapable of bettering his fallen nature. In short, there is nothing in man that would commend him to God.

 

…Salvation

To be saved means to be delivered from perishing. Jesus saw the lost as a harvest about to perish. He came to seek and save the lost. He paid for the

sins of the world by His death on the cross. His precious and perfect blood atoned for our sins. All who accept Him as their Lord and Savior by faith, are saved from perishing in hell. The following is sufficient to save all sinners. Romans 10:9-13, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” We believe the saved are eternally secure and have everlasting life. How to be saved.

 

…Heaven and Hell

We believe heaven and hell are real places. They are not a state of mind. London is a place. Hong Kong is a place. Seattle is a place. Heaven is a place. Hell is a place. Jesus said concerning heaven, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus was clear that hell is a place of fire and suffering. He preached more about hell than He did about heaven. The saved go to heaven. The lost are doomed in hell.

 

…The Church

We believe all saved people of this dispensation are members of Christ’s body which is His church. Local churches were established and pastors called to minister to the saved. The church’s purpose is to edify the saints and reach a lost world.

 

…Baptism

We believe new converts should be baptized in water to picture their identification with Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection.

 

…Communion

We believe the Lord’s supper demonstrates the unity among believers in Jesus Christ. Believers who die to self in order to maintain unity with the brethren “show the Lord’s death” till He comes.

 

…The Bible

The Bible is the word of God. He promised to preserve His word for every generation. 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.” We believe the King James Bible constitutes those “words” for the English speaking world.

 

…Marriage

We believe that the only legitimate marriage is the joining of one man and one woman; and that God has commanded that no sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman.

 

…The Future

We believe the body of Christ will be raptured to be with the Lord. This will be followed by seven years of tribulation in which the Jews will be the chief object of Satan’s wrath. The Antichrist will rise to power, only to be destroyed by the return of Jesus Christ in power and glory to reign on earth for one thousand years from Jerusalem. At the end of the thousand years, Satan will be loosed and will lead a rebellion against Jesus Christ. Fire will come down from heaven and destroy him and his armies. There will be a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness will reign for ever and ever!

Our History

In August of 1971 Fred L. England came to Kalispell from Bible Baptist College in Springfield, Missouri to start an independent Baptist Church. The church was organized on May 18, 1973. Pastor England left the church on April 1, 1974; he went to Selah, Washington to study under another pastor. Nathan Bemis arrived in Kalispell on May 17, 1974 with his wife Louise and sons John, 16 months old and Joel, 6 months old. When Pastor Bemis arrived the church was meeting at the former Assembly of God building on 2nd St E. in Kalispell. The building had been sold to the Senior Citizens so a new meeting place had to be found within the first months of his arrival. There were only 10 or 15 people attending the church at that time.

The Bible Baptist Fellowship of Colorado supported the Bemis family with $500 a month for a six month period. The church paid Pastor Bemis $50 a week. The church had purchased 3 and ½ acres of land in Evergreen from Les and John Inabnit. While trying to build up the congregation spiritually and numerically, Pastor Bemis was able to rent the hallway of East Evergreen School for Sunday services. Wednesday night prayer meeting was held in the Pastor’s home.

The first part of November 1974, Pastor Bemis began working as a welder and doing odd jobs to support his family. He sold his truck that winter to pay for a concrete slab to be poured at the property just off of LaSalle Rd in Evergreen. The local owners of a Quonset hut construction company agreed to put up a Quonset hut shell with 1 inch of insulation to cover the slab. In March of 1975, the first Quonset hut was erected. By this time the congregation had grown to about 50. The monthly payment for this building was $140. As money came in the sheet rock, piece by piece was put into place; furnaces installed, chairs purchased. A retired pastor, H.L. Inabnit helped with the building and was a great blessing to the church and to the Bemis family.

During the 1980’s Shawn Scribner was the youth pastor at Bible Baptist Church. After training under Pastor Bemis, he went on to pastor Heritage Baptist Church in Yuma, AZ. Many of the young people who grew up in Bible Baptist are still serving the Lord at the church.

During the 40 years that Pastor Bemis was Pastor at Bible Baptist Church, a second Quonset hut was built as a Sunday School building and fellowship hall. A new auditorium was built in 2007 and the original Quonset is used as junior church meeting place and Sunday School class building. We praise the Lord for the many children, teens and young adults who fill the various classrooms each Sunday and Wednesday as they learn the Word of God and the love of fellowship with God’s people.

Bible Baptist Church is an independent Baptist Church; we believe the King James Bible is the Word of God preserved without error; we sing the old hymns accompanied by the piano. The hymns sung are to prepare our hearts for the preaching and teaching of God’s Word.

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PASTOR NATHAN W. BEMIS was born in Colorado in 1941. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1960. While in boot camp, he had to spend several days in sick bay and was given a gospel tract. He was saved as a result of that tract and he began reading a Gideon New Testament. He joined the Methodist Church because Paul Whipple, the man who gave him the tract was studying to be a Methodist preacher. But as he and some fellow Christian sailors began visiting churches in the various ports where the Lexington was docked he began to go to Baptist churches. While in Pensacola, FL, he went to Brent Baptist Church where Dr. Peter Ruckman was pastor. There he got assurance of his salvation. When Dr. Ruckman began Pensacola Bible Institute in 1965, Bro. Bemis was a member of the first class. He graduated in 1968. That same year he married Louise Plemons and in the fall of 1970, they moved to Laurel, Mississippi where Bro. Bemis was pastor of Victory Baptist Church. In 1972, they moved back to Colorado. They adopted their son John in January of 1973 and Joel was born in November of 1973. They moved to Kalispell in May of 1974 and served the Lord at Bible Baptist Church until his retirement in June of 2015.