Apostles (rerun)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Why Apostleship Matters and Why Claims Today Are Dangerous

It is good to be back in the studio. Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio. We want to stand up for the truth and stand against error. We�d like to do it in a just a matter-of-fact way, in a blunt way.

We�ve gotten many emails and comments over the last several months. Let�s see, how long has it been? It has been September, October, November, December, January, so five months. We�ve been on the radio five months now, and people say, �Well, I don�t really like everything you say, but I like it that you�re blunt, that you�re frank, that you�re to the text, to the point.

And I don�t know, I think there�s probably room for this kind of show out there in evangelicalism. I respect Al Mohler and how he deals with people, I respect James White and some of the topics he talks about, but I don�t think any show really does what we do, short little 24-minute segments interviewing interesting authors, talking about biblical issues from a Bible perspective.

And today we want to do the same thing. Today we want to talk about apostles, apostles. When I drive down the street, especially in poor parts of town, and I see some kind of apostolic ministry, I basically do two things.

I laugh on the way there, and when I have to return home, on the way back I usually cry, I usually shudder, I�m usually sad about the whole thing, because people today are running around telling other people that they are apostles.

If you go to a church and you have to call your leader an apostle, you need to skedaddle out of there. You need to run, don�t pass go, don�t stop, don�t go to jail, don�t go to community treasure chest, you need to just get out of there.

For people to have the nerve and the gall and the biblical ignorance to call themselves an apostle today, there is a real problem. I can only think of a few reasons why people would call themselves apostles today.

One, they want power. They like to have power, and they understand the Bible well enough to understand that the apostles wielded a big stick of authority. That the apostles, sent out by Jesus himself, carried a lot of authority.

Now, I�m not talking about some kind of small-a apostle, we�ll talk maybe about that a little bit today. I�m talking about your leader who calls himself an apostle. Who would do that? I could see if someone says that they�re a pastor, that means they�re a shepherd of sheep.

I can see if you call your leader an elder, that�s biblical, an overseer, that�s biblical, bishop is actually a biblical word for an elder that�s taken out of context and now put over elders. But if you want to use biblical terms for New Testament shepherds and sheep, shepherds of the sheep, then that would be fine.

But if you�ve got a leader today, and he calls himself some kind of apostle, he�s doing it because he wants the power. He may be ignorant of what the Scriptures say, but if he�s that ignorant about what the Scriptures say about leadership in the New Testament church, he ought not to be the pastor, the leader, the apostle.

People say today that they�re apostles because they would like the authority, and they think that everything in the Bible that was written happens today, is for today. They would not understand any kind of cessation of any gift or anything, and therefore they would not even see the cessation of the canon, because God still speaks to them.

Show me a person today that says they�re an apostle, and I�ll show you somebody who�s a quack, and you don�t want to follow them. So what does the Bible say? It�s easy for me to say those things, right?

But it�s a lot different if you have to back it up from Scripture. And so we deal with people today who are charismatic or Pentecostal. I think there�s a lot of people I respect who are charismatic and Pentecostal.

From Gordon Fee, his commentary on 1 Corinthians, while I might not agree with everything, it�s a brilliant commentary, and how he wants to study the Bible, I like that. John Piper is a charismatic, and I love his Romans 9 stuff.

There are people who are smart that are charismatic, godly who are charismatic, Calvinistic even in our age. That�s an interesting thing today to find sovereign grace people who are five-point Calvinists who are charismatic.

But I will say this, don�t follow someone who calls himself an apostle. I just can�t get over that. So I ask the question today, what were the apostles? What did they do? Are there apostles today? What does this have to do with charismatic issues, and why does it matter?

There are people who go around calling themselves apostles, and you don�t have to look any farther than the Roman Catholic Church to understand that while they might not use the word apostle, they believe in apostolic succession.

Of course they do, following Peter, the first great pope apostle. There are Pentecostals who are apostolic. You can even look at the movie, there�s a movie by Robert Duvall that I don�t know if I�ve seen or not, I think I probably have, but probably it�s a horrible movie, I don�t know, and I certainly wouldn�t want to recommend it, but the movie is called The Apostle, and it�s about some kind of Pentecostal, probably boozer, someone high up the Christian ladder maybe calls himself an apostle.

And so we want to study today the look at the office and role of apostle in the New Testament. By the way, if you want to type in the internet Mike Vlock, V-L-A-C-H, apostles, apostolic succession, I think that might be a good place to start.

There�s lots on the internet that you could study about that. The bad news is there�s lots on the internet that probably talks about why apostles are for today. You know, if someone tells me at the church, �Well, I did an internet study and just type something in Google, there�s a big problem.

Maybe you go to monergism .org or monergism .org .com and then type in within their search engine �apostolic�, that might be better. Bible Bulletin Board, you type within their own search engine, you might be better off.

But if you�re just going to Google search engine, you�re going to find all kinds of crazy things that have nothing to do with anything, and then some guy�s got some Ph .D. from some kind of mail-order seminary.

I�m pretty much done with mail-order seminary qualifications. Why don�t people just tell them, �You know what? I got my degree from some mail-order seminary, and I just sent in, I did all the work, mail-order, and that�s what I got from some kind of rinky-dink place.

You know, some people can�t afford, and some people like to study online. I�m not against any of that. I�m against pastors who have rinky-dink degrees, and then they try to pawn them off as full degrees, but that�s another topic.

So what about apostles? Listen to what Vlock said, �Next to Jesus Christ, the most important person in the early church was the apostle. Traditionally, the church, including most Charismatics, agreed that the apostles only existed in the early church period.

Other Charismatics, however, insist that apostles do exist today. The question must be addressed. Do apostles exist today, or did they pass away after the foundation of the church was established? And that�s what we�ll look at today on No Compromise Radio.

If you�re an apostle, I would love, by the way, for you to email me and tell me that I�m wrong, and give me the Scriptures for why I�m wrong. If you�re an apostle, you certainly should have the authority to wield a big stick, and you ought to know much more Scriptures than I know, and so I�d love to talk to those apostles.

The Meaning of Apostle and the New Testament Witness

What is an apostle? The Greek word is �apostolos. And it�s a simple word. It just means someone who is sent, a sent one. He is someone who represents God to the people. That�s all it means. Who were the apostles in the Bible?

In the gospels, they had the twelve disciples, and they were with Jesus, and Jesus often sent them out. I think of the names of the twelve apostles, Matthew 10, verse 2. The names of the twelve apostles are these.

First, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax-gatherer, James the son of Alphaeus. By the way, I can�t pass that Matthew the tax-gatherer up.

Matthew, writing Matthew, says Matthew the tax-gatherer, Matthew the sinner, Matthew the total spiritual loser that God saved and made an apostle. And he is just impressed by the grace of God as he writes over and over, Matthew the tax-gatherer, Simon the zealot, Matthew 10, verse 4, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

And so as Matthew has the moniker tax-gatherer, so too Judas has the damning moniker, the one who betrayed him. So these people were the apostles picked by Jesus himself. And of course when Judas left and Judas defected and Judas was hanged and then he had his gut spilled out and was killed, Matthias was chosen to replace him and he was part of the twelve disciples, excuse me, the twelve apostles.

And the names of these apostles are written in the foundation stones of the wall in the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21 .14. And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

And when you think about apostles, it gets a little broader because certainly Paul and Barnabas were considered apostles, Acts 14 .4. But the multitude of the city was divided, and some sided with the Jews and some sided with the apostles.

Now Paul is an interesting apostle, and he is not necessarily part of the twelve, but he has seen the resurrected Jesus, and he has, along with Barnabas, been a messenger. Some say Barnabas was an apostle, some say he wasn't.

That's not really my point today. Acts 14 .14, but when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their robes and rushed out into the crowd crying out. In James, who was the brother of Jesus, he was called an apostle.

You say, well, this is kind of boring. Well, I've got to give you the biblical data, that should not be boring, but we've got to establish what the Bible says about apostles, so hang in there with me.

But I did not, Galatians 1 .19, see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. So we're seeing the twelve, and we're seeing a few more people who are called apostles. These men were called apostles.

Some think Salvanus in 1 Thessalonians 2 was an apostle. Some think maybe Andronicus and Junius were apostles, since Paul said that they were outstanding among the apostles in Romans 16. Here's the summary.

The use of the word apostle in the New Testament most of the time primarily refers to the twelve. There was a broadening, there was a widening of the use, as you went through the New Testament, to Paul, James, Barnabas, and maybe Salvanus.

The Requirements for a True Apostle

So now my next question is this, what were the requirements of an apostle? If you have an apostle at your church, these are the requirements that that person should meet. Or maybe some churches are so crazy they have apostolinas, and they have women apostles, apostolettes, we'll call them, apostolettes.

That sounds like some kind of cool 4th of July rocket that you shoot, an apostolette. What are the requirements of an apostle? One, the requirement of an apostle is that they were eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

They saw the risen Jesus Christ. When the apostles were looking around for Judas' replacement, what did they do? They said, well, we'll pick somebody who's got a good company, he's rich, he's influential.

No, we need to find someone that had to have seen Jesus be raised from the dead, Jesus after he was raised from the dead, Acts 121. It is therefore necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning with the baptism of John until the day that he was taken up from us.

One of these should become a witness with us of his resurrection, starting off with Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, then seeing the resurrected Christ. And by the way, when these apostles saw the resurrected Christ, they never forgot about it, and that was a theme throughout their ministry, preaching the resurrected Christ.

And when you look at apostolic preaching, you'll see that theme, Acts 2, Acts 3, Acts 5, Acts 10, Acts 13, where you will see the apostles preaching the supernatural resurrection. Not in a supernatural body, only in a real glorified, supernaturally glorified body.

When Paul says, I'm going to defend my apostleship, what did he say in 1 Corinthians 9? Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? How do you know you're an apostle? The first thing he says, have I not seen Jesus our Lord?

Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? If you're an apostle, you've seen Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. Now the problem is this. These men saw with their own eyes, their literal corneas and irises and pupils, their eyes, they saw the real resurrected Jesus.

And now we have people who go along and they'll say, well, I'm an apostle and I saw Jesus in a vision, and I saw Jesus in a dream, and I was shaving and Jesus came and he put his arm around my shoulder and spoke sweet nothings into my ear, and I've really seen Jesus.

That is not right. I can't deny somebody's mystical refried beans experience dream. I can't deny that. Here these men saw Jesus. You have to see Jesus. You say, well, Paul saw him later. And yes, Paul did see him later, but Paul is one of the few.

Paul is one of the only ones who then began to write the scriptures. And if you're going to say you're like the apostle Paul, but you've got such bad theology, you can't even understand justification by faith alone, grace alone.

You're an Arminian doing altar calls. You don't understand. Paul says, I saw Jesus. I have seen him. It wasn't some vision. I really saw him. And by the way, then you say to yourself, yeah, but that was a long time ago.

Nobody can see Jesus today, so there must not be any apostles today. You are thinking properly. The seal of Paul's apostleship was the real Jesus seen with his own eyes. Paul said, you know, the account in Acts chapter nine, remember, Paul was threatening murder against the disciples of the Lord.

He goes to the high priest. He's on his way to Damascus and the light from heaven flashes around him. He falls to the ground and he hears the voice, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who art thou Lord?

I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Rise into the city and I'll tell you what to do. Listen to first Corinthians chapter 15. Jesus appeared after the resurrection to Cephas, then to the 12. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 men at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

And he appeared to James, then to the rest of the apostles. And last of all, as it were to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. Jesus must be seen for you to be an apostle. But that's not the only thing that we do when we conclude someone is an apostle.

Signs, Wonders, and Miracles as Apostolic Credentials

We say, number one, eyewitness to the resurrection, but you say, well, some people were eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Does that make them all apostles? No, because the second criterion is this. Apostles had to perform undeniable miracles.

They could perform undeniable miracles. They were given the gift to do signs and wonders and miracles. John MacArthur said Paul was defending his apostleship against some who doubted his apostolic authority.

If doing miracles had been the common experience of ordinary Christians, it would be foolish for Paul to try to prove his apostleship by citing the miracles he had done. It is obvious, though, that even during the apostolic age, Christians couldn't do signs, wonders, and mighty deeds.

Precisely because those things were unique to the apostles, Paul could use his experience with signs and wonders as proof of his authority. Second Corinthians 12 .12, you ought to mark this down. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles.

Show me an apostle they've seen the Lord Jesus. They've done, and they can do, signs and wonders and miracles. And those signs and wonders and miracles were actually organic, instantaneous, could be confirmed by people who didn't even believe the gospel.

I know people today who call themselves apostles, and they're into somehow leg lengthening, they're into bad backs, they're into some kind of Benny Hinn chicanery, fakery, forgery. But what they don't really think through is, the Bible miracles could be confirmed by the people who didn't even believe in Yahweh.

So if you think you can do miracles today, and you call yourself an apostle, I'd like to call Channel 4, Channel 7, CBS, Fox News, and I'd like to have all the reporters come, and they can come down to your little storefront, and you can raise people from the dead, and then they can confirm it.

So you bring the doctors in, the doctors can say, yes, this is a dead body, they've been dead for four days, and now you raise them from the dead, you do it in front of the camera, and you're good to go.

And I would consider you someone who can do these kind of miracles. I still wouldn't consider you an apostle, because you hadn't seen the Jesus on earth 2 ,000 years ago. But here's the thing, people that run around and say, I'm an apostle, and I can do great signs and wonders, and I heal people's bad backs, and I make people throw a wheelchair down on stage at the DCU Center, and run across, and slay them in the spirit, they have no idea what the Bible is talking about.

None whatsoever. The bad news is, their followers don't either, and they're happy to give their leaders, their fake apostles, money. Number three, if you're an apostle, you've seen the resurrected Jesus.

You perform undeniable, organic miracles. And number three, you are around at the foundation of the church. You are around at the foundation of the church. Ephesians 2 .20, having been built upon, we're talking about the new body, the church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

Now, you're building the foundation. How long does it take to build the foundation of some place? Are we still building the foundation of the church 2 ,000 years later? Are we still at the foundation stage?

We're still kind of digging the hole and making the foundation? I think not. Listen to what one man said, the ministry of the apostles and prophets was to lay the foundation of the church. They brought the truth regarding the one body in Christ to mankind.

Once you have laid the foundation, there is no other foundation that needs to be laid. There is no other truth that needs to be conveyed for the church to be constructed, so there is no need for more apostles or prophets.

That is exactly right. That is exactly right. Number four, apostles were personally chosen by Jesus, personally chosen by Jesus. Jesus chooses the twelve. Jesus, through providence, chooses the replacement.

Jesus chooses Paul. They are chosen by God. They don't say, hmm, I think I'd like to have a lot of authority over people and be the leader, and I don't really have any seminary education, and I don't really have much of anything, and I kind of need to make a living, and I'm just going to put a storefront up and say it's apostle such and such church, and I'm the apostle, and I'll call myself an apostle.

You don't see that in the Bible at all. I think I'll call myself an apostle. You don't even see the church in the New Testament. Well, this person is now an apostle. They went to school, and first they started off as pastor, then they went to reverend, then they went to minister, then they went to overseer, then they went to bishop, then they are now an apostle and graduate their way up.

No, the church doesn't assign it. The church can't give that title. That is by Jesus himself. And so if you think you go to an apostle now, I go to, I have apostle so and so. He made himself that. Who wants to go to some self-made apostle?

I don't. Number five, apostles receive special revelation. But the helper John 14 .26, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you, apostles, all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

These apostles were the recipients of this new revelation. The Spirit of God would come into the hearts and minds of the apostles and give them the revelation to make the New Testament, to produce the Scriptures, to record what God's mind told them to say through their unique personality.

That's exactly what happens. And so if you're an apostle, you would be involved in receiving special revelation. I got a word from God, so see, therefore I'm an apostle. No, you're mistaking this nonsensical special revelation today.

God told me to do something when really it was you who told yourself something to do. And then mixing that up with the New Testament Scriptures. So you mean to tell me what God tells you to do is equal in weight to Romans?

When you can't even end a sentence properly, and you end a sentence on it with a preposition, and yet here's God's revealed word in Romans? So what you say is equal to Romans and Galatians and Hebrews?

Speaking of Hebrews, Hebrews 2 .3, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Now listen to these aorist verbs, which means point in time, past tense. And after it was first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

Spoken, confirmed. And so what happens? Here's the word that's spoken and confirmed. How was the word 2 ,000 years ago spoken and confirmed? Verse four, God also bearing witness with them both by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will.

And so with this authority, with revelation comes great authority. And that's where it's twisted today. Apostles today say that they are apostles because they want the authority that comes with the jurisdiction of saying, thus say the Lord.

By the way, the jurisdiction for the apostles was not just for one church. It was not some local storefront. It was for the church at large, the universal church, not just the local body in Worcester, but for the church universal.

And so if you've got someone who says they're an apostle, you know that they're a fake, that they're a fraud. They don't have a unique place forever in church history, Revelation 21. They don't do real biblical miracles.

They don't go to the hospital and heal everyone. And so what do you need to do? You need to study the Scriptures to see if these things are true. And if you are at a church that has an apostle, it's no church.

It's a man who wants to have authority, and he wants to tell you what to do, and he wants to be in charge, and you need to leave that grouping, that tax-exempt grouping. This is Mike Ebendroth. I am not an apostle.

I will never be an apostle. And one day I want to see the apostles in heaven worshiping Jesus Christ, and I'll be worshiping Jesus with them.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.