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Well, your alleged "discernment" is false.Brothertom said:So...God surgically removed just 2 of the 5......because it fits into the "cessationest" idea? That Scripture alone will fulfill your holy quest? No, He gave gifts unto men...as a package....& as Charisma...the gifts of the Spirit....which I discern you do not believe in either. I'm glad I'm not you....but Dogma has no challenge.....& I will not try to persuade you.....it can only end in strife.
How would we detect a false apostle? BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM. I have seen prophets do a MARVELOUS job of calling out every hunting person in a service and ministering to them with very accurate prophecies. But then at offering time, He tried to prophesy money from us to him. That was a FRUIT by which I reconized Him! I was reminded of Balaam. Balaam prophesied accurately ever word. But his heart was wrong. Your theory is just that, only a false theory with no scripture to back it.kaotic profit said:Lamad,
Is that all there is to it? Is it as simple as, "there are still prophets and apostles because the church is still here!" Is that's as deep as you can get into discovering truth?
When I make my decision as to what to believe I look at the scriptural evidence. If then I still have questions I do a word study. Then it's helpful to see what other commentators have to say. In this case it's not too important to do a word study because the evidence is already there. This is part of what's called a hermeneutic. Something I wish more Christians had.
Did you read the OP? Let me summarize for you.
Maybe looking at these verses in another translation would help you understand what's implied since you don't like word studies because they always prove you wrong.
Do you so easily write such nonsense against a fellow brother in the Lord, just because you don't agree?
16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
Hebrews 1:1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
What does this MEAN? I take it for exactly what it says: the dispensation of LAW was suspended with John, but will resume for the 70th week of Daniel.
Ephesians 2:19-20 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
No other foundation can be laid what the cornerstone foundation; which the original 12 apostles built upon..
Ephesians 3:5-6 Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:
Not sure why you brought up this one,but thank God Gentiles have become fellow heirs!
There have only been a few dozen (or so) prophets throughout history. In the OT God spoke through the prophets by wonders like the burning bush etc. The Holy Spirit wasn't as active in those days as He is today. The prophets of the OT were often exiled and often prophesied concerning Israel and Christ first and second coming. God used Israel to bring about the Messiah to save the world and is God's message to the world. No more prophets are needed to proclaim it. That's the mission of the church.
The Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost to perform a NEW ROLE. Part of that role was to be our teacher. Another part of that role was to bring gifts of the Spirit to the church: See 1 Cor. 12 for the list. Following the list of the 9 gifts of the Spirit, we see a list of gifts of MEN (or women) given to the church.
28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.
These all are PEOPLE being gifted to local bodies of believers. An apostle is a PERSON. A prophet is a PERSON. A teacher is a PERSON. So "diversities of tongues" is speaking of PEOPLE placed in a local body to give messages in tongues to be interpreted (equal with prophecy). It seems you wish to pull out the first two and say they are not for today. How silly can one be? This is a list given by the Holy Spirit and written by Paul. What gives you the right to rewrite it? If the church still exists, then God has set in the church ALL these gifts. Perhaps you have not see the ministry of a prophet. I have, many times. I have been blessed by prophecies given to ME several times. They were of great benefit to me, confirming in me what God had already said.
What is an apostle? He is one that STARTS churches, and corrects doctrine in churches. An apostle will have several of the gifts of the Spirit operating in him including one of the POWER gifts. We easily see this in the life of Peter and Paul. ARe there people that starts churches today? OF COURSE there are! I know two or three apostles that have started hundreds of churches each. ARe there prophets today? OF COURSE there are. They will have the gift of prophecy, and be placed in the office of the prophet. I have had prophets "read my mail" just as we see in the bible. Sometimes it seemed they knew more about my or my situation than I did! On one partucular occasion, I had been praying very hard to get a spirit of rebellion out of my son. It had seemed hopless. But I had FAITH. We (I and my son) went to some meetings, and our faith was that he would be delivered at these meetings. On the last night, someone gave me a personnal prophecy, telling me HOW this spirit got in, WHEN it got in, and WHY I had been unable to get it out. It was a miracle night for us. We both left those meetings changed. My son had been fluncking that grade; having flunked it the year before also. He came back a changed son. His grades changed drastically. The next year, he took a home computer course, many books, many lesson, over two years or so, and completed ALL of them on his own. Today he works as desktop support for HP. My point is, a PROPHET and the gift of prophecy was what set my son free.
Another time, when I moved to another city to attend bible school (late in life), I visited a church (looking for a new church home in a new city) And the pastor called me up and gave a lengthly prophecy over me. He had never seen me before. Again, this man read my mail! He gave a synopsis of my entire life, and finished by saying I was right on course. it was a VERY uplifting prophecy.
Therefore, you need to take off preconceived glasses and start over.
Before the church was established Spiritual gifts were administered to only certain individuals hand picked by God. As the Spiritual gifts emerged into the general population of the church, the apostles eventually died off and the prophets were no longer necessary.
Yes, in the Old covenant, only the prophet, priest or king was anointed, and gifts such as the gift of miracles was only seen in the prophet. In fact, all the gifts of the Spirit were seen in the Old testament, except for tongues and interpretation of tongues. Under the New Covenant, God said the manifestation of the Spirit is given to EVERY MAN.... So every believer should have at least one of the gifts of the Spirit flowing through him or her to bless others. We are told to covet these gifts. What you wrote it bold is utter nonsense, only the reasonings of men. You cannot find that ANYWHERE in scripture, and the very idea is preposterous. Is the church still here? Then the offices God has set in the CHURCh are still here.
Now that we have the fullness of God's Spirit some can 'prophesy.' That's a gift. NOT AN OFFICE!
ANYONE can prophesy. Did you not read? 1 Cor. 14:31 For ye may all prophesy one by one... Agreed, that is a gift, not the office. But who told you the office has been done away with? You certainly did not get that from the Word of God. It is the reasoning of men.
Another brother said...
The truth is that God gave us Prophets (Old Testament) and Apostles (New Testament) for the establishing of the church. Prophets pointed ahead to Jesus. Apostles point back to Jesus. But, now God speaks to us through His Son.
"God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world," (Heb. 1:1-2).
And to be an apostle there were two qualifications. An apostle must have seen Jesus and witnessed his resurrection.
The apostles were hand-picked by Jesus himself.
____________________________________________
Apostles TODAY are picked by Jesus. Nothing has changed. The first 12 SAW Jesus. Others did not.
Acts 14:14 Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul.....
Did Barnabas ever see Jesus? VERY unlikely, for he came from Cyprus!
Ephesians 4:11-13
King James Version (KJV)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
Has the church completely come in the unity of the Faith....unto a perfect man? Are we all measuring up to the stature of the fullness of Christ? CERTAINLY NOT! Yet, this is the PURPOSe of the apostles, prophetes, and other ministries. So to pick the first two and say they are not for today is a HUGE mistake.
And when it was day, he [JESUS] called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles;
Not only were the original twelve apostles hand-picked by Jesus, Paul was as well.
Conclusion
So are there apostles today? I have given a number of reasons why there are not. Let’s just review them briefly.
1) There are no apostles today because the apostles served as a foundation for the early church only. We should not expect to see apostles today any more than we should expect to see someone laying a building’s foundation on the fourth floor.
You have MISSED the biggest reason for Apostles and prophets TODAY. The church needs some MAJOR growing up.
2) There are no apostles today because they had to have seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. The apostles were to bear witness to the resurrection of Christ. To do this they had to have seen him after he rose from the dead. Paul says that he was the last person to see Jesus. Since no one since Paul has seen Jesus, no one since Paul can be an apostle.
This reason is PURE MYTH! There is no scripture to back this human theory. Please find a scripture that says all apostles had to have SEEN Jesus. I think you are misquoting Paul. Did he REALLY say that? MANY today have seen Christ, for He has called some to heaven and they have SEEN Him.
3) There are no apostles today because apostles had to be hand-picked by Jesus. Jesus isn't around to pick anyone.
MYTH: Jesus is STILL head of the church! He STILL calls and equips.
4) There are no apostles today because no one today has the miracle-working power of an apostle. Apostles were able to heal any physical condition. No case was to difficult. These healings often involved the miraculous recreation of body parts, and even the resurrection of the dead. No one is manifesting this type of miracle-working power today that I know of.
WRONG AGAIN! Where do you live? Have you had blinders on? Oh, perhaps those pesky preconceived glasses! Did you never read of Smith Wigglesworth who raised 19 people or so from the dead? Where have you been? Did you never hear of John G Lake? Did you ever hear of Jack Koe?Did you ever hear of the great healing revival from 1947 to 1958? Did you ever see the "Voice of Healing" magazine? In 1950, over 1000 healing evangelists gathered together at a Voice of Healing convention. Have you noticed at all what Reinhard Bonnke has done over the past 20 years? Without a doubt, he has preached face to face to more people that any other human being. Before him, It was T.L.Osborn. He had thousands of miracles in his meetings, that would begin while he was preaching. I have personally seen many miracles of healing. Once I saw a leg grow out 3 plus inches in one instant of time! (His leg had been crushed in an auto accident.) It is too late to tell me miracles have ceased! I have seen most, if not all of the 9 gifts of the spirit in operation.
Not all NT prophets were apostles. And not all apostles were prophets! The apostles eventually died off but were still prophets for only a short time after the apostles died off.
These are two different offices, but all apostles could prophesy. John outlived all the rest. Can you imagine, John in his 90's, and there are a thousand people in line, waiting for his hand to touch them for healing. He is so weak someone else has to lift his hand onto the next person. EVERY ONE who he touches is healed. But suddenly he gasps, takes his last breath and dies. The leaders then tell all the people hoping for a miracle: "you all go home! The last apostle has died, and miracles have ceased!" Well, the miracles did not come from the apostles, they came from the Holy Spirit! Has the Holy Spirit died? Of course not! All nine gifts of the Spirit are still in operation, and all offices are STILL OPEN, and will be until the church is called home. God is the same today as He was then. Nothing has changed but the generations.
The Bible warns us not to be deceived by false apostles. Since there are no true apostles or prophets today. Anyone who claims to be an apostle or prophet is a false one.
Scripture references and quotes iamlamad posted.iamlamad said:How would we detect a false apostle? BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM. I have seen prophets do a MARVELOUS job of calling out every hunting person in a service and ministering to them with very accurate prophecies. But then at offering time, He tried to prophesy money from us to him. That was a FRUIT by which I reconized Him! I was reminded of Balaam. Balaam prophesied accurately ever word. But his heart was wrong. Your theory is just that, only a false theory with no scripture to back it.
Lamad
Scripture references and quotes in the OP.....
I've never seen Jesus with my eyes, but I've "seen" Him with my spirit throughout the writings of the Old testament. Some years ago my wife and I were looking at something in a local Mall jewelry store and got into a conversation with the salesman about our faith. It turned out that the salesman was a professing Christian as well. However, he was born to a Jewish family. He "converted" to Christianity after an unusual experience many years previously. He had served in the Army in Viet Nam and survived a heavy "fire fight" in the jungle or among the rice paddies, and all around him were the fallen dead from the battle. Then he saw in the midst of them, a man with a beard and robed in bright white walking about looking at the dead bodies. For whatever reason, this former G.I. was convinced that the man robed in white was Jesus Christ and from that moment he believed and joined some church. I wasn't there and have no reason to believe that this man would lie to us about such a thing, but he certainly didn't claim to be an Apostle, nor did it appear that he had any desire to be anything other than an honest salesman. Who are you to make the claim that no one has seen the resurrected Christ since the original Apostles? Are you omniscient? Or perhaps Omnipresent? Perhaps we should be worshipping you, but somehow I doubt it.Dodo_David said:Well, your alleged "discernment" is false.
As I said before, Apostles no longer exist, because, in order to be an Apostle, one has to be an eye-witness of the resurrected Messiah, and nobody alive today is such an eye-witness.
If Apostles can cease to exist, then prophets can also cease to exist. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 13:8 the Apostle Paul says, "Where there are prophecies, they will cease."
Paul said, "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" (1 Cor 9:1)kaotic profit said:Scripture references and quotes iamlamad posted.
Scripture references and quotes in the OP.....
Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
Hebrews 1:1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
Ephesians 3:5 says that the mystery concerning the church has been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets through the Holy Spirit which indicates that these roles were fulfilled in the first century, and do not continue today.
Ephesians 2:19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
Ephesians 3:5 Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
Paul said, "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" (1 Cor 9:1)
An apostle had to be a witness of the resurrection of Christ. When the eleven met to discuss who would be the successor to Judas, the qualification of the successor was that he must be one of those who had companied with them throughout the earthly life of Jesus, and that he must be ordained to be a witness to the resurrection. (Acts 1: 21-22)
6 That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:
Acts 9:3-6
After Jesus appeared to him, he said of Paul:
...for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:
Acts 9:13-15
My theory is accepted by most Baptist/Protestant Churches. It's a result based on scripture study and what the 1st century didache say's about prophets and apostles. You have a problem accepting that they were office holders used for the establishment and foundation of the church because you're a Pentecostal.
There is no indication in the bible that all believers became prophets. In fact the position was quite an unusual one if you read chapter 11 of the didache.In Christ said:Kaotic
This is a rebuttal to your post #67
You have not said my definitions of prophets and apostles were incorrect so I must assume we are in agreement.
Jesus is the Prophet and the Apostle.. Since we are “in Him” then by definition we too are prophets and apostles.
Joe 2:28
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream
dreams, your young men shall see visions.
This prophecy was fulfilled in Acts 2:17 where all believers became prophets and can receive revelation from God, until Rev. 22:18 when the Bible was completed and there was no more revelations coming from God. However, the believers can still declare the word of God to the unsaved until the last day.
Jesus said: “As the Father have sent me so send I you” John 20:21
“Go therefore and make disciples of man.”
So you see, Jesus had given the believers the authority to go into all the world and declare the Gospel.
I believe it is you who has been misinformed. You only see the small picture instead of looking at the bigger picture.
Your argument was strictly focused on the qualifications of prophets and apostles instead of how Jesus mandated the New Testament believers that we read about in Acts 2:17.
Do you base this on any scriptures?day said:The Church-wide designation of someone as an Apostle or Prophet has ended. Today they are with us through their writings Apostles = New Testament, Prophets = Old Testament. Individuals are still gifted to perform these ministries IN the local church, but not TO the universal church.
The Two Witnesses of Revelation seem to be prophets sent to unbelievers outside the Church, more like Jonah to Nineveh than Elijah to Israel.
No it is more observation and reasoning. And, perhaps I should have said - the office of Apostle and Prophet SEEMS to have ended, rather than stating it as a fact (as if I were a prophet).jiggyfly said:Do you base this on any scriptures?
Kaotic
Again I reiterate
If an apostle means = one who is sent
and...
A prophet = is one who declares the word of God
If they did end (by whose authority), what then is the purpose to send out missionaries into the world? What does a missionary do? Isn't it to proclaim or declare the Gospel where he was sent to?
Was not Paul commissioned by Jesus to do these very thing and did not Jesus also commissioned His church to go into all the world to preach (declare) the Gospel and make disciples of men?
Not as well as I know how to study it.Know ye your Scripture?
There's some speculation that he was but no real confirmation of it that I know of. I'm not sure because I never really looked into it. But like I said. There had to be people who saw Christ after His resurrection that were qualified to be apostles that we don't know of since not all of them had to be mentioned in the bible.jiggyfly said:Kaotic, does Apollos meet your criteria to be a apostle?
