Speaking of the possibility that the apostolic office can be restored. This Christian agrees with the sentiment wholeheartedly. Let that office be restored and let us flow in that office as the Scriptures plainly illustrate, through the lives of the apostles…let us return to being an apostolic faith (2 Cor. 12:12).
Francis Asbury, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church said in his address to the Methodist Church:
“I am bold to say that the apostolic order of things was lost in the first century, when Church governments were adulterated and had much corruption attached to them. At the Reformation the reformers only beat off a part of the rubbish which put a stop to the rapid increase of absurdities at that time; but how they have increased since! Recollect the state of the different Churches, as it respects government and discipline in the seventeenth century when the Lord raised up that great and good man, John Wesley, who formed an evangelical society in England. In 1784, an apostolical form of Church government was formed in the United States of America at the first General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in Baltimore, in the State of Maryland.”[i]