The Call of God — Theodore Andoseh

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The Call to World Harvest

When it comes to discussing about Paul in this passage, it brings us to... I want you to confront Brazac's call and the ministry to which we are. When we are going to discuss Timothy and his relationship to Paul within the context of that call, you have no application unless you understand what is Brazac's call.

What did God call Brazac to? What is the equivalent of that introduction here, that Pauline introduction here, in his own life? There were a number of stages to it. In 1978, no, in 1975, when he was leaving Uganda to come back to Cameroon, Bishop Festus Kivengeri sent him off.

Festus Kivengeri is one of the Anglican bishops in Uganda. He was a believer, and he knew the Lord Jesus. In Uganda, many believers stayed within the Anglican system. Kivengeri was one of the bishops, the believing bishops, and leaders of the Anglican system.

He had to escape Uganda because of the political problems with Idi Amin. But he was an evangelist. Festus, you know, Kivengeri is K-I-V-E-N-G-E-R-I. Bishop Kivengeri came to him on the day of the send-off, when they were sending him back to Cameroon.

He wasn't coming back to Cameroon as a Cameroonian returning to Cameroon. They laid hands on him and commissioned him to Cameroon. And the commissioning prophecy of Kivengeri to Brazac was, Lord Jesus, may every Cameroonian say to Brazac as he returns to Cameroon, You owe me, Jesus.

You owe me, Jesus. That was on the 3rd of May, 1975. On the 5th of May, when Brazac was about to take the flight to return, Bishop Kivengeri came again to his house to say bye-bye. Laid hands again on him and said, Lord Jesus, as Brazac goes back to Cameroon, may every Cameroonian say to him, You owe us, Jesus.

You owe us, Jesus. That was the commission with which Brazac came back to Cameroon. On the 6th of May, when he landed in Cameroon, in fact, he was so possessed by his commission that he even did some awkward things.

He was wearing an outmoded suit because in East Africa they were still wearing some odd suits. So, when he landed in Cameroon, he was going to the university, and he was wearing his odd suit. And people were looking at him because he was looking so odd.

The words of Bishop Kivengeri were turning in his head. So, he said, yes, they are saying, you owe us, Jesus. So, when they were looking at him like that, he thought what the bishop said was coming to pass.

Every Cameroonian is looking at him and saying, you owe us, Jesus. He did not know that it was because he had monkey coat. That same day, because of the burden to get the gospel out from all those eyes that were gazing at him, he wrote the first tract, How to Know Jesus Christ, and cyclostyled it.

And that same day, on the 6th of May, on that first day of his coming back from Uganda, on his way to the university to report and take over duties, he led one soul to Christ, one of the students. So, he attacked his mission from day one.

Psalm 2 and the Ministry's Global Burden

Sometime in 1978, while he was praying, God suddenly began to tell him that the commission that I have given to you is not limited to Cameroon alone. It is a call to world harvest. Those were the words that God used.

I call you to a ministry of world harvest according to my word in Psalms 2. In Psalms 2, he says, verse 8, Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.

That was the second step in the clarification of the burden. The Lord told him, I call you to a world harvest according to my word in Psalms 2, verse 8. Ask of me for the nations, and I will make them your inheritance, and the ends of the earth your possession.

So, he started, he hired a two-bedroom house and bought some machines to start a cyclostyling. And he called that apartment Voice of the Gospel. That's how the ministry, that was how the base of the ministry started.

Voice of the Gospel. They produced trucks, and it's around that year that some of us believed. And I was so happy that the gospel was being produced in Cameroon that that term, I vowed that I must give 15 ,000 francs a year.

I was a student in secondary school form three. That's what grade here. Ninth grade. I was ninth grade. Is what? Between eight and nine. I preferred nine so that I would look like a good guy. So that term, I had very little pocket money because my brother had just come back from Switzerland.

And he had so many responsibilities in the family. But I said, ah, they are producing the gospel, so I must send my own money. That term, I bought no sweets. I bought nothing. Every kobo I had, I put it under my box.

I had promised, that was my first giving to God by faith. I didn't know where I was going to get money, but I told God, I will give you 15 ,000 at the end of the term. Towards the end of the term, I told myself that, no, I'm exaggerating this thing.

I need to be reading in the night, so I am malnourished. I need to take some beverages. So I bought a cup of Horlicks for 500 francs. At the end of the term, I came to gather what I had kept for God in order to send to the voice of the gospel.

It was 14 ,500. I've never forgiven myself for that bottle of Horlicks. Just a bottle of Horlicks. That was the first time, and that's how I started giving to God. It was to give God all. Give him everything.

It was also the first time I experienced, and the only time I experienced, the miracle of God providing supernaturally from heaven. I needed to repair shoes, and I can't take the money that I had given to God.

I came to my box. As I opened my box, there was an amount placed in my box. A neat banknote. And unlike students, I asked who put money in my box. For the first time, God closed the mouth. You know boys and students.

That God could close their mouth so that nobody owned up to having put the money. And when I asked for the price for the repairs of the shoes, it was exactly the amount. That was my first experience of the fact that God provides supernaturally.

I've never had another one. Maybe because I've never given so totally since then. So there we were. Voice of the Gospel. In 1982, Razak went on a retreat in Mount Faber. Mount Faber is a monastery in Cameroon.

A Roman Catholic monastery where they have facilities for spiritual retreats. And you can lock yourself up and be alone. So he went for a retreat. And during that retreat, he told us he didn't go to pray.

He didn't go to read the Bible. He just went so that the Lord may reveal himself to him. And then he was meditating on Romans chapter 1 verse 5. And God spoke to him. In that Romans chapter 1 verse 5, it says very clearly, Through him and for his name's sake we receive grace and apostleship to call people from among all the nations to the obedience that comes from faith.

That's where the goal of our ministry comes from. Because it was in that meditation that the Lord told him, I have called you to give me one billion people from all the nations who know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and render to him total obedience in all things.

It was while he was meditating on this passage that God spelled out the goal. That's where the goal came from. And to confirm it, since every apostle must have a direct visitation of Jesus from heaven, that was the first time the Lord Jesus walked physically into his room on retreat to reveal himself to him.

It was the first appearance of the Lord Jesus to him in that retreat room in Mount Phoebe. It wasn't a dream. It was not a vision. To show you that he was fully awake, the glory of the Lord was so frightful that he ran from, he ran under the bed, covered his face so that he would not see Jesus.

It was a frightful experience. That was when the call to apostleship came. It wasn't the fruit of an ambition. It wasn't the fruit of reflection. It wasn't zeal for the Lord. That was the first appearance of the Lord to confirm the call and to make him an apostle.

Prophetic Confirmations of the Calling

And he never spoke about it. In 1984, no, 1986, Sister Rachel and their friend, our common friend, Brother Roger Hines, and the brethren of the World Soul Foundation, they made a trip to Cameroon because one of the brothers, a certain colonel, I've forgotten his name, he had received a vision that there was a light from Central Africa that spread and filled the whole world.

So they sent Brother Roger Hines and two others to Cameroon to see whether anything was happening in Cameroon that God had shown them. Brother Roger Hines came and met Brother Zach in Douala. They did not say anything to him.

They invited him to the United States and toured with him all over, toured with him, and said nothing to him about that vision. They sent him back. Two years later, they invited him and toured with him all over.

And finally, they took him to this brother who had the vision, and they told him after watching his character. During those tours, they made one brother go with him on all the flights and sleep with him in the same room because they were watching his character to see whether the character was something that God can do, some big thing in the world.

And they called him two years later because they wanted to see whether he was just putting up something. And they toured with him again. Finally, they told him the vision and confirmed to him the call to carry the gospel to all the nations.

A Jewish brother came to Cameroon and confirmed to Brother Zach the same call and washed his feet and decided to make a contribution to our ministry by publishing our books. He was the first to start the publication of the books in Vantage Press.

So these were not things that were cooked up to impress people. That's how the call came. There were other confirmations along the way, a number of them from India and some others. Finally, somewhere here in Colorado Springs, during one of the prayer conferences, St. Jacob spoke out what she saw.

She had never met Brother Zach. They just met at a conference. And she called Brother Zach to a room and told Brother Zach what she saw in the Spirit about his life, work, and ministry. And when she finished, she told Brother Zach that God has told her that before all these great things that he has shown her will take place, he will shake the house one more time so that some elders will leave.

It was a strange message because this woman did not know that the house had been shaken already two times and that there will be a third shaking. And this time it will be an internal situation and it will involve the elders.

It was in that prophecy that she spoke about the headquarters of the ministry in a massive land, over 10 ,000 hectares, which she called and which she said God called a garden of delight for the nations.

And she described what she saw in the Spirit about the headquarters and what will be there. That was the first encounter. The first encounter with Cindy Jacobs. Those are some of the history of the call.

From National Mission to International Enterprise

There are many in-betweens. So God called Brother Zach to a world ministry. It wasn't an ambition. When he was being sent off, he was sent as a national missionary to Cameroon from Uganda. He was sent to Cameroon to be a missionary in Cameroon.

And we had no dreams of ever expanding church planting beyond Cameroon. When in 1989 the Lord told Brother Zach that it was time to send out the first missionaries, he brought it for discussion with all the elders because we had a policy that we had to move together.

Where we don't agree, we wait. So in 1989, he shared with us about the call to send out missionaries. And many of us in the eldership, it was too outrageous for us. So he waited. A few years later, the Lord rebuked him.

And secondly, God took over and started doing things. While we were waiting, Bosun Kumabe came from the Republic of Benin to come and commit himself because he had already started the ministry as a coworker of Brother Zach in Benin Republic.

Another brother from Angola came to Cameroon. He had already started a church as a coworker of Brother Zach and there were already 600. Kaven Eko in Gabon had already started a church as a coworker of Brother Zach.

So we were confronted with the fact that if he doesn't accept the call of God, then there will be a lot of confusion created in the world in his name. Finally, reluctantly, with all the evidences, the eldership decided to go along.

Normally, I was to be the first missionary to leave the country. The prophecy that determined what I was to do came out in 1990 in the 51-day prayer crusade. I did not shake by then. Being a missionary and all those things meant nothing to me.

I was anxious just to serve the Lord. What I call court service, Johannine ministry. I was tired of Pauline ministry, jumping all over the place. I wanted to settle down, pray for Brother Zach and serve him practically.

And the Lord told him, send Theodore to Nigeria. And since I was so stubborn, Philip's wife and many brethren started fasting that God should uproot me from Cameroon and fling me to Nigeria. I think they put in over 30-something fasts of seven days.

Were you in Ruth's group at that time? You didn't fast? You should have fasted. Maybe you owe me a fast. So they fasted until I was uprooted and sent to Nigeria. But that delay has caused a lot of confusion in the ministry, including all the punishment I am getting now with all this call to leadership.

Things would have been clearer, as God intended it to be, if I had obeyed. So I have no one to complain to. When you disobey, be prepared to get the chastisement throughout the rest of your life until God has mercy on you.

So we started off the missionary enterprise, and we're in 65 nations. That is the call of Brother Zach. It is the call to carry spiritual responsibility to the 250 nations in the world and to give Jesus 1 billion people from all the nations who know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and render to him total obedience in everything.

Within that call is the call of all the friends, lovers, co-workers, servants, and all that God gives to Brother Zach. Because that is a starting point. It is not an individual issue. Brother Zach became team leader, and many of us pledged our lives for the accomplishment of that call.

We covenanted with God that we will accomplish the goal, and the covenant stands because the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. Who has a question about the call of Brother Zach? Before we go on to other things.

Yes, Sister Rachel. Thank you so much. I've just been brought into remembrance that when Brother Zach was in Egypt, and we have an apartment there for the work, and he was staying there, and he sat with me and some of the brethren, a couple of the brethren, a couple of the disciples there, and he said to me, Sister Rachel, I want you to know, and this was I think the second or third time he'd come into Egypt, he sat with me and he said, you know, when you asked me to come into Egypt, he said, I never told you this.

I said, what is it? And he said to me, when I was at Colorado Springs, I think maybe another time or a time after that, Cindy Jacobs had called him out again and said to him, you will go to Egypt. And then, of course, I met him at a meeting and invited him in.

But I just wanted to share that the fulfillment of all God has done in his life and is doing through all of us as a unified body working together to pursue that goal. Amen.

Amen. And the prophecy actually said, your ministry will prosper in Egypt. If you want the prophecy, we will get it for you. So it had nothing to do with personal ambition or striving to do big things for God.

Jesus' Five Testimonies to a Calling

Go with me to John chapter 5. Can someone read verse 31 and 32? Verse 31.

John chapter 5, verse 31 to 35? No, just verse 31 first. Okay. If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid.

There is a... Last verse. No, just wait. You will still read. I want to show you when somebody claims that God has called him in the way we are saying that God has called Razak, the Lord Jesus Christ gave five corroborative proofs to establish such a call so that it is not just a matter of the person's personal assertion.

And in this passage, Jesus says, concerning my call, he says, if I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid. As far as the call of God on your life is concerned, personal testimony and the revelations that you received individually are not the basis of being a starting point.

Go on, verse 32 and 33.

There is another one who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid. Go on. You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony, but I mention it that you may be saved.

Good.

So there is a second testimony, human testimony, the testimony of an established servant of God. And Jesus says, that one is not enough for me, but I mention it since you people believe John, that you may be saved.

Go to the third testimony.

I have testimony weightier, this is verse 36, I have testimony weightier than that of John, for the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me.

Good.

So Jesus says, my work is a weightier testimony than whatever John says about me. My work. The work which God gave me to do, and which I am doing. It's a heavier testimony than what John can say, and heavier than what I say about myself.

Go to number four testimony.

And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice, nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. Good.

So there is the Father's testimony. And that Father's testimony, the Lord Jesus makes it very clear. He told them, you have not seen him. You have not seen his form. You have not heard his voice. God the Father has appeared to Brazzac five times.

The last time was in the hotel room in China, when he laid his big hands on Brazzac's head and said to him 84 things. It is not the things that you cook up in your daily dynamic encounters with God. That is the fourth testimony.

The Father's own testimony. God the Father.

Go down further. And the fifth testimony. You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me. Good.

The last testimony is the testimony of scripture. What a man does must fit into the scriptures. It must be in the Bible. It is not something esoteric. It must be in the Bible. Those are the five testimonies.

Personal testimony. Not valid. Another's testimony. It saves those who believe the person who has ordained you. The testimony of the work done. The Father's testimony. Epiphanal experiences. And the testimony of scripture.

These five must corroborate for the establishment of a starting point. So Jesus was saying that though the Father has called him, even for those who challenge Jesus' ministry, he came back to point to this.

Because Jesus' ministry was challenged. And Jesus came back to point to the things that establish credibility in the congregation. I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to share this so that what I told you, that if we have, some of us have followed Brazzac, it wasn't because we loved him.

It was because the issues that establish the things that God gave him to do and say were clear according to the scriptures. Those are God's proofs according to the Lord Jesus for a starting point. The testimonies, or put it, the testimonials of apostleship.

So if you have some wild revelation and you want to go and start your own because Brazzac started his own, make sure you have all these five together. Even though you'll be cast out like a wandering star.

The Difference Between God's Call and God's Sending

Maybe I should tell you a little about my own experience. I was a particularly bad guy. I wasn't a very good guy. When I was 19, I decided to get out of university. Because every time I was in class, I heard the call of God.

What I mean by hearing the call of God, I'm not joking. I'm not talking about a burden. I heard the voices of sinners crying, I'm going to hell. I would sit down in my physics class and tears would be coming down.

Because I'm hearing the perishing, the cries of the perishing. Over and over, the voice would keep saying, rescue the perishing. Save those that are being led to the slaughter. If you say we never knew it, does he who is above not see?

And shall he not reward everyone according to his work? Over and over, playing in my head in class. Finally, I packed up school to go and serve the Lord. Of course, now I have packed up school, I need to know what God wants.

I locked myself for nine days. I took Glenn Bland's book, a book written by Glenn Bland on the setting of goals. Glenn Bland. I sat down and worked out the goals for the first 25 years of my ministry.

And then I came out with all the goals at the end of the nine days retreat. And at the door, when I came out, after nine days, the Lord said nothing to me. When I came out, the Lord whispered something to me.

Theodore, who made you an apostle? What body of elders laid hands on you? I was shot like a bullet. I had left school, and after working out the goals, the questions of God showed that I have made a mistake.

And that I was out of order. I had already worked out my plans. I already got two disciples. One was Alain Onga. The other one was Hugo Lawton, whom I had also made to get out of school, because they were going to be my first apostles.

I better tell you all the full list so that you know that it wasn't a joke. These guys had all packed out of school to follow me. I told them the starting point for our ministry was to go to Betwa and conquer all those tribes in the east and preach the gospel.

So they were already fasting and praying, and I was to come out of that retreat with a blueprint of God for the ministry. And then I came out, and God asked me the questions that he asked me. And my life crumbled before me.

I stood there. I didn't know what to do. Then God came to my rescue. He told me, my confusion was, did I invent that call? Those cries and all that I heard, had I invented them? The Lord said no. So the Lord told me, the call of God is not the sending of God.

Paul was called three days after his conversion. He was sent 14 years after his conversion. The call and the sending are not the same. David was called at the age of 17. He was installed at the age of 33.

Moses was called at the age of 40. He was sent at the age of 80. And Moses also made the mistakes I had made, because in Acts chapter 7, the Bible says when he was killing the Egyptians, he thought that his brothers would understand that God was giving them deliverance through his hand.

So he knew the call of God on his life, but he became a fugitive from Egyptian justice in the wild desert in order to learn the discipline of God. The call of God is not the sending of God. So the Lord taught me the next thing.

What is there between the calling and the sending? I had to learn. What is there between calling and sending? It is service to man. It is service to man. After David's call, he entered Saul's service.

After Joseph's call, he entered Potiphar's service. After Paul's call, he even teamed up and entered Barnabas's service and Barnabas's ministry in Antioch. Nobody enters the call of God on his own life without entering the life of somebody else.

No one. I was to learn those lessons painfully. For me, it was 13 years. So that's when I began to notice these passages. You may be wondering why I noticed these passages. I didn't go around reading them.

God brought me here after I had been a fool. When you have suffered, you learn to see what is there in the Bible, that you are not a starting point, and that God doesn't have many starting points. That's a bit of the biography behind this.

Learning Submission Through Service

It was 13 years, and I entered the service of Barzakh almost in every department. I went to the laboratory to synthesize the compounds, which he had isolated, for pharmaceutical and for agricultural applications.

When I reached there, the university was so poor that there were no reagents. So I entered the service of Barzakh in his office to handle his private meals and the correspondence of our ministry to the English-speaking world.

Head of department for drugs, and then I started a department for revival drugs, then started a prayer chain. When I got to 18, I was appointed. One day I told myself, I am a jerk of all traits. I know nothing.

But I knew that I can take no one step further. It wasn't Barzakh who stopped me. It was God. God has. The work of God is clear and orderly. God is not confused. There is order. So some of us did not follow Barzakh because we happened to be very nice guys.

And we happened to be so humble that we were born with humility in our noses. We were not born with any humility. By now, I would have been some self-made apostle, maybe dying in some of the villages in eastern Cameroon.

I had to learn these lessons from the whip of the Holy Spirit. And God had to force me to see what he has written in his Word. Who are you? Did God call me to be an apostle? No. God doesn't have many starting points.

When God has raised his starting points, he gives all the others that are in his service to that man according to their gifts. If God gave you to somebody and you want to be on your own, you will grow dry, spiritually dry.

I don't want to teach further about the call. This one is enough. Who has understood? I want you to understand it intelligently. The call of God is not some mystical thing that everybody invents and it depends on the testimony of everybody.

If somebody comes up and says, Last night, I had something that was moving on my stomach. It shows that I have spiritual pregnancy. I am about to give birth to a visual. Give him analgesics so that he may stop having convulsions.

Something is wrong with him. Since I come from Nigeria, somebody just tells you, I had a dream and I saw some blue colors there. It shows that it is my heavenly call. You see? That's not how it works.

God is not something fanciful. I want a few people to pray. If you wonder why some people followed, they follow because they know what God wants. They follow because they were convinced. Brazac had not become the successful world leader that he is and he was.

We were just starting. And some of us came from the Presbyterian Church with a lot of prejudices in our hearts against him. Around that time also, we had so many stories about him that to go near him you needed a lot of God.

God had to pull you. In fact, I met a friend. He told me that lying is very powerful. He invented a lie about Brazac. Then the lie went all around the country and came back to him and he believed it. And he knows that he is the one that invented the lie.

When he finally heard the lie that he had invented from another person, he believed it. I can't even tell you his name. Because I remember the day he was so shocked. This thing that he just said like that.

It was true. It was true. Why? Because if it was not true, why would? But please, I want us to pray. If you want to follow in the commission that we have received, it is not because some of us are some fanatical people who have some loneliness because Brazac has gone to be with the Lord.

It's because God gave us something clear. And the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. We didn't follow carefully invented stories. If a few people pray, we'll go to the next thing. So, Timothy had to know the call of God in order to relate to it.

Because Paul will soon die. And Timothy is expected to keep what Paul has given to him as a deposit. How would he do it? Unless he's under the grip of what Paul has told him being the will of God. The continuity was because of the convictions.

It wasn't because of sentiments. Let some people pray. That those who are here who are co-workers of Brazac, that they will be established in their convictions and strengthened. You may end up hearing so many things that you wonder whether you are the only one who is right.

Prayer for Conviction and Faithful Continuity

Gracious Father, the Father of missions and missionaries, we thank you, O God, for laying grip upon our Father, upon our departed leader, upon Brazac. We are grateful. Thank you that you made the call so clear.

Thank you for the revelations. Thank you for the visions. Thank you for the manifestations, O God. Thank you for all that we constituted, confirming your call upon his life. We are grateful to you for giving us clear leadership, clear direction.

Blessed be your name, Lord. Father, thank you because in the fullness of time, you granted me grace to be part of this call. Lord, I am honored. I am grateful. We pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that it will be settled, O God, in many hearts here.

Father, hearts that have been wavering because of lies, because of doubts, because of prejudices, we pray that hearts will be established to align to that call which you gave Brazac. In Jesus' name, amen.