|
The Apostles’ Creed and
Its Blessings of Faith
Our desire is that the Apostles’ faith
be handed down to us in its unadulterated purity. This is our wish,
and the hope of every Christian. Their faith should have been handed
down to us sufficiently in written texts after their death. However,
the true faith of the Apostles is revealed only in their Epistles,
and this is why we are struggling to share and spread their faith.
What, then, is the faith of the Apostles?
Strictly speaking, the Apostle’s Creed was made after the passing
of the Apostolic Age. It is, in other words, a testament of the
Apostles’ faith recorded by the generation who came after them.
The Apostles’ faith is the faith in
the works of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The baptism
that we receive when we accept God as our Savior requires from us
the faith that confesses the following: that Jesus’ baptism has
cleansed all our sins; that through the blood of Jesus Christ on
the Cross all our sins were accordingly judged; and that Jesus was
sent by His Father as the Savior of sinners. Thus, when one believes
that all his/her sins are redeemed by the baptism and blood of Jesus,
he/she then receives the Holy Spirit from God.
We can therefore ask the following
question to those who wish to be baptized: “Do you believe that
when Jesus was baptized by John, all your sins were taken from you
and placed on His shoulder instead?” When the answer is, “Yes, I
believe that all my sins and all the sins of the world were taken
upon by Jesus,” we follow with another question: “Do you then believe
that Jesus, having shouldered all your sins by being baptized by
John, shed His blood on the Cross?” Those who answer affirmatively
are then baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit.
Faith in the Triune God begins with
the confession, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator
of heaven and earth.” Only to those who believe and confess this,
the Apostles could baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. The true Christian faith was granted to only
those who believed in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. That
is why God’s Church was built upon the foundation of the twelve
disciples’ faith.
The origins of the Apostles’ Creed
go back to the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., signed by the Roman Emperor
Constantine. Given the historical background to the changed status
of Christianity, turning from an outlawed religion to the official,
state religion of the Roman Empire, this radical change generated
significant and growing interests in Christianity among all Romans.
What was needed then was a standard of faith for these new believers
wishing to become a part of God’s Church.
The Apostles’ Creed has its origins
in this need, and owes its existence to the people who came after
the Apostolic Age. Its present form was handed down to us after
being compiled and repeatedly revised by various religious councils
that followed the Apostolic Age. This is why the present Apostles’
Creed must be reinterpreted through the faith in the gospel of the
water and the Spirit, the differentiated faith of Christianity and
the true faith. To spread this Christian faith throughout the world,
we must know and believe how Jesus took the sins of mankind upon
Himself, how He made these sins disappear, and how He has given
human beings their eternal life.
But there are countless religions
in the world. And each religion has its own deities. The difference
between these deities and the Christian God is that while the former
are merely human constructions, the latter is the God who exists
by Himself. To believe in the Christian God, one must abandon all
these false gods of the man-made religions. Without this, all efforts
are fruitless. The reason why we see before our eyes such a confusion
of faith about God is because of the lack of knowledge in the Creator
God and His name.
In the Mongolian Empire there was
a god called “Buruhung.” This god is not said to have created the
world, yet the Mongolians still worship “Buruhung” as their god
even to this day. As such, even as they believe in the Christian
God as their own God, they also believe in their national god. This
makes them impossible to have true faith. If one believes that the
Christian God is the same as their national god, he cannot meet
the true God professed by the Christian faith. This is why we must
bear witness to the Triune God of Christianity.
Why is it so hard for the true Christian
faith in God to enter into all the nations of the world? It is because
many of them cannot distinguish the difference between their gods
and the Christian God; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This other reason of such difficulty is that Christianity has failed
to keep and preach the truth of the remission of sin, the gospel
of the water and the Spirit throughout its history.
Christianity that was introduced into
the Mongolian Empire made too many compromises with the existing
national religion, so as to avoid any conflict of faith with the
dominant Buddhist doctrines, and this resulted in the failure of
the Christian truth to blossom. The Christian truth of atonement
cannot be made compatible with the Buddhist doctrines. This truth
of atonement means that Jesus took upon all the sins of the world
for the sake of mankind, died on the Cross in our stead, rose from
the dead again, and has thereby saved those who believe in Him.
But one of the Buddhist doctrines
is an aversion to killing. The core truth of Christianity is the
gospel of the water and the Spirit, and this truth entails Jesus’
baptism of the bearing of sin and His bloodshed on the Cross. But
because of the Buddhist doctrine that prohibits any killing, the
Word of the bearing of sin and the death of Jesus could not be accepted
or believed as it was. The Christian doctrine of atonement, therefore,
could not coexist with the Buddhist doctrine of conscience.
As a result, Christianity in the Mongolian
Empire eventually ended up becoming absorbed by Buddhism, and it
can no longer be found in Mongolia. When the Church in the Mongolian
Empire faced tribulations and persecutions, moreover, many Christians
fled to Buddhist temples with little hesitation and easily converted
themselves to Buddhism, and thus leading to the eventual demise
of Christianity in that nation.
| Want
to know more about "The Faith of the apostle's Creed"?
Please click the banner below to get your free book on the
Apostle's Creed. |
 |
The biggest reason as to why Christianity
disappeared from the Mongolian Empire has to do with the fact that
the Mongolian faith in the Triune God was not certain. They saw
“Buddha” and Jesus as the same God. This is what led to the eventual
disappearance of Christianity from the Mongolian Empire.
Eternal life can come about only to
those who are saved from their sins by believing in the true God
of Christianity as their own God, regardless of who and where they
are. We must therefore believe in the gospel of the water and the
Spirit, and in the Triune God. These are the foundation of our faith
in God’s Church, and we must also bear witness to this truth. This
truth is none other than the faith of the Apostles that this book
speaks of. There is only one God in the entire world, and He is
the Triune God. His name is “Yahweh,” or “Jesus the Savior,” or
the Holy Spirit. He is the true God not only for Christians, but
also for all the religious.
Back
|
