APOSTLES

TODAY

PAUL GALLIGAN

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 Apostles Today

APOSTLES TODAY
Copyright © 2006 by Paul Galligan

Paul Galligan
Revival Ministries Australia
P.O. Box 2718 BC
TOOWOOMBA Qld. 4350
AUSTRALIA
E-mail: paul@revivalministries.org.au
Web site: www.revivalministries.org.au

This book is offered to the body of Christ as the

seed of His word sown freely to bring forth a
harvest of righteousness, pleasing unto the Lord.
Any part of it may be copied and distributed
for teaching purposes, not for profit.

All Scripture quotations are from the New King James

Version [NKJV]
© 1979, 1980,1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Published by Revival Ministries Australia Ltd

ACN 082 081 098
PO Box 2718 BC
TOOWOOMBA Q 4350
AUSTRALIA

Cover Photograph Peter De-Bressac

Word Processing & Editorial assistance Janet Barton

DEDICATION

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 Dedication

Jesus said “If they receive you [the apostles] they re-
ceive Me, and if they receive Me they receive the One
[the Father] who sent Me” Matt.10:40.

This book is presented to you “all the saints in Christ

Jesus who are in every place, with the overseers and
deacons” (Phil.1:1) and to the apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors and teachers whom Christ has
given to the church in His ascension (Eph.4:11).

“Through Christ we have received grace and

apostleship for obedience to the faith among all na-
tions” Rom.1:5.

I dedicate this book to you for your teaching, re-

proof, correction and instruction in righteousness.
Never for a moment do I think my book is equal to
Scripture in any way, but I believe that the teaching I
am presenting to you is the teaching I have received
from the Lord as I have studied the word in the spirit
of wisdom and revelation. I have been much aided
by many other ministers of Christ whose writings
and teachings I have received. I realise that my
teaching is incomplete as the word of God continues
to unfold.

I echo the Apostle Jude’s words “exhorting you to

contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all
delivered to the saints” (v.3).

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 CONTENTS
Preface - Coming into the Apostolic 7

Introduction - The Goal is a Perfect Church 11

Chapter 1 A Change of Leadership -

From Shebna to Eliakim 21

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 Apostles Today

Chapter 2 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle 38

Chapter 3 Why we need Apostles Today 54

Chapter 4 Apostles are Fathers 70

Chapter 5 What is an Apostle? 82

Chapter 6 Characteristics of Apostolic Ministry 102

Chapter 7 What is Apostolic Doctrine 122

Conclusion The Apostolic Revelation 146

Appendix i Apostolic Council 149

Appendix ii Discipleship Course - based on Manuals 152

Discipleship Course I 155

Discipleship Course II 160

Discipleship Course III 164

Discipleship Course IV 168

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 PREFACE
It wasn’t until September 1997 that I first seriously con-
sidered the ministry of the apostle as a reality today. At that time
I was serving on the staff of a denominational church, gifted as a
teacher to the body of Christ. I had been aware of the prophetic
movement since the mid-nineteen eighties, when a prophet
called Paul Cain testified in a John Wimber conference in Aus-
tralia. One thing that most in the prophetic movement failed to
do was to prophesy the restoration of apostles. I personally did
not become involved in the prophetic movement and, in fact,
saw some ‘not good fruit’ coming out of a prophetic school here
in Australia. However, I always had a basic belief in the five-
fold ministry of Ephesians 4:11 without a full understanding and

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 Preface
with next to no understanding of the ministry of the apostle.

My Ministry Background
Previous to the teaching ministry I was serving in from
1994-97, I had served for six years as a pastor and, prior to that,
four years as a church and Christian School administrator. Over-
all I thoroughly enjoyed the work of the pastor, working hard,
serving the Lord, being the best minister I could be, but not be-
ing satisfied deep within. From 1985-1990 I served as a part-
time honorary chaplain at a local university, doing the work of
the evangelist and seeing some fruit but knowing that I did not
have the ministry gift of the evangelist, although I deeply de-
sired to be more effective in winning the lost.
For reasons beyond the scope of this introduction, I left
the ministry in late 1990. For two and a half years I wandered in
a strange wilderness, serving in a range of jobs from house
painting to international consultancy and then returning to full-
time university study. All along I knew I was called to be a min-
ister of Jesus Christ but felt disqualified and had no idea how
God could bring me back into the ministry, but He did. In mid
1993 I began a teaching seminar in a local church where I was
attending. At that time, I applied for a job as administrator with
this church. For me I thought this was a way of getting back into
ministry as by now I knew God was calling me.
Applicants for the administrator’s job were narrowed to
two and finally the decision was made against me. However, the
senior minister came to inform me of the final decision and why.
My qualifications and CV were most suitable and I was judged
as worthy as the successful applicant, but the selection commit-
tee decided it was not my calling, as I was called ‘to preach and
teach the word of God’. Despite having put considerable hope
into getting that job, I was not disappointed, but was actually
encouraged as I was affirmed in my ministry calling and my gift
to preach and teach. Praise the Lord!

A Teacher of the Word

Later in 1993 I was offered a job with that same church
as a teacher of the word and with responsibility for community
outreach. I entered into an exciting, challenging and fulfilling
ministry for the next four years. This included presenting teach-

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 Apostles Today
ing seminars in prayer and in evangelism. I was responsible for
writing study manuals for these seminars. This teaching ministry
was received by many churches in the body of Christ. By 1996 I
was travelling with a team of trainee ministers and the Lord had
given us a very strong anointing to teach the word, to apply the
word through workshops and to impart the anointing of the Holy
Spirit.
By the second half of 1997, the denomination to which
the church belonged and in which I was serving, made some
very wrong moves in terms of accepting unrepentant homosexu-
als into membership and not excluding such ones from the or-
dained ministry. In our local church, the senior minister and
many others were resigning and leaving the denomination. This
was when God began to speak to me about the ministry of the
apostle. I was given some tapes to listen to and, on one tape, the
brother spoke about the ministry of the apostle. This activated
my heart and the Lord revealed to me that this was my calling.
He then led a small group of us to tender our resignation and
begin to plan a new ministry. ‘Revival Ministries Australia’ was
the result. The Lord revealed the very name and confirmed it
and we launched the ministry in January 1998.

I saw the Lord

As the time of the planned launch came close, I person-
ally began to feel the responsibility of leading a ministry and I
was timid and afraid about doing this. Up until this time, in four-
teen years of fulltime ministry serving in three different church
ministries, I was always in the role of the assistant or the one
representing someone else. Now I was going to be the leader! I
had expressed my fears to no one, but the Lord knew. I awoke at
1 a.m. in the morning to see the Lord Jesus standing at the end
of my bed and as I focused on Him, He imparted courage to me,
right into my spirit, in a tangible way. This was a most awesome
and memorable experience: ‘I saw the Lord’ and He ministered
to me in a life-changing way, preparing and empowering me for
the work of the ministry He was calling me to. Not wanting to
lose the powerful reality of seeing the Lord, I rose from my bed
and went to my study, switching on the light and reaching for
my Bible. While I could no longer see Jesus, I knew He was
with me and very clearly He instructed me to open Joshua 1. It

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 Preface
was as if He read to me the first nine verses, which emphasise
‘being strong and courageous’.

Commissioned to be an apostle
At the time I was not consciously thinking of the minis-
try of the apostle but I have known, ever since that day, that this
was my commissioning by Jesus to be an apostle. One of the
key words in the reading, Joshua 1:1-9, is the word
“inheritance”. While in the context God is telling Joshua that he
will divide the land as an inheritance to God’s people, I knew
that my role in restoring inheritance to God’s people would be
in “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2Tim.2:15). My strength
in ministry at that time was as a teacher and now I am a teaching
apostle, and God has enabled me to play a part in restoring the
‘inheritance’ to His people. Little did I know that one day I
would write the book, ‘Walking in our Inheritance’ [2004].

A School of Tyrannus
Part of the vision that the Lord put in my heart from
those early months of planning the ministry and launching Re-
vival Ministries Australia, was to establish, in due time, an apos-
tolic training/teaching centre. We wrote of this and envisioned
that one day God would enable us to have a modern version of
the “School of Tyrannus” (Acts 19:9-10). After a trip into the
Union of Myanmar [formerly known as Burma] in early 1999,
we established a six-week training school in June/July of that
year, using hired facilities. At that time, the ministry was based
in various homes. We had experienced a short term training
school in Myanmar and had also been taken to minister in vari-
ous towns, mainly in house-churches that had been established
by disciples trained in that ministry. God was showing me a pat-
tern of the apostolic church in action: short term training schools
to train disciples for ministry and the establishment of the
church in the house. At the end of 2000, a businessman, who is
part of our ministry group, actually purchased a building in the
central business district of our city, for Revival Ministries Aus-
tralia. Ever since then we have had a permanent base for an ap-
ostolic training centre. We have been conducting two-week
training schools, twice yearly, since 2001. In April to June 2006,

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 Apostles Today
we held a three-month international training school with eight-
een international delegates attending from seven different na-
tions. God has enabled us to ‘flesh out’ the original vision He
showed us in the Scriptures.
Over the years, beginning in 1998, I have been enabled
by the Lord to write a number of teaching/study manuals. I had
learnt to write manuals in the previous ministry so I drew on that
experience. The manuals that emerged really map our journey in
the unfolding apostolic revelation that we walk in today. This
book ‘Apostles Today’ is a compilation of sessions from a num-
ber of those manuals, drawing together teaching and understand-
ing of apostles today, including an introduction to apostolic doc-
trine. However, all of the content and material has been edited,
expanded and updated in the light of the unfolding revelation
and the lessons and practical applications learned by experience.
INTRODUCTION
The Goal is a Perfect Church
Jesus Christ is preparing for Himself “a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without
blemish” Eph.5:27. He is preparing this church “by sanctifying
and cleansing her with the washing of the water by the word”
Eph.5:26. This is the church that has grown up into maturity
having come “to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ” Eph.4:13. This is the church that has
“gone on to perfection”, having properly laid the foundations of
“repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, the doc-
trine of baptisms and the laying on of hands, the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment” Heb.6:1-2.

This is the church that Jesus is coming back for:

a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any
such thing, a holy church without blemish.

We go on to perfection [maturity] only “if God per-

mits” (Heb.6:3) and God will only give that permit when the
church has strong foundations. Jesus Christ is that “foundation”:
“no other foundation can anyone lay” (1Cor.3:10-11); Jesus

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 Introduction
Christ is “that Rock” (1Cor.10:4). Each one of us needs to build
our life in Christ upon the foundations of repentance and faith,
baptism in water and the laying on of hands to receive the Holy
Spirit, and to walk in the revelational knowledge and practical
reality of the doctrines of the resurrection of the dead and of
eternal judgment. As well, the church needs to be built upon the
foundation of Christ, apostles and prophets being the foundation
ministries (Eph.2:20) that give the church a proper basis to grow
and develop and become the perfect man of Ephesians 4:13.
The mature church is represented by the five wise vir-
gins in Matthew 25:1-13. This glorious church will be fully
anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit; her lamps will be burn-
ing brightly in a dark world given over to the anti-Christ. This
church is prepared and ready for the coming of the Lord!
This is the church that understands the mystery of the
body of Christ (Eph.3:6) that is made up of Jew and Gentile,
together, as joint heirs. Jesus Himself “has made both one, and
has broken down the middle wall of separation so as to create
one new man from the two, making peace” Eph.2:14-16.
This is the church that receives the deeper wisdom of
God “which God ordained before the ages for our glo-
ry” (1Cor.2:6-7). It is this corporate church, walking in maturity,
that receives “the mind of Christ” (v.16).
There is much teaching in the Scripture on the mature
church, the church that is to grow up into perfection because that
is God’s goal for us. Paul says that his major work as a minister
was to preach Christ, “warning every man and teaching every
man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in
Christ Jesus” Col.1:28.

Jesus Christ Gave Everything For His Church

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, went through the humilia-
tion of being incarnate as a man, “making Himself of no reputa-
tion”, and suffering death, “even death on a cross” (Phil.2:7-8),
in order to gain for Himself the church. “He is the Saviour of the
body” Eph.5:23. Furthermore, “He descended into the lower
parts of the earth” Eph.4:8-10 [into hell itself 1Pet.3:18-19] and
then ascended on high, taking captivity captive. Through His
descension and His ascension, Jesus gained an awesome cosmic
victory that changed history forever and, as a result of His re-

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 Apostles Today
demptive work, He was able to deliver to His church the five-
fold ministry gift of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and
teacher. Without these gifts the church could not be brought to
maturity and perfection. The role of the five-fold ministry gift is
manifold in producing the mature body of Christ “from whom
the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint
supplies, according to the effective working by which every part
does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of it-
self in love” Eph.4:16.
This is the mature body that the LORD is bringing
forth in the earth, and He is doing it by releasing the
gift of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher

God is building the Church

Jesus said in Matthew16:18 “I will build My church”.
God is building a house [temple]. The temple is made up of liv-
ing stones; we, the saints, are the living stones. We are being
built into a spiritual house for God to indwell (Eph.2:22) in
which we, as priests, offer up spiritual sacrifices to God (1
Pet.2:5).
The building is built upon the foundation of firstly apos-
tles, then prophets (Eph.2:20). These are under-girding minis-
tries that hold up the rest of the building, connecting the church
to the foundational rock ‘who is Christ’ (1Cor.3:11). Without
the apostles and prophets the building will not be built according
to the scriptural pattern. It is the ‘apostles’ doctrine’ that the
church is to devote itself to (Acts 2:42).

The apostle lays the foundation,

oversees the building of the church
and brings it to completion.

Zerubbabel is a type of the Apostle

To understand the ministry of the apostle we need to
look at the ministry of Zerubbabel who was the governor of Je-
rusalem. He was charged with rebuilding the temple of God at
the time of restoration after the Babylonian exile.
“The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of
this temple” Zech. 4:9. Zerubbabel had laid a foundation so he is
a type of the apostle; he is building the house of God. The verse
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 Introduction
goes on to say “His hands shall also finish it, then you will
know that the LORD of hosts has sent Me to you”. This is
speaking of the ministry of the apostle. When God raises up an
apostle, He gives to that apostle the master plan of how to build
the church. Paul says of himself that he was a “master build-
er” (1Cor.3:10); that he had been given by God the plans to
build the church. Paul reveals many of those plans to us in the
book of Ephesians.

Built by the Spirit’s Power

In Zechariah 4:6, the angel gives the interpretation of
the vision that the LORD had shown Zechariah, “This is the
word of the LORD to Zerubbabel; not by might, nor by power
but by My Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.” This is the word of
the LORD to the man who is charged with the job of rebuilding
the temple. The work can only be done through the anointing of
the Holy Spirit. The word of the LORD to Zerubbabel is, ‘it is
not by human strength or might; it is not by human power or
ability; it is by the Holy Spirit, by revelation, by the anointing of
God, that this church will be built.’

Built by Grace
Zerubbabel had been charged by God, through the
prophet Haggai and the prophet Zechariah, to build the house of
God. This is the builder, the apostle who is to lay the founda-
tion, to oversee the building of the walls and to bring forth the
capstone with shouts of “grace, grace to it!” (v.7). It is built by
grace through faith, “it is the gift of God, not of works least any
man should boast” (Eph.2:8-9). It is “by grace and
apostleship” (Rom.1:5) that the church will be built. God is re-
vealing the master plan of how to build the church in these last
days and the grace is given to the apostles to make known the
pattern and to oversee the building of the church.
Remember that Paul calls himself a wise master builder
(1Cor.3:10) and Jesus specifically proclaimed to Peter
(Matt.16:18-19) that he would be a foundation stone in the
church that Jesus was building upon the ‘rock’. As a foundation
apostle, he received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Peter
reveals some more of the master plan for the building of the
church in his epistle (1Pet.2:4-10). Like Paul, Peter the apostle

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 Apostles Today
was a wise master builder.

Built by Faith
“Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel
you shall become a plain!” Zech.4:7. The word of God says to
Zerubbabel that the mountain of opposition will be overcome.
This prophecy shows that the apostle has the authority to deal
with all opposition to God’s purposes. In 2Corinthians 10:3-6
Paul tells us that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but
mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down argu-
ments and every high thing that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the
obedience of Christ.” This is how the mountain of religious op-
position is dealt with in the apostolic church.
Isaiah 40:4, speaking of the coming ministry of John the
Baptist, says “every valley shall be exalted and every mountain
and hill brought low”, to make straight the way of the LORD.
How did John the Baptist ‘bring mountains down’? It was the
ministry of the word, declaring the very things God had revealed
to him. This is similar to the “power over nations” that Jesus
promised to overcomers (Rev. 2:26-27). He said that the church
would receive the same power that He had received from the
Father, to “rule [shepherd] them with a rod of iron”.
Jesus said “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to
this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does
not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will
be done, he will have whatever he says” Mk.11:23. This is faith
in action.

Have the faith of God and you will move mountains.

That is the faith that will build the church.

Jesus is the Apostle of God, building the Church

The hands of the one who laid the foundation of the
temple will complete it. Jesus Christ is the one who has laid the
foundation of God’s church! Jesus Christ is the one who is go-
ing to finish the work! How is Jesus going to do this? Through
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers that He has
given (Eph.4:11). When the church is complete everyone will
say, ‘truly this is the church of the living God.’ ‘Look at this
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 Introduction
awesome, worldwide church that has been raised up out of every
nation, out of every tribe and tongue, every people group, to
show forth the glory of God in Christ.’

The Apostolic Restoration Begins

“For who has despised the day of small things?” Zech.
4:10a. The work has to start with foundations, with small things!
The Welsh revival of 1904-5 faltered largely due to the lack of
five-fold ministers and especially apostles and prophets, but
even true pastors and teachers were very scarce. In the aftermath
of the Welsh revival there was an apostolic/prophetic move
among some brethren who recognized that both of these minis-
tries were necessary for the building of the church. A movement
arose that gave recognition to apostles and prophets and other
five-fold ministers. This movement exists in Australia today as a
Pentecostal denomination which still gives recognition to all the
five-fold ministries. This movement was as a forerunner and
only became known to a small number of people.
A more significant birthing of the apostolic and prophet-
ic happened in the Latter Rain movement that began in 1948
with a revival in which the Lord restored much of the deeper
wisdom and teaching of the Scriptures. It was through the Latter
Rain revival that brethren began to understand the Tabernacle of
Moses, the Feasts of Israel, the order of Melchizedek, the laying
on of hands for baptism of the Holy Spirit [before this the Pente-
costals waited in ‘tarrying’ meetings for the Holy Spirit to
come]. Many other truths and ministries were restored at that
time. It is interesting to note that the earlier apostolic/prophetic
move from the Welsh revival rejected the Latter Rain movement
as did the other Pentecostal denominations.
When we began Revival Ministries Australia in 1998,
the first teaching manual we were led to write was ‘Foundations
of our Faith’ based on the six elementary principles of Christ
from Hebrews 6:1-2. For the first five years of Revival Minis-
tries Australia, 1998-2002, we were generally working under-
ground, laying foundations and learning the apostolic ministry.
We were very aware that this was where God had us and we
learnt ‘not to despise the day of small things’.

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 Apostles Today

The Plumb Line is the Word of God

“For these seven rejoice to see the plumb line in the
hand of Zerubbabel” Zech.4:10b. The ‘seven’ represent the Holy
Spirit. The seven eyes are the seven spirits of God (Rev.5:6).
Jesus is the anointed one who received the Holy Spirit without
measure (Jn.3:34). The Holy Spirit of God rejoices to see the
plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. A plumb line is used to
check the straightness of a wall. It is something to measure up
to. We are to measure up to the word of God. The plumb line is
the word of God in the hands of Zerubbabel, a type of the
apostle. The last days church is to measure up to the word of
God. When the people of God allow themselves to be judged by
the word, and line up with the Scripture, and not fall short of the
glory of God any longer through sin, then the Holy Spirit rejoic-
es and the anointing increases. When the people of God allow
their church structure and practices to be judged by the word
and to line up with Scripture, then the glorious church will
emerge.

Ministry of the Prophet

The Prophet works alongside the apostle, strengthening
the foundations and keeping the church on track. The ministry
of the prophet is to guide the church to perfection. The prophet
brings revelation of the word of God to the church. When the
ministry of the apostle and the prophet are raised up and work-
ing together, as in the case of Paul and Silas (Acts 15:40), then
the church will have a strong foundation and be able to go on to
perfection. It is to the apostles and prophets that God gives the
revelation of the mystery by the Spirit (Eph.3:5).
The ministries of apostles and prophets are foundation-
al; it is these ministries that bring the church to perfection
through the preaching of “the unsearchable riches of Christ, to
make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery” Eph.3:8-9.

Ministry of the Evangelist

The Evangelist goes out into the quarry of the world to
dig out some new stones to make suitable building stones for the
walls of the church (1Pet.2:5). The evangelist is often a very
public ministry. For example, the whole city of Samaria gave
attention to Philip’s preaching (Acts 8). The evangelist digs out
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 Introduction
stones who become living stones by being born again, and he
brings them into the church. The walls of the church are called
‘walls of salvation’ (Isa.26:1). The evangelist preaches salvation
and souls get saved, and then they become built into the walls of
the temple.
Notice that Philip, as an evangelist, baptized! Both Peter
and Paul often did the work of the evangelist preaching the gos-
pel in regions where it had not been heard. Both Peter and Paul
commanded baptism immediately and also ministered the bap-
tism of the Holy Spirit to the new believers. There needs to be a
return to biblical evangelism with scriptural emphasis placed on
water baptism as the vital, required response of those who have
been convicted by the word.

Ministry of the Pastor

The Pastor takes the new stones and begins to shape
them, polish them and fit them together. The first important
ministry of the pastor is to nurture the new believers by laying
the foundations of the faith (Heb.6:1-2). New born babes need to
be fed the milk of the word so that they can grow in salvation
(1Pet.2:2). The second important ministry of the pastor is to
“feed My sheep” (Jn.21:17). A pastor must be able to teach the
word both to babes in Christ and all believers, ‘making disci-
ples’ (Matt.28:19-20). The third important ministry is to pastor/
shepherd God’s people which includes overseeing their souls,
providing guidance and protection. Paul told the elders at Ephe-
sus “to shepherd the church of God” (Acts 20:28) and Peter
says, “shepherd the flock of God which is among you serving as
overseers” (1Pet.5:2).
The pastor brings restoration to the people of God. The
first verses of the shepherd’s psalm illustrate this beautifully:
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” Ps.23:1. The pastor
gives the Christian the provision of God’s word and God’s love.
“He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside
the still waters” v.2. The pastor feeds the sheep with fresh food;
he provides a safe place for the believers, where they can be
nurtured and grow. Their souls are restored!

The Ministry of the Teacher

The Teacher’s ministry is to ground all the believers in

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 Apostles Today
the word of God; to teach the word “precept upon precept, line
upon line” (Is.28:10). The teacher feeds the word to the nurtured
Christian so that the disciple graduates to the solid food and is
encouraged to go on to maturity. Up until now, many teachers
have only found expression for their ministry in Bible Colleges
and schools. However, that is not the scriptural pattern. The
Scripture is clear: the teachers are those who have been gifted
by Christ with the ascension gift ministry of teaching and who
have been well taught by the apostles, having come to know the
revelation of the mystery.
At SHILOH, here in Toowoomba, we have seen this
reality unfolding. One of our pastors has given himself to the
apostles’ doctrine, fully embracing the apostolic revelation, and
is now functioning powerfully in the teaching ministry. In 2006,
we have a Bible School which operates one day per week, with
an average of ten disciples attending. These brethren are being
trained to teach the word. This is done by teaching the word to
them and giving them opportunity to teach the word.
In these days of restoration, teachers are being raised in
the local churches and the teaching of the word is growing and
multiplying.

The Ministries Working in Order

The apostle and the prophet lay the foundation: a strong
foundation in the word of God. On that foundation the evange-
list is strengthened to go out into the world and preach salvation
and many souls are saved. The evangelist knows he can bring
the new converts to a strong, properly founded church, where
there is a team of pastor/elders to nurture the new Christians.
The new Christians need to be fed the ‘milk of the word’ and be
fully established in the foundational principles of the faith. Then
the teacher [often one of the local elders] grounds the believers
in the word of God, discipling them through the word of God by
teaching the precepts and commandments of the word. The
saints are then ready to be trained and equipped by the apostles
and prophets so they can be raised up into ministry. Ministry
includes being able to teach the word, ministering the gifts of
the Holy Spirit and moving in the anointing and power of God
in ministry to others. A whole new generation of ministry can be
raised up: a new generation of apostles, prophets, evangelists,

18
 Introduction
pastors and teachers.
As we return to and restore the apostolic pattern clearly
shown in the Scriptures, we realize that the elders of the local
churches [the local church being the city-wide church] have
been appointed by apostles. Therefore the elders [pastors and
teachers] have an ongoing relationship with an apostle. When
the church is functioning according to the biblical pattern, all of
the five-fold ministers find their place and the full expression of
ministry that works towards “the perfecting of the saints” and
“the building up of the body of Christ until we all come to the
unity of the faith, to the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man” Eph.4:12-13.

Chapter One
A CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP

Leadership and church governance is in the hands

of apostles, overall, and in the hands of elders
in the local towns and cities.

The authority given to apostles is not dependent

upon man but upon Christ Himself who
calls and appoints the apostles.

Eliakim is a type of the apostle, God-raised,

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 Apostles Today
God-appointed and God-anointed and
the leader able to fulfill the calling and
purpose of God.

It is God who calls and raises up the apostles

and the apostolic leadership for His church.
“God has set in the church first apostles”

The New Leader ~ Isaiah 22:21

“I will clothe him with your robe
and strengthen him with your belt;
I will commit your responsibility into his hand.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem”

From Shebna to Eliakim – Isaiah 22:15-25

“Thus says the Lord God of Hosts: ‘Go, proceed to this
steward, to Shebna, who is over the house and say: What have
you here, and whom have you here, that you have hewn a sepul-
chre on high, who carves a tomb for himself in a rock?
Indeed, the LORD will throw you away violently, O
mighty man, and will surely seize you. He will surely turn vio-
lently and toss you like a ball into a large country; there you
shall die, and there your glorious chariots shall be the shame of
your master’s house. So I will drive you out of your office and
from your position I will pull you down.
Then it shall be in that day, that I will call My servant
Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah; I will clothe him with your robe and
strengthen him with your belt; I will commit your responsibility
into his hand. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusa-
lem and to the house of Judah.
The key of the house of David I will lay on his shoulder;
so he shall open, and no one shall shut; and he shall shut and no
one shall open. I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place, and
he will become a glorious throne to his father’s house.
They will hang on him all the glory of his father’s
house, the offspring and the posterity, all vessels of small quan-
tity, from the cups to all the pitchers.
In that day, says the LORD of hosts, the peg that is fas-
tened in the secure place will be removed and be cut down and
20
 A Change of Leadership
fall, and the burden that was on it will be cut off; for the LORD
has spoken.”

Who Holds the Key of David?

In Revelation 3:7 our Lord Jesus is introduced as “He
who is Holy, He who is true, He who has the key of David, He
who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens.” In
this letter, Jesus is speaking to the church in Philadelphia and He
reveals to the church that He has “Set before them an open
door”. Jesus is identified in Hebrews 3:1 as “the Apostle … of
our confession.” It is Jesus the Apostle who holds the key of
David. In these days of restoration, the church is once again be-
ing called upon to “consider the Apostle Christ Jesus”; some-
thing the church has not done seriously for maybe 1,800 years.
Jesus, as the Apostle, holds the key of David and remember that
Jesus gave “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” to Peter, having
already acknowledged that Peter was a foundation stone in the
building of the church of Jesus Christ (Matt.16:18-19). Peter had
been called by Jesus to be an apostle earlier (Matt.10). Jesus, the
Apostle, gave to Peter, an apostle and a representative of all
apostles, keys of the kingdom giving the apostles authority to
open and shut. Therefore apostles hold the key of David as giv-
en by Jesus.
Since the mid 1990’s the Lord Jesus has been restoring
the ministry of the apostle to His church worldwide. It began in
a small and largely unknown way but, by 2006, the word
‘apostle’ and considerations of the reality and impact of this
ministry are having an effect worldwide even if, for some, it is a
stance of active rejection. In the midst of this, the Lord is effect-
ing a change of leadership, ‘from Shebna to Eliakiam’.

The Old Leadership

The church at large has been led by senior pastors, by
bishops, by successful ministers, by some evangelists who have
become famous, even by some with healing gifts or miracles.
Some of these successful ministers appear to be more like chief
executive officers, with business and entrepreneurial skills, than
like the apostles of the New Testament. Denominational church-
es are generally led by far-away administrators and bureaucrats,
often with their own personal and political agendas that are op-

21
 Apostles Today
posed to the gospel and the word of God. In Australia, one of
the major denominations, in terms of numbers of members, is
led by a church career bureaucrat who supports homosexuals for
ordination to the ministry. For years, he and others had been
skillfully politicking in that denomination to the point where, in
2003, the triennial conference of the denomination officially
accepted the ordination of homosexual ministers and now some
of their parishes have so-called ministers with their same sex
partners in residence. While this is an extreme case, it highlights
the tragedy that can result from the church moving away from
and denying the ministry of apostles and not receiving the
apostles’ doctirne.

New Testament Leadership

Most churches do not talk about biblical leadership as
set down in the New Testament. Senior leaders take up the of-
fice of senior pastor or are ordained as bishops exercising au-
thority over one or many churches. Denominational boards and
committees rule over denominations, claiming to be the legiti-
mate leadership of the church. There is no biblical mandate for
such rule.
In the New Testament -
leadership and church governance is in the
hands of apostles overall, and in the hands of
elders in the local towns and cities.

In presenting an understanding of the body of Christ,

(1Cor.12:12-30), Paul clearly states that “God has appointed
these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teach-
ers, after that …” v28. This is a clear statement of the order of
God’s appointment of church leadership. Very soon after the
writing period of the New Testament Scriptures, the church that
emerged began to see individual bishops raised in rulership over
the church of a city and these bishops, usurping the authority of
the apostles, began to impose the bishopric as the leadership
authority in the church.

Church Colonialism
Imperialistic colonialism has ceased on the world stage.

22
 A Change of Leadership
Now there are many independent nation states that were former-
ly colonies of powerful European nations. However, Christian
denominations have continued a form of church colonialism
with numerous denominated groups going into the same city or
region and planting separate churches. These groups win adher-
ents to their particular doctrine and organised church practice,
establishing themselves separately from other church groups
who are established in the same city. Generally the headquarters
of these denominated groups are in faraway capital cities. As a
result, there are institutionalised divisions in the body of Christ.
Many Christians are no longer satisfied with this arrangement
and God certainly has never been satisfied. It is time to reform
the church in terms of leadership and governance. Only then can
true unity become a reality in each city or region.

Restoration of Biblical Leadership & Governance

As the Lord effects the restoration of Biblical leadership
and God once again is appointing “first apostles, second proph-
ets, third teachers”, the church is being restored to the New Tes-
tament pattern.

The authority given to apostles is not dependent

upon man but upon Christ Himself who
calls and appoints the apostles.

As apostles are raised by Christ He gives to them the

authority as represented in the ‘key of David’. That authority
surpasses, supersedes and transcends the authority of the
‘bishop’ as representing man’s appointment to church leader-
ship.
This change of leadership is a most vital issue in the life
of the church today. Without the restoration of biblical leader-
ship and governance, the church will continue to miss its vital
calling. It has been called to preach the kingdom of God and the
things concerning Jesus (Acts 8:12), impacting the world, bring-
ing a mighty harvest of souls to the kingdom of God, preparing
the church for the Lord’s return and preparing the saints to rule
and reign with Christ in the earth.

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 Apostles Today

God is Initiating a Change of Leadership

In Isaiah 22:15-25, there is very instructive teaching
concerning the change of leadership from Shebna, the steward,
to Eliakim, the man God raised. Shebna is a type of the leader
raised by man such as the moderator voted into office, the bish-
op ordained by men, the senior pastor who assumes leadership
etc.
Eliakim is a type of the apostle,
God-raised, God-appointed and God-anointed,
and thus the leader able to fulfill
the calling and purpose of God

God is Speaking to Church Leadership

If you are functioning in ministry and church leadership
today, do you know the calling and appointment of God, or have
you only been placed in ministry and leadership by the choice of
man? If the latter is true, it does not mean that you are ‘not
called of God’ but it does mean that you have submitted your
calling to man’s institutional ways and, as a result, you will nev-
er be released into the one hundred fold ministry that Christ has
ordained for you.
“Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts; ‘Go, proceed to this
steward, to Shebna, who is over the house, and say” Isa.22:15.
The word of the Lord is coming to the prophet Isaiah and it is
addressed to Shebna who is the steward over the house. The
house referred to is the house of Judah and the city of Jerusalem.
This man was the chief steward in the reign of King Hezekiah.
He was man-appointed [by the king] and God was not happy
with his leadership or with the fruit of his ministry. What is a
‘steward’ in the context of the church today? The steward is rep-
resented by the ‘bishop’, or the administrator, or the ‘pastor’, the
man in charge of the local church, the man in charge of churches
in the city or in charge of a whole denomination. This steward in
the contemporary context has been ordained by men, elected by
men or, in some cases, is self-appointed.

God is Judging the Works of Church Leadership

“What have you here, and whom have you here, that

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 A Change of Leadership
you have hewn a sepulcher here, as he who hews himself a sep-
ulcher on high, who carves a tomb for himself in a rock?”
Isa.22:16. The Lord is asking two questions, ‘Who are you?’
and ‘What have you been doing?’ The steward is answerable to
God for what he has been doing. God is saying to this steward,
‘You have been building something for yourself, making a name
for yourself, so you will be remembered after you die.’ Instead
of being a steward looking after God’s house, he has been build-
ing something for himself. So often we see the successful local
church constructing an ornate new worship centre with all sorts
of facilities for the comfort of the worshipers; or we see the sen-
ior leader growing wealthy and amassing private things unto
himself. Meanwhile, the command to preach the gospel to every
person (Mk. 16:15-16), and to go to all nations to make disciples
(Matt.28:19-20) is ignored.
There are many illustrations of this from the past in Eu-
rope. Large cathedrals, built by man, sometimes taking many
decades to build and costing men their lives, are simply monu-
ments to man, empty shells, tombs [sepulchers]! Many people
visit these places but they do not meet with God; they merely
admire the architecture and artwork that give glory to man.
Such buildings were built by ‘stewards’ [bishops] who were
meant to be overseeing and shepherding the house of God, that
is, building the lives of people to know and reflect the glory of
Christ. But they have stumbled and focused on their own work,
their own ‘house’, seeking to make a name for themselves, even
a name that will remain after they have gone.

God Judges the Leadership of the Church

“Indeed, the LORD will throw you away violently, O
mighty man, and will surely seize you. He will surely turn vio-
lently and toss you like a ball into a large country; there you
shall die, and there your glorious chariots shall be the shame of
your masters house” Isa.22:17-18. God is saying that the
‘things’ that this steward has gathered for himself will be taken
from him. The steward will lose his life. The things the steward
has built will actually become a thing of shame and will not
bring glory to the master. Jesus warned us, “if we try to save our
life we will lose it.” Paul said that there are vessels [ministers],
“some for honour and some for dishonour” (2Tim.2:20).

25
 Apostles Today
This steward made the mistake of trying to build some-
thing for himself. God called it a sepulcher, which is a burial
tomb. That is what God thinks of our works. Many today are
following the example of this steward Shebna. They are serving
a master, albeit they assume that God is that master! They are
building modern day cathedrals; they are driving luxury cars in
third-world countries; Pentecostal bishops are wearing the pur-
ple shirts of Roman bishops and one is left wondering: ‘where
are the apostles?’ ‘Where is the church that Jesus is building?’
“So I will drive you out of your office, and from your
position he will pull you down” Isa.22:19. The Lord is going to
remove this steward from his office, because the things that he
has been doing are not pleasing to God. It is God who raises up
and it is God who casts down.

There is to be a Change of Leadership

“Then it shall be in that day, that I will call My servant
Eliakim the son of Hilkiah” Isa.22:20. Eliakim means ‘God of
raising’. Hilkiah means ‘portion of Jah [Yahweh/LORD]’. God
is raising up a new leadership: God is saying, “I will call”; God
says ‘I will raise the one whom I have chosen – My portion.’

It is God who calls and raises up the apostles

and the apostolic leadership for His church -
“God has set in the church first apostles”.

A change of leadership is happening. The old style of leadership

which has been building a name for itself is being pulled down,
put aside. God is raising up those who will lift up His name in
the earth. The day is coming, and now is, when God is calling
His servants – the ones He is raising to be the leaders of His
church.

Saul, the People’s Choice - David, God’s Choice

In 1 Samuel 8-10, Saul is raised up out of the will of the
people to be their king. He is as a steward over God’s nation,
Israel. But he proved to be unreliable; he compromised; he re-
fused to obey God’s instructions; he chose to do things his own
way. He had a fear of man, which resulted in him making an
unlawful sacrifice rather than obeying God (1Sam.13). God re-
26
 A Change of Leadership
placed Saul with the one of His choice, David. The transition
from Saul to David is similar to the change of leadership in Isai-
ah 22. God is replacing the ones who will not obey Him with the
ones He chooses, who will obey His word and fulfill His will.

The New Leader

“I will clothe him with your robe and strengthen him
with your belt; I will commit your responsibility into his hand.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem” Isaiah
22:21. There are four things to note from this verse: clothed with
the robe, strengthened with a belt, received responsibility into
the hand, and to be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Clothed with the Robe

The new leader is going to be clothed with the robe.
This is the mantle that covers and identifies the chosen leader.
Jacob identified his son, Joseph, as one specially chosen by
placing upon him “a tunic of colours” (Gen.37:3). When the
‘lost son’ returned to his father’s house, the father received him
as his son and said “bring out the best robe and put it on
him” (Lu.15:22). The robe identifies the son as belonging to,
and being one with, the father. It is interesting that bishops, in
the development of ‘church’, have generally gone the way of
dressing or robing themselves in man-made religious garments
that draw attention to their office externally, but they have not
known the anointing of Christ which covers.
There is a new covering coming over the church; no
longer the covering of the steward/the bishop, no longer the de-
nominational or institutional covering, but the covering is the
covering of Christ Himself. This comes through the One that
God raised! Jesus is the one whom God raised. Christ is the
Head of the church and no other. All of the saints are members
of the body and when the church is in apostolic order [led by
apostles] then the covering of Christ’s anointing is real and ef-
fectual.
Eliakim is a type of Christ, but he is also a type of the
apostolic leadership that God is raising up in these last days.
God is putting this mantle on a new leadership, which will pre-
pare the church for the covering of glory that God has promised
for “every dwelling place of Mt Zion and above her assemblies”

27
 Apostles Today
Isa.4:5. God has promised that the last days church will be fully
covered with His glory “a cloud and smoke by day and the shin-
ing of a flaming fire by night” Isa.4:6. It is the last days church,
set and functioning in apostolic order, that will be robed by God
in Christ.
Even as Jesus trained twelve whom He chose to be
apostles, and later the Holy Spirit raised a new generation of
apostles in the New Testament church beginning with Paul and
Barnabas in Acts 13, so today God is raising a new generation
of apostles to lead the last days church. This is the new leader-
ship!

Strengthened with the Belt

God will strengthen this new leader with a belt. This is
the belt of truth (Eph.6:14). John 17:17 says “your word is
truth”. Peter tells us to “gird up the loins of your
mind” (1Pet.1:13). Loins are girded with a belt. It is our minds
that need to be strengthened with the belt of truth. We do this by
having the word of God in us and believing what the word of
God says. Apostles come with the covering of the Lord Jesus
Christ and authority and freedom to speak the word of truth, not
under the control and restrictions put in place by man. Apostles
proclaim the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Peter said
after the appointment of the first deacons in Acts 6:4, that the
apostles should “give themselves continually to prayer and the
ministry of the word.” The result of functioning apostolic lead-
ership, as recorded in Acts 6, was “Then the word of God
spread, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusa-
lem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith”
v7. It is essential for the belt of truth to be placed on the ones
that God is raising so that there will be a full restoration of the
word and counsel of God in our day.

Commit Responsibility into the Hand

Responsibility is to be committed into the hand of the
new leader. The hand represents authority and also it is by the
hand that the work is done, speaking of giftings. God is saying
that He is going to take the responsibility out of the hand of the
existing leadership and give it into the hand of the ones He rais-
es. In Exodus 28:41 [NASBible] there are two Hebrew words

28
 A Change of Leadership
[SC# 4390 to fill and 3027 the hand] translated ‘ordain’ mean-
ing ‘to fill the hand’. God will give His authority into the hand
of those whom He knows will obey Him. The authority that the
steward had [that is, the old leadership] is being given by God to
the apostle [the new leadership]. It is God who raises up leader-
ship, commissions them and ordains them by imparting to them
His authority and His ability through giftings to do the work.

A Father to the Inhabitants of Jerusalem

The one that God raises will be a ‘father’, no longer a
steward but a father. There is a change happening here: church
leaders are no longer going to be administrators or overseers
[bishops]; they are going to be fathers, apostles, ones chosen by
God not the ones chosen by men. Apostle means ‘sent one’. Eli-
akim means ‘God of raising’.

Apostles are ones that Jesus calls, raises and sends .

The apostle Paul told the Corinthians that though they

“might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many
fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gos-
pel” 1Cor.4:15. Most in the churches today do not have a father.
World-wide, the church has been fatherless but, since God has
been raising apostles again, He has restored fathers and the
church is truly becoming relational as befits a body relating to
our head, Jesus Christ.

The Key of David is given to the one God raises

“The key of the house of David I will lay on his shoul-
der; so he shall open and no one shall shut; and he shall shut,
and no one shall open” Isa.22:22. This is the verse quoted from
in Revelation 3:7, and it is Jesus who holds the key of David. He
is the one who opens and no one shuts and shuts and no one can
open.
What is the key of David? It is the key that the steward
of the house of Judah held. The steward was the man who repre-
sented the king and who oversaw the work of the kingdom. She-
bna represented King Hezekiah, having been appointed by him,
and he held the key that gave him the king’s authority. The key
is to be taken from Shebna, the steward, and given to Eliakim,
29
 Apostles Today
the one God is raising. The steward is replaced by the apostle.
The key is similar to the signet ring used by kings as the
sign of their authority. Pharaoh gave his ring to Joseph and it
gave him the authority to open and to shut, to command all of
Egypt, her people and economy (Gen.41:42). In Haggai 2:23 the
Lord says to Zerubbabel the governor [the church/house of God
builder], “I will … make you like a signet ring; for I have cho-
sen you.” God is acknowledging the apostle as the one who
wears the ring of authority. The ring of authority is similar to the
key of David. When the lost son came home, the father put a
ring on his finger also. The father was acknowledging him as his
son and saying, ‘you have a full inheritance, and this ring gives
you the same authority as me.’

Jesus holds the Key of David

Jesus was the one who was given that authority by God
(Matt.28:18). He holds the key of David, but He gave keys of
the kingdom of heaven to the apostle Peter (Matt. 16:18-19) tell-
ing him “whatever you bind [shut] on earth will be bound in
heaven and whatever you loose [open] on earth will be loosed in
heaven.” This is the authority that Jesus has given to His apos-
tles. Elijah had this authority to open and shut heaven. He was
able to say to King Ahab, “As the LORD God of Israel lives,
before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years
except at my word” 1Ki.17:1. He had the authority to shut up
the heavens. This is the same authority that Jesus gives to apos-
tles. On the basis of His authority, Jesus sent the apostles to
“make disciples of all nations” (Matt.28:19).

Peter, the Apostle, was given Keys

Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter, [a large stone or a
small rock] and on this rock [meaning a large rock – speaking of
Christ Himself] I will build My church, and the gates of Hades
shall not prevail against it.” Peter is set in place by Jesus as a
foundation stone upon which Jesus will build the church. Jesus
then gave to the apostle the keys to open and shut and said that
nothing would stop His church from being built. Peter is an ap-
ostolic leader, appointed by Jesus, to found the apostolic church.
Peter is a foundation stone, as an apostle, set upon the Rock
Himself. Remember that Paul later says the church is built upon

30
 A Change of Leadership
“the foundation of apostles and prophets” (Eph.2:20), and Peter
himself wrote that we are to come to Jesus “a living stone” and
“as living stones” to be “built up a spiritual house” 1Pet.2:4-5.

Peter was given the keys to see the kingdom of God

manifest in the earth through the church, as an apostle
appointed and commissioned by Jesus Christ.

Notice that the keys of the kingdom are specifically giv-

en to Peter immediately after Jesus has proclaimed that the gates
of Hades [hell] will not prevail against the church. Keys and
gates are both speaking of a similar reality. Gates represent the
place of authority and keys lock or unlock the gates. At that
time, one could say that the kingdom of heaven was still shut
but Peter was being given the keys to open the gates of heaven
and every attempt by the devil to stop that happening would be
unsuccessful. The church is the vehicle whereby God has or-
dained for His kingdom to be manifest. Since the cross and res-
urrection, Jesus holds “the keys of Hades and of
Death” (Rev.1:18). Jesus was giving Peter the keys of the king-
dom of heaven, knowing that He was going to wrest the keys of
hell and death from the devil through the cross.
The foundations of the church of Jesus Christ were
properly laid by the twelve apostles whom Jesus personally
trained and appointed, and by the apostles whom Jesus called
and gifted after His ascension (Eph.4:8-11). The same keys that
Peter received were given to all the apostles and Paul demon-
strates in Acts 19, and in other places, that he had the keys to
manifest the kingdom of God in establishing the church of Jesus
Christ properly, according to the Scriptural pattern.
God is raising a new leadership for His church in these
days. Shebna, the steward, represents the old leadership that has
been in place for decades in the charismatic/Pentecostal church-
es and for centuries in some of the older denominational church-
es. Eliakim represents the new leadership that God is raising, a
leadership by apostles who will be ‘fathers’ to His people and
who will preach apostolic doctrine and practice sound doctrine.

The Effect of the New Leadership

“I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place, and he will

31
 Apostles Today
become a glorious throne to his father’s house” Isa22:23. When
apostolic leadership is back in place, it will be like a secure peg
which will bring security to God’s people by providing a proper
foundation for faith and practice. Because the apostles are in
place, the church will “become the glorious throne to his fa-
ther’s house.” The church will begin to be the glorious church it
is meant to be, so that the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
kingship of Jesus Christ, will be revealed in the earth. Jesus is to
be enthroned in the midst of His church. This is how John saw
Him “in the midst of the seven lampstands” (Rev.1:12-16). The
seven lampstands represent the completed church [seven-fold].
Through the preaching of the “unsearchable riches of
Christ”, which is the full message of the gospel of the kingdom
of God, the Lord Jesus Christ will be exalted. It is through the
church knowing “the fellowship of the mystery”, knowing fully
what it means to be “in Christ” and who Christ is in us, that the
Lordship of Jesus Christ will be made known to the principali-
ties and powers in the heavenly realm, to the people on the earth
and to the inhabitants of hell (Phil.2:9-11).
It is time to make Jesus King; it is time to set things in
order; it is time for the church to receive a new leadership ac-
cording to God’s order – “first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers” (1Cor.12:28). It is time for the church to be sanctified
and cleansed so that we can be presented “a glorious
church” (Eph.5:26-27).

The Glory shall be Revealed

“They will hang on him all the glory of his father’s
house, the offspring and the posterity, all vessels of small quan-
tity, from the cups to all the pitchers” Isa.22:24. When the apos-
tles are raised up, the ones who represent Christ, then there will
be ‘fathers’ in the house, and ‘fathers’ beget ‘sons’. God will
remove the ones who have been raised by man as stewards,
bishops or administrators. When I say God will remove these
ones, this happens in one of two ways: either the person in the
office of steward or bishop receives the revelation of the apos-
tolic, receives the adoption into sonship and begins to function
and flow in apostolic ministry; or the person refuses to accept
the deeper and fuller teaching of the word of God and gives their
loyalty to the institution or the system, thus missing out on ap-

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 A Change of Leadership
prehending the higher call of God and coming into maturity.
We have witnessed a bishop, the overseer of many
churches, who after one day, in an apostolic seminar where I
was teaching, resign from the man-made office of bishop be-
cause he had received an apostolic anointing. This brother expe-
rienced a radical change in his life and is now walking in son-
ship [the maturity brought about by the spirit of adoption] and in
apostolic ministry, properly leading the pastors and overseers as
a father among all the churches for which he is responsible.
When the church has been set in order and apostles are
in place, then all the glory of the Father will be revealed in Je-
sus, who will be in the midst of His church. Every member from
the smallest [least significant] to the greatest will reveal the Fa-
ther’s glory. Paul teaches us that in the body “those members of
the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we be-
stow greater honor” 1Cor.12:23. Paul also teaches us to build
with “gold, silver and precious stones” because the fire will test
the work (1Cor.3:12), and Paul exhorts us to strive to be a vessel
of gold or silver (2Tim.2:20-21).

Without Apostles the Church is cut off

“In that day, says the LORD of hosts, the peg that is
fastened in the secure place will be removed and be cut down
and fall, and the burden that was on it will be cut off; for the
LORD has spoken” Isa.22:25. If apostolic leadership is not in
place, everything falls down. The church will remain broken and
divided while it is administrated by stewards rather than led by
God-raised apostolic fathers. The church that is in the world to-
day, despite all the good things that have happened by the grace
of the Lord and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, does not ade-
quately represent Jesus Christ and is yet to come into His glory,
even as a remnant.

God is Adopting His Church to Walk in Sonship

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, at His baptism, the
voice of the Father spoke and said, “This is My beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased” Matt.3:17. This was the beginning of
Jesus walking in the adoption [placed by the Spirit in that place
of maturity to do the Father’s will]. When Jesus was coming to
the end of His ministry, He went up on a high mountain with

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 Apostles Today
Peter, James and John, and was transfigured before them in glo-
ry. The voice of the Father spoke again saying, “This is My be-
loved Son. Hear Him!” Mk.9:7 Jesus was approved by the Fa-
ther to step into sonship at the beginning of His ministry. On the
mount of Transfiguration, He was seen in all His glory and the
Father gave instructions to the disciples to ‘listen to Him’. Je-
sus’ short time in ministry saw Him complete His walk with
God in the earth. He had come to perfection. All the glory of His
Father was manifested in Him on the mount of Transfiguration.
This did not happen at His baptism even though He received the
Spirit of His Father without measure. Even so, the church at the
end of the age [or at least a remnant company] is to walk in the
fullness of sonship and it is through this remnant that the voice
of the Father will be heard.

The Church is to Bear the Glory of Christ

God is raising up a new leadership so that the church
can come to the place of maturity, bearing His glory. Who bears
the glory? In Zechariah 6:11-13 the LORD is giving instructions
for Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, to have a crown
placed on his head, and then in verse 13 the LORD says, “He
shall build the temple of the LORD. He shall bear the glory and
shall sit and rule on His throne; so He shall be a priest on His
throne”. Joshua is a priest being crowned as a king. Jesus ful-
filled this prophecy and became the king/priest. Jesus bears the
glory of the Father and the church is destined to bear the glory
of Jesus which is the glory of the Father. Jesus demonstrated in
His own ministry that even as He walked in the power of the
Spirit and came to a place where the glory of God could mani-
fest in Him [transfiguration], even so He is preparing a glorious
bride church in the earth who will manifest His glory in the
earth.

When apostles are in place

the church is restored

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 A Change of Leadership

Jesus will be enthroned

in the midst of His church

The church will bear His glory!

Chapter Two
THE FINISHED WORK OF
JESUS THE APOSTLE

A key understanding of the apostolic:

it is as we receive the one sent
that we receive the One who sends

Jesus’ apostolic work, that the Father gave

Him, was to concentrate on twelve men
in terms of training them and
preparing them to be sent as apostles

The faith was first presented by apostles

and those, who believed the word of
the apostles, were to become one
and to continue in oneness

John 17:
v4 “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the
work which you have given me to do.
v6 I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have
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 Apostles Today
given Me out of the world.
v8 For I have given them the words which You have given
Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I
came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.
v10 All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glo-
rified in them.
v11-12 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the
world and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name
those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.
v13 Now I come to You, and these things I speak in the
world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.
v14 I have given them Your word and the world has hated
them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the
world.
v17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
v18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them
into the world.
v20-21 I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will
believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one, as
You Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may also be one
in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
v22-23 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them,
that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in
Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world
may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You
have loved Me.”

Jesus the Apostle

“Therefore holy brethren partakers of the heavenly call-
ing, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession,
Christ Jesus” Heb.3:1. This verse draws our attention to two
vital aspects of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ: He is the
Apostle and He is the High Priest. For 1800 years or more the
church has been largely unmindful of Jesus the Apostle and the
apostolic nature of the church. Despite the fact that the Creeds
have said the church is apostolic, they also said the church was
catholic and most people who said the Creeds understood nei-
ther words. The Scripture says we are to ‘consider the Apostle
and High Priest of our confession’. This word ‘confession’ is

36
 A Change of Leadership
very important. It is made up of two Greek words: homo mean-
ing the same, and logeo which comes from logos the word;
homologeo literally means ‘to speak the same thing’. We are to
know from the word of God that Jesus is the High Priest and we
know that, as the High Priest, He offered up the perfect sacrifice
of Himself on the cross, and that saves us. He continues forever
as the High Priest, interceding for us at the throne of grace. We
also need to know from the word that Jesus is the Apostle.
Jesus the Apostle of God is rarely spoken of and most
brethren do not have a confession of Jesus the Apostle. What is
an apostle?

An apostle is one who is sent on behalf of another

to represent that one and to do the work
that he has been sent to do

Jesus was sent from heaven by the Father to repre-

sent God and make Him known, and the work He was given
to do was to prepare the building of the church, the house of
God. The apostle is the master builder (1Cor.3:10). It is the ap-
ostolic ministry that works to raise up the other ministries and
energise them to do the work of the ministry “perfecting the
saints and building up the body of Christ, until we all come …
to a perfect man” Eph.4:12-13. Both the ministry of Apostle and
the ministry of High Priest were completed in the earth by Jesus.
This was fulfilling God’s plan.
In John 19:28-30 Jesus “knowing that all things were
now accomplished” declared “It is finished”, and then He died.
What was finished?

Jesus had completed the work of redemption

as High Priest by offering Himself on the cross.

However in John 17:4, Jesus had made a similar state-

ment and He was not referring to His redemptive work.
The context of John 17 is of Jesus speaking with His
disciples at the Last Supper [Passover meal] on the night He was
betrayed. Jesus had been instructing His disciples of many
things in regard to His coming death and resurrection. His teach-
ing at the Last Supper began in John 13 with the washing of the

37
 Apostles Today
disciples’ feet.

Glorify Your Son

Finally before He leaves for the Garden of Gethsemane,
Jesus “lifted up His eyes to heaven” and spoke these words,
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son
also may glorify You. As you have given Him authority over all
flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have
given Him” Jn.17.1-2. Glory comes from the Father to the Son
and, through the Son, it brings eternal life to the ones whom the
Father gives. The Son glorifies the Father by bringing the gift of
salvation to human beings, which happens at the new birth.
When a soul becomes born again and receives Jesus, this brings
glory to God. The very life of God has entered the person by the
Spirit of God. Adam originally received life as a created being
by receiving “the breath of life” (Gen.2:7). Now through Jesus
having completed His work in the earth, both the High Priestly
and the Apostolic work, man is able to receive “eternal life”.
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” Jn.17:3.
Eternal life is to know God in Jesus Christ. This word ‘know’ is
‘epignosis’ and means having a deep conviction, an inner know-
ing of who God is. We are to know the one who has been ‘sent’.
This word sent is the word ‘apostello’ in the Greek. Jesus was
the one sent by God; He was the apostle of God. It is Jesus the
Apostle who is praying this prayer for the ones He has raised up
and has prepared to be sent out into the world as apostles. He is
saying that the apostles with Him had received eternal life be-
cause they had received Him.

A key understanding of the apostolic: it is as we

receive the one sent that we receive the One who sends.

I have finished the work

In John 17:4, Jesus says “I have glorified You on the
earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to
do.” What is the ‘finished work’ that Jesus is referring to here?
It is not referring to His substitutionary work on the cross. We
have already seen, in John 19:30, Jesus declaring the redemptive
work finished. He is not referring to His redemptive work,
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 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
which is the work of the High Priest, but He is referring to His
apostolic work which was to raise the twelve apostles.
It is the apostolic ministry of Jesus that has been ne-
glected in church history. In our day, God is restoring apostles
for His church and through them is highlighting, again, Jesus as
the Apostle. The major work of the apostle is to build the house
of God [the church] and the way that God has chosen to build
His house is through the ministry of apostles and then, in due
course, through the other ministry gifts that He has given. We
note that Jesus did not choose twelve prophets or twelve pastors
to be the foundation ministry of His church and to be responsi-
ble for the building of the church, finally leading the church in
its growth to perfection.

Jesus raised up a new ministry: the ministry of apostles.

Jesus’ apostolic ministry was to twelve men

Jesus is saying, in John 17:6-19, that the work that He
had finished was the training of the twelve to be apostles. The
first major thing that Jesus reports to His Father in the training
of the twelve is in verse 6. “I have manifested [revealed] Your
name to the men whom you have given Me out of the world.
They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept
Your word.” The three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all
clearly name the twelve original apostles called and appointed
by Jesus. Remember, that the ministry of the apostle is a New
Testament ministry introduced by Jesus: He came as the Apostle
of God to raise apostles among men for the building of His
church. Jesus demonstrates in Himself the full ministry of apos-
tle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher, but it is the ministry
of the apostle that He specifically came to this earth to institute.
This is the key ministry that is required to build the house
[church] of God. Jesus is clear: God gave Him a few men, only
twelve, and one of them was “the son of perdition”, so in John
17, He actually has eleven apostles with Him.

Jesus only did the Father’s work

There is a deep lesson for us all to learn: Jesus’ apostol-
ic work that the Father gave Him was to concentrate on twelve
men in terms of training them. One of the twelve was a failure
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 Apostles Today
and yet Jesus is confidently thanking His Father and asking the
Father to release His glory to these men. These men are His
‘crown and glory!’ In coming to the end of His ministry, Jesus
does not remind the Father of all the people who had been
healed! He did not remind the Father of all the disciples He had
taught! He did not remind the Father of the seventy He had
trained and sent out in Luke 10! No, Jesus was relating to the
Father over the success He had in raising twelve apostles [Judas
Iscariot was replaced by Matthias in Acts 1]. This was the spe-
cific work the Father gave Him. We only need do the work the
Father gives us. In the final accounting, it will not be the num-
bers we have ministered to, the size of the congregation, the
buildings we have constructed or even the signs and wonders
ministry that we have performed, but it will be: ‘Were we obedi-
ent to the Father’s calling to do the Father’s work?’

Jesus made manifest the Father’s name

What does this mean? In the gospels, Jesus refers to
God as Father or addresses God as Father over 170 times. Is
‘Father’ the name that Jesus has manifested to His disciples? Is
‘Father’ a name? Normally ‘father’ is the title given to that one
who is our father and it is the same with God. Jesus is not telling
us that the name of God is Father but, rather, He is introducing
us to God as our Father. This was a radical New Testament rev-
elation: God is our Father.
So what is the name that He manifested to His disci-
ples? When God called Moses, in Exodus 3, and commissioned
him to go to Egypt, Moses said “and they say to me, ‘What is
His name?’ what shall I say to them?” v.13. God answered and
said, “I AM WHO I AM. Thus you shall say to the children of
Israel ‘I AM has sent me to you’” v.14. This revealed name of
God is translated ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Jehovah’, [from YHWH] but
mostly in the English Bible this difficult to pronounce Hebrew
name of God is rendered ‘LORD’ [over 6000 times]. This is the
revealed name of God in the Old Testament. Jesus said, “I have
manifested Your name to the men You have given Me”.

In My Name
So what is the revealed name of God in the New Testa-
ment? When the angel announced to Mary that God was bring-

40
 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
ing forth His Son through her, he said, you “shall call His name
Jesus” (Lu.1:31). Jesus is the shorter form of Yehoshua which
means ‘Yahweh is Salvation’ or ‘the LORD saves’; from this we
get the name ‘Saviour’. Many times in the gospels, Jesus refers
to His own name: “in My name”. He said prayers will be an-
swered in My name; demons are cast out in My name; the sick
are healed in My name. You will all acknowledge that the name
that gives you authority over demons or over sickness is the
name of Jesus. It is not effective to command a demon to go ‘in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ or
in the name of God Almighty. God has given us the name of
JESUS. Peter declared in Acts 3:16 that the lame man was made
strong “through faith in His name”, and in Acts 4:12 Peter de-
clares that there is “no other name under heaven given among
men by which we must be saved.” What name? JESUS.
The Scripture says that “God has highly exalted Him
and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven
[referring to principalities and powers - the demonic heaven]
and of those on the earth [people] and of those under the earth
[the demons of hell] and every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” Phil.2:9-11.

Power and authority are in the name of JESUS!

The name in the New Testament is JESUS!
His full name is LORD JESUS CHRIST!

The name in Baptism

In Matthew 28:18, Jesus declared to the apostles “All
authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is
the sovereign ruler over heaven and earth and when He com-
manded the apostles “to go and make disciples of all nations”,
He told them to baptise “in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit” Matt.28:19. Notice He said ‘name’,
singular, not ‘names’. When we realise this, we can then under-
stand why Peter, in Acts 2:38, was acting in obedience when he
commanded the ones who believed the gospel to be baptised “in
the name of Jesus Christ”. In fact all of the references to water
baptism in the book of Acts refer to the name singular. In the
case of Paul and the Ethiopian eunuch, the name used in baptism

41
 Apostles Today
is not mentioned. Paul had an amazing experience in meeting
the Lord and asked “who are you, Lord?’ Then the Lord said, ‘I
am Jesus’” (Acts 9:5). Paul came to know the Lord Jesus, so we
can assume he was baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts
8:16 says the new believers at Samaria “had only been baptised
in the name of the Lord Jesus”; we can assume that Philip bap-
tised the Ethiopian man in that name also. Peter commanded the
newly Spirit-filled Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius
“to be baptised in the name of the Lord” Acts 10:48. Paul in
Acts 19:5 baptised “in the name of the Lord Jesus”. The first
step that we are to take in making disciples is to baptise those
who have believed in the Name.

We are to make manifest to the young disciples

the name of the Lord.

I have given them the words

The second thing Jesus said to the Father that He had
done in training the apostles is in John 17:8. “For I have given to
them the words which you have given Me; and they have re-
ceived them and know surely that I came forth from You; and
they have believed that You sent Me.” The result of the disciples
receiving the word was to know who Jesus was and that He had
come forth from God. The primary intent of the word of God is
to reveal God and to make Him known. This is the ministry of
the apostle: Jesus said to the apostles in Matthew 10:40 “he who
receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him
who sent Me.” Jesus came forth as the apostle of God and by
sharing the word of God with the ones to whom God had sent
Him and who had received Him as the Christ, they came to
know who He was and in so doing came to know the Father.
Jesus said “I have given to them the words”; He taught
the disciples the word of God. This is the teaching ministry.
The second step in making disciples is to “teach them to observe
all things that I have commanded you” Matt.28:20. Jesus taught
the apostles and imparted to them the words that God had given
Him. This is so awesome! Jesus is simply saying that He suc-
cessfully discipled the apostles by manifesting God’s name to
them and giving them God’s word. Jesus is saying, ‘I have re-
ceived the men You gave Me; I have revealed Your name to

42
 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
them; I have taught them the word You gave Me for them’. Je-
sus was obedient to the Father’s will.

I am glorified in them
The third thing Jesus said about the preparation of the
twelve is in verse 10. “And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are
Mine, and I am glorified in them.” Jesus received the twelve that
were to be His apostles from the Father. He brought them to a
level of maturity whereby He was now able to be manifest in
them. Having manifested God’s name to them and imparted
God’s word to them, Jesus says He is now “glorified in them.”
The apostle Paul says that his goal as an apostle is to make
known to the saints “the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”
Col.1:27. Jesus had brought the twelve through to the place
where He was glorified in them. In other words, these men were
now able to carry the glorious presence of the Lord within them-
selves and represent Him fully to those who would receive their
word.
The goal is for Christ to be glorified in the saints.
God’s church is to grow up into maturity,
to walk in the glory.
This is the goal of the apostolic ministry:
for Christ to be manifest in a glorious church.

In Romans 8:29-30, we see that we are “predestined to

be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the first
born among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined,
these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified;
and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” Justification
comes through the blood of the cross: we are saved! But glorifi-
cation comes because the same blood was taken by Jesus into
the tabernacle made without human hands, into heaven itself,
and placed upon the true mercy seat, signifying that God has
called His people to glory in Christ Jesus (Heb.9:11-12, 24,
1Pet.5:10). Jesus raised apostles to the level of maturity where-
by He could be glorified in them and then they, through the min-
istry gift of the apostle, could bring the church to maturity to
walk in the revelation of the mystery, which is “Christ in you.”
God’s goal is to prepare a “glorious church without spot or
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 Apostles Today
wrinkle” (Eph.5:27).

Kept through the Name

The fourth thing Jesus refers to is to ask the Father to
“keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that
they may be one as We are” Jn. 17:11. In verse 12, Jesus said
that He had “kept them” in the Father’s name. In other words
Jesus had shown them the power of His name and He was confi-
dent that, after He left, they would continue to know ‘the keep-
ing power of God’. Jude says “Now to Him who is able to keep
you from falling and present you faultless” v24. The Lord prom-
ises that “the God of peace Himself will sanctify us completely”
and we will be “preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ” 1Thess.5:23-4.
A key to coming into a fullness in Christ when every-
thing seems to be too hard and too difficult for us, is to yield, ‘to
give up’, to be able to say to God, ‘I cannot do this’. The wis-
dom from above is “willing to yield” (Ja.3:17). Remember faith
comes by hearing (Rom.10:17). As we hear the word and are
willing to yield, the faith that we need will be given to us. Re-
member again, God has measured to each one of us the faith we
need to function in His grace in the body of Christ (Rom.12:3-
4). Let God keep you by His grace in the power of His name.
“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.
Those whom you gave me I have kept” Jn.17:12a. One of the
fundamental lessons that God wants every new believer to learn
is to know the authority of His name, the name of Jesus, over
the devil and all of the devil’s works. Every believer needs to
know that they can resist and overcome even the most fearsome
demonic attack.
Jesus acknowledges that even one of the twelve apostles
was lost “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn.17:12). A key
thing we learn from the Lord’s testimony is that our work is to
do ‘the will of the Father’, not our own will. Often, in the minis-
try and in church life, we are assailed by motivational speakers,
church growth proponents and others who want to give us
‘worldly goals’ and so we come under pressure to try to attract
and hold numbers of people in our local church or to have many
churches etc, whereas the Father wants us to know His will and
to do it. The Son of God said He had completed the work the

44
 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
Father gave Him by successfully raising twelve apostles – Mat-
thias replaced Judas (Acts 1:26).

My joy fulfilled in them

The fifth thing that Jesus says of the apostles He had
raised up is “that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves”
Jn.17:13. Because the apostles knew ‘the name of the Lord’ and
had received ‘the words Jesus gave them from the Father’, and
because they now were able ‘to carry the glory of the Lord in
themselves’, and knew ‘the keeping power of God and the pro-
tection of His name’, they were ‘filled with His joy’. How are
we going to know this joy? Jesus gives us a key in John 16:24:
“Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you
will receive, that your joy be full.” We are to ask the Father in
His name (Jn.16:23).
It is this fullness of joy that comes, through knowing
Jesus, which enables us to endure the suffering that comes
through the various trials we all will face. James says “count it
all joy when you fall into various trials” (Ja.1:2-3), because the
trials are for the testing and refining of our faith. Likewise Peter
expounds on this same theme assuring us that, once our faith has
been proven, we will “rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of
glory” (1Pet.1:7-8). Jesus Himself “endured the cross, for the
joy set before Him” (Heb.12:2). The grace of receiving Jesus the
Apostle, which can be released in us by receiving the apostle(s)
He sends to us, is full and all encompassing. As a result, we are
able to walk in a fullness of sonship that releases the grace we
need to endure the sufferings brought about by the trials we
face. His joy is fulfilled in us.

The word gives us victory in the world

“I have given them Your word and the world has hated
them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the
world” Jn.17:14. It is the word of God that brings division. Jesus
said “I did not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matt.18:34).
When we speak the truth of the word, men will either love us or
hate us.
“I do not pray that You should take them out of the
world but that You should keep them from the evil one”
Jn.17:15. Jesus taught us to pray “deliver us from the evil

45
 Apostles Today
one” (Matt.6:13), and in 2Thessalonians 3:1-3 Paul is speaking
about the need to be delivered “from unreasonable and wicked
men” [the world], and then he says, “the Lord is faithful, who
will establish you and guard you from the evil one.” We are not
called to fight the devil but to submit to God and His word and
He will deliver us.
“Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth”
Jn.17:17. The word of God has within itself great sanctifying
power. It is the word working in us that separates us unto the
will of God. We need to continue in the word; we need to con-
tinue to be disciples of the word and then we “shall know the
truth and the truth shall make us free” (Jn.8:31-32). It is by the
“washing of water by the word” that we are cleansed and sancti-
fied, to be presented ‘to Himself a glorious church” (Eph.5:27).

Sent as apostles
The result of Jesus having properly trained and prepared
the men that God had given Him is that He is now able to send
them forth into the world as apostles: “As you sent Me into the
world, I also have sent them into the world” Jn.17:18. This word
‘sent’ is the Greek word ‘apostello’ which is the verb form of
apostle. Jesus had completed the work His Father had given
Him to do. He had devoted much of the three and a half years of
His ministry to teaching and training the apostles. In John 17
from verse 4, Jesus is clearly declaring that He has finished the
work the Father gave Him.

That work was to raise the apostles to a place of maturity

where they were now ready to be sent as apostles to repre-
sent Jesus and the Father, and bring to pass the outworking
of His will through the preaching of the gospel and the
building of the church of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ task as the apostle of God was to build the

church. Jesus declared “I will build My church and the gates of
Hades will not prevail against it” Matt.16:18. The apostles had
already been appointed by this time and Jesus specifically told
Peter “you are Peter and upon this rock I will build My church.”
Peter, as an apostle, is going to play a key role in the foundation
and building of the church. Later Paul says that, as an apostle,
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 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
he was “a wise master builder”. Paul had the keys. He knew
how to build! He knew what to build! The church is to be built,
that is, grown up to maturity, able to carry the glory of God in
Christ, that is, ‘Christ in us’.

Jesus Prays for all Believers

Having established with the Father that the men the Fa-
ther had given Him were trained and ready to be sent, Jesus then
prays “for those who will believe in Me through their [the apos-
tles] word” Jn.17:20. His prayer is that all who are taught by the
apostles will become “one”. This oneness is the oneness of Je-
sus being in the Father and the Father being in Jesus, “as You
Father, in Me, and I in You” Jn.17:21. The result of the believ-
ers coming into the oneness of the Godhead will be that the
world may believe God sent Jesus (v.21).

The faith was first presented by apostles

and those who believed the word of the apostles
were to become one and to continue in oneness.

After His resurrection, Jesus commissioned the apostles

to make disciples by teaching them the words Jesus had given to
them (Matt.28:20). It is as apostles are sent by Jesus and re-
ceived by the believers that the church is formed according to
the words of Jesus. The church is His body and must come to-
gether in the way that He has ordained to function fully and ex-
press His life and His glory, as a witness in all the world.

That they may be perfect in one

Jesus said He was glorified in the apostles (Jn.17:10).
He then says that He will be glorified in all those who believe
(v.22). It is this reality of the glory of Christ in the believers that
will enable them to “be one just as We are one: I in them, and
You in Me; that they may be perfect in one” Jn.17:22-23.
God’s goal for the church is perfection. The way to per-
fection is through God’s glory covering and permeating the
whole church. God has promised such a covering for the rem-
nant in Isaiah 4:5-6.

Jesus makes it clear in these verses

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 Apostles Today

that the expression of the glory of God in us

is the means by which we become one.

This expression of glory becomes known by revelation

and wisdom that is shared by apostles who have been raised,
trained and sent by Jesus. The result will be that “the world will
know that the Father sent Jesus” and the world will know that
Jesus has “loved them [believers] as You [the Father] have
loved Me” Jn.17:23.
Jesus continues to pray for all believers. It is true that
every believer living today can receive insight and solace from
the prayer of Jesus. It is true, that in many cities, pastors from
various churches are coming together in unity movements and
that is a legitimate outworking of Jesus’ prayer. However many
have missed the full context of the prayer. I have shown in this
chapter that the context of Jesus’ prayer for all believers is that
they have come to believe in Jesus through the apostles. There is
a key here for us in the last days, and the key is, that when apos-
tles are restored and received, the church will come into one-
ness.
The oneness that Jesus prayed for, and that many long for,
is only possible through the glory of God in Christ
being made manifest in the believers.

Jesus is clear: the glory produces and makes possible

the oneness. The glory is revealed through the preaching and
teaching of the deeper wisdom of God among the mature. “We
speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom
of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to noth-
ing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden
wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory”
1Cor.2:6-7. It is this wisdom, the revelation of the mystery,
which God is revealing again in our day through the apostles.
The oneness that the saints are to experience in Christ will be
made manifest through the preaching of the unsearchable riches
of Christ that makes all see “what is the fellowship [koinonia
#2842] of the mystery” (Eph.4:8-9). There is a deeper fellow-
ship which is the fellowship of oneness.
The desire of our Lord is for us to be with Him, “that
they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am”, and

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 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
that we “may behold His glory”, the glory which Jesus had with
the Father before the foundation of the world (Jn.17:24). Jesus is
not referring to a life with Him in heaven but, rather, He is refer-
ring to the revelation of the mystery that Paul refers to in Colos-
sians 1:26-27, “the mystery which has been hidden from ages
and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.
To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in
you, the hope of glory.”
Finally, Jesus declares in His prayer that the ones that
He has received from the Father have come to know that the
Father sent Jesus (Jn.17:25).

Our receiving of Jesus is the key

to coming to know the Father.

This is the revelation of the apostolic:

coming to know the Father through Jesus ,
by receiving the apostle(s) whom Jesus sends.

Jesus says, that it is through the declaration

of God’s name, that the revelation of God’s love
becomes manifest in the apostles and in all believers.

The GLORY coming upon the saints

is the key to the ONENESS
of the saints in Christ –

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 Apostles Today

only then can the PERFECT come

Chapter Three
WHY WE NEED APOSTLES TODAY

We need the restoration of apostles to bring

the solid foundational teaching of the basic
principles of Christ (Heb.6:1-2); to make
known the wisdom of God concerning the
structure of the church, concerning the place-
ment of ministries and the appointment of el-
ders in every place.

Until we come to this deeper knowledge of the

wisdom of God’s word we cannot perceive or
understand what God is doing in the earth
through His church, nor how to adequately
bring the church to that place of maturity to
walk in the revelation of the mystery, thus con-
sciously co-operating with the Lord as He
manifests Himself through His church.

Times of Restoration
God is a God of restoration. Principles of restoration are
clearly taught in the Scriptures. Restoration is:
 the setting in place of the original pattern;
 things becoming as they were in the beginning;
 bringing the creation back to its original created
state;

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 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle

 restoring the church to the Biblical pattern and

order
Peter declared to the Jews, when he was preaching in
the temple after the healing of the lame man, that we are enter-
ing into a time of restoration. “Repent therefore and be convert-
ed, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing
may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send
Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven
must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which
God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the
world began.” Acts 3:19-21.

This Scripture shows that there are certain things

that have to happen before Jesus can return.
Jesus is being retained in heaven
“until the times of restoration of all things.”

We are living in that time of restoration and until all

things are restored that must be restored according to the word
of God, Jesus is not coming back to receive the church to Him-
self.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved
the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and
cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He
might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot
or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and
without blemish” Eph. 5:25-27. Jesus is coming back for a blood
-washed, sanctified, cleansed and glorified church. His plan for
the church is to restore the church to be even more glorious than
in the beginning.
“‘The glory of this latter temple [house] shall be greater
than the former’, says the LORD of hosts” Hagg.2:9. The book
of Acts church is the former church [temple]. The church has to
go back to the beginning; it has to go back to the biblical model,
to the apostolic pattern as established by Jesus through the first
apostles. The church will be restored, “as it was in the begin-
ning”, into an even greater glory.

Creation
In Genesis 1:26, God said “Let Us make man in Our
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 Apostles Today
image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on
the earth.” God intends for man to have dominion over created
things. He wants us to exercise that authority. In Mark 4:41, af-
ter Jesus had calmed the storm, His disciples said, “who can this
be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” Jesus demon-
strated the authority, that God intends man to have, through His
miracles and healings. God will restore dominion authority to
the sons of men as they are raised in manifest sonship
(Rom.8:19-21).
God told the man and the woman He had created, “be
fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion
over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every
living thing that moves on the earth” Gen.1:28. The man and the
woman, created in God’s image and likeness, were to fill the
earth with godly offspring, thereby extending the goodness and
richness of the Garden of Eden throughout the earth. They were
to subdue the earth: subdue is a military term meaning to take
control over. God’s intention for His people is for them to sub-
due the devil and rule on the earth.
In Genesis 1:2 we read that “the earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.” The earth
was empty; that means it was yet to be inhabited. As we know
God created all forms of life to fill the earth so that it was no
longer empty. It was shapeless [without form] but the Holy Spir-
it was moving on the face of the deep and His work was to bring
forth shape and symmetry, causing the unformed matter to be
formed into a beautiful spherical globe, as we know it today.
There is a principle of God’s awesome goodness
demonstrated here: wherever there is darkness and emptiness
and lack of purpose, God’s Spirit comes to ‘brood’ [SC #7363],
like a bird that sits on her nest to bring forth something new,
something beautiful.

Creation Unfolds
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’” v.3. Light was al-
ways in existence because it was God’s light, but now God was
releasing light into the time/space/matter realm that He was cre-
ating. Where God is, there is always light. The word ‘let’ in

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 The Finished Work of Jesus the Apostle
these verses is a word of permission to do something, but it is
more than that, it was also a creative command of incredible
force, producing amazing results. Suddenly, within the first day
of creation, God had brought form to the empty and shapeless
matter that had first appeared.
“God made the firmament, and divided the waters
which were under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament” v.6. This speaks of the separation of the
heavens from the earth. God made the ‘firmament’ [the atmos-
phere]. Before this there was no atmosphere, just waters around
the earth. When God made the firmament, He separated the wa-
ters from above and below and there was still no dry land. Then
God caused the dry land to appear. When it appeared God said,
“Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the
fruit tree” v.11. The creation of the trees and the herbs was not
that of a seed sprouting up, but God created all things in full
maturity. Therefore full grown trees, “whose seed is in itself”,
came forth in the earth.
Then in verse 26, God says “Let Us make man in Our
image, according to Our likeness.” In creating a man and a
woman, God is revealing His eternal purpose, His new creation
purpose. When Paul teaches us on marriage in Ephesians 5, he
says, “I speak of a great mystery” v.32. He was speaking of
Christ and the church. When God created man and woman and
told them to be as one, He was performing a prophetic act. He
revealed to us His eternal purpose, which is for there to be a per-
fect church, perfectly joined to Christ. Even as Eve had to be
restored so, too, does the church!

God is a God of RESTORATION!

As it was in the Beginning

God’s will is for everything to be restored ‘as it was in
the beginning’. In Matthew 19:4, Jesus is speaking on marriage
to the Pharisees who were questioning Him about divorce. He
reminds them of how it was in the beginning. Marriage is one
husband to one wife. This is how it was in the beginning. This is
God’s original plan.
Creation is to be restored by being released from the
curse brought by man’s sin and liberated by the “sons of God”

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 Apostles Today
into “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom.8:19-21).

Jesus is Restoring His Church

Jesus said “I will build My church, and the gates of
Hades shall not prevail against it” Matt.16:18. Jesus Christ laid
the foundations of the church. He laid them by training up and
appointing twelve apostles. God wants to restore His church as
it was in the beginning. The early church in the book of Acts
was not made up of different denominations or institutions. Alt-
hough there were many people meeting in different groups in
houses, they were still part of the church in that city. Paul wrote
to the church at Ephesus, the church at Corinth, etc. Jesus is
coming back for a perfect church, as it was in the beginning!
The church in each city was one people with an eldership sub-
mitted to an apostle. Jesus appointed twelve apostles on whom
to build His church. He gave Peter a particular foundational role
in establishing the church, thereby establishing a pattern for all
other apostles. All apostles receive from Jesus a ministry that is
both foundational in the forming or reforming of the church and
that is vital in bringing the church to maturity.

Principles of Restoration
“So the last will be first, and the first last” Matt.20:16.
This saying can be interpreted prophetically to say the church of
the last days will be as the first church and the first church will
be manifested in the last. There is a saying that seeks to explain
the historical experience of restoration in the history of the
church: ‘the first truth lost is the last truth restored; the last
truth lost is the first truth restored’. The first truth lost was
the teaching and ministry of the apostles. Historically, very soon
after the writing time of the New Testament Canon, individual
bishops rose up claiming authority over the church of a city and
not receiving any longer the apostles whom God “had set first in
the church” (1Cor.12:28). It is only in very recent years that we
are witnessing the restoration of the teaching and ministry of
apostles in the last days church.

Truths and Ministries Restored

The last truth lost publicly in the history of Christendom
was salvation by faith. This was the first truth restored publicly
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 Why We Need Apostles Today
through Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century. From the
time of Luther to our day there have been major restorations of
truths and ministries and gifts in the life of the church. This has
happened through revivals, through the raising up of pioneering
leaders that Christ chose and raised to restore truths. Finally, in
the second half of the twentieth century, the five fold ministries
of Ephesians 4:11 have been restored to the church. The result
of this is that the church today is poised to receive a major por-
tion of its inheritance as the restoration work is largely complete
for those who have ears to hear, eyes to see and hearts to under-
stand the unfolding revelation of the mysteries of God’s word.
These mysteries are being made known again today through the
apostles and prophets that God Himself is calling and raising,
commissioning and sending forth to speak His word.

Restoration of Apostles
The first church was “built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets” (Eph.2:20). To build the last days church
and see it functioning effectively, we need the restoration of
apostles and prophets, and we need the apostles and prophets to
be adequately making known “what is the fellowship of the
mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden
in God who created all things through Jesus Christ” Eph.3:9. We
need the restoration of apostles to bring the solid foundational
teaching of the basic principles of Christ (Heb.6:1-2) and to
make known the wisdom of God concerning the structure of the
church, concerning the placement of ministries and the appoint-
ment of elders in every place.

Apostles bring revelation of the mystery

In Ephesians 3:3, the apostle Paul says “that by revela-
tion He made known to me the mystery.” This mystery has
“now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and proph-
ets” v.5. Therefore we need the restoration of apostles and
prophets who know the revelation of the mystery of the church.
Until we come to this deeper knowledge of the wisdom of God’s
word we cannot perceive or understand what God is doing in the
earth through His church. Nor do we understand how to bring
the church to that place of maturity to walk in the revelation of
the mystery, thus consciously co-operating with the Lord as He

55
 Apostles Today
manifests Himself through His church. This revelation “which
in other ages was not made known to the sons of men” has now
been given to apostles through a dispensation of grace, to
“preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
and to make all to see what is the fellowship of the mystery...to
the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made
known by the church to the principalities and powers in the
heavenly places” Eph.3:8,10.
There is a revelation of the mystery given only to apos-
tles. Thank God, He is restoring apostles today and the under-
standing of the deeper wisdom of God is being taught, enabling
the church to come into maturity. This is the wisdom which is
for the mature; it is “the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden
wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory” 1
Cor.2:7-8.

Apostles represent Christ

Apostles are commissioned by Jesus to represent and
reveal Him in a unique way. Jesus says this of no other minister.
“He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me
receives Him who sent Me” Matt.10:40. Jesus used similar lan-
guage in Mark 9:37 and Luke 9:48, speaking of receiving a child
in His name. In so doing, Jesus is emphasising the importance of
how we receive the one(s) He sends to us, representing Him.
The ministry of the apostle is unique in this regard. The very
word apostle literally means ‘sent one’. This ministry of the
apostle is specific to Jesus, the Apostle of God, and the apostles
He raised, including the ones raised after His ascension, to spe-
cifically represent Him. While the whole church is meant to be
apostolic, that is, representing Jesus to the world, there is a deep
revelation being restored to the church through the restoration of
apostles. Without the apostles’ doctrine and revelation we do not
have the full revelation of Jesus Christ.

We receive the Son and the Father

Jesus said that, if we receive an apostle, we receive
Him. But He then said if we receive Him, we receive the One
who sent Him. This means Jesus is saying we are able to receive
the Son, Jesus, and the Father. There is a revelation of the Son
and a revelation of the Father that comes to us through receiving

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 Why We Need Apostles Today
an apostle. There is revelation of who God is and His very na-
ture: He is the Father and He also is the Son and they are One.
This deep and very amazing and satisfying revelation of God is
being restored by the apostles being sent to represent Him.

Grace and Apostleship

“Through Him we have received grace and apostleship
for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name”
Rom.1:5. This Scripture brings together two very powerful as-
pects of God’s work in the earth by the gospel. The key element
of the New Covenant that is so awesome and wonderful is grace.
The Scripture says twice in Ephesians 2 that we are saved by
grace (v5&8). This grace “was given to us in Christ Jesus before
time began” (2Tim.1:9), but was not released to us until Jesus
Christ appeared in the earth. It can be said that the incarnation of
God in Jesus Christ is essentially the manifestation of the eternal
grace of God into our time-space world. This grace is inextrica-
bly linked to apostleship. “But to each one of us grace was given
according to the measure of Christ’s gift” Eph.4:7. Grace is re-
leased to every member of the body through apostles as well as
through the other fivefold ministers of Ephesians 4.

Grace
It is the manifestation of this grace through the evange-
list that saves us. It is the manifestation of this grace through the
pastor that nurtures and founds us in the faith that saves us. It is
the manifestation of this grace through the teacher that grounds
us in the word that saves us. It is the manifestation of this grace
through the prophet that guides and leads us into a much deeper
revelation of salvation. It is the manifestation of this grace
through the apostle that brings us into the fullness of salvation.
Each fivefold ministry given by Christ is a grace gift
that releases the grace of God to the members of the body. Most
brethren are blessed and excited to participate in evangelism
events when a gifted evangelist is brought into the city and
souls are being born again into the kingdom of God. There is
nothing like the grace that the evangelist operates in and that
grace is contagious. All of us become more evangelistic when
an evangelist is ministering among us.
Many are blessed in being part of a fellowship that is

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 Apostles Today
led by a gifted pastor. The ministry of pastor brings a special
grace to the people of God, whereby they feel secure and loved
in the fellowship.
Many of us hunger for a deeper knowledge of the word
of God and some of us have been blessed to find a gifted teach-
er of the word who brings life and light upon the word as he/she
opens up the word. This gift may be shared through written ma-
terial.
A gifted prophet is often very much sought after as
there is a profound grace released to the brethren when the
prophet is in the midst ministering the word of God and bringing
guidance and insight to the church and to individual believers.
Each ministry gift has been given by Christ to minister
grace to the body. If we lack apostles we lack an essential por-
tion of the grace of God that He has given to His church for the
“perfecting of the saints” (Eph.4:12).

Apostleship
The word apostleship is apostole from the verb apostel-
lo, to set apart, to send out; apostole means commission, i.e.,
specifically apostolate, translated apostleship. This word appears
in Acts 1:25 in the prayer asking for the Lord’s choice between
Joseph and Matthias “to take part in this ministry and
apostleship from which Judas by transgression fell.” The
apostleship here refers to the specific calling and placement as
an apostle of the Lamb of one who had accompanied Jesus and
the other apostles “beginning from the baptism of John to that
day when He was taken up from us” Acts1:22. This was a par-
ticular apostleship with special qualifications.
In 1Corinthians 9:2, Paul says that the believers “are the
seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” The seal of one’s apostolic
ministry is the brethren who are continuing in the faith and in
the ministry as fruit of the particular apostleship. An apostle is
judged by the fruit of the ministry.
Then in Galatians 2:8, Paul says that Christ “who
worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circum-
cised also worked effectively in me toward the Gentiles.” Here
the apostleship refers to the sphere of ministry, to the realm of
endeavour. While there may be no one with such a broad
apostleship today as Peter and Paul, there are clear spheres of

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 Why We Need Apostles Today
ministry for each apostle or company of apostles and this needs
to be mutually recognised and supported.
When grace is combined with apostleship the result is
“obedience to the faith among all nations for His name.” This
apostleship refers to the specific commission given by Christ to
apostles; it refers to the specific task He gave to apostles.
Apostleship is unique and is the primary ministry given by
Christ for the building of the church. It is through apostles pri-
marily that Jesus is building the church He spoke of in Matthew
16:18, and it is through apostles that the church is equipped by
grace and released to fulfil the Great Commission.

Apostles Minister Ascension Life

“Therefore He says: ‘When He ascended on high, He
led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men. Now this, ‘He as-
cended’- what does it mean but that He also first descended into
the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One
who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all
things. And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some proph-
ets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” Eph.4:8-
11. It is clear from these verses that the five-fold gifts are ascen-
sion gifts. They were given to the church after Christ’s ascen-
sion. Even the twelve apostles of the Lamb did not receive the
ministry gift of the apostle until the Holy Spirit came upon them
in the Upper Room. Yes they had been trained and equipped for
ministry by Jesus but the ministry gift of the apostle is an ascen-
sion gift given by Christ after “He ascended far above all the
heavens”. John the Baptist knew that every genuine ministry gift
comes from heaven. He said “a man can receive nothing unless
it has been given to him from heaven” Jn.3:27.

The Ministry Gifts are by God’s Appointment

Some talk about the five-fold gifts emerging out of the
plurality of eldership in a city. There may be five-fold gifts in
the leadership of the city already but we need to be aware that
each ascension gift minister must know the calling and appoint-
ment of God in Christ. “God has appointed these in the church:
first apostles, second prophets, third teachers” 1Cor.12:28.
There is a clear order of appointment set out in this verse. All of
these ministries come together in apostolic council as peers [cf.

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 Apostles Today
Apostolic Council p149]. However, the leadership of the church
was established in each city in Scripture by the apostle(s) ap-
pointing/ordaining elders in each city. What is lacking in most
cities currently is a common city eldership and where there is an
emerging city eldership, the lack of an apostle who is the apos-
tolic father of the elders. It is this relationship of elders with an
apostolic father sent by Christ that brings the elders into an un-
derstanding of sonship and into the place of being under over-
sight and in accountable relationships.
The ministry gifts of Christ come from heaven, not from
the earth. When I was first saved in 1974, I knew I was called to
be a preacher by Christ. As I shared in the preface to this book,
my first years in ministry were challenging and fulfilling as I
served in Christian schooling, church administration, pastoring
churches and evangelistic chaplaincy on a university campus.
But in those ten years I did not really know my ministry calling;
nor did I know Christ’s appointment. It was in 1994 when I was
invited on to the staff of a local denominational church here in
Toowoomba that I knew that Christ had gifted me as a teacher.
It was the manifestation of an ascension gift given by Christ in
His ascension. Likewise it was Christ who called me in late
1997 to begin to be prepared for the ministry of apostle. It is a
profound reality to know one is called and gifted by Christ to
serve in the ministry and to know the specific ministry gift that
one has received.

Apostles are a Necessary Foundation Ministry

“Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and for-
eigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the
household of God, having been built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cor-
nerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together,
grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are be-
ing built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit”
Eph.2:19-22. These Scriptures teach us much about the building
structure of the church. A building must have foundations. The
sure foundation is Christ (1 Cor.3:11), and the whole building
must be securely built upon Him, that is, upon the revelation of
faith “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” Matt.16:16.
Jesus has established the ministry of apostles and prophets as the

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foundation upon which the church is built. It is the ministry of
apostles and prophets, through revelation given to them, that
provides the foundational doctrines of the faith. Remember Je-
sus acknowledged that Peter’s confession of faith in Him as the
Christ was a revelation from heaven, and then Jesus gave Peter a
foundational apostolic placement in the building of His church.
In our day we need apostles and prophets to establish and build
the church upon the foundation of revelational faith in Christ
Jesus.

Christ the Chief Cornerstone

A cornerstone is set in place upon the foundation which
is laid first. That means the church must be established upon the
foundation of apostolic and prophetic ministry before the cor-
nerstone can be properly set in place. The whole building is
joined together in Christ, the chief cornerstone. That building,
which is the church, grows into a holy temple: the worldwide
church, the one body (Eph.4:4). This temple is the whole church
of Jesus Christ but verse 22 is referring to another aspect of the
church, the ‘local’ church, where ‘you’, whether in Ephesus or
Toowoomba or a city in another nation, are being built together
for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. We are members of, or
living stones that make up, the temple of God, but we are also
joined together in the Spirit in the local assembly, as part of the
local city church, where we experience God in the Spirit
(1Pet.2:5).

Jesus chose twelve

In Acts 1 we see only eleven apostles because of the fall
of Judas. Peter is led by the Holy Spirit to appoint the twelfth
into office because there were to be twelve foundation apostles.
“Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them
were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” Rev.21:14.
The twelve were the leaders of the first church (Acts 2:14, 6:2).

The number 12
The number 12 refers to God’s government. It is 3 times
4. The number 3 is the number of the Godhead, referring to the
fullness of God in Christ. It is also the number of perfect witness
and the three persons of the Godhead all witness perfectly to the

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fullness of the Godhead. The number 4 refers to the four direc-
tions or the four winds, thus encompassing the whole earth.
Through 12 [3x4] apostles, the gospel of the kingdom of God
[the revelation of the Godhead in Christ] will spread over all the
earth through the preaching of the gospel and the making of dis-
ciples [the Great Commission given to the apostles] (Mk.16:15,
Matt.28:18-20).

There were 3
Among the 12 Jesus chose 3: Peter, James and John
(Mk.9:2, Lu.8:51). These three had privileged opportunities to
be with Jesus at special times. They were eye witnesses of ex-
traordinary events, including the transfiguration. When James,
the apostle of the Lamb, was killed by Herod he was replaced by
James, the brother of Jesus (Gal.2:9). These three were called
the pillars of the church of Jerusalem by Paul.
Among the original 3 there was 1, Peter, the rock, the
one specifically commissioned by Christ (Matt.16:18-19). The
12 had headship/leadership in Peter and also in the 3. The origi-
nal 3 had headship/leadership in Peter; the latter 3 had headship/
leadership in James (Gal.2:12).

Paul Worked with other Apostles

Later Paul was raised up as a special apostle [one spe-
cifically commissioned by Christ] and he exercised a powerful
headship/leadership apostolic ministry. Again in 1 the Lord in-
vested Himself in a special way to make manifest the revelation
of the mystery to the church. Peter was the apostle to the Jews
and Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:8). While Paul
stands out on his own in many ways as an apostle, he initially
worked in close association with Barnabas who was also an
apostle. Later in Paul’s ministry he had many apostles as co-
workers including Timothy and Silvanus (1Thess.1:1, 2:6),
Adronicus and Junia (Rom.16:7), Titus and other brethren,
“messengers [apostles] of the churches” (2Cor.8:23) and others.

Apostles are to Work Together

Today as apostles are restored, it is not clear if the Lord
is going to manifest Himself through preordained numbers of
apostles working together or working separately in the ministry

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of bringing the church to completion. What is clear is that apos-
tles are meant to work together and that there are many configu-
rations patterned for us by the apostles in the Scriptures, show-
ing us the reality of apostles working together as co-workers or
as ones knowing their own sphere of ministry but submitting
their doctrine to the leaders of other spheres of ministry and
there being mutual submission, acceptance and approval.

The Church is Built on the Apostles’ Doctrine

The apostles’ doctrine is the teachings of Christ. In the
Great Commission Jesus told the apostles to “teach them to ob-
serve all things that I have commanded you” Matt.28:20. The
first church “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine”
Acts 2:42. The first new disciples [3000 of them] devoted them-
selves to the teaching of the apostles. That is how they found out
about Jesus. The apostles’ doctrine is the word of the four gos-
pels of the New Testament. It is the teachings of Paul (Acts
18:11); it is the New Testament.

Apostles are Needed to Build the Church

“According to the grace of God which was given to me,
as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another
builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it”
1Cor.3:10. God reveals to apostles His blueprint, His plans, so
the church can be built. Moses alone received this blueprint
[pattern] in the Old Testament for the building of the Tabernac-
le. Paul says that he was a wise master builder, receiving by
grace a big portion of the revelation of the New Testament
church, but it requires apostles today to take up the mantle of
apostleship and build the church according to revelation.

Apostles and Prophets Will See Babylon Fall

“Rejoice over her [Babylon], O heaven, and you holy
apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!”
Rev.18:20. Finally apostles and prophets will be present in the
earth to see Babylon fall. The church of Jesus Christ will have
been set in order; the saints of the Most High will be equipped
and functioning properly, “every joint supplying, every part con-
tributing to the upbuilding of the whole body” Eph.4:16. Baby-
lon will fall because of the judgement of God pronounced by the
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church. Remember Ephesians 3:10, “to the intent that now the
manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church
to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.”
As the church is restored and established as the body of
Him “who fills the all in all” [the whole universe] (Eph.1:23),
God’s authority will be released through the church. Babylon,
representing all that is ungodly and opposed to God, will fall.
Remember Jesus promised to the church that overcame the pow-
er of Jezebel “to him I will give power over nations - ‘He shall
rule them with a rod of iron; they shall be dashed to pieces like
the potter’s vessels’” Rev.2:26-27.
We have underestimated the authority of Jesus Christ
and, because we have not had apostles, we have not been able to
receive His authority. His authority is complete: “all authority in
heaven and on earth” (Matt.28:18); He is “the ruler over the
kings of the earth” (Rev.1:5), and “the kingdom and dominion
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, shall
be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom
is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and
obey Him” Dan.7:27.

Apostles are vital ministries:

in the founding of the church,
in the life and the development
of the church of Jesus Christ.

Apostles are needed today:

to set the church in order,
to restore proper foundations,
to ordain elders in every place,
to bring the revelation of the mystery,
to release the grace of God,
to work mighty signs and wonders,
to bring the church to maturity.

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Chapter Four
APOSTLES ARE FATHERS

God promises us that in the last days He will

send the prophet Elijah to restore fathers.

These are fathers not by name or by position

but fathers who have a heart for the children
that they will grow up into mature sonship, in
turn becoming fathers.

One of the primary roles of the apostles being

raised by Jesus today is to father the church.
Apostles are fathers! They have the heart of a
father for the church because they have been
appointed by Jesus to bring the revelation of
the Father to the church.

In apostolic relationships, the goal of the father

is to bring up the children to be young men
who grow to the age of maturity; then the
young men enter into sonship by the Spirit of
adoption. This place of sonship is a relation-
ship with the heavenly Father. The apostolic
father has completed his task.

God has Promised Fathers

In the closing verses of the Old Testament, God says
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of
the great and dreadful day of the LORD, and he will turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the chil-
dren to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a
curse” Malachi 4:5-6. This is an amazing Scripture, revealing
God’s heart for His people. God’s clear and deep desire is for all

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of us children to have fathers. Worldwide, there is a dearth of
good fathers even in normal family relationships. This has been
exacerbated in the West by high divorce rates and children born
to single mothers, but it seems in all cultures that children suffer
for the lack of fathers. Even where there have been comparative-
ly good fathers, the children still often grow up lacking security
and without knowing their true identity. God promises us that, in
the last days, He will send the prophet Elijah to restore fathers.
These are fathers not by name or by position but fathers who
have a heart for the children that they will grow up into mature
sonship, in turn, becoming fathers.

God is Sending the Spirit and Power of Elijah

The ‘great and dreadful day’ referred to has not yet
come, and before that day, God is going to send Elijah the
prophet. In Luke 1:16-17 the angel of the Lord is prophesying
the coming of John the Baptist, saying “And he will turn many
of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go
before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Therefore the manifestation of the spirit and power of Elijah in
the ministry of John the Baptist was three fold: ‘to turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children’, ‘the disobedient to the wis-
dom of the just’ and ‘to make ready a people for the Lord’. This
was referring to John the Baptist’s ministry to prepare the way
for the Lord’s first coming. But the spirit and power of Elijah is
coming again before the ‘great and dreadful day of the LORD.’
This will be before His second coming. At the first coming of
the Lord Jesus there was rejoicing, with an angelic choir singing
in the heavens (Lu.2:13-14). In other words, this was not a
‘dreadful’ day. Before that day comes, God is going to restore
fathers to the church. These are apostolic fathers who have a
heart for God’s people.

Who are Fathers?

The apostle John says twice that fathers are those who
“have known Him who is from the beginning” (1Jn.2:12-14). In
this passage the fathers are in the context of “little children” and
“young men”. John’s expectation is for there to be at least three

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generations in every fellowship of God’s people: little children
who are newly saved and receiving the milk and then the bread
of God’s word; the young men who are able to receive strong
meat, who have victory over the devil and are now ready to min-
ister the word to others; and fathers who are the mature ones, by
definition, fathering the children and even the young men until
they have become mature sons.

Apostles are Fathers

In these days of apostolic restoration, God is restoring,
firstly, the apostles who come as fathers to the body. One of the
primary roles of the apostles being raised by Jesus today is to
father the church. Apostles are fathers! They have the heart of a
father for the church because they have been appointed by Jesus
to bring the revelation of the Father to the church. Jesus said to
the first apostles “if they receive you they receive Me, and he
who receives Me receives Him who sent Me” Matt.10:40. This
is a key revelation that has been missed because we have not
had apostles. We have had evangelists who have powerfully
preached a gospel of salvation bringing us to know Jesus. We
have had other ministries teaching us and bringing us into other
aspects of the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and
of the Holy Spirit.

But what we have lacked is an intimate relationship with,

and knowledge of, God the Father.

Jesus is clearly telling us that the revelation of the Fa-

ther comes automatically when we receive true apostles who are
sent by Jesus Christ.

Adam the First Father

In the Old Testament we are presented with many great
father figures. While the ministry of the apostle is peculiarly
New Testament, we have powerful types of apostolic fathers in
the Old Testament. In this sense the first apostle was Adam and
he is the father of mankind. We are all, by nature, children of
Adam. He was meant to be the father of a godly human race but
the covering of God’s glory through the father of the human
race, Adam, was broken when he fell into sin and God could not
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restore that covering in the short term. God intended Adam to be
fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth with godly children
(Gen.1:28), but Adam failed. Before we were saved, we were
children of Adam, who was a sinner, and because we were un-
der that broken covering we all are born sinners.

Noah an Apostolic Father

The godly line through Seth to Noah demonstrates the
biblical father/son relationship. Each of the fathers was able to
pass on to the firstborn son the inheritance. While little is known
of the patriarchs, the pattern is set and the next apostolic leader
of note in the Scripture is Noah. Noah was used by God to build
an ‘ark of salvation’ in his generation and bring deliverance to
his family, having preached God’s salvation to the whole human
race. Noah then became the father of the human race. But de-
spite his election and his standing before God, he was still a sin-
ner and not able to father a godly human race.

Abraham a true Father

Approximately two thousand years after Adam, God
raised up another father, Abraham. He was called by God, who
changed his name from Abram, which means ‘exalted father’, to
Abraham, which means ‘father of a multitude’ (Gen.17:5). God
chose this man on the fore-knowledge that he would rule his
own household well and that he would train up his children to
do righteousness and justice (Gen.18:19). He was a father in his
own household and trained them in the ways of God. Abraham
is known as the father of the faith and we are his children
through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom.4:16). God gave to Abraham
the promise that, through him, every family on the earth would
be blessed (Gen.12:3). God was replacing the fallen apostle,
Adam, with His chosen one, Abraham. As believers, we have a
father in Abraham. The blessing, promised through Abraham to
the whole human race, could not come immediately. Until Jesus
came, it was confined to one small people group, the children of
Israel. Isaac is Abraham’s seed and from him came Jacob. Jacob
is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Moses Father of a Nation

About four hundred years later, God raised up Moses

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who became an apostolic father to the children of Israel.
Through Moses, God allowed one nation of people to come un-
der an apostolic covering that separated them from all the other
nations that were still under the fallen covering of Adam. The
Bible says (1Cor.10:1-2) that the children of Israel were all bap-
tised into Moses. God gave them the law and formed them into a
nation. They had a ‘father’; they were under a leadership cover-
ing of the man of God, and they had identity; they knew who
they were. To this day the Jewish religion is based on the law of
Moses and the Jews still derive their identity from him at least in
part. However this covering was only partial and did not release
the blessing promised through Abraham to all the nations.

The Concept of Covering

Concerning the concept of covering, it is never the cov-
ering of a man as such. When we speak of Moses providing an
apostolic covering to the people of God, it is God working
through Moses, by His glory, to cover His people. This covering
comes through the accurate preaching and teaching of the word
that God gives. In the Old Testament, it was the law given
through Moses; in the New Testament, it is the gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ. This never changes! In the Old Testament,
the prophets were calling the people of God back to the word
spoken by Moses and, as well, prophetically pointing to the New
Covenant yet to come. In the New Testament, the church
“continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine”, and Paul and
the other writers of the epistles, similar to the prophets of the
Old Testament, are calling the people of God to adhere to the
teachings and revelations brought by the Lord Jesus, both which
He taught to the apostles of the Lamb and, then by revelation of
the Holy Spirit, to the apostles raised up later.

Jesus Christ is the Apostle of God

Through Him the Blessing of Abraham comes to all
There are many apostolic figures throughout the Old
Testament, but the next important apostolic figure in our study
is Christ Himself. It is through Christ that the blessing which
was promised to Abraham is released to all. Moses could only
give a covering to the Jews. Through Christ, that which our fa-
ther Adam lost is restored to the whole human race.

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The blessing of Abraham is the promise of the Spirit,
“that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in
Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith” Gal.3:14. The blessing of the Spirit could not
come until Christ came. It is through Christ that we receive our
inheritance. “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ
Jesus,” and “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise” Gal.3:26,29. When we are
born again we become a child of God and the inheritance is
ours; but when we step into ‘sonship’ [into the adoption] that is
when we actually inherit.

Jesus, the Apostle of God, is our Father

Jesus is the apostle sent by God (Jn.20:21). He is our
apostle: “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession,
Christ Jesus” Heb.3:1. Jesus fully represents and manifests the
Father to us. In Him we come to know the Father. Jesus refers to
or directly addresses God as the Father more than 170 times in
the gospels. He became a ‘father’ to ‘children’ through the gos-
pel. He says, “Here am I and the children whom God has given
Me” Heb.2:13. Jesus is our father. He is leading many sons to
glory (Heb.2:10). He does this by bringing us into the full reve-
lation of the apostolic message. If we receive the apostle He
sends, we receive Him and, in receiving Him, we receive the
Father. He was the Son to His Father and He has given us to the
Father. We are the brethren of Jesus in one sense but, in reality,
in the household of God, Jesus is our apostolic Father and
through Him, we come to know God as our Father. He then ap-
pointed apostles to be fathers in the church so that through them
we could come to know Jesus and in Him, come to know the
Father.

Jesus Raised the Twelve to be Fathers of the Church

One of the main aspects of Jesus’ ministry was to raise
up twelve apostles who were to be the foundational and leader-
ship ministries of the church. They were the apostolic fathers
through whom Jesus gave birth to the church (1Cor.4:15,
Gal.4:19). They are forever the foundation ministries of the eter-
nal church. In these last days Jesus is once again giving apostles
to His church and a key aspect of the apostolic ministry is for

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the apostles to bring fatherhood to the church.

We all need a ‘Father’

Every human being needs a father. Without ‘fathers’
there is a lack of peace and grace. Instead there is a striving to
prove oneself. Having a ‘father’ who loves unconditionally
brings peace and security and actually releases us into the call of
God whereby we come to know our identity. The approval and
acceptance that we long for comes to us from God our Father,
but often only flows fully to us through an apostolic father. We
need to know we belong in the family of God and that
‘knowing’ comes through an apostolic father. Receiving an
apostle is receiving Jesus and the Father (Matt.10:40). When we
are given or sent an apostle by the Lord, and we receive that
one, something happens. The grace of God is released to bring
us into a real experience of sonship.
In a period of weeks and months in the latter part of
2002 a number of us at SHILOH came into a remarkable experi-
ence of spiritual fatherhood and sonship. For some it was a par-
ticular life changing experience; for others it was a gradual tran-
sition, realizing that one had come into a wonderful place of
security and of tangible grace. Coming into the reality of son-
ship, by receiving a spiritual father [apostle] through whom
Christ releases the Spirit of adoption, brings us into a wonderful
awareness of and deeper relationship with the heavenly Father.
Ever since then, the message of sonship and the reality of spir-
itual fatherhood has gone forth through us and many have en-
tered into sonship.
Recently, I led a team to visit a number of house
churches but the major ministry was to a very new house church
in a town hundreds of kilometers south of our city. We had only
been to this group of people once before and they began to meet
as a house church as a result of that visit. In planning our return
visit we had suggested that they host a public seminar to pro-
mote the apostolic message. However they contacted us and said
‘we just want our father to come and talk with us’. After being
among this people for two days, we realized the Lord was doing
a wonderful work in their midst, bringing them into relational
security with us and among themselves and giving them vision,
purpose and grace to go on. They said to me ‘we knew that

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when our father came his Father would come also.’ These peo-
ple have a wonderful revelation because they know how to re-
ceive an apostle.

The Revelation of Sonship

This revelation of Jesus and the Father that comes
through the apostles, brings to the believer the reality of sonship.
A true apostle is sent by Christ with the restoration power of
Elijah to restore “the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
hearts of the children to the fathers” Mal.4:6. Sonship refers to a
walk in maturity. It is the same as receiving the Spirit of adop-
tion whereby we come into a real relationship with the Father:
 not as a child who knows the Father as a child,
 not the relationship that a young man has as a
servant to the Father,
 but the relationship that a mature son is able to
have with the Father.

Jesus is the Pattern Son

Jesus related to and spoke of His Father all the time.
Even as a lad of twelve years, He said “Did you not know that I
must be about My Father’s business?” Lu.2:49. At His baptism,
God spoke from heaven, acknowledging Jesus, “This is My be-
loved Son in whom I am well pleased” Lu.3:22. In Hebrews 1:5,
the divine relationship between Jesus and His Father is clearly
proclaimed in quotes from Old Testament prophetic Scriptures.
“You are My Son, today I have begotten You; and again: I will
be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son.” God gave
“His only begotten Son” to us (Jn.3:16). In His life as the Son of
Man, Jesus demonstrates to us how to relate to God as our Fa-
ther.

The Revelation of Father and Son

A true son is equal with his father
In the book of John, Jesus explains His relationship to
the Father. After Jesus had healed the man at the pool of Bethes-
da and that man told the Jews it was Jesus who had made him
well, the Jews wanted to kill Him for healing on the Sabbath
(Jn.5:1-13). Jesus answered them saying “My Father has been

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working until now, and I have been working” Jn.5:17. The Son
does what He sees His Father doing. The Scripture goes on to
say that “the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He
not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Fa-
ther, making Himself equal with God” v.18. A mature son is
equal with his father.

In apostolic relationships the goal of the father

is to bring up the children to be young men who grow
to the age of maturity; then the young men enter
into sonship by the Spirit of adoption. This place
of sonship is a relationship with the heavenly Father.
The apostolic father has completed his task.

A true son does the Father’s works

Jesus then said “The Son can do nothing of Himself, but
what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also
does in like manner” Jn.5:19. In April 2004, sitting on my bed in
a hotel in Rwmagana, a provincial town in Rwanda, in the midst
of flowing in powerful apostolic ministry, I heard the Lord say
to me ‘from now on you only have to do what you see Me do-
ing’. This sounds so simple and it is! It is a profound reality to
enter into His rest and only do the things that He says to do. By
the time Paul sent Timothy to Corinth as a “beloved and faithful
son”, he knew that Timothy would fully represent him, not as a
servant but as a son, a mature son equal to his father in that he
would do the same works that he had seen his father do. In the
same way, I am now able to refer leaders who make inquiry re-
garding our ministry through our website to apostles in Africa
who are sons. In so doing I am able to say, ‘this Kenyan apostle
will adequately and genuinely represent the apostolic ministry of
Christ’, to the leader inquiring.

There are greater works for the son

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things
that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than
these that you may marvel” Jn.5:20. One of the awesome revela-
tions that we are learning to walk in as sons is that ‘the Father
loves me.’

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He loves me as His son, one of His chosen ones,

and He has chosen me for particular “greater works.”

Remember, Jesus told us later on in John’s gospel that

we would do greater works when He went to the Father (14:12).
These greater works are now taking place. In our ministry we
have seen many having transforming experiences when they
hear the apostolic revelation and receive the Spirit of adoption.
To witness a minister of many years experience totally change
in front of one’s eyes is an amazing ‘greater work’. Walking in
apostolic grace and revelation causes us to give thanks to God
continually. Like David in 1Chronicles 17:16, I say to God
“who am I, O LORD God? That you have brought me this far?”
Like David, each one of us is a chosen son of God and God is
calling us to walk in sonship, to do the greater works.

The Father bears witness to the Son - John.5:31-39

I have stated earlier that Jesus is our Father. Even as the
Father bore witness to Jesus as the Son, now it is Jesus who
bears witness to His sons. True sons represent the Father. We
represent Jesus. While this is specific to the ministry of the
apostle, as the spirit and power of Elijah is restored all the saints
will come into sonship and will be manifest as sons in the earth
(Rom.8:19). Sons represent the Father and the Father, by His
Spirit, bears witness of the sons. The Lord will bear witness to
us as we faithfully preach and teach the Scriptures. It is true that
if we remain faithful to the word of God, to speak the word of
God only, then the word will become flesh again and will be
seen by all men. “The words that I speak to you I do not speak
on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the
works” Jn.14:10. Jesus said “He who has seen Me has seen the
Father” Jn.14:9. The Son bears witness to the Father and the
Father bears witness to the son.

The glory of the Father is to be seen in Christ in us!

The Revelation of Father and Son applied

True unity is being one with Jesus and the Father. The
only way for this to happen is to receive the apostles that He
sends. Remember “He who receives you receives Me, and he
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who receives Me receives Him who sent Me” Matt.10:40. God
created us in His own image, according to His likeness
(Gen.1:26), and that image is revealed to be God as Father and
God as Son; God is Father to a Son and Son to a Father. God is
bringing His church into this revelation: He is restoring us to
His own image and likeness. Therefore He is raising up apostol-
ic fathers and releasing His children into an experience of son-
ship, thereby bringing us all into a closer relationship with God.

GOD IS SENDING ELIJAH!

The spirit and power of Elijah has been restored

and is being released.

Apostles are being raised

‘Grace and apostleship’ is being received again

from God the Father through Christ.

This is releasing the children of God

into apostolic relationships.

Apostolic fathers have been restored

Many are coming into this experience

of grace and apostleship,
to be manifest as ‘sons’.

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Chapter Five
WHAT IS AN APOSTLE?
The key to becoming an apostle is to receive a
calling from God. God calls a person to be an
apostle; God raises that person up, generally
after many years of training and preparation,
and sends that person to do the ministry work
of an apostle.

An apostle is one called by Christ and given a

profound measure of grace and anointing by
the Father to bring the revelation and reality of
God’s will and of the Father’s love to the
church.

The apostles, both the twelve, and those who

are given as ascension gift ministries, are
foundational ministries upon which the apos-
tolic church of the Lord Jesus Christ is built.
Therefore the last days church will again be
built on the foundational ministry of apostles.

Even as it was in the beginning of the church,

so shall it be in the end-time church - there will
be many apostles called by the Lord.

An apostle is a “sent one”, a special delegate, one com-

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missioned for a particular task or role, one sent forth with a mes-
sage; officially a commissioner of Christ [Strong’s Concordance
#652]. Literally, an apostle is one sent forth.

An apostle is one sent on behalf of another with the authority

of the sender to successfully fulfill that for which he is sent,
and to fully represent and make known the sender.
The key to becoming an apostle is to receive a calling
from God. God calls a person to be an apostle; God raises that
person up, generally after many years of training and prepara-
tion, and sends that person to do the ministry work of an apostle.
Paul the apostle declared that he was set apart from his mother’s
womb for the purpose of God (Gal.1:15). At the time of his con-
version, God revealed to the disciple Ananias that there was a
powerful apostolic calling upon Paul’s life (Acts 9:15-16). It
was not until many years later, when Paul [Saul] was minister-
ing as part of the leadership team of the church at Antioch, that
the Holy Spirit revealed that it was now time for Paul and Bar-
nabas to be ordained to the ministry of apostle (Acts 13:1-3).

Some have said that there are three delineating fea-

tures of an apostle. Let us look at these three features.
‘One who has had a visible encounter with the resur-
rected Christ.’ What does that mean? Paul the apostle never
saw Jesus in the flesh but he had a visible encounter with the
risen Lord on the road to Damascus which dramatically changed
his life. Stephen, the first martyr, had a visible encounter with
the Lord as he was being stoned. My testimony is that the apos-
tolic calling needs to be based on a very clear encounter with the
Lord so that the person called to be an apostle has no doubts that
their calling is from Christ. There is much contending against
the apostolic ministry, both within the church from other minis-
ters, and in the spirit realm from the powers of darkness. I
shared, in the introduction to this book, that I have seen the Lord
and He commissioned me to the ministry of the apostle. This has
been a powerful foundational testimony that has enabled me to
stand in many nations, before principalities and powers, and be-
fore large and small congregations of leaders and declare that I
am an apostle of Jesus Christ.
‘One who plants churches.’ In the Scripture it is not

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only apostles who plant churches. In Acts 8, Philip planted the
church in Samaria but the apostles soon became involved to
properly found and set the church in order. In Acts 11, some
disciples planted the church in Antioch but, when the apostles in
Jerusalem heard of it, they sent Barnabas to help as an apostolic
delegate in the leadership of the church. Perhaps it is more en-
lightening to say that the apostle is the master builder of the
church, laying the foundations and setting the church in order so
that every local church can function fruitfully. For a church to
be properly planted there needs to be involvement by both apos-
tles and prophets as both these ministries provide necessary
foundational teaching and instruction for the church to be built
properly (Eph.2:19-22).
‘One who functions in the ministry with signs, won-
ders and miracles.’ Every ascension gift ministry can expect to
function with signs and wonders. In fact, every true believer,
which scripturally means an apostolic believer, can expect to see
signs and wonders (Mk.16:17-18). The calling of the apostle
should be confirmed by the Lord in this way, specifically:
“many wonders and signs were done through the apostles” Acts
2:43. “Truly the signs of an apostle were accomplished among
you with all perseverance, in signs and wonders and mighty
deeds” 2Cor.12:12. Notice that perseverance is a key character-
istic of the apostle. I bear witness that God grants remarkable
signs through the ministry of apostles, and I bear witness that
perseverance is a key quality to learn and grow in.
[The three quotations in bold are quoted from Marvin Vincent
in the word wealth in the Spirit Filled Life Bible p.1738; the extra
comments are mine.]

The Lord Calls People By Name To Be Apostles

In Matthew 10, we read of the calling of the first apos-
tles by the Lord Jesus Christ. The first calling we all receive is
the call to follow Jesus; then comes the appointment to a specif-
ic ministry. Out of many who were following Jesus, God called
the twelve to be His apostles. In verses 2-4, Jesus names the
ones who are to be His apostles. He called them by name. They
were chosen by Jesus after a night spent in prayer, talking to His
Father (Lu. 6:12–13). Both Luke and Mark also record the
names of the twelve. There are at least twenty-two apostles
named in the New Testament and other apostles are referred to.
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It is interesting to note that there are no pastors named in the
New Testament; there were very few prophets or teachers
named and only one evangelist. Even as it was in the beginning
of the church, so shall it be in the end-time church - there will be
many apostles called by the Lord.
In these days God has equipped me, and this ministry,
with the ability to recognize and commission apostles. We oper-
ate in this area very carefully.

The apostolic ministry is not something that we

aspire to of our own volition or ambition,
but rather it is a response to the clear calling
and appointment of the Lord.

Apostles are empowered by the Lord

“When He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He
gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to
heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease” Mt.10:1. The
signs of the apostle, given by Jesus, are power over unclean
spirits and the ability to cast them out, and the ability to heal the
sick. Notice that Jesus has given authority to heal “all kinds of
sickness and disease.” We should boldly pray for every sick per-
son confidently in the authority of the word.

Testimony of signs and wonders

The testimony of our own ministry is as follows: from
1995 to 1998, we as a ministry team saw many signs and won-
ders everywhere we went both within Australia and overseas.
We were primarily an itinerant teaching ministry in those
days. From 1999, the season changed and the Lord put us
‘underground’ to learn the apostolic ministry, beginning with
foundations. However from late 2002, the Lord has raised this
ministry in apostolic authority. As a result, our focus and em-
phasis is not on signs and wonders and yet regularly the Lord
grants mighty signs and wonders, confirming the word that we
are speaking.
For example in February 2003, I was taken to a village
church outside of Yangon, Myanmar. In the course of the even-
ing meeting I was asked to pray for three boys who were broth-

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ers, all suffering from ‘blood cancer’. The oldest boy was visi-
bly sick. I was without a team on that occasion and simply
prayed in faith according to Mark 16:18 “they will lay hands on
the sick and they will recover.” I returned to Yangon in Septem-
ber that year and two Christian workers from that village church
came to meet me in the capital to tell me that the three boys had
been totally healed.
In September 2005 I was with a team in Pakistan and,
on one evening, I was the speaker in an open gospel crusade in a
large tent that had been erected for some meetings. Hundreds of
people attended the night meeting and, as soon as we came on to
the platform, we observed a demonized woman attracting a lot
of attention in the midst of the congregation. My team saw this
and began to pray and intercede and the demonic behavior
ceased so I could minister. At the end of the meeting there was
an altar call for the healing of the sick and the ushers began to
carry the demonized woman forward. During the meeting, God
had put a conviction in my heart that this woman would be set
free. However, I instructed the ushers to take the woman to the
back of the meeting as the demonic behavior had flared again as
the demon wanted to attract attention and interrupt the healing
of others.
As we left the meeting, I went straight to the demonized
woman and she was set free very quickly simply by binding the
devil in her, in the name of Jesus, and then getting the woman to
agree with me, speaking out the name of Jesus and commanding
it to leave. The demon left; we stood the woman on her feet and
prayed for her to be filled with the Holy Spirit and she spoke in
a heavenly language. This woman had been demonized from
childhood. The people, and especially the local pastors with us,
were amazed. The pastors said ‘we have never seen anything
like this! This is the greatest miracle we have ever seen!’

Apostles are Sent to Specific People Groups

The apostles are sent out by the Lord. Jesus gave the
apostles specific instructions: to which people group they were
to go, and where they were not to go. “Do not go into the way of
the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go
rather to the lost sheep of Israel” Matt.10:5-6. Paul also was
clearly sent to specific cities or regions. In Acts 16:6 Paul said

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“they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in
Asia [a Roman province].” Then Paul was directed by the Lord
to proceed to Macedonia to preach the gospel there (v.10).

Myanmar
In early 1997 I went with another pastor to Myanmar
and, while there, the Lord made it clear to me that I would be
returning to that nation bringing ministry teams. I was back in
Myanmar for the fourth time in early 1999 and significant work
was opening up for us. Other teams from our ministry had al-
ready gone into Myanmar as well. I had known from the early
years of my Christian experience that I would be ministering in
Asia and this was now being fulfilled. I had never thought of
going to Africa, thinking that the European nations should be
responsible to help the African churches. However, while in
Myanmar in 1999, an invitation to Kenya came to me via a fax
message and the Lord spoke to me telling me clearly I would be
going to Africa.

Africa
The Lord’s sending of our ministry to Africa has been
very specific, being confirmed in many ways, and now the work
in Kenya has become a primary focus of our apostolic ministry
and we are seeing lasting fruit. Many apostles have been raised
in Kenya and, even in this year of 2006, apostolic ministries are
going out from Kenya. Apostolic ministers have been to a Con-
golese Refugee Camp in Western Tanzania and to Dar Es Sa-
laam, the capital of Tanzania. Teams have been to towns and
villages in Southern Sudan. A Kenyan apostle, George Muteti,
regularly visits four Central African nations, ministering in the
capital cities of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda and in other
towns and cities as well as in Goma, Democratic Republic of
Congo. There are other apostolic sons ministering powerfully
within Kenya and in other African nations.

The Conduct of Apostolic Ministry

What were the apostles to do
They were to “preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven
is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast
out demons” Matt.10:7-8. One of the key areas of restoration
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that the Lord is emphasizing in his church in these days is ‘the
rediscovery of the kingdom of God’ and that the gospel is ‘the
gospel of the kingdom of God [or the kingdom of heaven]’. The
twentieth century was the century of modern evangelism, begin-
ning at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of Charles
Spurgeon in England, and then in America, D.L. Moody.
It was Moody who was the father of twentieth century
evangelism. It was Moody who introduced altar calls where the
lost could come to salvation through saying the ‘sinner’s prayer’
and being counseled. This became the way of evangelism for all
soul winning ministries. The emphasis in this evangelism was
the salvation of souls and, in many ways, an unscriptural focus
was put on ‘going to heaven’ rather than the preaching of the
biblical injunctions such as Jesus’ own words when He began
preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, “The time is ful-
filled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in
the gospel” Mark 1:14-15.
Then in John 3, Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus how
to enter the kingdom, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless one is
born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of
God” v.3,5

People are ‘saved’ to enter the kingdom of God now,

not just to have an assurance of going to heaven when they die.

How were they to conduct the ministry?

They were sent out by the Lord and were obedient to
His instructions (Mt.10:9-15). On this occasion, the Lord sent
them out with “neither gold, nor silver, nor copper in your mon-
ey belts,” nor even a change of clothes, assuring them that they
would be fed and looked after. At the Last Supper, Jesus re-
minded the disciples of the time He sent them out with nothing
but then told them that, in the light of His impending suffering
and death, they would now need a moneybag, a knapsack and
even a sword (Lu.22:35-36). From these two passages of Scrip-
ture we learn that the Lord has ways of providing specifically
for each mission for which He sends His servants.
From the beginning of our ministry in 1998, we have
known from a ‘rhema’ [quickened] word from the Lord that our

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ministry would be ‘sent, safe and supplied’.

Over the years the Lord has taught us :

every mission of God has His permission
and His provision. God has resources that
we do not know of, and He is able to supply.

Testimony of the Lord’s provision

Sometimes we have set out in Australia with a team
traveling by car and we have only had a small amount of money
for fuel etc. And yet we have always been supplied with every
need, often bringing home offerings to fund the ministry. When
we are convicted that the Lord is sending us on an international
trip, often the team members including myself, have no funds
available for the trip. We have to trust the Lord completely for
His provision. It is our practice, until now, to always pay our
own way when we go overseas as our destination has been to
developing nations. This has meant that, on occasions, we have
needed to provide extra money to facilitate conferences and
seminars in the host nation, as well as meeting our own accom-
modation and travel expenses. However, this situation is chang-
ing as the brethren in the host nations become more apostolic in
doctrine and practice. Soon, it will be possible to visit these
brethren and God will enable them to provide the needs of the
visiting ministers. The point is that we need to consult the Lord
and go out in His will and in the confidence of His provision,
whether it be with a money belt or without.
In our ministry, we have many testimonies of God’s
provision both for our upkeep here in Australia and for many
international trips. Some years ago, I was booked to go to Africa
with a team. I was confident that our planning was in the will of
God but, two days before our tickets were to be paid for, I had
no money at all. I sought the Lord and He answered me and
said, ‘borrow the money for the tickets because the money for
the African trip is coming.’ I approached someone whom I be-
lieved would lend me the money and amazingly God had al-
ready spoken to them about this. I paid for my ticket and still
needed over one thousand dollars for the actual trip costs. The
very next day a person came to the office and shared with one of
my co-workers that an inheritance had come to them in the form

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of a house which was to be sold. The person said ‘I will be tith-
ing on that sale and tell Paul he can use some of that money for
the African trip’. Some weeks went by and it was not until the
last working day before we left for Africa that the person
brought the tithe to us. You can imagine that it was a challeng-
ing time having to wait until the eleventh hour to repay my debt
and to have money to travel with but the Lord provided!

Apostles will be persecuted

Persecution will come when people step out into a full-
on ministry for the Lord, even from family. The apostles were to
expect persecution but not to fear it because the Holy Spirit
would tell them what they were to say (Matt.10:16-20). As an
apostolic ministry, we have experienced some real opposition,
both within Australia and in some overseas nations, from other
church leaders because we have gone forth doing the ministry
work of the apostle. I have been called before ‘the council’ more
than once and been accused of all sorts of fallacies in my teach-
ing and practice. I have been threatened and other ministers
have been warned against our ministry, not because of scriptural
errors in doctrine or practice in our ministry, but because the
apostolic ministry challenges the doctrine and practice of others.

Apostles are to lay down their lives Matt.10:27-31

Apostles are expected to preach openly the things that
Jesus reveals to them. This can even imperil the life of the apos-
tle. The apostle is to be full of courage, boldly declaring the
whole counsel of God. In the current church, this includes ex-
posing the errors of the ‘prosperity doctrine’ which has corrupt-
ed many ministers and impoverished many believers; it includes
declaring the biblical truth concerning the sin of homosexuality
which some denominations have declared to no longer be a sin;
it includes clear teaching from the Scripture concerning the se-
cond coming of Christ and the need for the church to be pre-
pared to “endure to the end” (Matt.24:13).

Apostles are to confess Christ Matt.10:32-33

Notice that this Scripture has been misused by evange-
lists asking a brand new Christian to come forward in a meeting
to confess Christ publicly. It is the apostles who are to confess

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Christ publicly. If one does this, Jesus has promised to confess
their name before the Father. The public confession of Christ
will bring division. Households will be divided, but this is part
of the cost of fulfilling the call (v.34-39). Jesus said ‘He who
does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me’
v.38.

He who receives an apostle receives the Lord

There are rewards for those who receive an apostle. Je-
sus said, speaking to the apostles, “He who receives you re-
ceives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent
Me” (Matt.10:40). If you receive an apostle you receive the
Lord.
Herein is a mystery: when we receive a true apostle
of Jesus Christ, we receive a much deeper revelation
of Jesus and the Father; the Son and the Father!
The revelation of God is made known to the church
at a much deeper level through apostles.

A true apostle is empowered by Christ to minister

“apostleship” through grace. Paul says “Through Him we have
received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among
all nations for His name” Rom.1:5. An apostle is not just anoth-
er five-fold minister. An apostle is one called by Christ and giv-
en a profound measure of grace and anointing by the Father to
bring the revelation and reality of God’s will and of the Father’s
love to the church. It is our experience that, when we receive an
apostle of Jesus Christ in reality, we receive an enormous en-
dowment of God’s grace that is not able to be compared to any-
thing previously received. As one becomes obedient to the
apostles’ doctrine, there comes a deeper revelation of Jesus
Christ and the Father. The apostles’ doctrine initially can only
be taught by the apostles whom Jesus is restoring to the church
today. Through the apostles, Jesus is restoring apostolic doctrine
and the revelation of the mystery. However, when the apostles’
doctrine is taught, all ministers begin to function with an apos-
tolic anointing and revelation and begin to teach the apostles’
doctrine themselves. The apostles’ doctrine, in simple terms, is
teaching the Scriptures accurately.

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The Apostles of the Lamb are the Foundations
The apostles had been with Jesus for some time before
He named them. They had already had some training with Jesus.
He knew them. In the New Jerusalem the walls of the city are
built on the foundations of the twelve apostles of the Lamb
(Rev. 21:14). There are only 12 apostles of the Lamb. In Acts
1:15-26, we read of a replacement being chosen for Judas; the
qualifications for that replacement: one who had been with Jesus
from the day of His baptism with John to the day of His ascen-
sion (v.21-22).

The Church: Built on the Foundation of Apostles

The church is built on the foundations of the apostles
and prophets (Eph.2:20). The apostles, both the twelve and those
who are given as ascension gift ministries, are foundational min-
istries upon which the apostolic church of the Lord Jesus Christ
is built. Therefore, the last days church will again be built on the
foundational ministry of apostles. The last days apostles are also
required to do the work of the ministry to bring the church to
maturity. While the church remains under the leadership of bish-
ops and pastors it cannot, by definition, come to full maturity.
This is because the church needs the full five-fold ministry func-
tioning to release the grace that is required for the church to
grow to maturity.
This has not concerned many leaders as they do not be-
lieve that the church is pre-destined to come into glorious ma-
turity in preparation for the Lord’s return. Rather they believe
and teach that the church is to be ‘raptured’ out of this world in
its present state of immaturity. Therefore, the attitude is: get
people saved and look after them as best as possible in the pre-
sent church structure until Jesus comes to rapture the church.

The keys of the kingdom of heaven

In Matthew16:18-19, Jesus declares that He will build
the church on the confession of faith in Him. Because Peter had
this revelation, he is singled out as a model to be a foundational
apostle of the church. Jesus gave to the apostle Peter the keys of
the kingdom. The only other clear reference to keys in the Scrip-
ture is to the ‘key of David’, first mentioned in Isaiah 22:22 and
then in Revelation 3:7. Jesus is identified as the one who holds
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the key of David. It is reasonable to believe that Jesus was giv-
ing to the apostle something of the nature of the key of David.

Peter uses the keys

In Jerusalem - Acts 2:17-41
Peter was the one chosen by God to stand up with the
eleven and preach on the Day of Pentecost with the result that
3000 Jewish men were released into the kingdom. On that day
Peter used the keys to open the door to the kingdom of heaven
to those 3000 Jewish men.
In Samaria - Acts 8:14-17
After Phillip had preached in Samaria as a successful
evangelist with signs and wonders, men and women alike had
believed and been baptised but had not received the Holy Spirit.
The church in Jerusalem sent Peter and John, the two leading
apostles, who laid hands on them that they might receive the
Holy Spirit. Peter fulfilled his commission by using the keys to
release the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Samaria.
In Caesarea - Acts 10:30-46
Peter went to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, to share
the gospel and, using the keys, he preached Jesus to them and
God released the Holy Spirit to them. Then he baptised them in
water. Peter opened the kingdom of God to the Gentiles.
Peter is used as a foundational apostle in three specific
ways in the book of Acts to fulfill the Great Commission. In
Acts 1:8, Jesus commanded the apostles that, once they had re-
ceived the power of the Holy Spirit, they were to preach in three
major areas: the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea, the Samarians,
and the Gentiles.

Paul the apostle had the same keys

Paul was first called to apostolic ministry when Ananias
was sent to heal him, see him filled with the Holy Spirit and
baptised in water. In Acts 9:15-16, we read the commission giv-
en to Paul by Jesus through Ananias, “he is a chosen vessel of
Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings and the children
of Israel.” Paul received the keys when he was ordained to be an
apostle. In Acts 13:1-4, Paul is sent out as an apostle by the Ho-
ly Spirit to do the ministry work of the apostle. Before that he is
called a teacher. He is already recognised as having the ascen-

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sion gift ministry of teacher. The church met together
‘ministered to the Lord and fasted’; then the Holy Spirit spoke
to them, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work
to which I have called them.” The other prophets and teachers
then laid hands on them and sent them out.
In Acts 14:1-4, Paul and Barnabas begin to minister as
apostles, preaching to and teaching Jews and Gentiles alike,
winning new converts and experiencing strong opposition. In
verse 3 we read that the Lord was “bearing witness to the word
of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their
hands.”
In Acts 19:1-7, we see Paul using the keys of the king-
dom of heaven to plant the church in Ephesus. How did Paul use
the keys in Ephesus? He preached Jesus to them. They were
baptised in the name of Jesus and received the Holy Spirit; they
spoke in tongues and prophesied. These twelve men became the
foundation stones of the church in Ephesus.

Apostles in the book of Acts

Peter doing the work of the Evangelist.
In Acts 2:38, ‘Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let
every one of you be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spir-
it.”’ Peter is using the keys: calling people to repent, be baptised
in the name of Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit. For some years
the Lord has directed me to concentrate on leadership confer-
ences and seminars to bring the leaders of the church into the
apostolic revelation. However, during my trip into Pakistan in
September 2005, I was asked to speak in a number of open-air
crusades. I had not done the work of the evangelist like this for
some years. Now, as an apostle with some experience in the ap-
ostolic ministry, I found that I had much grace and wisdom and
understanding to present the gospel in such a way that the lost
were saved, that the need for water baptism was presented, that
believers were able to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and
that there was food for everyone in the preaching of the word. I
experienced a much greater authority as I am aware that the
Lord has given me “the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

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Apostles releasing the Holy Spirit
“Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard
that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and
John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them
that they might receive the Holy Spirit” Acts 8:14-15. The apos-
tle is used to release the Holy Spirit.
Some years ago I and a team were asked to minister for
a few days at the end of a short-term training school [six-weeks]
in central Myanmar. The students had been thoroughly taught
but God used us to release the power of the Holy Spirit “as He
had not yet fallen on any of them” (Acts 8:16). Some of those
students went forth in powerful ministry from that school and
we are still in contact with them today.

The Calling of Paul

The Lord said to Ananias, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel
of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the chil-
dren of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must
suffer for My name’s sake” Acts 9:15-16. Paul, the apostle, was
called and commissioned by Jesus, and this was confirmed by
the Holy Spirit in Acts 13:2. While the calling of Paul was
unique, it is also true that Paul is a ‘model’ apostle for all of us
who are called into the apostolic ministry. Because Paul was not
one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, he demonstrates for us
how apostles are called today.

The first church established among the Gentiles

In Acts 10:1-44, Peter was sent by the Lord to the house
of Cornelius, to Gentiles. He preached Jesus, the Holy Spirit fell
and he baptised the new believers. Peter the apostle is founding
the church. Notice that the church is being founded in the
‘house’. We have found for the last eight years that the Lord has
directed us into establishing the church in the house. Often in
our own ministry in Australia, where we have concentrated on
planting the church in the house, we have been able to minister
salvation, including water baptism and baptism of the Holy Spir-
it. We have done baptisms in bath tubs, in the ocean when it is
nearby, in rivers, lakes and ponds and in both public and private
swimming pools.
We have written of church in the house elsewhere and

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need to write more because the biblical church is the church that
meets “from house to house”. It is our experience that the small-
er meeting in the house is the perfect training ground for bring-
ing the saints up to be ministers as each member is able to func-
tion in the house fellowship, no longer a ‘pew-sitter’.
The benefits of church in the house will become more
and more evident as the times that we live in usher in the inevi-
table persecutions and tribulation of the last days. Even at this
time, the voice of the prophets is starting to be heard, instructing
the church that a time of suffering will come upon the church
world-wide and that the Western church is ill-prepared for such
a future.

It is the Holy Spirit who Anoints and Sends

“So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit” Acts 13:4. Paul
and Barnabas were sent out to do the ministry work of the apos-
tle by the Holy Spirit. The whole church is meant to be apostol-
ic. Many have thought in recent decades that missionaries are
the modern apostles. There is no doubt that many who have
gone out to the mission field have been called and sent by the
Lord. However, the fruit of much missionary work has been the
establishment of denominational churches in every nation on
earth. Therefore, the missionary work has not been truly apos-
tolic, but denominational, in character.

Again today, we are seeing the Holy Spirit

anoint and send apostles.

One of the marks of my own ministry as an apostle has

been the ability by the Holy Spirit to recognize and anoint apos-
tles. This began in our March/April 2003 trip to Kenya. On this
trip, as we taught in meetings and seminars, a few individuals
responded specifically to the word which was explaining the
restoration of apostles and, through apostles, the restoration of
fathers. At the time the Lord showed us to place a ‘Samuel
anointing’ upon those who were being called to be apostles. We
understood that even as Samuel anointed David to be king many
years before he was actually king, we were anointing individuals
who were called to be apostles, knowing that the ministry would
emerge in time. Since that time God has continued to raise apos-

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tles through us, both in Africa and Asia, and it is clearly a work
of the Holy Spirit.

Apostles plant and strengthen, and appoint elders

“And when they had preached the gospel to that city and
made many disciples they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Anti-
och, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to
continue in the faith, and saying, ‘We must through many tribu-
lations enter the kingdom of God.’ So when they had appointed
elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commend-
ed them to the Lord in whom they had believed” Acts 14:21-23.
The apostles are able to discern those who are to be raised up
into leadership.

The Apostles’ Doctrine establishes the church

In Acts 18:1-8, Paul visited Corinth and we see apostol-
ic work happening: the church is being raised up, the work of
evangelism is being done and the word of God is being taught.
This was the foundation of a strong church being raised up in
Corinth, which moved in signs and wonders. The work of the
apostle today is generally not in evangelism, as the work of
evangelism has already been done in most places, and the
church has been established in some form. However, the work
of the apostle today is very much to teach the word, the apostles
doctrine, setting the church in order.

Appointing leaders
On a trip to Kenya in early 2006, I was invited to speak
in a one day seminar, on a Saturday with an apostolic company
led by apostle George Muteti. Then, on the Sunday morning, I
had the privilege of ministering in the meeting where a number
of house churches had gathered. George has been functioning as
an apostle for a few years and he had trained a number of disci-
ples who were now ready for ministry. It was an amazing time: I
ordained George as an apostle, having commissioned him two
years earlier; I ordained two pastors, who had been functioning
in the local churches in this apostolic company; I commissioned
approximately eighteen men and women to various ministries,
including pastoral, teaching, deacon, eldership, prophetic wor-
ship and intercession.
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Setting the Church in order

In the Sunday meeting, I had the opportunity to set a
number of things in order including the Lord’s Supper, tithes
and offerings; also helping the church to be led by the Holy
Spirit in worship and in the ministry of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. I taught the word concerning the full restoration of wom-
en in ministry. Both George and I were aware at the time that
God was authorizing and enabling a wonderful work of estab-
lishing and strengthening this apostolic company in biblical or-
der. Setting the church in order included ordaining and commis-
sioning leaders. Since then, I have received testimonies from
George concerning the change in his own ministry function - an
increase of authority and clarity in the ministry gift of the apos-
tle - and the release of ministry in the lives of the ones I com-
missioned.

The Church in a Refugee Camp

A couple of years ago, two pastors from a Congolese
Refugee camp in West Tanzania contacted us through our web-
site. They were urging me to come to visit but that did not seem
possible. However, in September 2005, apostle Peter Akeck
from Kakamega in West Kenya, accompanied by a pastor, trav-
eled to this camp on my behalf and the brethren there were very
appreciative. As a result of this visit, Peter returned in Novem-
ber ‘05 and conducted a four day seminar in the camp for Chris-
tian leaders. Pastors and ministers, including Bible College prin-
cipals, attended the seminar and when, at the end of the fourth
day, Peter asked if there were any questions, the only question
was ‘when can we have this again?’ There are 56,000 people in
the camp and they have been there for nine years.
After the seminar, the pastors who were in contact with
me wrote a report and I quote from it: “The camp got revival
about the word of the ministry and the restoration of the church.
We would formally let you know that we are still children and
do not know anything about the word of God although we are
pastors and church leaders, since our knowledge is still low.
We believe that God has accepted us to be refugees on
purpose. This is enabling us to become disciples, from disciple-
ship to servants and then sons. Let us confess that the church in
DRC has lost the plan we are now looking for. Missionaries

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who colonized us did not preach the Gospel announcing the
kingdom of God in its clearness. However, the only thing that
can restore all things is the church using the apostolic teachings
which are spiritually powerful and greatly inspired by the Holy
Ghost.”
At the request of the leaders in the camp, Peter returned
to do a further seminar in March 2006 and, also at the request of
the leaders, a specific course of study has been set in place. This
course includes the study of nine manuals [these are teaching
manuals produced by Revival Ministries Australia. An outline
of the course can be found in the Appendix of this book]. The
course will be completed by the end of November and Peter will
return in July and then in November for further seminars and to
graduate the successful students at the end of November.

The Ephesian Model

In Acts 19:1-7, the foundations of the faith were being
laid in the lives of twelve individual men and through them the
church was planted in Ephesus. Within months of Paul begin-
ning his ministry in Ephesus, he established an apostolic training
centre in the school of Tyrannus, teaching there daily. “This
continued for two years so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the
word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” v.10. This is the
first clear example of an apostolic training school, where the
apostle taught the word continually, training many ministers and
sending them out during the course of the school to evangelise
the whole province of Asia. Paul’s ministry in Ephesus was
characterised by mighty signs and wonders but, even more so,
“the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” v.20.
The church in Ephesus grew into a strong apostolic and
evangelistic church with all the gift ministries operating. In
Ephesians 4:11, the five-fold ministry is clearly presented and
the purpose of the five-fold ministry is detailed in verses 12-16.
The Ephesian church is the model church in the Scripture. We
have more information about this church than any other and it is
in the letter to the Ephesians that Paul makes known so much of
his knowledge of the mystery of the church, that is, coming to
know its true nature. In these last days, the Lord is once again
raising His church in the earth and it is according to the pattern
of the Scripture.

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An integral part of the apostolic ministry

is to make known again the pattern

that is revealed in Scripture

according to which the church

must be established and built.

Chapter Six
CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
APOSTOLIC MINISTRY
We notice that Jesus did not choose twelve
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prophets, twelve evangelists, twelve pastors or
twelve teachers; He purposefully raised a new
ministry and invested into that ministry the
uniqueness of His own apostleship.

Jesus’ primary task as the apostle of God was

to raise apostles and it is only through the min-
istry of apostles that finally the church will be
built according to the Scriptural pattern.

Before Jesus ascended, He imparted His au-

thority to the apostles and, through them, to
the whole church. The Scripture does not
know of churches that are not flowing in apos-
tolic authority. Therefore it is reasonable to say
that the church of the New Testament is apos-
tolic.

The apostle is to live a life that is an example

to others. He/she must be able to say ‘Follow
me as I follow Christ.’

Jesus chose twelve apostles

In this chapter, we are doing a brief study of the New
Testament to find characteristics of the ministry of an apostle.
The ministry of the apostles is unique to the New Testament.
While we can now look back at the Old Testament and see types
of the apostolic leader and learn more about apostles by doing
this, Jesus specifically was sent to the earth as the Apostle of
God and, as the Apostle, His main ministry was to raise the
twelve chosen ones into apostleship. We notice that Jesus did
not choose twelve prophets, twelve evangelists, twelve pastors
or twelve teachers; He purposefully raised a new ministry and
invested into that ministry the uniqueness of His own
apostleship.

Cessationist teaching is false

The whole of the New Testament is a revelation of Jesus
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Christ and His church. The whole of the Bible is God’s word
and the New Testament brings forth the fulfillment of all that is
spoken of in the Old Testament. The New Testament is an apos-
tolic document and is the ‘primary’ source for Biblical doctrine
and practice in the church today. Unfortunately, we have come
through centuries of ‘cessationist’ teaching which insists that
there are no apostles today. Such teachers have traditionally
claimed that there is no baptism of the Holy Spirit today, no
healing, no miracles, no casting out of devils etc. However, even
among those who have accepted the restoration of Holy Spirit
baptism, there are many who do not accept the full restoration of
the five-fold ministry gifts of Ephesians 4:11. Further, even
among those who accept in some way the restoration of the five-
fold ministry gifts, there is a lack of understanding and ac-
ceptance of apostles as clearly taught in the New Testament.
And yet, Jesus’ primary task, as the apostle of God, was to raise
apostles and it is only through the ministry of apostles that final-
ly the church will be built according to the Scriptural pattern.
In John 17:4-19, Jesus is relating to His Father concern-
ing the apostolic work the Father had given Him. Remember in
Hebrews 3:1 we are to consider “the Apostle and High Priest of
our confession, Jesus Christ.” Jesus’ apostolic work was com-
pleted (Jn.17:4) and that work was to raise twelve apostles,
bringing those trainees to the place where they were ready to be
sent out as apostles (Jn.17:18).

The following are characteristics of the ministry of the

apostles drawn from the Scriptures:
Apostles are called by name and are sent by the Lord
In Mark 3:13, Jesus went up on the mountain and
‘called to Him those He wanted’. In v14-15 “He appointed
twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send
them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to
cast out demons”. Then He named the twelve (17-19).
The initial twelve [Judas replaced by Matthias] are the
twelve apostles of the lamb (Rev.21:14). However, in the New
Testament, at least eleven other apostles are named and many
more are referred to. Today, the Lord is calling and appointing
apostles. It is by the Holy Spirit that the Lord does this. In Acts
13:1-4 the Holy Spirit identified Saul and Barnabas to be set

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apart and sent out as apostles. These are the first two of many
ascension gift apostles called by name to be apostles.

[Apostles named in the New Testament: 12 in Matt.10:2-4; Mat-

thias in Acts 1:26; Paul & Barnabas in Acts 13:2/14:14; Androni-
cus & Junia in Rom.16:7 & other apostles referred to; Apollos in
1Cor.1:12, 4:5-6; Titus in 2Cor.8:23; James in Gal.1:19; Epaph-
roditus in Phil.2:25; Silvanus & Timothy in 1Thess.1:1 & 2:6;
four other brothers of the Lord 1Cor.9:5; Mk.6:3]

Apostles are used to plant churches and lay foundations

Jerusalem - in Acts 2, Peter the apostle is laying the
foundations of the church on the day of Pentecost. He told the
people to “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Notice that Peter refers to
three of the first four foundations listed in Hebrews 6:1-2. These
are the elementary or foundational doctrines of Christ that the
church must be founded in before we can go on to perfection.
Number two in the list is missing, ‘faith toward God’; this foun-
dation is already in place because the hearers on the day of Pen-
tecost were acting in faith on the word they had heard.
Samaria - In Acts 8, the apostles Peter and John are
sent to Samaria where Phillip had been preaching. They prayed
for the new believers that they might receive the Holy Spirit
(v.15) through the laying on of hands (v.17). Philip had already
laid the first three foundations of repentance, faith and water
baptism.
Ceasarea - the foundations were being laid in Acts 10
when Peter ministered the word in the house of Cornelius. He
preached Jesus to the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit came and Peter
commanded them to be baptized. The church was planted.
Ephesus - in Acts 19:1-7, the apostle Paul was used to
establish the church in Ephesus. The disciples were baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus because they believed the preaching
of Paul concerning Christ. These disciples were already follow-
ers of John but they repented [changed their mind] and believed
in Jesus. Then Paul ‘laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came
upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied’ v.6.

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Checking foundations
Much of the work of the apostle today is to check foun-
dations because, in most places, the church has already been
planted, but without due regard to the apostolic pattern and prac-
tice of the Scripture. Therefore many believers are not properly
founded in the faith.
Apostle Peter Akeck of West Kenya was asked to
preach in a Sunday morning service by a pastor who had heard
him share in a seminar. The local church was a congregation of
about one hundred and twenty adults. Peter wrote in an email on
the 15th February 2006, “The Spirit led me to share very basic
things from Acts 2:36-42. The whole church was shocked at the
awesome revelation in those verses which they have often
rushed over. At the end of the message, over fifty people were
ready for baptism, not willing to go home and get clothes to
change. The conviction brought by the revelation of what bap-
tism is, overwhelmed them and for the first time in my life, I took
over fifty adults to the river - two kilometers away - and bap-
tized them. They - old women, men, young ladies and young men
- were very happy, going home dripping with water.
This was after over one hundred adults admitted that
they were not filled with the Spirit and I prayed for them with
the laying on of hands and about eighty were wonderfully filled
and spoke with other tongues and magnified God.” The apostle
sets the foundations in order.

Apostles are given power by Jesus to heal, cleanse, raise

the dead and cast out demons
In Matthew 10, Jesus sent out the twelve and command-
ed them in v8 to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the
dead, cast out demons.” This is repeated in Mark 3:15, where
Jesus gave the apostles “power to heal sicknesses and to cast out
demons”. This is part of the great commission given to the apos-
tles before Jesus ascended into heaven, “And these signs will
follow those who believe, in My name they will cast out de-
mons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up ser-
pents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means
hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover”
Mk. 16:17-18. The power to heal the sick and cast out demons is
then given to all believers: the whole church, finally, is meant to
be apostolic.
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 What Is An Apostle?
The ministry of the apostle is characterized by signs and
wonders. In Romans 15:18-19, Paul is writing to the church in
Rome, “For I will not dare to speak of any of those things
which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and
deed, to make the Gentiles obedient in mighty signs and won-
ders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem
and round about to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of
Christ.” A gospel without power is not really the gospel. Re-
member that Paul, in 1Corinthians 2:1-5, testifies to the power
of God that was demonstrated by the Holy Spirit in Corinth.

Apostles are used by God to release the Holy Spirit

In Acts 8, Philip went down to Samaria and preached
Christ to the people. Many responded, believed and were bap-
tised. “Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that
Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John
to them who, when they had come down, prayed for them that
they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet He had fallen up-
on none of them. They had only been baptised in the name of
the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them, and they received
the Holy Spirit” Acts8:14-17. In Acts 10, Peter preached to the
Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. “While Peter was still speak-
ing these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard
the word.” v44
In Acts 19, Paul came to Ephesus and met a group of
disciples and asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit.
They replied “We have not so much as heard whether there is a
Holy Spirit” v.2. Paul opened up the Scripture to them and then
he “laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and
they spoke with tongues and prophesied” v.6. It is not only
apostles who can release the gift of the Holy Spirit. For example
the disciple Ananias laid hands on Saul for him to be filled with
the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:17). I was only a few months old in the
Lord when I first laid hands on a new believer and they spoke in
tongues.

Apostles have authority from Jesus to bind and to loose

“And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heav-
en, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and
what ever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”
Matt.16:19. Jesus firstly gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter,
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an apostle. We have written on these keys elsewhere. In the con-
text of binding and loosing we must note that there is no refer-
ence to fighting with, or trying to bind, principalities or powers.
The reference is to the kingdom of God and Peter used these
keys effectively by preaching Jesus Christ and commanding
baptism, including receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is
the primary context of understanding these keys and the power
to bind and loose. The second, and only other, time that binding
and loosing is mentioned is in Matthew 18:18; there the context
is that of church discipline - dealing with a brother who refused
to repent of sin.
Before Jesus ascended, He imparted His authority to the
apostles and through them to the whole church. The Scripture
does not know of churches that are not flowing in apostolic au-
thority. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that the church of the
New Testament is apostolic. “And Jesus came and spoke to
them saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and
on earth’” Matt.28:18 and that authority is to be found and ex-
pressed in the church of Jesus Christ. This is the authority to
bind and loose, to open the door to the kingdom of God that
people may enter in, no longer bound in sin.

Apostles have authority to remit sins or to retain sins

(Jn.20:23). Some may see this as an application of the
authority ‘to bind and loose’ and that is a correct understanding.
After the resurrection, Jesus came to His disciples, “He
breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
In giving the Holy Spirit to His disciples, Jesus then tells them
that they have the authority to “remit sin”, that is, to forgive sin.
This is a very powerful thing that Jesus gave to His ministers:
even as He had the authority to forgive sin on the earth, the
apostles now had the power to forgive sin, albeit, through the
gospel. Often the forgiving of sins is the key to a person receiv-
ing their healing. If a person remains unrepentant, as Simon the
sorcerer did in Acts 8, then that person is left bound or retained
in their sin.
On one occasion, a young man came into an outreach
fellowship meeting. He had a nominal Catholic background. He
came forward at the end of the meeting for prayer. I explained to
him about being born again and asked if I could lead him in
prayer and confession. He agreed. We went through a ‘sinner’s

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prayer’ and he asked Jesus into his life. Nothing happened! The
Holy Spirit prompted me to break the power of sin from his life.
I did this and then led him through the sinner’s prayer again and
he experienced Christ coming into his life. This is an example of
the power that Jesus has given to us to remit sin.

Apostles are called to prayer and ministry of the word

In Acts 6:1-4, a dispute arose between the Hebrews and
the Hellenists [Greek speaking Jews] over daily distribution to
the widows. The apostles decided to appoint seven men who
would oversee these needs. Peter made it clear that the apostles’
main ministry was to preach and teach the word of God. He said
“we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry
of the word” v2-4. Herein, we are given insight to the true na-
ture of ministry: firstly, the minister must spend time continually
in prayer; out of the prayer comes the ministry of the word. My
own testimony confirms this: for years I spent much time in
prayer with the Bible open in my hand, praying the Scripture
and diligently seeking the Lord. In the prayer time, the Lord
would give me revelation and understanding which I could then
preach. To this day, our ministry is firmly based in prayer with
set prayer meetings and many impromptu calls to prayer.

Apostles raise others up to do the work of the ministry

In Acts 6:1-7, seven others are raised up to help with the
work; they are commissioned with the laying on of hands. The
result of multiplying ministry is “the word of God spread, the
number of the disciples multiplied greatly.” True apostolic lead-
ership is able to make godly decisions and the godly decisions
release further revival. This administrative oversight is summa-
rized by Paul when he instructs Titus to “set in order the things
that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city” Titus 1:5.
Many churches base their structure and order of doing things,
including appointment to leadership, on denominational and
institutional standards. It is very rare to find churches operating
in scriptural order with elders who have been appointed by an
apostle. There must be a multiplying of ministers and it is apos-
tles who initiate and administrate this.

Apostles pastor, feed and shepherd the flock

Peter, the apostle, was commissioned by Jesus to the

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pastoral ministry. In John 21:15-17 Jesus instructed Peter to
“feed My lambs”, “tend My sheep”, and again to “feed My
sheep”. All apostles will have a heart for the sheep as fathers
and will be able to train pastors to “shepherd the flock of God”
Acts 20:28.

Apostles minister publicly and from house to house

Acts 2:42-47. The early church was taught the ‘apostles’
doctrine’ and they ‘continued daily with one accord in the tem-
ple and breaking bread from house to house’. The first apostles
taught the word from house to house. The early church primarily
met in houses. The apostles and, later on prophets and other five
-fold ministers, did most of their ministry work in the house
churches.
In Acts 20:20, Paul is speaking to the elders of the
church at Ephesus, reminding them how he proclaimed the gos-
pel to them and ‘taught publicly and from house to house’. Un-
fortunately, many ministers today are puffed up and do not un-
derstand the true nature of church, which is the fellowship meet-
ings in smaller groups, meeting in houses. Such ministers look
for crowds and big offerings rather than devoting themselves to
the work of the ministry “willingly, not for dishonest gain but
eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted, but being exam-
ples to the flock” 1 Pet.5:2b-3. Some of the most powerful meet-
ings we have experienced have been in houses. Sometimes here
in Australia, we travel to a remote town or rural area and breth-
ren gather in one house, some even bringing caravans and tents
to sleep in. We continue in fellowship for two or three days, or
more, and people come to the house from the local area as well.

Apostles teach the word; declare the whole counsel of God

Their word is as a commandment, “that you may be
mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy
prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the
Lord and Saviour” 2Pet.3:2. Paul, as an apostle, was able to say
that he had not ‘shunned to declare the whole counsel of
God’ (Acts 20:27). James the apostle declared the counsel of
God to the council of Jerusalem. “The apostles and elders came
together to consider this matter’ Acts 15:6, then in v13-21 James
spoke the word of God ‘as it is written’ from the book of Amos.
This wisdom of the Holy Spirit resolved the situation that the

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council was facing.
“But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted
with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God
who tests our hearts” 1 Thess.2:4. Apostles have been entrusted
with the whole counsel of God. Because apostles have been en-
trusted with the message of the gospel in a specific way, then,
when the apostle is speaking the truth of the word as an apostle,
the elders [ministers] and the brethren need to take heed. The
word of the apostle will not always be “as pleasing men.”
In Hebrews 6:1-2, six foundations are listed which have
to be taught before the church can go on to maturity. The apostle
is to call the church back to foundations, to ensure that they are
properly laid. Unless foundations are properly laid, God is una-
ble to release the greater depth of His word to believers.
In the Great Commission given by Jesus (Matt.28:20)
the apostles are commanded to “teach them all things that I have
commanded you.” The apostles taught “the apostles’ doc-
trine” (Acts 2:42). The apostles’ teaching was the foundational
word upon which the church is built and it remains the same
today. Just as the law of Moses governed the life of the Old Tes-
tament church, the apostles’ doctrine is what governed the life
of the New Testament church.
The apostle Paul taught in Corinth: “And he continued
there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among
them” Acts 18:11. In Ephesus, Paul “reasoned daily in the
school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years, so that all
who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews
and Greeks” Acts 19:9-10. In Rome, “Paul dwelt two whole
years in his own rented house, and received all who came to
him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things
which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one
forbidding him” Acts 28:30-31.
Paul taught Timothy and instructed him to teach others,
“And the things that you have heard from me among many wit-
nesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach
others also” 2 Tim.2:2.
From the beginning of our ministry as Revival Minis-
tries Australia in January 1998, we envisaged having an apostol-
ic training centre, modeled on the example of apostle Paul in
Ephesus in Acts 19. God has enabled this to come to pass and
we have been conducting short-term schools in Australia and
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overseas for many years. We are now in the process of develop-
ing many more training opportunities.

Apostles ordain elders

The apostles visited churches in different cities
(Acts14:21); then they “appointed elders in every church, and
prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom
they had believed” v 23. Paul commissioned Titus to appoint
elders, “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in
order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city
as I commanded you” Titus 1:5. Paul, as an apostle, was part of
the eldership that ordained Timothy (1 Tim.4:14) and Paul says
that he specifically had imparted a gift to Timothy through the
laying on of hands. We can assume that this impartation took
place when Paul laid hands on Timothy with the eldership. It is
best practice for every local church leadership [pastors/elders] to
ask the apostle that they relate to and whose leadership they fol-
low, to be part of the ordination of ministers being appointed.

Apostles are to persevere in persecution and tribulation

Matthew 10:5-15 lists the instructions Jesus gave to the
twelve before He sent them out, then in v16-26, Jesus warns
them that persecutions are coming. In 2 Corinthians 11:23-28,
Paul lists the sufferings he has endured as an apostle. Jesus
warns in Luke 21:16 “You will be betrayed even by parents and
brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to
death.” These warnings are repeated in Mark13:9-13. Jesus was
rejected and persecuted. He told His disciples, “A servant is not
greater than his master, if they persecuted Me, they will also
persecute you” (Jn.15:20). The apostles in the early church ex-
perienced this persecution Acts 4:1-22. Peter and John were ar-
rested and put in jail, and commanded not to preach in the name
of Jesus. Paul expected persecution and summed it up in 1 Co-
rinthians 4:9 “For I think that God has displayed us, the apos-
tles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a
spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” Persecutions
are guaranteed but the key character quality required is perse-
verance. “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed;
we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsak-
en; struck down, but not destroyed” 2 Cor.3:8-9.

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Apostles carry concern and burden for the churches
“In weariness, toil, sleeplessness, hunger and thirst, of-
ten with fasting, in cold and nakedness - besides the other
things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the
churches”2 Cor.11:27-28. Paul is saying that his greatest burden
is not the difficult things he had suffered but his concern for the
churches. An apostle is like a parent watching over their chil-
dren. By his letters, it is apparent that Paul carried a deep bur-
den for all the churches he had visited. “Now for the third time I
am ready to come to you. And I will not be burdensome to you;
for I do not seek yours, but you. For the children ought not to
lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children” 2
Cor.12:14. Writing to the Galatians, Paul reveals his deep fa-
therly concern for them to grow to maturity “My little children,
for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you”
Gal.4:19.

The Apostle gives all for the saints in the churches

This follows on from the previous point. The apostle
Paul says to the Corinthians in 2 Cor.12:15, “And I will very
gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abun-
dantly I love you, the less I am loved.” Even though Paul felt
that the Corinthians did not appreciate what he had done and
was doing for them, his life was totally laid down for them. A
true minister of Christ is prepared to suffer in order to be able to
minister effectively to the body. Paul says in Colossians 1:24 “I
now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His
body, which is the church.”

The Apostle does all things for edification

“Again, do you think that we excuse ourselves to you?
We speak before God in Christ. But we do all things, beloved,
for your edification” 2 Cor.12:19. The work of the ministry is to
“build up the body of Christ” until the body grows to maturity
(Eph.4:12-16). The apostle, and all five-fold ministers, are to
give themselves to “the work of the ministry”. The work of the
ministry is not complete until the body of Christ has come to
maturity as clearly taught in these verses in Ephesians. Every-
thing must be done in word and deed for the edification of the
church, the people of God (1Thess.5:11).

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Christ proves Himself mighty in the ministry of the Apostle
“Since you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, who
is not weak toward you, but mighty in you” 2 Cor.13:3. The
ministry of the apostle is to specifically represent Christ. Much
grace is available to the apostle to represent and manifest the
reality of Christ. However, this also includes such authority that
emanates in judgment as was the case in Acts 5 with Ananias
and Sapphira. Paul said that he preferred to always minister “by
the meekness and gentleness of Christ” but he also indicated
that, if necessary, he would be bold in the Lord toward those
who judged him “as walking according to the flesh” 2 Cor.10:1-
2, and that he would not “spare those who have sinned” 2
Cor.13:2.

An Apostle lives and ministers by the power of God

Paul knew he had to rely on the power of the Holy Spir-
it. “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with ex-
cellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony
of God. For I determined not to know anything among you ex-
cept Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weak-
ness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my
preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith
should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” 1
Cor.2:1-5. Paul was dependent on the power of God that was
within him, “For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He
lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, but we
shall live with Him by the power of God toward you” 2
Cor.13:4. Those called to apostolic ministry must know the
‘death to self’ and have an ongoing and growing experience of
the power of God working in them and through them.

An Apostle knows the grace, love and fellowship of God

Paul is able to share the grace of the Lord, God’s love
and the communion of the Holy Spirit with the saints
(2Cor.13:14). Because the apostle knows these depths of rela-
tionship with God in Christ, he is able to minister and, thereby,
bring the saints into that reality. We note that most of the epis-
tles by both Paul and Peter begin with the ministry of “grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”,
and often end with a similar ministry of grace. For years we

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have tended to skip over the introductory verses to the epistles
and yet there is an awesome ministry of impartation from the
apostle to the saints of grace and peace. Furthermore, the apostle
is able to bring the saints into a greater depth of the love of God
and demonstrate a deeper walk with the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle knows and wields the weapons of warfare

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war accord-
ing to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal
but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down
arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the
obedience of Christ” 2 Cor.10:3-6. An apostle must be able to
demonstrate, to the saints, the walk in obedience to Christ. It is
when our obedience is complete that we are able to punish all
disobedience. The punishing of disobedience is through the ac-
curate and Spirit-empowered preaching of the word and the
leading of prayer in the truth and reality of the word. In these
Scriptures in Corinthians, Paul is not referring to spiritual war-
fare in the heavenlies against ‘principalities and powers’ but he
is referring to the full renewing of the mind by the pulling down
of mindsets, prejudices, opinions and areas of personal pride
that prevent us from walking in obedience to the word of God.

Apostles are not to be compared with each other, or com-

pare themselves with others
“For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves
with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring
themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among
themselves, are not wise” 2 Cor.10:12. Any true minister must
have a true estimate of who they are in Christ and what they
have been appointed to do. Each minister will be unique in the
conduct of their ministry in obedience to Christ’s calling. In
fact, every apostle and every saint needs to come to the experi-
ence of, and the walk in, sonship. It is this grace of becoming a
son that brings security and a right understanding of one’s iden-
tity. The grace of sonship deals with life-long insecurities.

Apostles know the sphere of ministry God has appointed

“We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but with-
in the limits of the sphere which God appointed us, a sphere

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which especially includes you” 2Cor.10:13. Initially Jesus sent
the twelve to the lost sheep of Israel commanding them to not go
“in the way of the Gentiles and do not enter a city of the Samari-
ans” Matt.10:5-6. Paul was appointed primarily to go to the
Gentiles (Gal.2:8). During the course of his ministry life, like
Jesus, Paul pushed on to preach the gospel to other cities also. I
do not believe that there are apostolic ‘territories’ as some claim
but there are clear spheres of ministry that the Lord appoints
apostles to function in. I have found that the way of the apostol-
ic is to remain humble and let the Lord reveal and prove the
sphere of ministry.

Apostles facilitate the gospel going to the regions beyond

Paul knows that he is called “to preach the gospel in the
regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man’s sphere of
accomplishment” 2Cor.10:14-16. An apostle is a pioneer and
must be allowed to lead the way into new realms of ministry.
The apostle is to obey the command that Jesus gave in Matthew
28:19-20, and give leadership to the fulfillment of the commis-
sion, “making disciples of all the nations.” Simply preaching the
gospel in an evangelistic way does not fulfill the Great Commis-
sion. The apostle facilitates the local church and its ministers to
‘make disciples’.

The Apostle can be used to expose false apostles

Paul exercised this discernment “For such are false
apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apos-
tles of Christ” 2Cor.11:13. Jesus commends the “angel of the
church of Ephesus,” for having “tested those who say they are
apostles and are not, and have found them liars” Rev.2:1-2. The
angel of the church can be seen as the ‘messenger’ [the literal
meaning of angel]. It is interesting that the King James Bible
translates the Greek word apostolos twice in the Bible as mes-
senger (2 Cor.8:23 & Phil. 2:25). It makes sense that the leaders
of the churches in Revelation 2 & 3 would be apostles.
As with currency notes, one knows a counterfeit note by
being familiar with the genuine note; even so, one who is a true
apostle is able to discern one who is not. The mistake that many
pastoral leaders and bishops are making is that, without knowing
the true apostle, they reject all apostles as being false.

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The Apostle is supported financially by various churches
The apostle Paul states that he received wages from oth-
er churches so he could preach the gospel ‘free of charge’ to the
church in Corinth (2Cor.11:7-9). Apostles have a right to be
supported. Paul argues that those who preach the gospel should
be supported, just as those who render any service have a right
to receive remuneration. “Do you not know that those who min-
ister the holy things eat of the things of the temple, and those
who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar? Even
so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel
should live from the gospel” 1Cor.9:13-14.
In the contemporary church the income of the church
from tithes and offerings is seen as being under the control of
the local pastor. In some situations, it is the bishop who oversees
a number of churches who controls the finances of all the
churches. Both of these situations fall short of the Scriptural
model. In both situations, there is no place for apostles and
when apostles are restored, there is resistance to releasing finan-
cial support to them. The example of the early church was to
bring the money and lay it “at the apostles’ feet” Acts 4:35. In
my own situation, God has raised up a support base through a
number of related house churches and fellowships who support
the apostolic ministry based at SHILOH.
“And laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed
to each as anyone had need” Acts 4:35. The early church
“shared all things”. When they wanted to give of their excess
they brought it to the apostles and sought the counsel and confir-
mation of the leadership as to the distribution of the gifts. “Now
concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to
the churches of Galatia, so you must do also” 1Cor.16:1.

The Lord upholds His apostles

Paul found that there were those who forsook him, those
who sought to do him harm and those who resisted him. “But
the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the mes-
sage might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gen-
tiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the
lion. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and
preserve me for His heavenly kingdom” 2 Tim.4:17-18. During
Paul’s first apostolic journey, John Mark deserted the apostles,
turning back from the journey. When it came time for a second

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journey, and Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them,
Paul refused. However, later in Paul’s ministry, Mark had be-
come a respected co-worker with Paul. In Colossians Demas is
among Paul’s co-workers (4:14) but in 2Timothy 4:10 he has
forsaken Paul “having loved this present world.” I have experi-
enced similar things with co-workers who have abandoned us
and, thankfully, we have also experienced some being restored
to us.

Apostles must be disciplined in body/flesh

“But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection,
lest, when I have preached to others, I myself would become
disqualified” 1 Cor.9:27. Paul also says “if a man is overtaken in
any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit
of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted”
Gal.6:1. Apostles must be temperate in all things. “And every-
one who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now
they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperisha-
ble crown” 1 Cor.9:25. They are to exercise self-control. “And
do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled
with the Spirit” Eph.5:18.

The Apostle is to be a leader that others can follow

“Brethren, join in following my example, and note those
who so walk, as you have us for a pattern” Phil. 3:17. Paul is
saying ‘follow my example’. The apostle is to live a life that is
an example to others. He/she must be able to say ‘Follow me as
I follow Christ.’ Some years ago in our training school, I was
asked to give a session on leadership. I had not done this as such
before. I had been to leadership seminars and had been surprised
to find the teaching was based on successful business principles
not on the Scriptures. I took the session and, for the first time in
my life, realized that I had to be able to say to the leaders:
‘Follow me as I follow Christ!’ I was able to share that, if any
leader wanted to know how to pray effectively, I could show
them how to pray; if someone wanted to know the Scriptural
pattern for giving financially, I could demonstrate through my
own giving; if someone wanted to know how to preach, I could
train them; if someone believed they were to go to the nations, I
could take them. I realized that God had brought me to the place
where I could lead by example. Paul says “I urge you, imitate

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me” (1 Cor.4:16). In our recent International Training School, a
number of the leaders who had come from other nations publicly
testified to the high level of commitment and the dedication
demonstrated in the lifestyle of the leaders here at SHILOH.

An Apostle’s life should be an exemplification of grace

“Through Him we have received grace and apostleship
for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name” Rom.
1:5. Grace is received through Jesus Christ, and it is the grace
that is released through the ministry of the apostle that is the
mark of the apostle. Each one of us has received grace, but there
is a grace for the apostle to walk in and minister to the Body.
The apostle’s life ought to demonstrate the grace received. Paul
declares that he received a “dispensation of the grace of God” to
make know the revelation of the mystery and “to preach the un-
searchable riches of Christ” Eph.3:2-3,8.

An apostle’s ministry can include all the five-fold ministries

Mature apostolic ministry exhibits characteristics of all
forms of other ministries. “And He Himself gave some to be
apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and
teachers” Eph.4:11. Paul demonstrated that blending of minis-
try: “for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle – I am
speaking the truth in Christ and not lying - a teacher of the Gen-
tiles in faith and truth” 1Tim.2:7. Paul preached the gospel as an
evangelist; he taught the word and he ministered as an apostle.
He specifically says that he was appointed to three ministries.
We know from Paul’s writings that he had tremendous prophetic
insight into the word of God and we also know that he had a
pastors’ heart for the brethren working closely with him.

Conclusion
As one reads the New Testament, looking to understand
who are apostles and what they do, one finds an abundance of
material. So much of the teaching of Jesus is directed to apos-
tles. Much of Paul’s writing is sharing about the ministry of the
apostle. The New Testament is written by apostles or by their
close co-workers as in the case of Luke. The book of Acts is the
Acts of the Apostles.
The Lord Jesus, the Head of the Church, is restoring the
gift ministry of the apostle in the church worldwide. The final
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‘setting in order of the church’ is taking place so that the Lord
can release the last days revival in every nation. The river of
God will flow, but not until the foundations are strongly and
properly set, according to the word of God and not according to
denominational tradition. When the one hundred and twenty
disciples gathered in the upper room after the ascension of Jesus
into heaven, the Bible says, “These all continued with one ac-
cord in prayer and supplication” Acts1:14. Out of the committed
prayer, Peter was led to replace Judas, the apostate apostle who
had committed suicide by this time. Once the foundation apos-
tles were in place, then the Day of Pentecost “fully came!” The
Lord was setting the church in order to receive an unprecedented
outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

And who was being set in order?

Apostles, the foundation ministry of the church.

The Lord is showing us that the apostles

have been set in the church;
they are first! (1Cor.12:28).

They are the foundation ministry upon

which all else is built.

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Apostles must be received,

for when the church receives an apostle

they receive Jesus the Messiah

and in receiving Him

they will receive the Father God!

Matt.10:40

Chapter Seven
WHAT IS APOSTLES’ DOCTRINE?

The actual Gospels as written are primary ap-

ostolic doctrine

A true apostle is one who comes in the name

of the Lord, who comes non-denominationally,
who comes not representing a part of the
church or a particular group, but who comes
with the true heart of Jesus for His people and
for His body. Through the teaching of the
apostles, Jesus is revealed.

There are meant to be at least three genera-

tions of inspired, trained teachers operating in
the body of Christ: the apostles who train and
impart to other ministers; then the ministers
who train and impart to faithful men; the faith-

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ful men who teach others.

If we preach the perfecting of the church, the

preparation of a glorious bride church, if we
preach the grace of God to endure tribulation
and exalt in it, then we will be preaching and
teaching the Word of God accurately and de-
claring the whole counsel of God

The Four Gospels

The first example of the apostles’ doctrine in the New
Testament is the testimony of the four Gospel writers. Matthew
and John were apostles of the Lamb and directly share their ex-
perience of Jesus. While there is no clear evidence that Mark
and Luke were apostles [they could have been] in the ministry
of the church, they both worked with apostles very closely over
a long period of time and passed on the teaching and testimony.
The actual gospels, as written, are primary apostolic doctrine.
They include the actual teachings of the Lord Jesus and testimo-
ny of His acts.
The Gospel of Mark
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of
God” Mk 1:1. Mark’s gospel is an amazingly compact testimony
of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus. The gospel is the good
news which includes the promise of salvation and its fulfillment
in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
The Gospel of John
John wrote his gospel as an eyewitness of Jesus. He tells
us why he wrote the gospel:“But these are written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believ-
ing you may have life in His name” Jn.20:31. John wrote his
gospel so that people could believe and be saved. Apostolic doc-
trine is teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:42) to
the intent that the hearers come to the saving knowledge of God.

The Gospel of Luke

In introducing his gospel, Luke gives us important in-
sights as to the nature of apostolic doctrine. He writes

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“Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative
of those things that have been fulfilled among us, just as those
who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the
word delivered them to us, it seemed to me also, having perfect
understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an
orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know
the certainty of those things in which you were instructed”
Lu.1:1-4.
There are four things in these verses that describe what
apostolic doctrine is:
 a clear ordered narrative
Apostolic doctrine, as expressed in Luke’s gospel, is a
clear, ordered narrative [story] of the life, teaching and
ministry of the Lord Jesus.
 delivered by eyewitnesses
The gospel was delivered by eyewitnesses [apostles of the
Lamb] and ministers of the word [those apostles who
were with Him, also including post-ascension apostles].
 perfect understanding
Luke has received perfect understanding from the
apostles’ testimony. Remember, Luke is a Gentile who
became a disciple of Paul a number of years after Jesus’
death and resurrection.
 know the certainty of these things
Having been instructed, Luke is able to write an orderly
account so that another may ‘know the certainty of those
things’ which Luke has come to know from receiving ap-
ostolic teaching.
In 1John1:1-4, John talks in a similar way: the testimo-
ny of Jesus is shared by the apostles, the eyewitnesses and min-
isters of the word, so that we, the hearers, may come in to eter-
nal life which is fellowship “with the Father and with His Son
Jesus Christ.”

The Gospel of Matthew

Matthew’s gospel, amongst other things, shows the ful-
fillment of Old Testament prophecies in the life and ministry of
Jesus Christ. The interpretation of the Old Testament is an im-
portant aspect of apostolic doctrine. The book of Hebrews
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demonstrates this aspect of apostolic doctrine more fully as it is
a total interpretation [showing the fulfillment] of Old Testament
types and shadows. To understand Hebrews, one needs a good
working knowledge of the Old Testament.
Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.
He declared that the law would be fulfilled. Jesus wants us to
teach the word of God from the Old Testament prophetically.

Apostolic doctrine gives to the people of God

the understanding of the law and of the commandments,
of the prophets and the writings;
to enable all to see and understand
their fulfillment in Christ (Matt.5:17-19).

We need to have the revelation of Christ and His church

in the Old Testament so that we can teach the prophetic fulfill-
ment in the New Testament. “And beginning at Moses and all
the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the
things concerning Himself” Lu.24:27. Jesus confirmed to His
apostles “these are the words which I spoke to you while I was
still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were writ-
ten in the Law of Moses and Prophets and Psalms concerning
Me.’ And He opened their understanding that they might com-
prehend the Scriptures” (Lu.24:44-45).

Apostolic doctrine is to be passed on

“And the things that you have heard from me among
many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able
to teach others also” 2Tim.2:2. Paul gives us a similar under-
standing of how apostolic doctrine is to be received and passed
on to others. The apostle, who is an eyewitness [Paul said he had
seen the Lord] and the minister of the word [Peter said the apos-
tles must give themselves to “the ministry of the word” Acts
6:4] teaches and trains others to become ministers [not all are
apostles; this includes all five-fold ministers]. The ministers
who have received from the apostle are then to pass on the apos-
tolic doctrine to faithful men [neither male nor female] who will
teach others. There are meant to be at least three generations of
inspired, trained teachers operating in the body of Christ:
the apostles who train and impart to other ministers;
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 Characteristics Of An Apostolic Ministry
the ministers who train and impart to faithful men;
the faithful men who teach others.

The Apostles’ Doctrine In The Book Of Acts

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doc-
trine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers”
Acts 2:42. The four things that they continued in are really the
‘first works’ of the early church. In Revelation 2, Jesus is writ-
ing to the church at Ephesus and in verse 4 He says,
“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your
first love.” In verse 5 He goes on to say, “Remember therefore
from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or
else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand
from its place – unless you repent.” This church had lost its first
love and was being told by Jesus to repent and do the first works
again. In order to find out what the first works are, we need to
look at the practice of the first church.
The first church included the 120 believers, [including
the 12 apostles of the Lamb], on whom the Holy Spirit fell on
the Day of Pentecost and the 3000 men who had believed and
were baptised on that day. These believers continued in the four
things listed in Acts 2:42: the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, the
breaking of bread and prayer. They continued in the fellowship
of the apostles’ doctrine, the fellowship of breaking bread to-
gether and the fellowship of corporate prayer; as they continued
in fellowship, there was a profound ‘caring and sharing’ among
the believers (Acts 2:44-45).
If we continue steadfastly in these four things, the ongo-
ing result will be that we will be in love with Jesus and we will
not lose that love. It will increase every time we share the
Lord’s table; every time we come together in prayer and wor-
ship; every time we meet in faith filled fellowship, which cares
and shares, meeting one another’s needs, and every time we
share the apostles’ doctrine, which is the teaching of the Word
of God [the teaching which has been faithfully passed on by
apostles]. This verse specifically says “the apostles’ doctrine”,
not simply the teaching of the word. The word of God has been
taught in some measure ever since the Reformation in the six-
teenth century, but rarely has there been an apostle to teach the
word in recent centuries. Therefore we need to understand what

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is the ‘apostles’ doctrine’?

Revelation is given to Apostles and Prophets

Basically, the whole New Testament is the apostles’
doctrine but the revelation of the word of God is given specifi-
cally to apostles and prophets (Eph.3:5). In these days, we need
apostles to be raised up in the anointing to teach the Scriptures.
The Scriptures can be taught by pastors, teachers and evange-
lists, but a lot of key revelation is given to apostles and prophets.
It is by a special dispensation of grace that apostles and prophets
are able to bring forth the knowledge of the mystery. “If indeed
you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which
was given to me for you” Eph.3:2. Paul, as an apostle, had re-
ceived a certain dispensation of grace. The outworking of that
grace is verse 4 “by which, when you read, you may understand
my knowledge in the mystery of Christ.” The Lord Himself re-
veals to apostles and prophets the mystery. [This mystery is also
referred to in 1Cor.2:6-16 & Col.1:24-29]. Paul had knowledge
of the mystery of Christ and he shared and taught that
knowledge. Each member of the body then receives grace by
receiving the apostolic doctrine “which in other ages was not
made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by
the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets” Eph.3:5. This mys-
tery had not been revealed to Abraham or other men of God in
the Old Testament. These Old Testament men cannot come into
fulfillment until Jesus has raised up His church (Heb.11:40).

What Is The Mystery?

The mystery is oneness in Christ
“That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same
body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel”
Eph.3:6. It is only the gospel that can bring Jew and Gentile into
oneness (Eph.2:14-18). Jesus is our peace and has made both
one, creating one new man from the two. God wants ‘one new
man’; He sees only one new man! The wall of separation has
been removed.
Paul illustrates this mystery further in Romans 11
speaking of an olive tree that represents God’s people. There is
only ever one true olive tree. The original tree grew out of God
choosing the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The root is

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Messiah, Jesus. He says “I am the Root and the Offspring of
David” Rev.22:16. He says “before Abraham was, I AM”
Jn.8:58. Jesus also referred to Himself as the “true vine” and the
members of the church are the branches (Jn.15:1-8). The one
new man, the body of Christ, the olive tree and the vine are all
speaking of the New Covenant “Israel of God” (Gal.6:16).
When Christ came in the flesh, only a remnant of Israel
received and entered into righteousness in Christ (Rom.11:5-7).
The rest were cut off as dead branches and the believing Gen-
tiles were grafted into the original olive tree through faith (v17).
However, Paul goes on to reveal to us that, because of the
“fathers”, God is going to do a final great work of redemption
among those of natural Israel who were blinded to the gospel
because of their unbelief (v25-28). What will be the result? Jews
and Gentiles happily growing together in righteousness in the
one olive tree!

The mystery is the “bride church”

In Ephesians 5:23-33, Paul explains the mystery of the
bride church in terms of marriage and the relationship in mar-
riage between husband and wife. In conclusion, He says “This is
a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church”.
In Revelation 21:9-11, John is shown in the Spirit “the bride, the
Lamb’s wife.” The church is both a bride in preparation for mar-
riage and a wife for the Lamb. Jesus Himself is “sanctifying and
cleansing the church with the washing of water by the word, that
He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having
spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy
and without blemish” Eph.5:26-27. This church that Jesus is
going to present to Himself will be glorious. In the natural, we
generally perceive that a bride is going to be presented on her
wedding day with every effort made for her to look beautiful
and for everything to be done to make the wedding day as per-
fect as possible.
The church is to be fully joined to the Lord: “he who is
joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” 1Cor.6:17. This is as a
spiritual marriage, a full joining. We are “members of His body,
of His flesh and of His bones” Eph.5:30. This is what Adam said
when he first saw Eve and called her ‘woman’ (Gen.2:23).

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The mystery is the grace of God
Paul said he became a minister “according to the gift of
the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His
power” Eph.3:7. The result of that grace was “that I should
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ”
v.8. God has “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not
according to our works, but according to His own purpose and
grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus
Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortali-
ty to light through the gospel, to which I was appointed a
preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles” 2 Tim.1:9-
11. This grace was given before time began.
The mystery of the grace of God is that Paul, of the cir-
cumcision, is appointed as a teacher to the Gentiles. Grace is the
enabling power of God, enabling His will to be done. [Enabling
a pharisee of the pharisees to become the apostle to Gentiles]

The fellowship of the mystery

Paul says he was given grace “to preach among the
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, to make all see what
is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of
the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through
Jesus Christ” Eph.3:9. There is a fellowship of the mystery that
God wants us to see and experience. The word for fellowship is
koinonia SC#2842 and, in the context of the fellowship of the
mystery, it is referring to a deep relationship with God and be-
tween brethren who have come into maturity. Paul tells us that
the deeper wisdom of God, the mystery, is for the mature
(1Cor.2:6-7). I understand that this level of maturity is of grace
whereby the Spirit of God places us as sons in Christ, in a rela-
tionship with the Father as sons and in a relationship with one
another that is deeper than anything we have experienced be-
fore. Maturity refers to that walk with God in Christ that we call
sonship, “but you receive the Spirit of sonship” (Rom.8:15
NIV). We testify that the fellowship we enjoy as sons together is
rich and deep and is bringing us into an experience of being
joined together in the body, walking in a much fuller and deeper
revelation of the body of Christ.
Another part of the revelation of the mystery is “that in

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the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might bring to-
gether in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and
which are on earth in Him” Eph.1:10. This is referring to the
coming together of the saints who are in heaven with Jesus and
who are coming back with Him, and the saints who are the sanc-
tified ones in the earth, ready for the Lord’s coming
(1Thess.4:13-17). What a fellowship that will be!

Displacement of principalities and powers

Paul says that the result of the church coming to know
the fellowship of the mystery is “To the intent that now the man-
ifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the
principalities and powers in the heavenly place” Eph.3:10.
When the church comes into the fellowship of the mystery [the
deeper wisdom], then the manifold wisdom of God will be re-
vealed. This verse suggests that the church has been designed by
God so that when it comes into this apostolic and prophetic rev-
elation, walking in sonship, ruling and reigning in Christ, the
saints will speak and preach with such power that the principali-
ties and powers will be disempowered and the gospel will begin
to fill the atmosphere.
The revelation of the mystery, of ‘who Christ is’, re-
veals that when Christ rose from the dead He was raised up by
the power of God “and seated at His right hand in the heavenly
places, far above all principality and power and might and do-
minion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but
also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His
feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all”
Eph.1:20-23. This means that God has made the church, which
is His body, the head over all things in Christ. This is the revela-
tion that all things, even thrones and dominions in the invisible
realms, were created by God through Jesus Christ (Col.1:16).
Such rulers “are coming to nothing” (1Cor.2:6) because of the
revelation of the mystery, the teaching of the deeper wisdom.
The power of the church, walking in a mature revelation
of the mystery and, thus displacing principalities and powers, is
illustrated in Acts 8 when Phillip went to Samaria and began to
preach in that city. He preached the kingdom of God and the
name of Jesus and mighty signs and wonders were happening to
confirm the preaching. Men and women believed the gospel and
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were baptised. Through Phillip’s preaching, the manifold wis-
dom of God was made known to the principalities and powers in
the city of Samaria so that even the chief strongman of the city,
Simon the sorcerer, wanted to become obedient to the gospel
and be baptised.

The mystery of the church ‘going on to perfection’

The church is called to “go on to perfection” (Heb.6:1).
We have already spoken of this church in the Introduction. It is
only when the church is walking in maturity, going on to perfec-
tion that the glory of the Lord will be seen in the church.
“Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of
the LORD is risen upon you” Isa. 60:1. God is saying to His
people, ‘Arise, shine for the glory of the LORD is risen upon
you’. This is present tense! The Light, Jesus, has come, and to-
day the glory of the LORD is rising upon His people. “The
whole earth is full of His glory,” the seraphim said in Isaiah 6:3.
This glory will be revealed [made known] as the church be-
comes the true sanctuary of the LORD’s presence in the earth.
“For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and
deep darkness the people; but the LORD will arise over you, and
His glory will be seen upon you” Isa.60:2. This is what we are
experiencing in the world now; it is increasing. The beast is aris-
ing. The darkness is spreading all over the world, but the church
is to arise in Him, in His glory.
“The Gentiles shall come to your light, and kings to the
brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around, and see;
they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come
from afar, and your daughters shall be nursed at your side. Then
you shall see and become radiant, and your heart shall swell
with joy; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to
you. The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you” Isa.60:3-5.
This is the revelation of the mystery that, in these last days,
Gentiles are coming to the Lord in increasing numbers. This is
happening because the time of the Gentiles is almost fulfilled.
“All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to
you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall as-
cend with acceptance on My altar, and I will glorify the house of
My glory” Isa.60:7. Kedar and Nebaioth were the first born sons
of Ishmael. Prophetically, it is possible to believe that many
Muslims will be saved in the last days. Leaders and their con-
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gregations will be saved and come into God’s kingdom. ‘They
will ascend with acceptance on My altar’; this altar is Jesus.
Many Muslims are going to come to Jesus and He will accept
them.

Foundational Doctrines Of Christ

Apostolic doctrine grounds the church in the elementary
principles, or fundamental teachings, of Christ. These founda-
tional doctrines are listed for us in Hebrews 6:1-2; they must be
properly laid before the church can go on to perfection.
Apostles’ doctrine must be thoroughly taught to all believers in
these six areas before the saints will be able to understand the
deeper wisdom that God wants all the saints to receive.
Repentance from dead works is the foundational doctrine of
the faith of the gospel. To repent is to change. Repentance is to
be preached (Luke 24:47). If people repent, their sins are remit-
ted [forgiven].
Faith toward God follows repentance. When we repent we turn
from something to something; we turn away from sin, we turn
toward God through faith in Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
to be preached so people will come to faith in God through Him.
Doctrine of Baptisms, while plural, primarily refers to baptism
in water in the name of Jesus Christ, following the practice of
the apostles in the book of Acts. In Romans 6, Paul teaches the
doctrine of baptism. Peter teaches on baptism in 1 Peter 3:20-22.
Both apostles teach that, through baptism, the believer is raised
in resurrection life [seated in heavenly places].
Laying on of hands primarily refers to receiving the Holy Spir-
it. When Saul [Paul] was saved, the disciple Ananias came and
laid hands on him. Saul was healed and filled with the Holy
Spirit.
Resurrection of the dead refers to our walk in the resurrection
power of Jesus Christ. There are three important aspects of this
doctrine: Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead; through His
resurrection we receive eternal life [new birth]; thirdly, every
soul will rise, some to the resurrection of the just and some to
resurrection of damnation (Jn.5:28-29).

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Eternal Judgement is the doctrine of eternal states, understand-
ing that there are rewards and punishments and understanding
that the church is to come into the place of true judgment in
Christ.

Apostles’ doctrine is the teaching of the apostles

They are the ones commissioned and appointed by
Christ to fully represent His power and authority, wisdom and
knowledge in the earth today. It is a gift given to some, by
Christ, for His church (Eph.4:11). In Matthew 10:40, Jesus is
speaking in the context of the appointing and commissioning of
His apostles. He says “He who receives you receives Me, and he
who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” It was the Father
who sent Jesus. Jesus is saying that apostles, who are truly ap-
pointed and commissioned by Him, fully represent Him. In the
church age, such apostles are ones who have received the ascen-
sion gift of the apostle, from Jesus the ascended Lord, according
to Ephesians 4:7-11. A true apostle is one who comes in the
name of the Lord, who comes non-denominationally, who
comes, not representing a part of the church or a particular
group but who comes with the true heart of Jesus for His people
and for His body. Through the teaching of the apostles, Jesus is
revealed.
In Matthew 23:39, Jesus is speaking to the Jews when He
says “for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say,
‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’” For the
Jews of today, this means that they will not see the Lord until
they say ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’. The
one who came in the name of the Lord was Jesus. Who is the
one who comes in the name of the Lord today? Firstly, His
apostles whom He sends, and secondly, His church, His apostol-
ic body, which He sends to the whole world.

FIVE ASPECTS OF APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE

There are specific aspects of teaching in the New Testa-
ment that are emphasized in one way or another by most church-
es in some way in their teaching. However, it is rare to find a
church covering all of these aspects in a scriptural way. Some of
these aspects are: the Great Commission, Building the Church,
Perfecting the Saints, Exalting in Tribulation and Preparing for

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the Lord’s Return.

I) THE GREAT COMMISSION

Preach the Gospel
The clearest thing that Jesus told the church to do is to
preach the gospel. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature. He who believes and is baptised will be saved;
but he who does not believe will be condemned” Mk 16:15-16.
Everyone made in God’s image and likeness needs to hear the
gospel; some will believe and be saved and some will believe
not and be condemned. In Matthew 24, where Jesus is explain-
ing signs of the end times and signs of His coming, He says
“and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the
world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will
come” v14. One of the clearest signs that we can look for and
recognise and, thereby, know that the end of the age is near is
worldwide evangelism. The 1990’s were declared to be the dec-
ade of worldwide evangelism. There has been enormous growth
in evangelism world wide in the last fifteen years. Christianity is
by far the fastest growing faith or religion, despite the obvious
spread of Islam that the media gives so much attention to. Often
Muslims are a very small minority but, because of the world
system, they exercise influence far beyond their numbers. The
church is God’s answer for the world and His church will
emerge and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.
Even though evangelism has been widespread, as men-
tioned elsewhere in this book, the gospel preached has been a
gospel of salvation focused on going to heaven.

It is the gospel of the kingdom that will produce

“sons of the kingdom” who will inherit the kingdom
of the Father in the earth (Matt.13:38,43).

Make Disciples
The Great Commission Jesus gave us begins with the
preaching of the gospel so that men can be saved, but is only
complete with the making of disciples.
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on
earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptis-
ing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
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Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have com-
manded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of
the age” Matt.28:18-20. We are called to go to all the nations,
all the people groups, baptising them and teaching them. Jesus
promised to be with us until the work is finished at the end of
the age. Unreached people groups are now receiving the gospel.
There has been a quickening of the work in the last 10-15 years.
The sign of the gospel, in Matthew 24:14, is being fulfilled very
quickly. Praise the Lord!
We are told, in Mark 16:16, that some will hear the
message and be saved, others will not believe and be con-
demned. These are those who are going to be punished at the
coming of the Lord: “those who do not know God, and those
who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”
2Thess.1:8. It seems that there will be those who will refuse to
believe in God even though they have heard the message and
there will be those who hear the gospel but refuse to obey it.

The Promise of the Holy Spirit

The key to fulfilling the Great Commission is the Holy
Spirit whom Jesus promised His disciples, “Behold, I send the
Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusa-
lem until you are endued with power from on high” Lu.24:49.
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come
upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in
Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” Acts 1:8.
In Psalm 2:7-8, the psalmist wrote prophetically “I will
declare the decree; the LORD has said to Me, You are My Son,
today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the
nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your
possession.” The nations have been promised to Jesus as His
inheritance but we are also partakers of this inheritance. “Now
to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not
say, ‘and seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your Seed’,
who is Christ.” “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abra-
ham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” Gal.3:16,29.
Jesus has been promised the nations; Jesus is the Seed of Abra-
ham to whom the promises were made and, if we are Christ’s,
we are also heirs according to the promise.

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II) BUILDING THE CHURCH

In the 1980’s we had a scourge of church growth spe-
cialists who claimed to know how to add numbers to your local
church. The presumption was that the only important thing
about the church was how many people were attending a partic-
ular building and, thereby, making the particular minister appear
successful. The advice given in church growth seminars includ-
ed having suitable signs in the car park, how to present a user
friendly welcome pack, how to train the ushers, etc etc. Building
the church is all about growing up the particular disciples that
God gives to each eldership [in the New Testament, church
leadership was in plurality]. The goal of church growth is to
bring the believers to maturity, having equipped [perfected]
them to function in the body properly.
Jesus said to Peter “you are Peter, and on this rock I will
build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it” Matt.16:18. Peter was a foundational apostle set in
place by Jesus Christ. Later Peter speaks about his revelation of
being a foundation stone and that the church [temple] is built of
living stones. “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected in-
deed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as liv-
ing stones, are being built up a spiritual house” 1 Pet.2:4-5. Je-
sus said something like this to Peter, ‘you are a living stone and
because you have faith in me, I am going to use you to build my
church’.
Jesus said He would build His church and He is going to
use apostles as the foundation. He is also going to use prophets,
evangelists, pastors, teachers and every other ministry and gift
that the Holy Spirit is going to release again into the church.
This church will prevail over hell. Jesus said, ‘I give unto you,
the church apostolic, the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ These
are the keys spoken of in Matthew 16:19 “And I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth
will be loosed in heaven.”

Christ Gave Gifts For The Building Of The Church

These gifts are the five-fold ministries given by Christ
in His ascension. “And He Himself gave some to be apostles,
some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teach-

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ers” Eph.4:11. Why were they given? To build the church: ‘by
equipping [perfecting] the saints; by doing the work of the min-
istry and by building up the body of Christ’ (Eph.4:12). The
church is to be built [by the five-fold ministries] until it comes
to maturity. The goal is perfection. There is a state of maturity to
grow into as an individual believer and there is a state of maturi-
ty to grow into as a church, “Till we all come to the unity of the
faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” v.13.
Christ, as Son, is building God’s house and is Head over the
house, the church (Heb.3:3).

III) PERFECTING THE SAINTS

In many Christian circles in recent decades there has
been no understanding of the perfecting of the saints or the need
for it. This is because of mistaken end-time views and because
there has been little acceptance of the five-fold ministries of
Ephesians 4:11. And yet the Scripture says that the work of the
ministry of these gifts given by Christ is the perfecting of the
saints. God’s goal is for there to be “a perfect man, to the meas-
ure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” v.13. How is the per-
fecting of the saints to be accomplished? Through ministry done
after the pattern set by our Lord Jesus. In Colossians 1:24-29,
Paul speaks of sacrificial service for Christ and His body as a
minister. Are you willing to suffer as a minister of the gospel?
Paul is saying that, to be an effective minister, you must be will-
ing to suffer because that is essential for effective ministry in
Christ.

The Work Of The Ministry

Perfection comes through suffering. “I now rejoice in
my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in
the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the
church, of which I became a minister according to the steward-
ship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the
word of God” Col.1:24-25. In the work of a minister, there is
much suffering for the sake of ‘His body’, which is the church.
The goal is for Christ to be fully formed in the lives of the
saints. In writing to the believers in Galatia, Paul says “my little
children for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in

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you” Gal.4:19. We are ministers ‘according to the stewardship
from God’, which is the grace given to us to do the work of the
ministry.
The work of the ministry is to make known “the mys-
tery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but
now has been revealed to His saints” Col.1:26. There are gener-
ations to whom the mystery is still hidden. They have not yet
heard the gospel; and even many who have heard have only
heard in part. The Lord wants all of the believers to be discipled
and then to be instructed in the knowledge of the mystery. “To
them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the
hope of glory” Col.1:27.

Bringing The Saints To Perfection

The glory of the Lord is risen upon us, now, today. We
are to tell the church the mystery! If we faithfully impart the
message of the gospel, it will spread and multiply. To be born
again is a mystery to those who do not believe, but the gospel is
much more than being born again. In the context of Colossians,
Paul is speaking to a church. He is not preaching the gospel to
the lost; he is showing the believers how they are to go on. To
this end Christ must be preached not only for salvation but for
glorification. “Him we preach, warning every man and teaching
every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect
in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to
His working which works in me mightily” v.28-29. It is Christ’s
mighty power that works through us to bring the saints to ma-
turity in Christ.

Let Us Go On ...
In Philippians 3:12-14, Paul says, “Not that I have al-
ready attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I
may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of
me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but
one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and
reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward
the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
We are going on to perfection, by apprehending [taking hold of]
that which we have been called to do. We are to forget what lies

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behind and press on to the new thing that God is doing. Take
hold of the apostolic revelation that God is now revealing.
“Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind”
Phil.3:15. There is agreement coming among brethren who are
receiving the apostolic doctrine, who are receiving the apostles
Christ is sending forth. The major ministry of the apostle today
is to make known the revelation of the mystery and ministering
out of this revelation for the perfecting of the saints.

IV) EXALTING IN TRIBULATION

Every teaching in the New Testament about tribulation
tells the saints to exalt in tribulation, to glory in tribulation, to
endure in tribulation. Paul says in Romans 5:3-5 “we also glory
in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;
and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope
does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured
out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” To
glory in tribulation is only possible by standing in grace. We
enter into that standing in grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
The word ‘tribulation’ SC#2347 simply means
‘pressure’, and is translated:- afflicted, affliction, anguish, bur-
dened, persecution, tribulation, trouble. When we stand in faith
in Christ, the grace of God is released to us. Many preachers and
believers fear tribulation and the only reason that one would fear
tribulation is because one does not know the manifest grace of
God. A key aspect of the apostolic revelation is the reality of the
tangible grace of God which enables one to stand in tribulation
and in all suffering.
Paul prays to know the “fellowship of His suffering”
and to be conformed to “the image of His death” (Phil.3:10). It
is this reality of embracing suffering, of purposing to die to self
in every way, that releases the grace to endure, to persevere and
to overcome in the midst of tribulation. Come on church! Let us
preach and teach the Word of God and not a doctrine whose title
does not even appear in the Word of God.

The Lord comes after Tribulation

The coming of the Lord is in the midst of tribulation in
the church according to 2 Thessalonians 1:4-7. Paul tells the
Thessalonians who are experiencing persecution and tribulation

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that God will deal with those who cause the persecution when
the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven. God will give the suf-
fering saints rest when the Lord Jesus comes.

The saints will suffer

Chapter 2 of Thessalonians speaks of the coming of the
“son of perdition”. Judas Iscariot was a particular ‘son of perdi-
tion’ and he betrayed the Son of God Himself. In the last days,
there is coming another and much more powerful ‘son of perdi-
tion’ who will have pervasive influence on the world through
the spirit of apostasy and lawlessness that is coming upon the
earth; he will especially target the true church, having gained
power through the false church, the church that has fallen away.
It is the church of the last days that will suffer for a season be-
cause this evil one is allowed to rule and oppress the saints. This
is clearly prophesied in Daniel 7:21 and Revelation 13:7. If you
look at both those passages you will find that the saints are be-
ing overcome by the ruling of the beast, but the awesome reality
is that finally “judgment was made in favour of the saints of the
Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the king-
dom” Dan.7:22. This same testing time referred to in Revelation
13:7-10 will demonstrate “the patience and the faith of the
saints”.
Matthew 24:13-28 speaks of the great tribulation that
ushers in the coming of the Son of Man. “He who endures to the
end will be saved” v13. We are to endure to the end, not until a
‘rapture’ comes to rescue us, but until Jesus comes who will
deal with our enemies. Jesus promised that He would be with
the church until the end of the age (Matt.28:20) so He will ena-
ble the church to be preaching the gospel to every nation until
the end comes (Matt.24:14). The great tribulation of verse 21
firstly refers to the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem in
AD70. However, because our Lord is answering questions about
the destruction of the temple, as well as the end of the age and
His coming, there is good reason to understand another great
tribulation will take place at the end of the age. But even this
latter tribulation is, in the context, centred in “Judea” (v16). It is
only God’s grace that enables the saints to endure the tribula-
tion. In fact God will “shorten the days for the elect’s sa-
ke”(v22).
The sign of the coming of the Son of Man appears
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“immediately after the tribulation of those days”. That means
that Jesus comes after the tribulation to gather His elect “from
the four winds” v.29-31. The saints, the elect, pass through trib-
ulation. The true saints have done so in every century of the
church age and there is not some special dispensation for late
20th, early 21st century saints. It is time for the church, especial-
ly in the West, to toughen up and become real saints of the Most
High God.

V) PREPARING FOR THE LORD’S RETURN

Many have been taught to prepare for a rapture that res-
cues the believers out of the world before the world is subjected
to great tribulation. In the context of this teaching the believers
are told to be ready but, in reality, they are not being prepared
for the Lord’s return.

Being sanctified and cleansed

How do we prepare for the Lord’s return? In Ephesians
5:22-32, Paul is teaching us that Christ Himself is preparing His
church so that she will be ready for His return. “Just as Christ
also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might
sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word”
v. 25-26. When the word of God is preached and taught, it is
being used by Jesus to cleanse His church. “You are already
clean because of the word which I have spoken to you” Jn.15:3.
Thank God for every opportunity you have to preach or teach,
but make sure you are teaching the apostles doctrine. The word
that goes forth sanctifies the church so that the church might be
presented to Jesus, “that He might present her to Himself a glo-
rious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but
that she should be holy and without blemish” v. 27.

How do we prepare for the Lords return?

By sanctifying and cleansing the church,
through teaching the word,
bringing her to be a glorious, pure, perfect body.

The church is the bride of Jesus Christ and is to be treat-

ed as holy. If we preach a ‘rapture’ that rescues the church out
of a troubled world, believers will believe for the rapture. If we
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preach the perfecting of the church, the preparation of a glorious
bride church, if we preach the grace of God to endure tribulation
and exalt in it (Rom.5:3-5), then we will be preaching and teach-
ing the Word of God accurately and declaring the whole counsel
of God. Believers will believe for what is taught, because “faith
comes by hearing” (Rom.10:17).

Purifying ourselves
“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not
yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He
is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,
and everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as
He is pure” 1 Jn.3:2-3. We are to purify ourselves; this is how
we are to prepare for the Lord’s coming. Our hearts are purified
by God through faith (Acts15:8-9). Peter says that we purify our
souls by “obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of
the brethren” 1Pet.1:22. James says, “cleanse your hands you
sinners, and purify your hearts” from double mindedness
(Ja.4:8). Jesus Himself has purified us to be His own special
people, “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).

The coming of the Lord

Paul gives us more detail about the actual coming of the
Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and also in 2 Thessalonians
1:3-12 and chapter 2. The Scripture tells us that those “who have
fallen asleep in Jesus, God will bring with Him at the coming of
the Lord” 1Thess.4:13-15. This is the wonderful hope that Paul
also refers to in 1 Corinthians 15, that believers who have died
in faith will rise again and, that resurrection takes place, at the
coming of the Lord. The spirit bodies of the saints who have
died are with Jesus now (2Cor.5:8), and they will return to plan-
et earth with Him. Then in some miraculous way their new glo-
rified bodies rise from the earth. There will be a company of
saints who “are alive and remain, who will be caught up togeth-
er with them [the dead in Christ] in the clouds to meet the Lord
in the air” 1Thess.4:17. These words about the coming of the
Lord are meant to bring comfort and encouragement (v. 18).

Glorified in His saints! Admired among all who believe!

When the “Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His

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mighty angels”, He will be present in the “glory of His power,
when He comes, in that day, to be glorified in His saints and to
be admired among all those who believe” 2Thess.1:7,9,10. The
reference to “saints” and “those who believe” seems to be refer-
ring to two groups of people. Jesus will be glorified in the saints.
The saints are those who will be ready and prepared for His
coming and they are the ones who will be caught up to meet the
Lord in the air. It appears there is another much larger group of
people who believe but are not saints.

Saints are holy ones; ones set apart; ones sanctified!

It is the saints who receive glorified bodies
at the coming of the Lord.

There will be many as signified by the five foolish vir-

gins (Matt.25) who believe in Jesus but will not be ready for his
actual parousia [coming] but will “admire Him” when He
comes. I assume that it is all these believers who admire Jesus
when He comes who will be the people who transit into the Mil-
lennium. We know that those “who do not know God and those
who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be
punished with everlasting destruction” 2Thess.1:8-9. Therefore,
idol worshippers, atheists, and those disobedient to the gospel
will not survive the coming of the Lord.
The coming of the Lord will also deal with the “lawless
one, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth
and destroy with the brightness of His coming” 2Thess.2:8
Many teach and believe there are two comings but 2
Thessalonians 1&2 clearly declare that the gathering of the
saints to meet the Lord in the air is the same coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ that will destroy the lawless one.

What Is Apostles Doctrine?

It is the teaching of the Word of God 2Tim.3:16.

It is the whole counsel of God Acts 20:27.

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It is the revelation of the mystery Eph.3:3-5.

It is the deeper wisdom of God 1Cor.2:6-10.

It is Christ revealed, Eph.4:17 Phil.3:8-11.

It is the continual preaching and teaching of Jesus

as the Christ Acts 5:42.

The final picture we have of Apostle Paul

in the Book of Acts 28:30-31 is of him
“preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the
things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with
all confidence, no one forbidding him.”

Conclusion
THE APOSTOLIC REVELATION
In the last ten years, there has been an amazing prolifer-
ation of apostolic ministry across the church of Jesus Christ
world-wide. To walk into a Christian bookshop ten years ago
and find material on ‘apostles today’ was almost impossible.
There may have been one or two books. By 2006 there are a
number of books written by apostles that give insight and under-
standing to the ministry of apostles and that herald the restora-
tion of apostles today. But more than by the written word,
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there are more and more apostles ministering in the nations,

and this is resulting in a deep structural change in the form
of the church and is releasing the deeper teaching of the word
of God, that is, the revelation of the mystery.

As the Lord brings us into the apostolic revelation of

His word, we come to know the authority of Christ in, and
through, His word. It is the deeper wisdom of God’s word that
actually brings us into the glory of God (1Cor.2:7). As we saw
in Chapter 2, Jesus prays for us to receive His glory which He
had with the Father before time began (Jn.17:22).

It is the revelation of the glory of Christ that brings

us into oneness and it is in oneness
that we come to perfection.
There is no other way!

Recently, I shared from John 17 in a house church meet-

ing with a few mature believers. When we finished the study of
the word and entered into prayer, we all experienced a profound
sense of His glory: the weight of His glory fell on us and a num-
ber of the brethren were physically transfixed; they could not
move but were able to worship God in Spirit and truth! We un-
derstood that God was bearing witness to His word and He was
confirming to us that we are entering into a new phase, the third
phase; that we are coming into another dimension, a third di-
mension, where we are totally covered with His glory. As a re-
sult, we can be in the Holiest with the Father and manifest His
glory which is “Christ in us.” The next step is to walk in the glo-
ry - “them that He justified He also glorified” (Rom.8:30).

The whole earth will be filled with His glory

as mature sons, in whom His indwelling presence
has manifested His glory, carry that glory
into the work place, into the market place,
into the homes, into every place being
‘fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth.’ (Gen.1:28)

We are in that generation of millennial change, that time

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of transition into the new age, the age to come (Eph.1:21). Some
are preaching about this as the third day!

We are entering into the third phase

of God’s revealed purpose being fulfilled.
We are to celebrate the third and greatest feast!

The feast of Tabernacles has been forgotten in church

history and replaced by Christmas and the focus of the fulfil-
ment of all things has been lost. Since the Latter Rain revival in
1948, God has been restoring to the church the knowledge of,
and the expectation that, the Feast of Tabernacles will be ful-
filled.
God is calling us to come into the Holy of Holies. It is
only as we understand that Jesus, as the eternal High Priest, has
fulfilled the Day of Atonement and has gone within the veil as a
forerunner for us (Heb.6:19-20), that we can now hear the trum-
pets [the prophetic word of God] calling us into the full apostol-
ic revelation, to understand the immensity of what Jesus has
done by shedding His blood on the cross and then entering into
the Most Holy Place in heaven above with His own blood
(Heb.9:11,12,24). This signifies that all sin has been forgiven
and done away with forever, “I will forgive their iniquity and
remember their sin no more” Jer.31:34b.
This is the New Covenant promise sealed in the blood
of Jesus so that every time we come to the Lord’s table and we
commune [fellowship] in the blood of Christ (1Cor.10:16), we
are acknowledging that Jesus, by His blood, has forgiven all of
our iniquity and God remembers our sin no more. We have
come to the Day of Atonement, knowing that “after He had of-
fered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of
God” Heb.10:12. Jesus has “by one offering perfected forever
those who are being sanctified” Heb.10:14.

The time for the perfect has come!

Everything has been done!
It is time for the church to inherit,
to come into the fulfilment of all things in Christ.

This means that it is time for God to indwell His people,

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“if anyone loves Me, he will keep My words; and My Father
will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home
with him” Jn.14:23. The word ‘home’ in this verse is the same
Greek word as ‘mansion’ in verse 2. It means ‘a dwelling place’;
it means ‘a tabernacle’. It is time for the fulfilment of the Feast
of Tabernacles! It is time to come into the Holy of Holies and
experience the glory of the Father.
It is time to come to know the third person of the God-
head who is actually the first person of the Godhead, “the first
shall be last”. It is time to come to know the Father! And how
does this happen? Jesus said “if they receive you [the apostles]
they receive Me; and if they receive Me they receive the One
[the Father] who sent Me.”

It is essential for apostles to be restored today!

It is time for the apostolic revelation!

Appendix i - APOSTOLIC COUNCIL

Why we need Apostolic Councils
To avoid further denominations
It is time for the apostolic leaders of the church to form
an apostolic council that will provide oversight and leadership
for ministers, ministries and fellowships who are wanting to be
part of the apostolic church as patterned in the Scripture and that
is emerging everywhere today. Such a council would include
leaders of various apostolic companies and apostolic and pro-
phetic bodies. The council being formed is not the beginning of
a new movement, denomination or network but a realistic out-
working of scriptural practice.

Apostolic faith is growing

At some point in the near future, there will be a great
number of saints, ministers and whole fellowships led by their
ministers joining with the apostolic faith which is “the faith once

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and for all delivered to the saints” Jude 3.

For Apostles to be accountable

In the present time, various apostles and prophets have
been raised and companies have gathered around them or
churches have been planted by an apostolic leader, or fellow-
ships and their ministers have come into relationship with an
apostle. However, these leaders do not have any place or forum
where they can relate as peers and submit in a mutual relation-
ship and be accountable for their doctrine and practice. Because
of this, when a problem arises, a leader can act unilaterally and
be out of order, causing unnecessary division and damage.

To avoid a leader drawing away disciples

Another dangerous development is for an individual
leader to become overly influential through his particular inter-
pretation of apostolic teaching and ministry [obviously the same
applies to a prophet or a teacher]. Attention is thereby drawn to
the leader and much emphasis is then placed on that leader’s
opinion and judgment of all things. This is a miss-development
that detracts from the centrality of Jesus and the pre-eminence
that must be given to Him in all things. Such a development
leads to the particular ministry leader and those who adhere to
his teaching and practice becoming a delineated movement, no
longer being a genuine apostolic ministry to the body of Christ.

The Issue of Covering

An issue of importance to most ministers is that of cov-
ering. The apostolic council is clearly under the covering of the
Lord Jesus Christ. In fact there is no other covering for the
church. Jesus alone is the head of all of us and He does not dele-
gate headship, in His church, to any man. Through the mutual
submission of all members, the council then provides oversight
to each member. The apostolic council is according to the pat-
tern of Acts 15.

The Jerusalem Council

Acts 15:5 reports on a serious problem that had arisen in
the church because “some of the sect of the Pharisees who be-
lieved rose up, saying, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them

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[Gentile believers] and to command them to keep the Law of
Moses.’”
v6 Apostles and elders gathered “to consider this matter”.
There was a large number in that council, “multitude” v.12.
v7 “there had been much dispute.”
v12 But after Peter had spoken of his experience in Cor-
nelius’ house (Acts 10) and Paul and Barnabas were now to
speak, the multitude kept silent and listened. When apostles,
with present truth to share, speak, they command the attention of
everyone.
v15 James then brings the council to a proper conclusion by
bringing the quickened word from the Scripture: it is written!
The Scripture finally settles the issue and that should be our
motto: Scripture alone. The Scripture is our only authority for
faith and practice.
v22 Notice the reference to “their own company”. The idea
of apostolic company has a scriptural basis.
v25 While the council started in dispute, they finally were
able to say “It seemed good to us, being assembled with one
accord.” Being in one accord is the goal that we can achieve by
being willing to handle disputes in a biblical way and allowing
the Holy Spirit and the word of God to be the final arbiters, not
the will of a strong leader.
v28 “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” The
Holy Spirit is the head of the apostolic council.
v31 Good fruit came from the Jerusalem council: when the
letter was read in Antioch “they rejoiced over its encourage-
ment.”

A Smaller Apostolic Council

In Galatians 2:1-10, Paul tells of his going up to Jerusa-
lem with Barnabas and Titus to purposefully communicate the
gospel that he was preaching “among the Gentiles” v2. He met
with James, Peter and John “who seemed to be pillars” v9. Paul,
as a senior apostle and a man who clearly knew the call and
commissioning of the Lord and who received awesome revela-
tion of the gospel, wanted to communicate with the leading
apostles in Jerusalem. It was in this meeting of apostles that it
became clear that Paul was to go to the Gentiles while Peter was
to specifically lead ministry “for the circumcised” v7-8.
Notice that there was no hierarchy among these apos-
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tles. One was not ‘the spiritual father’ of the others. Rather they
recognised that they were peers and that the Father of all is
the Apostle, Jesus Christ.

The aim is ONENESS

The council is a place where leaders of various groups
can come together because of a shared commitment to the end
goal. This goal is clearly expressed in Ephesians 4:12-16, spe-
cifically v15b-16 “growing up in all things into Him who is the
head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit to-
gether by what every joint supplies, according to the effective
working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the
body for the edifying of itself in love.”
Each group pursues the vision the Lord has given to
them and therefore contributes into the body for the up-building
of the whole body. The council enables various leaders to come
into a place of safety and security, where they are recognised
and received.

*****************************

Appendix ii - DISCIPLESHIP COURSES

For Christian ministers and serious disciples
These courses have been prepared for brethren who are serious
disciples of the word of God and there are four courses availa-
ble.

Certificate I:
- Nine modules based on the teaching manuals and two
seminars.
- Verse by verse study of gospels of Matthew and Mark

Certificate II :
- Seven modules based on the teaching manuals, the book
’Walking in Our Inheritance’ and two seminars.
- Verse by verse studies of gospels of Luke and John

Certificate III:

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- The book ‘Apostles Today’ and four modules based on
the teaching manuals plus actual teaching from nine teach-
ing brochures.
- Verse by verse study of book of Acts and Hebrews

Certificate IV:
- Eight modules based on teaching manuals plus actual
teaching from ten teaching brochures.
- Verse by verse study of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians
and Colossians

Scripture Studies
Each course includes verse by verse studies of books of the
New Testament. In Cert 1 and Cert II, we recommend that
the class reads through the Scriptures together, making sure
that all participants understand the Word. In Cert III and
Cert IV, we recommend that students are nominated each
week to prepare the studies and lead the studies in small
groups of 6-10 people.

Each certificate course includes practical components.

* Memorizing Scriptures in particular subject areas, with at
least one verse per week in Cert I and II and short passages
in Cert III and IV.
* The regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper
* Disciplined reading of the Scripture – the whole Bible in one
year.

Certificates will be issued at the end of each course to those

who successfully complete the course.

Seminars
There needs to be a seminar:
1. At the beginning of the course to introduce apostolic teaching
to the disciples and,
2. At the end of the course to complete the teaching and gradu-
ate the successful students. Seminars need to be presented by an
apostle or apostolic teacher.

Curriculum - based on manuals, books, teaching tracts and

a verse by verse study of various books of the New Testa-

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ment

The manuals and books that are to be studied will be made

available to the acting principal of the course and copies can be
made for all participants if that is possible.
Each module is based on a manual [written by Paul Galligan or
one of the team at Revival Ministries Australia] or a book, or
teaching tracts.

Training to teach
In Cert III and IV, the participants are to do the teaching from
the tracts, manuals and books, and are to lead the scripture stud-
ies. The goal of the instruction is to make disciples and then
train the disciples to teach others.

Timetable and Content

We recommend that the school meets at least one half day
per week and that at least two sessions are presented each
day. Please note that some of the sessions in some of the
manuals have recommended workshops that the students
are expected to participate in.

Each course is the equivalent of nine modules. Normally a

module is one manual and the books in the course are equal
to 2 modules each. Some of the sessions are longer and an
individual session may take up to three hours. Some of the
sessions are shorter and therefore more sessions can be
covered in one day. Most of the sessions are average length
and we suggest two sessions per day.

Each session is normally a chapter of one of the manuals or

the books. The students need to note the main points of
each chapter’s teaching as they study the material. When
the study of the material is complete and the student has
noted the main points, then each student is to write briefly
how they see the word applying in the church today.

In the Cert III and IV there are two modules that are devot-
ed to developing practical ministry skills – preaching and
teaching set biblical topics. Each Certificate course should
be successfully completed in approximately 30-40 weeks,

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following the above schedule.

DISCIPLESHIP COURSE I
The following 9 modules are based on teaching manuals pre-
sented by Revival Ministries Australia. Module 10 is a Scripture
study on the gospels of Matthew and Mark. There are no assess-
ments prescribed but we encourage the teachers of the sessions
to ensure that the students have understanding of, and are able to
practise what is taught in each session. Some discipleship
schools have devised assessment sheets but we have not been
able to access and arrange such sheets.

PRACTICAL MINISTRY
These are the details of the practical ministry required
throughout Discipleship course I & II.

I ) The Lord’s Supper

Many churches neglect celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Some
churches have communion once a month, some once in a while
and some never. In the Scripture the Lord’s Supper was cele-
brated daily in the early church (Acts2:42,46). Every time the
discipleship class meets, we ask the disciples to celebrate the
Lord’s Supper and for the teacher of the course to lead and mod-
el its practise. We encourage you every time you partake to have
an expectation to meet with Jesus.

Who can participate

Many churches have religious rules that have governed the con-
duct of the Lord’s Supper and have excluded children from par-
ticipating. We find that there are no such rules in the Scripture.
The early Christians broke bread in the houses of the believers
and we can rightly assume that every family member was in-
cluded even as the Philippian jailer and his whole household
were baptised in Acts 16:33.

Children obviously can have saving faith in Jesus Christ; there-

fore children with saving faith can participate in the Lord’s Sup-
per and can be baptised in water. Jesus specifically said, “Suffer
the little children to come unto me.”Matt.19:14.
The elements used

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 What Is Apostles’ Doctrine?
Another issue that needs to be frankly looked at is the issue of
the ‘elements’ used in the Lord’s Supper. In the context of the
Passover Meal in which Jesus gave us the Table, He used bread
and wine, which were both Biblically and culturally accepted
elements in that meal. However in Western Kenya, for example,
it can be difficult to actually purchase bread as it is not part of
the normal diet. Secondly we tend to use grape juice or some
similar juice; we do not use wine as such, except in some of the
older denominations.

Therefore it is quite acceptable to God to ‘remember Jesus’ in

the context of the normal meal we participate in, that is, Ugali
and Kenyan tea in the case of West Kenya. The real issue is to
remember Jesus regularly in the context of the believers sharing
a meal together

II) Practical Ministry - Bible study

Each student doing the certificate course needs to commit to
daily reading of the Bible. We recommend reading the whole
Bible in one year according to a prescribed plan. Simply begin
reading according to the plan on the date you receive it. (Plans
are available on request)

As an apostolic community we have been reading the Bible

through annually for some years and we have been very blessed
by being instructed by the Word through regular committed
reading and study. Because the disciples are all reading the same
passages of Scripture, this enriches our fellowship together.

Module One: PRAYER - Prayer a way of life (6 sessions)

1. Prayer: communication with God
2. Listening to God and talking to Him
3. The Lord’s Prayer
4. Praying Scripture
5. Fasting
6. Praying in the Spirit

Module Two: FOUNDATIONAL DOCTRINES -

The Word and the Spirit (7 sessions)
1. Salvation
2. The Word of God
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 Apostles Today
3. Who is the Holy Spirit
4. The Holy Spirit comes: how to be filled
5. The Spiritual gifts
6. Going on to Maturity: the five-fold ministry
7. The seven grace gifts – Romans 12

Module Three: FOUNDATIONAL DOCTRINES – Founda-

tions of our Faith,
Hebrews 6:1-2 (8 Sessions)
1. What must we do to be saved?
2. Repentance from dead works
3. Faith toward God
4. The doctrine of Baptisms
5. Laying on of hands
6. Resurrection of the dead
7.Eternal Judgement
8.Going on to maturity
Please Note: Some of the sessions in this manual are long; we
recommend that extra time is allowed.

Module Four: THE CHURCH – I will build my church

(5 sessions)
1. Jesus will build His church
2. Jesus trains Apostles to lead and build
3. The Apostles obey—the Church emerges
4. The Church—the Body of Christ
5. The Church—the Bride of Christ

Module Five: THE CHURCH – Planting the church (4

sessions)
1. What is the church
2. Planting the church
3. Growing the church
4. Maturing the church
Module Six: GOING ON TO MATURITY – From the
Cross to the Glory (7 sessions)
1. Introduction: the message of the cross; glorification is
the goal
2. Justification
3. Sanctification
4. Sanctified by the Blood
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 The Apostolic Revelation
5. Sanctified by the Word
6. Sanctified by the Spirit
7. Exploring the Glory

Module Seven: BUILDING THE CHURCH - Steps to

Revival (8 sessions)
1. The church of the last days: a study in Ephesians, part
one
2. The church of the last days: a study in Ephesians, part two
3. Returning to our first love: what are the first works
4. The Breaking of Bread in Scripture
5. The assurance of Zion’s salvation: the role of consistent com-
mitted prayer
6. Salvation for the Gentiles: My house shall be called a house
of prayer for all nations
7. The Great Commission: a plan for evangelism
8. Entering into the gates of the Holy City

Module Eight: APOSTOLIC MINISTRY – And He gave

some to be Apostles The five-fold ministry of Ephesians 4:11
(7 sessions)
1. Introduction to the five-fold ministry & reviewing
five-fold ministry gift in the book of Acts
2. Ministry gift of the Apostle
3. Ministry gift of the Prophet
4. Ministry gift of the Evangelist
5. Ministry gift of the Pastor
6. Ministry gift of the Teacher
7. Grace to grow to Maturity: Ephesians 4:7-16

Module Nine: APOSTOLIC CHURCH – Faith in Practice (6

sessions)
1. Baptism
2. The Breaking of Bread
3. Tithing
4. Ministry in the house
5. Proclaiming apostolic doctrine, raising apostolic companies
6. Building the church
Some of these sessions are the equivalent of double sessions

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 Apostles Today
Module Ten: PRACTICAL - Scripture Studies
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark (44 chapters);
At least one chapter per week is to be studied together be-
ing led by the course teacher. If the School is finishing be-
fore 44 weeks, the final chapters of Mark can be studied
together to complete the book.

Module Eleven: PRACTICAL - Scripture Memorisa-

tion
One verse of Scripture per week is to be memorised.

N.B. Guidelines for Scripture memorisation are available

but we recommend the course leader chooses verses from
the context of the studies each week.

DISCIPLESHIP COURSE II
This course involves seven manuals and the book “Walking in
Our Inheritance”. It totals eleven modules and some sessions of
the manuals may take longer than others. You will notice in the
curriculum that each chapter of the book is to be covered in two
sessions.

PRACTICAL MINISTRY: The Lord’s Table & Bible Study

Same as Discipleship Course I, please refer there for guid-
ance.

Module One: EVANGELISM - This Gospel Must be

Preached (8 sessions)
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 Apostolic Council
1. The Great Commission
2. Preach the Gospel, Cast out devils, Heal the Sick
3. Witnessing, discernment and leading another to Christ
4. Prayer Evangelism
5. Evangelism on the ground – the example of Luke 10
6. The Holy Spirit in the life of the believer
7. Evangelism and the power of God
8. The Gift of Evangelism and Equipping the Saints for the
work of Evangelism

Module Two: PRAYER – The Power of Prayer (7 sessions)

1. Introduction – understanding prayer and getting right with
God
2. Jesus Christ – the focus of prayer
3. Praise in Prayer
4. Gifts of the Holy Spirit in prayer
5. The armour of God
6. Weapons of our warfare
7. Intercession

Module Three: APOSTOLIC MINISTRY –

A Strategy to reach the Nation (6 sessions)
1. Groundwork: God’s plan, go forth!
2. Prayer: the essential element in preparation and
planting
3. Vision, strategy and work
4. Evangelism: bring in the harvest
5. The vision Jesus has for His church, Revelation 2:1-7
6. Prophecy: the ministry gift of the prophet and the
charismatic gift of Prophecy

Module Four: GOING ON TO MATURITY – The Glo-

ry of the Lord shall be Revealed (7 sessions)
1. Our Redeeming God: the story of redemption
2. The emergence of the five-fold ministry gift in the book
of Acts
3. Levels of training and equipping in the church based on
the five-fold ministry of Jesus
4. A Holy Priesthood: ministers for revival, a study of Eze-
kiel 44
5. The King Priest: who is Melchizedek? Tithing, the order
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of the royal Priesthood
6. The two anointed ones of Zechariah 4
7. The glory shall be a covering over all: a study of Isaiah
chapter 4

Module Five: GOING ON TO MATURITY – Let us go

on to Perfection (6 sessions)
1. The same Anointing that Jesus had
2. Who are Apostles and what do Apostles do?
3. The male child – the victorious church
4. Restoration of the Tabernacle of David – salvation for
the Gentiles
5. The Tabernacle of Moses – entering the glory
6. That Great Day of the Feast – the Feasts of Israel in
fulfilment

Module Six: LEADERSHIP – Leadership in the Last Days

Church (8 sessions)
1. Leadership – “Men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit,
full of wisdom”
2. Eldership – “Ordain elders in every place”
3. Part one: Lord of Hosts – covering, Zechariah 4
4. Part two: Lord of Hosts – covering, Elijah-Elisha relation-
ship
5. What is apostles doctrine?
6. Aspects of apostolic doctrine
7. Biblical House church
8. Intercession – within the veil

Module Seven: LEADERSHIP – The Spirit and Power of

Elijah (6 sessions)
1. Apostles are Fathers
2. Restoration – Why we need apostles
3. The Sons of Rechab – an apostolic company
4. Change of Leadership – the key of David, from Shebna to Eli-
akim
5. Unmasking the Jezebel spirit
6. The sons of Issacar – it is time to make Jesus King

Module Eight: “WALKING IN OUR INHERITANCE” by

Paul Galligan (7 sessions)
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 Apostolic Council
1. Glossary and Introduction
2. Becoming the Sons of God (2 sessions)
3. Called to be an Apostolic Company (2 sessions)
4. The Mystery of the Church (2 sessions)

Module Nine: “WALKING IN OUR INHERITANCE”

by Paul Galligan (9 sessions)
1. Jesus our Apostle (2 sessions)
2. Walking in our Inheritance (2 sessions)
3. The Day of the Saints (2 sessions)
4. Ruling and Reigning with Christ (2 sessions)
5. Conclusion and Testimonies

Module Ten: PRACTICAL - Scripture Studies

The Gospels of Luke and John (45 chapters).
At least one chapter per week to be studied together being
led by the course teacher. If the school is finishing before
45 weeks the final chapters of John can be studied together
to complete the book.
Module Eleven: PRACTICAL - Scripture Memorisa-
tion
One verse of Scripture per week is to be memorised.
N.B. Guidelines for Scripture memorisation are available
but we recommend the course leader chooses verses from
the context of the studies each week.

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DISCIPLESHIP COURSE III

This Course will take the students deeper in the word of God
and will be more focused on training and equipping the students
to minister to others through practical ministry. The curriculum
is nine modules, which includes four teaching manuals, the book
“Apostles Today” and nine teaching tracts.

Each week a student should be assigned to minister by present-

ing a teaching from the teaching tracts on a particular subject
(see Module seven for details). Also, each week in the Scrip-
ture Studies session (see Module eight for details), the stu-
dents are to separate into small groups of 7-8 people. These
groups are to have a different student each week assigned to
lead the study.

PRACTICAL MINISTRY
Same as Discipleship Course I & II, except that now a differ-
ent student should be assigned to minister the Lord’s Table
each week.

Module One: “APOSTLES TODAY” by Paul Galligan (7

sessions)
1. Preface & Introduction
2. A Change of Leadership (2 sessions)

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3. The Finished work of Jesus the Apostle (2 sessions)
4. Why we need Apostles Today (2 sessions)

Module Two: “APOSTLES TODAY” by Paul Galligan (9

sessions)
1. Apostles are Fathers (2 sessions)
2. What is an Apostle? (2 sessions)
3. Characteristics of apostolic Ministry (2 sessions)
4. What is Apostolic Doctrine? (2 sessions)
5. The Apostolic Revelation & Apostolic Council

Each student is to write a testimony of how they came into

the apostolic revelation and what it means to them. [one
page minimum but no more than two pages of computer
type]

Module Three: SPIRITUAL WARFARE (5 sessions)

1. First Level of Spiritual Warfare – Individual
2. Second Level of Spiritual Warfare – Local Church
3. Third Level of Spiritual Warfare – Against World Powers
4. Walking in Victory and Exhortation
5. Testimonies of Warfare

Module Four: THE GLORY OF MESSIAH (7 sessions)

1. Introduction and The Beginning
2. The Gospel
3. JESUS
4. ‘CHRIST’ the translation of MESSIAH
5. MESSIAH, the Great Ruler
6. Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ
7. The Son of God

Module Five: APOSTOLIC TEACHINGS –

The Heart of the Matter (11 sessions)
1. The Call to Follow Jesus
2. Walking in the Power of the Resurrection
3. The Church that Jesus is Building
4. There is One… the Seven Ones
5. Biblical House Church
6. The Church that meets in Houses
7. The Third Day Church
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8. Elijah is Coming First and will Restore all Things
9. The Man Child Company
10. Nature of an Overcoming People
11. The Apostolic Company

Module Six: APOSTOLIC TEACHINGS –

Stewards of the Mysteries (12 sessions)
1. Introduction and Ministers of the Mystery
2. Great is the Mystery of Godliness
3. The Transformation of the Saints
4. Four parts Grace - Two parts Truth
5. Comfort one another with these Words
6. The Kingdom of God, the Coming of the Lord, the Message of
Sonship
7. The Apostolic Revelation**
8. Why Sonship?
9. Experiencing the Grace of God
10. Aspects of the Doctrine of Sonship
11. The Fivefold Blessing of the Father
12. The Great Intercession

Module Seven: PRACTICAL – Teaching from tracts on

particular topics. Each student begins to teach.
Each student must be able to teach/preach for 20 minutes on
nine of the subjects outlined in the tracts. Initially each student
will present the teaching to the assembled class or if there is a
larger group, a class needs to break into smaller groups to enable
everyone to do their presentation. However once the students
have had two or three practices they are then required to find a
small group outside of the discipleship class to share the word
with. This will be a real opportunity for each student to begin to
reach out in ministry.
1. Is Anyone in Charge? (Evangelistic)
2. How do I Get Saved? (Evangelistic)
3. What is the Bible?
4. What Foundations are you Building on?
5. Who I am in Christ
6. Baptism
7. Which Church do You Belong to?
8. The Sufficiency of the Grace of God
9. Are there Apostles Today?
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Module Eight: PRACTICAL – Scripture Studies

A study of the books of Acts and Hebrews (41 chapters);

At least one chapter per week to be studied now with a stu-

dent leading a small group of 7 to 8 people. If the school is
finishing before 41 weeks the final chapters of Hebrews
can be studied together to complete the book.

Module Nine: PRACTICAL – Scripture Memorisation

Short passages of two to four verses per week are to be
memorised .
N.B. Guidelines for Scripture memorisation are available
but we recommend the course leader chooses verses from
the context of the studies each week.

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 Apostles Today

DISCIPLESHIP COURSE IV

This course is a continuation of deeper studies in the word of

God, as well as refreshing the students in the basic principles of
Christ. There are Eleven modules which include seven manuals
and ten teaching tracts. This Course functions the same as
Course III (see introduction to Course III), with the focus be-
ing on training and equipping the students to minister through
the teaching tracts (see Module nine) and the Scripture Study
groups (see Module ten).

PRACTICAL MINISTRY
Same as Discipleship Course I & II, except that now a different
student should be assigned to minister the Lord’s Table each
week.

Module One: BASIC APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE -

Basic Discipleship (7 sessions)
1. What do you say about Jesus?
Who is Jesus? His Life (Part 1)
Who is Jesus? His Life (Part 2)
2. Who is Jesus? His Death (Part 1)
Who is Jesus? His Death (Part 2)
3. Who is Jesus? His Resurrection (Part 1)
Who is Jesus? His Resurrection (Part 2)
4. Truth Revealed
Where do I go From Here?
5. What is the Bible?
To be Born again
What must I do to be saved?
6. Repentance from dead Works
Faith toward God
7. Doctrine of Baptisms
Laying on of Hands

Module Two: BASIC APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE - Basic

Discipleship (6 sessions)

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1. Resurrection of the Dead (Part 1)
Resurrection of the Dead (Part 2)
Eternal Judgement
2. Let us go on to Perfection (Part 1)
Let us go on to Perfection (Part 2)
3. The first works of the Church
The Breaking of Bread
What is Prayer?
4. The Lord’s Prayer (Part 1)
The Lord’s Prayer (Part 2)
5. Who is the Holy Spirit (Part 1)
Who is the Holy Spirit (Part 2)
6. The Holy Spirit comes - How to be filled
How does God guide?

Module Three: WHO CAN BE A DISCIPLE? (5 sessions)

1. Introduction
Abiding in the Word
Answered Prayer - The Fruit of a Disciple
2. Loving and Serving as Jesus Loved
3. What Prohibits a man from being a Disciple?
4. Characteristics of a Disciple
The Responsibilities of a Disciple
5. Sent into the World as Jesus was Sent
The Empowering of the Disciple
The Disciple’s Charge

Module Four: WHO IS THE SON OF GOD?

That I may Worship Him (6 sessions)
1. The Blessed Hope
The Generation of Sons is Arising
2. Apostolic Succession
3. Established in the Gospel
4. Chosen to know His Will
5. The Manifestation of the Name
6. Washed in the Apostolic - a revelation of the Son of God
(John 9)

Module Five: THE CITY WILL BE BUILT (10 sessions)

1. Jesus and the Bride - Are you in love with Jesus?
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2. The City will be Built
3. The Church has Foundations
4. Living the Perfect Life
5. When the Church Prays
6. Steps to Glory
7. The Dwelling Place of God
8. The Church! The Kingdom!
9. Apostles – The Master Builders
10. Apostolic Theology

Module Six: AS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH (8 sessions)

1. In My Father’s House
2. Workers for the Harvest
3. The Wheat and the Tares
4. The Reality of the Rapture? (Part 1)
5. The Reality of the Rapture? (Part 2)
6. The Reality of the Rapture? (Part 3)
7. The Reality of the Rapture? (Part 4)
8. As in the Days of Noah
9. The Victorious Gospel
10. Key Words in Matthew 24:39-41

Module Seven: ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE (6 sessions)

1. Sacrifices Acceptable to God
2. Tithing and Giving in the Church Today
3. Feed your belly and fill your stomach - Ezekiel 3:3
4. Paul’s Charge to Timothy - 1 Timothy
5. The Commission
6. The Shaking and the Signet

Module Eight: ONLY SPEAK THE WORD (10 Ses-

sions)
Only Speak the Word
Go and Make Disciples
A Band of Disciples
Sons to Glory
Salvation of Your Souls
Day of Atonement
Apostolic Company
Jesus the Apostle
The Glory of God is to fill the Earth
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A Message of Hope

Module Nine: PRACTICAL – Teaching from tracts on

particular topics. Each student begins to teach.
Each student must be able to teach/preach for 20 minutes
on nine of the subjects outlined in the tracts. Initially each
student will present the teaching to the assembled class or
if there is a larger group, a class needs to break into smaller
groups to enable everyone to do their presentation.
However once the students have had two or three practices
they are then required to find a small group outside of the
discipleship class to share the word with. This will be a real
opportunity for each student to begin to reach out in minis-
try.

1. The Glory of Christ

2. The Church is the Body of Christ
3. God has made us Kings and Priests
4. Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest
5. Jesus said: “Do this is in remembrance of Me”
6. Put on the whole Armour of God
7. Who are Apostles?
8. What is Sonship?
9. Tithing - a means to Dominion
10. God’s Goal for His Church is to come to Maturity

Module Ten: PRACTICAL - Scripture Studies

A study of the books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians
and Colossians. If the course is divided up into four terms,
each term you will study through one of these books divid-
ing the book into a passage per week that completes one
book per term.

Module Eleven: PRACTICAL - Scripture Memorisation

Short passages of two to four verses per week are to be memo-
rised.

N.B. Guidelines for Scripture memorisation are available but we

recommend the course leader chooses verses from the context of
the studies each week

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