If I may continue my discussion on the use of the creeds, especially the Apostles' Creed, in evangelical worship: another objection that is often raised is that of relevance (...overused and annoying word) - how could something so old speak with any freshness to our present situation?
As cliche as this objection is I admit we do need to consider whether some topic is relevant to discipleship and so worth the Church's time to consider. If I proposed to our church that we gather to read through the city phone book name by name, or that we monitor the wholesale price fluctuations of fresh tuna in the Tokyo fish markets I would be guilty of leading the church into activities that are not relevant to discipleship.
But I suggest that the Apostles' Creed has never been more relevant to the Church than today; and a grasp of its teaching would invigorate us for the present and prepare us for what lay ahead. In what way?
Therefore, the apostle John warns, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God..." (1John 4:1). Similarly he says, "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour" (1John 2:18). Again John says, "Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist - he denies the Father and the Son" (1John 2:22).
So - in the last days the spirit of Antichrist will be powerfully at work to obscure and deny the glory of Jesus Christ - His uniqueness, deity, supremacy, and sufficiency as a Savior. Because of this the Father is denied and with Him the whole doctrine of the Trinity. It is therefore the great task of the Church in every generation - but especially that generation of the end times - to maintain a clear Trinitarian theology and the essentially Trinitarian nature of the Christian faith.
Interestingly, the two most powerful religious forces opposing the Church in the west today are Islam and the nebulous theism of the pop-culture religion. Both of these claim a relationship to God, yet in their denial of Jesus as the unique Son of God, they are manifestly Christ-less and so are part of that antichrist religion described by John. They deny the "Father and the Son" and so deny the triune nature of God.
Now to the extent that the Church has a weak or non-existent understanding of the Trinitarian nature of her faith - to that extent she is in danger of being swept away by the aggressive expansionism of Islam, or absorbed, diluted and dissolved by the generic spirituality of our pop-culture.
We should recall that these forces have always been at work and were particularly active in the decades before the Apostles' Creed was formulated. Powerfully influential voices in the Church were denying the deity of Christ (and therefore the Trinity), causing the Church to consider what the Bible taught about Him. It should come as no surprise then to note the clearly Trinitarian structure of the Apostles' Creed. So as to relevance: it is one of the most timely study tools for our day and the last days.
