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| - The General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church, Inc. was organized in 1935 as the Church of the Full Gospel, Inc, by members of several Free Will Baptist churches, under the leadership of William Howard Carter. In doctrine and organization they are similar to the Free Will Baptists, holding a hybrid Calvinist/Arminian outlook and somewhat Wesleyan theology. They share Wesleyan-Holiness traits, and consider themselves fundamentalists and are in acceptance of the theology of free grace, free salvation, and free will. By 1952, they had grown to 31 churches with about 2200 members. Headquarters were in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where an annual conference was held. Today the headquarters are in Tucson, Arizona. After the death of Carter in 1980, the denomination dwindled to 2 churche
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| abstract
| - The General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church, Inc. was organized in 1935 as the Church of the Full Gospel, Inc, by members of several Free Will Baptist churches, under the leadership of William Howard Carter. In doctrine and organization they are similar to the Free Will Baptists, holding a hybrid Calvinist/Arminian outlook and somewhat Wesleyan theology. They share Wesleyan-Holiness traits, and consider themselves fundamentalists and are in acceptance of the theology of free grace, free salvation, and free will. By 1952, they had grown to 31 churches with about 2200 members. Headquarters were in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where an annual conference was held. Today the headquarters are in Tucson, Arizona. After the death of Carter in 1980, the denomination dwindled to 2 churches with about 100 members by 1992 and was revived in 2009 by Arizona Bible College [1] and it's graduate seminary - Tucson Theological Seminary[2]. Graduates of college/seminary may qualify for ordination which is in the Baptist/Methodist tradition and deacons/deaconess are also ordained. General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church also has an informal tier of ministers. Those who graduate from a Bible College or take a year of prescribed courses are Licensed Ministers. Two more years of courses or graduation from a seminary or theological graduate school, as well as an exam by senior ministers, will result in one becoming an Ordained Minister. Both Licensed and Ordained ministers are entitled to "Pastor". The General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church does not ordain women to the senior pastorate but does ordain women as "deaconess" or "minister". i.e. Assistant Pastor, Children's Minister, etc. General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church congregations believe the Bible is the completed, inerrant word of God, and believe in the straightforward grammatico-historical interpretation of Scripture. General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church is distinguished from the majority of Baptist groups including the Southern Baptist Convention and its offshoots, as well as fundamentalist Baptists in that they reject the popular Baptist view of "unconditional perseverance of the saints," (also commonly referred to as the "Doctrine of Unconditional Eternal security" or "once saved, always saved"). Instead, the General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church holds to the traditional Arminian position, based on the belief in a General Atonement, that it is possible to commit apostasy, or willfully reject one's faith. Faith is the condition for salvation, hence they hold to "conditional eternal security." An individual is "saved by faith and kept by faith." The concept is not of someone sinning occasionally and thus accidentally ending up "not saved", but instead of someone "repudiating" their faith in Christ. General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church believe that an individual maintains his or her free will to follow Christ, but in the event a believer turns from faith in Christ, there is no remedy for this apostasy (based on an interpretation of Hebrews 6:4-6). General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church observe two ordinances: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Churches commonly advocate voluntary tithing and not working on the Sabbath.
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