The Evangelical Methodist Camp has been a ministry of the Evangelical Methodist Church of America for 50 years. The Evangelical Methodist Church purchased the property of the former Boy Scout Camp Chiquetan and dedicated the camp for Christian ministry on July 5, 1975. The camp immediately began to host various youth groups, churches, and family camping activities that summer.
Though the Promised Land Camp of Lancaster County has since expanded, hosting: retreats, family camps, banquets, hymn sings, and conferences, the mission of the camp has remained the same - to proclaim the name of Christ, evangelize the lost, and equip the saints with the Word of the Living God.
1. To glorify God through the edification of Christians by the teaching of God's Word.
2. To develop the young people of our churches for a life of Christian service.
3. To train young people in Christian living by teaching them to feed daily on God's Word and by prayer.
4. To reach unsaved young people by teaching them the necessity of the new birth through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ according to the Word of God.
5. To accomplish similar purposes and spiritual results with adults through recreational camping, Bible conferences, and evangelistic camp meetings.
6. To provide facilities for various church and Sunday School activities in keeping with the general purposes outlined above.
We are delighted to partner with others who share our commitment to the truth of God’s Word and the gospel of Jesus Christ. In order to preserve the unity of purpose and mission of the camp, all groups renting our facilities must affirm our doctrinal statement:
Concerning Scripture: We believe the Bible is the infallible, inspired, inerrant Word of God and has been preserved by Almighty God. We believe that the Scriptures are the sole authority for faith and practice.
Concerning God: The God of the Bible is the infinite and perfect Spirit in whom all things have their founding, support, and completion (Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16-17). God has revealed himself to mankind (Exodus 3:14; Isaiah 43:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:9) and He is known by His attributes. The Bible tells us that God is holy, majestic above all of His creation, separate from all that is unclean. He is self existent; infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, immutable, and incomprehensible. God is perfect, all-wise, the only true God, righteous, faithful, loving, merciful, and gracious. The one true God exists wholly and indivisible, simultaneously and eternally, in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is three persons in one essence. Each person is forever and equally God, yet each has unique functions.
The Sovereign God is the Creator of all. He freely and wisely directs all things and events in accordance to His perfect will for His glory alone. He spoke all of creation into existence out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3) in six literal, twenty-four hour days.
Concerning Jesus Christ: We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (John 5:17-18, 10:36). He is the second-member of the Godhead. As God the Son, He is co-equal (John 10:30) and co-eternal (John 8:58) with the Father. The eternal Son took man’s nature upon himself in the womb of the virgin (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14), and He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, so that He was, and still is, sinless (Hebrews 4:15, 13:8; Matthew 1:20).
In the person of Jesus Christ, God and man have been forever joined together into one person (Philippians 2:5-8) having two whole and perfect natures, never to be divided, who is one Christ. Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile to His Father a people whom He redeemed through the shedding of His precious blood. Jesus kept the divine law perfectly on their behalf by His personal obedience. His death on the cross was a once-for-all time substitutionary sacrifice that fully satisfied God’s wrath toward repentant sinners.
Believers are made partakers of the redemption purchased on their behalf by Jesus Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit who unites them to Christ by belief through an effectual calling. That calling is the work of God’s Spirit, who convinces sinners of their sin, and enlightens their minds to the knowledge of Jesus Christ as He is revealed in the Word of God. The Spirit renews the will, persuades, and enables the individual to embrace Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. That work is freely offered in the message of the gospel.
Jesus rose again bodily on the third day, and forty days later, He visibly ascended into heaven where He is presently interceding for His redeemed people, who eagerly await His return.
Concerning the Holy Spirit: We believe in the eternal deity and personality of the Holy Spirit as the third member of the Trinity (2 Samuel 23:2-3; Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 3:16; Hebrews 9:14). Through God’s Word, the Spirit convicts men of sin (John 16:8-11; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14), imparts spiritual life in the new birth (John 3:3, 5; Titus 3:5), and is the earnest of salvation to the believer (Ephesians 1:13-14). As that earnest, the Holy Spirit permanently indwells the believer (Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 6:19), controls them through their obedience to the Word (Ephesians 5:18; Colossians 1:9-11), and assures them of salvation (Romans 8:14, 16). He illuminates their minds to willingly accept, apply, and obey the Scripture (1 Corinthians 2:14-16), and He intercedes for them (Romans 8:26).
The Holy Spirit incorporates every believer into the body of Christ (Acts 2:1-4; 11:15; 1 Corinthians 12:13). The believer evidences the Spirit’s control and indwelling with spiritual fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). Furthermore, the Spirit distributes spiritual gifts to all who are under His control (Romans 12:6), God-given abilities for ministering to others in the church (1 Corinthians 12:7) for the use of service and edification of other believers. Certain of these gifts (e.g., tongues, prophecies, miracles, healing) were by their very nature miraculous, and they served as signs or confirmations of the apostles and their message until the canon of Scripture was closed. With this established, these miraculous gifts are no longer given, for they are no longer needed (1 Corinthians 13:8-10).
Concerning Man, Sin, and Eternity: Sin is the failing to conform to God’s holy character, and is the transgression of His holy law (Romans 3:23; 1 John 3:4). Adam, the first man created by God, fell from his original righteousness and from fellowship with God by his disobedience and has brought sin, guilt, and condemnation upon not just himself, but upon all of his descendants. (Romans 5:12) All human beings have inherited from him a totally corrupted sin nature. (Romans 3:10-11, Romans 3:23).
Being sold to sin by our first father, every person is sinful not only in their thoughts, nature, and actions, but also in their omissions. Because of sin, all men are alienated from God and from the life that is found in Him. Sin’s consequence is death (Romans 6:23), and this death is two-fold: spiritual death is eternal separation from God (Ephesians 2:1); physical death is the separation of the body from the soul (James 2:26). For the unsaved, death brings eternal damnation in hell and in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15). Salvation is God’s free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement for man’s sin (Isaiah 53:6, Romans 6:23). God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by Him (John 14:6). Therefore, Jesus Christ, through His death and shedding of His blood, is the only way that men can be reconciled to God and the life that is in Him (Romans 5:10). God has commanded that this Gospel be preached throughout the world, and in obedience to the Gospel, men must repent of their sins and own efforts to reach God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 10:9-10).
The gospel must be proclaimed, heard, and believed for anyone to be saved (Acts 11:14; Romans 10:13-17; 2 Timothy 2:10). That gospel teaches that the salvation of a sinner is owed entirely to God’s grace, and that the damnation of every sinner is due entirely to their sin and unbelief (John 3:18; Acts 13:46).
God has separated the believer from the power of sin unto Himself, and they must grow in holiness in this life through the sanctifying work of the indwelling Spirit of God, through their obedience to the Word of God, and through the ministry of the local church. God has preserved them secure in Christ, and He has enabled the believer to persevere in Christ, thus assuring them of eternal life, until they are brought to be forever with Him.
Concerning the Doctrine of Separation: The doctrine of Separation rests on the clear teaching of the Word of God that warns, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (1 Corinthians 6:14-18).
The apparent “success” of modern evangelicalism has encouraged even greater departures from the Scriptures of Truth. It has also fostered the pretense that it is possible and even desirable for believers in Christ to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, when the Scriptures absolutely forbid such fellowship (Ephesians 5:11; 2 John 10-11). The Word of God calls Christ’s people to strengthen their resolve to be faithful to the Gospel and to take their stand against that which dilutes or denies it, and to practice such separation in their individual lives, as the Scriptures command, “as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Peter 1:15). Christ’s followers must “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
The believer must be resolved to maintain the practice of biblical separation, both personally and ecclesiastically, and to remain faithful to the biblical demand to separate from those who teach “another gospel”, and from all who deny the doctrines of the Scripture, from all who pervert the Scripture to unbiblical uses and teachings, and from all those who refuse to separate themselves from those who are disobedient to God’s commands.
This ministry takes its stand firmly with historic Fundamental Christianity which was the position of early Methodism. We stand affirmed and committed to the positions and resolutions of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC). We reject all additions to, and subtractions from, the Holy Scripture. We call upon God’s people to separate from churches, or other religious groups that advocate modernism, ecumenism, new evangelicalism, the charismatic movement, Roman Catholicism, cultism, or other theological theories which question, add to, subtract from, or twist the Word of God.