Beliefs
Willow Creek Community Church states that its mission is to "turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ." The church bases its belief on the Bible, asserting it to be inspired by God, inerrant, infallible, and the final authority on matters which it covers. Based on its understanding of the Bible, the church then draws the following conclusions:
- There is one God, eternally existing in three persons— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— each possessing all the attributes of Deity.
- Humans were created by God to have fellowship with Him, but due to their rejection of God, they need His saving grace, which must be received by repentance and faith, in order to end the separation from Him.
- Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth and then voluntarily paid for the sin of humans with His death on the cross. This payment offers salvation for those who believe in Jesus. He rose from the dead and is the mediator between us and God. Christ will return to the earth to consummate history.
- The Holy Spirit draws sinners to Christ and equips believers for personal growth and service to the church.
- The church's role is to glorify God and serve those in need.
- At the end, everyone will experience bodily resurrection and the judgment. Those forgiven through Christ will enjoy eternal fellowship with God.
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Famous quotes containing the word beliefs:
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)