Some thoughts, here. Dropping the bomb.
Looking forward to the responses.
I have seen multiple people claim they know what the apostolic is.
I typically either smile and nod, and tell them what they want to hear, or I roll my eyes, cringe for the moment, and smile and move along.
And the reality is that, typically, because of the counterfeit, because of legitimacy, and because of the craving for real power or authority, apart from principles, reality, and cause-and-effect, between 130 and 185 percent of what claims to be the apostolic is not.
So, kissing it here (K.I.S.S), let us be simple.
The frame, before G-d sends the Isaac, the enemy will send the Ishmael. In place of the releasing and liberating apostolic, comes the apostolic overseer and covering…..
And there is a lot of mixture, in the church, of what claims to be the apostolic. However, the truth is most of the “apostlolic” is really et up with the Antichrist spirit.
We read Ephesians 4:11-12, and we hear what the Fivefold Ministry, is for “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry”, and we FAIL ruthlessly to explain what SHOULD happen after that equipping. Paul mentions “equipping the saints for the work of ministry”, and we FAIL to build out that phrase, “the work of ministry”.
In Practice, following the precedent of the Shepherding Movement, and much of the Ruler Season (1901-2004), with its obsession with protocol and hierarchy and order and systems (to say nothing about whether or not those systems were ever truly life-giving), too much of the Fivefold was concerned with controlling other believers, due to woundedness and the lust for power.
What ultimately resulted was we allow illegitimated “covering” types to equip and then ANNEX.
If you want to know few of us trust when you say “the fivefold is the only biblical ecclesiology (form of church government)”, or “only the fivefold is the proper form of leadership”, well, this is one reason why.
Typically, whomever institutes the fivefold in a place installs themselves at the top and calls themselves the apostle over the organization.
And, unfortunately, in practicing that ministry this way, we have rejected the implied exposition that pairs the reality of Ephesians 4:11-12 with the longer ending of Mark 16 and Matthew 28:18-20.
Make disciples, teaching them to observe what I have instructed you, and lo I am with you until the end of the age.
Preach the Gospel to every creature, and send them forth with the signs following.
Here, Yeshua NEVER commanded anyone to control another human.
…NEVER commanded anyone to limit another or shrink another….
…and NEVER commanded anyone to subject what He told them to do to another person who was supposed to act as an intermediary…
On the one hand, the doctrine of covering, natch, will lead to this control. On the other hand, the Great Commission and the accounts of Luke 21 and the work of Acts lead naturally to one thing: freedom. A free people walking directly with their King, and developing into the leaders they were made to be, will increase the real, Isaacite (as opposed to the counterfeit, Ishmaelite) apostolic. It enables rather than disables.
Put differently, IN THE WORDS OF JOHN WIMBER, we equip, and then, as a result of the balance of the biblical text, RELEASE those people, and allow them to do what HE told them to do. Build a platform under them for their success and fulfillment.
Counsel is one thing.
Control is another.
….no, not allowing…..that word choice is terrible.
Allow me to share something.
I want to share part of my testimony here.
Near the end of my first marriage, when we were trying to salvage it, my first wife, who cheated on me, made a disturbing statement.
“I am a strong godly woman, and I AM ALLOWING DAVID TO BECOME THE HEAD OF THIS HOUSEHOLD.”
That statement disrupted not only my spirit, but also the spirit of Jeff, who is my adopted father and was present.
Even allowing someone, permitting someone, releasing someone, loosing someone is inadequate.
We are responsible to REALIZE and ACKNOWLEDGE that G-d designed humanity to be free, and to crave liberty, and whether or not we permit or allow it, they will move toward that direction with whatever tools they have, see, or realize are on hand.
The Book of Numbers in the Torah acknowledges this reality, because in that book, G-d shows us how a loving Father takes a full nation of only slaves, and begets a nation of sons, within one generation.
When freedom is the direction of a people who have gotten a taste of liberty, lesser structures will not satisfy. To wit, the structure embodied by the phrase “apostolic oversight” is risky when applied to free people, because it lends itself to structures that push people toward ring-kissing, boot-licking, and being subjected to the grand poobah who is more capable of hearing G-d for you than you are for yourself. It creates a spiritual welfare system that forces us to depend on a priestly caste.
That is a caste system we set up. And the priests, the Brahmins who serve their Shiva, sadly end up destroying the flock rather than nurturing it.
That’s what false apostles look like.
Now, describing the true variety.
Apostles primarily, biblically, because they establish new works, look at foundations. They do not sit at the top. They are muddy and grubby, and considering the roots of a thing. They are not bishops or political masters.
They go out and do. They might understand heaven’s blueprint. But they are most obsessed with establishing the kingdom where it is not rightly established, and pointing out obstacles to that establishment.
Believers were made to be powerful and dangerous, and walk hand-in-hand with the King and their Father. Your Father wants to be your first father, ahead of any man or woman.
Second, apostles enable an enviroment where real fathering can take place.
And in the words of Arthur Burk, let me ask this question to a fatherless generation, that includes myself.
What resources does G-d the Father lack with which to father us HIMSELF?
Anything?
Does He lack anything? No.
Now, is it fair just that we do not have access to parents or figures willing to parent us? Perhaps.
However, it is better for us if we are able to receive G-d as father leading us before we engage with another person, because that person can turn into someone we mooch from.
We were not made to mooch from them.
And if G-d in Exodus and Numbers are a blueprint for how He deals with His people.
If His first revelation to pagan humanity was as Father (Israel is my SON, MY FIRSTBORN. LET MY SON GO!, IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL KILL YOUR FIRSTBORN.)….
If He intended to break the slave mentalty by sequentially leading a generation of slaves into the wilderness so then HE HIMSELF could transform them into a generation of sons….
And that was Old Covenant, and we are under the New Covenant…
…then why would we expect Him to do anything less than amping up and intensifying the process of fathering us Himself?
He deals with us as sons, and not as slaves.
He deals with us via connection and intimacy in this season, NOT protocol.
He works at fathering us Himself.
It’s not about obedience. It is about intimacy and connction and family.
And we in the apostolic were made to foster the environment so permeated by love and kindness and justice and mercy and grace and tenderness, that it enables believers to connect more intensely with THE FATHER with HIS SONS. And yes, ladies, if I as a man can be the bride of Christ, then you also can as a woman can be the son of G-d. Congratulations, life is uncomfortable for everyone.
But it makes people uncomfortable to allow He HIMSELF to father, because we look for Him to send someone with skin on.
He never promises that.
He only promises that He, as the ultimate Father will, together with the Son, make His home with us.
The apostolic does run toward fathering, and toward foundations, but all of this is to push for a twofold reality.
Apostles, put in their right place, seek to foster an environment, free of obstruction, where the parts of the engine glide past one another, much like the function of motor oil, so that what comes naturally from them is the fostering of an envionment that enables the connection and flow to be established, and happen more easily, between G-d and man. It’s not about the dude or chick that is anointed. It’s not about them protecting you and me. It is about our obsession that you meet with HIM. It’s about Him meeting with His kids. Personal relationship that is intense and intimate. For the only covering that matters, with no respect to the predatory Shepherding Movement, is the one provided by G-d the Father.
As to the Redemptive Gifts, the Redemptive Gift that makes the best Father is the Gift of Ruler/Judge/Deliverer. The Principle of Freedom that leads slaves out of bondage into freedom. Dominic Torretto is one such example of the Ruler who seeks to father well.
And his dad wanted that for his sons, even though the way he went about it was kind of messed up. You still see the fathering in this vision here when Dom is underwater, before the mother, his bride, Letty, the Prophet rescues him.
And the Prophet says to the Ruler, “none of it is worth a thing if I lose you.”
Apostles fade into the background while Dad Himself meets with His kids and the minutes just slip away as the intimacy slips away, and people begin to hear G-d more clearly for themselves. They know the Father heart, and yearn for others to have that, not to control those hearts, but to release and send out those hearts as they themselves have been.
So, whatever else has been written about the apostle, if it
Would that all the people were prophets…..capable of hearing G-d for themselves.
Moses cried out for the complete and dangerous liberation of people to pursue G-d for themselves to a place of full freedom and flow of revelation and vision and understanding (what constitutes the prophetic) in freedom.
Yet, here we are under the New Covenant, looking for apostles to be covering and our daddy’s and control us and lead us into further bondage because we may have rejected the fruit of the spirit of self-control.
Maybe we need fewer of these “apostles” and more connection with Father Himself. As people who walk in the principles, we are more than capable (Romans 8:37) of engaging personally with Him in His love and seeing that connection bring a multiplication in all arenas of our lives, causing a flourishing. Sons build and fight. Part of His fathering of us, and part of the DNA of a son, is that we learn how to build; we accrue, manage, and transform raw materials into products that are useful for the agenda of the kingdom; and we learn how to fight and who to fight. When we subject that organically life-giving connection to the caprice of another person’s discernment, as too many lived examples have shown, we retard or destroy the fullness of life, shrinking our supply, and making our spiritual life unsustainable.
This is now how we were designed, in order for the Kingdom to flourish and us to flourish, we must be free.
And G-d is the one who will hold us accountable, per about 5 referneces.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
Psalm 10:13
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,
Matt 12:36
So then zeach of us will give an account of himself to God.
Rom 14:32
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are cnaked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Heb 4:13
but they will give account to him who is ready lto judge the living and the dead.
1 Pet 4:5
We are responsible to be free, with the King at our side as our bridegroom., and G-d as our Father before all others.
40 years ago, when I needed a Father, it was Yeshua who introduced me to the reality of true fathering by offering that chance to be fathered by him, and in the ensuing decades of coverings doing a really bad job of fathering, many to the point of abuse, He never once left my side as He walked with love surrounding me. And Just over a year ago, the L-rd used a woman of G-d to connect me to the Father Himself. And she is one of the most important people in my life. And this last year, I have had the honor to see survivors grow in that connection. And THAT is my favorite thing in the world.
One problem, however, is that His offer to father goes unreceived, because so many want a person on this earth in this fallen world to take on that responsibility. And that is not what He has designed sons for. He designed us so he could be with us.
And that connection point, process, and moment is what we in the real apostolic live for. Period. On stronger-than-the-gates-of-hell foundations, we seek for others to connect with Father Himself.
And the ministry of the real apostolic gets ignored in favor of this Ishmaelite, lesser-than, weak substitute. We can and we must do better.
Just some thoughts.
Thank you so much for this post! I am coming out of a relationship with an Apostle after seeing many red flags. Blessings to you for the real truth in love that is setting sons and daughters free.