What Is Apostolic? — Art Katz

Is to begin with a paper written by Bob Gladstone, one of the teachers from the FIRE school that he left with us on what is apostolic. It's very fresh and an original paper, so I thought maybe to read it or read portions of it and to open that for discussion.

I've got a few supplementary readings on the same subject. So, let's call on the Lord, who is the great apostle and the high priest, prophet and king. Lord, precious God on high, the God of beginnings, shall we bow before you, my God, yet again and look to you for the commencement of these days.

Thank you, Lord, that though we are only feeling our way, you know already explicitly what is in your heart to express. And we invite you, my God, to wrap our knuckles if we are venturing into anything that is not appointed.

But, and if it is, Lord, to give grace to examine that very great word and to receive, my God, some illumination, understanding of what is currently being debased. So, give us your free spirit, your presence, Lord.

We invoke your blood upon our heads and upon this door and house, over these grounds, all these people, my God, under your blood afresh. Purge even the air, my God, of anything that would thwart or inhibit, adversely affect the expression of your great heart toward us.

So, Lord, we are all just getting newly acquainted and there is that sense of awkwardness and strangeness for those who are here for the first time. I ask in the wonderful way that you have to dissolve all of that and give us an immediate kind of entree, of ease, of spirit, heart, mind and expression that you might draw, my God, from any of us and more deeply bring forth the precious treasures of the faith.

Thank you, my God, for this occasion, this beginning, the day of small beginnings. Come, my God, and be the alpha of it as you shall also be the omega. We thank you, we give you the praise in Jesus' name.

Amen. Stir our hearts, Lord, to a great jealousy for those two foundational words, apostolic and prophetic. Those inexhaustible words, Lord, that are under assault. And may we perceive them freshly, Lord, although we will never come to the end of the matter, they are as inexhaustible as you yourself are.

In fact, they are what you yourself are. So, we invite, my God, the spirit of truth, illumination, the light of your life, Lord, to shine upon our examination of these words in these days. That in such a way, my God, not only to inform and to instruct, but to change us and to conform us into their very meaning.

Give us a jealousy, my God, for the church whose foundation they represent. So we bless you, Lord, precious God, that you yourself call yourself by that name, the apostle of our confession, and that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.

So you have co-joined your name with those great words. So we bless you, Lord. Come and speak to us, my God, as sons and daughters, without mincing words, without in any way having to baby us. In a word, my God, perhaps that will be new to us, but as a statement of your earnestness and how late the hour.

So we welcome, Lord, what comes from your throne. We bless you, Lord. We're weak as all get out. We're tired. We're a little banged out of shape. We're in different states of being, having traveled and arrived, my God, in a condition that we're in.

So we pray even the spirit of refreshing, Lord, a quickening by your spirit to take the haze from our minds, Lord, and to give us an ability to enter in. Thank you, Lord. Receive our gratitude for the privilege of these days and come and fulfill them as only you can.

We thank you and give you praise in Yeshua's holy name. Dear brothers, at a recent leadership meeting I mentioned a brief essay I sensed the Lord leading me to write about the difference between the ministries of government and an apostle.

Apostolic Ministry Versus Governmental Leadership

Here is that paper. The difference between an apostle's ministry and government is important for our team to understand for two major reasons. First, as it has tried to do in every other area of Christianity, the spirit of this age is trying to mold even the organic nature of apostolic ministry and leadership into another fad, profession, or denominational phenomenon.

Feel free to raise your hand at any point you want to interrupt the reading or something is quickened as this goes forth. Since we are a revolutionary movement, we can't make the same mistake. Watering the vital distinctions between the ministries of apostle and government is simple error to make.

Many ministries within the church culture of the West are committing it, but God has called us to help change the system, not reproduce it in a different form. Our arrangements and language must be spiritually precise and spiritually current.

So I think he's taking up the question of whether the word government is synonymous with the word apostle. Because we always think of apostles as establishing structure, government, and order. He's the first one that I've encountered who wants to make a distinction that that kind of symmetry is not necessarily true.

We must understand the nature of apostolic ministry in order to discern God's will for our leadership. Remember, this paper is being submitted to the headship or leadership of the revival movement of which he is part.

The present topic is a sensitive issue for our team at a very critical time in our development. So let me state clearly that I'm not trying to assert or imply how any of us actually fits into our team's leadership arrangement, nor do I have any ax to grind.

Instead, I'm only trying to contribute to our foundation for future direction and growth in response to some recent valuable comments within team discussion. The sovereign Lord of the church is the one who appoints his ministries as gifts to his body, and we submit to him and to one another.

The Distinction in 1 Corinthians 12

Simply put, Paul distinguishes between an apostle and the gift of government in 1 Corinthians 12 .28. He says, and God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, kinds of tongues.

The word translated here as administrations is the Greek word kybanesis. It originally referred to the pilot or helmsman responsible for guiding and steering a naval ship. Against this background, the ancient Greek writers typically employed that word to refer to government.

So Paul used a rather striking word to describe one with powerful leadership ability in the church, one of the most vivid terms in the New Testament for those who lead. Kybanesis refers to those with an extraordinary ability to motivate, administrate, oversee, and steer community members into the vision or plan given by God.

These gifted people work out the practical logistics of the visions seen by prophets or the architectural plans laid out by apostles. And I would add, according to his sense, but they themselves are not apostles.

They have a gift of administration and leadership and direction that does not constitute for them that title. That raises the question, then what does? The sheer fact that Paul uses the word for government separately from apostle clearly illustrates the distinction between these two ministries to the church.

Now logically an apostle must demonstrate at least some governmental ability. I guess I'm thoroughly disqualified. Still, Paul not only differentiates the two, he places apostles in the first position and government seventh in a list of eight.

It is not that Paul saw governing abilities as minor compared to apostolic ministry. Surely the body suffers without each gift operating freely. Governmental grace helps plan out and manage the physical implications of the other ministries.

Without it, the body members don't always know what, when or how to move. The issue here is that Paul does not see government as foundational. Here's the word in italics to the kind of communities he sought to plant and nurture.

We cannot underestimate the importance of this last statement. There are men in the body today who claim or receive the title apostle based on their ability to govern a large ministry. Sometimes these men even claim or receive the title when they themselves did not establish the ministry they oversee.

Ironically, these men may in fact be apostles, but they are not apostles by virtue of their ability to govern. In fact, I believe that there are some apostles in our culture who have not yet tapped into that unique and intangible quality that would truly make them apostles.

The devil has robbed them in the church of their powerful gift by substituting a more outwardly impressive ability to manage and grow a big ministry operation for the meek, subtle, and outwardly unimpressive qualities of the true apostle.

Apostolic Grace and the Character of Christ

Apostolic ministry is not an office, but neither is it merely a function. I put a question mark after that statement. I always thought of it as an office. It is the grace inherent in a man that reproduces Jesus himself to a degree sufficient to plant and nurture genuine communities of divine habitation, love, and power.

Let me read that one again. This is after distinguishing between government. Now this is the first statement on what an apostle is whose character, to back up a little bit, is not some imposing figure who arranges and directs, but more likely meek, subtle, and outwardly unimpressive.

Apostolic ministry is not an office, but neither a function. It is the grace inherent in a man that reproduces Jesus himself to a degree sufficient to plant and nurture genuine communities of divine habitation, love, and power.

That is an extraordinarily skillful and insightful statement. I'm reading from other sources. This is C .K. Barrett, a well-known New Testament theologian, writing on that subject, and he says almost identically the same thing.

Working at Karl Barth, my favorite theologian, and his statement on what is apostolic ties it in always with community. What community is formed by men who bear the character and the life of the Lord.

They are sent ones because they represent him, and the Hebrew word from which the apostolic concept was derived from men who are familiar with that Hebrew context, as Paul himself was, is shalia, who is an agent or representative sent by another, but in being sent he represents the one who sends him, not just in the bearing of a missile or a document, but in his character of what he is in himself.

He can be entrusted to represent someone else because he has come to a place of such remarkable coincidence with the sender that he can aptly and lightly express him. That's why Jesus can say, if they receive you, they receive me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.

If ever there's a definition of apostolic succession, I like this one. In fact, I don't know if we'll get into much of this tonight, or if the Lord will even continue tomorrow. Karl Barth, B-A-R-T-H, one of the giants of the 20th century, very much opposes the Catholic view of apostolic succession or any kind of pyramidal form by which men are designated as being in a continuum with those who have gone before them, as someone who is just elect, appointed by men, and given a title, and so on, and that title goes on indefinitely through generations, is different from the origin and sense of apostolic as one sent representing another, and so the place of the Holy Spirit in the act of sending, the reality of the Holy Spirit in shaping the one who is doing the representing is altogether having nothing to do with religious ordination or designations by men according to a history of succession.

That's the whole Catholic mentality and framework, but it's entirely contradicted by all three sources that I have before us tonight. Maybe men would prefer some religious way of conferring titles, rather than the route that can only be obtained by the operation of the cross.

If you're going to represent Christ, and on that basis establish a community that will equally express him, how can such a phenomenon take place without the operation of the cross and the deaths and the working of the redemptive, sanctifying kind that must precede one being sent.

Much easier to designate men and to give them titles and have those and others who inherit the titles without any spirit qualification at all. So we have two kinds of apostolic definition in collision.

One is institutional, the other is organic. So I love very much what Bob says here, it's worth dwelling on. We know that there were twelve apostles, men appointed and called and sent who had great responsibility in being foundational to the church.

And we think that there are such men now in our own generation. So not every Christian is an apostle, although every Christian is sent according to the great commission, go ye into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature.

So we need to distinguish between men who have an office of a foundational kind who make the communities that do go possible by their own impartation and what they bring in representing the head of the church himself.

We're not going to settle this in one statement. People say give me a one sentence definition. I say well, it took five days at Lausanne, Switzerland to first address the subject of what is apostolic.

And the book on the shelf, Apostolic Foundations, has its origin at those first five days of meeting where whole messages were spent on apostolic character, apostolic proclamation, apostolic perception, the subject of eternity, the principalities and powers of the air, the various aspects that constitute an apostle.

And we must understand them because they are foundational to the church that is itself to have such a mindset, such a corresponding ability, such an expression. So hold your question that will require much discussion to begin to assess this remarkable jewel.

We need to do our homework. We've been lazy and we like a little snap definition, but it's too glorious a thing to be so easily addressed. So in this one paragraph he begins to suggest, this is what I like about the paper, though it starts with the issue of apostle versus government, he goes far beyond that as you'll see as we read on.

And so I'm stopping at the first paragraph where he begins to make these definitions. It's not the impressive ability to manage and grow a big ministry, but for the more meek, subtle, and outwardly unimpressive qualities of the true apostle.

So the true apostle, according to his definition, is not outwardly impressive. In fact, if he's outwardly impressive, he might well be an object of suspicion and not one of qualification. So a man can be quiet and unprepossessing and yet have the distinctive character and calling and yet not have an outward administrative ability that people would admire.

It is the grace inherent in a man that represents Jesus himself for respectful consideration. To represent Jesus himself. Anyone can say that. It can be said of someone, but what does it in fact mean?

Not the word Jesus, which anyone can tack on to anything as an appellation, as a title, but Jesus himself. What Jesus is in himself is what the apostle represents and depicts. And you have to assume not as some kind of put on, not some affectation, not some external copycat imitative thing, but something in wrought of the very life and character of the Lord himself.

So we can assume that such men don't grow on trees and that they are not an overnight phenomenon. And therefore we need to be jealous because the deceitful or the false thing is everywhere about us. Maybe I'll take a moment to leap into this where he talks about false apostles.

Discerning True and False Apostles

Why are they false? Because they lack a commission from Christ himself. They were never sent. They sent themselves. Or they're sent by some committee. Or what I'm learning, I don't even want to mention names, I have to bite my tongue each time when you think of who I'm referring to.

Men are now validating themselves by each other. So a prophet prophesies falsely and says, God has called you to a much greater ministry than ever you have known. You're not only to be an apostle, you're to be the chief of apostles in these last days.

And it goes on like that. And so the man takes his mandate and commission from that prophecy. And he himself validates the prophet. And so it's a self-validating, self-confirming, self-congratulatory system.

But it's a man never sent by Christ. Why? Because he cannot represent him. The very fact that he's ambitious and wants so to enjoy that kind of a title and use and would be quick to latch on to anything that justifies it is his disqualification.

Where is the quietness and the meekness and the non-visible, unimpressive qualities that characterize a true apostle? This very ambition condemns him and makes him false. Although not to say that tens upon tens of thousands are being impressed.

They were false apostles because they lacked the commission from Christ himself but were or at least were acting as no more than envoys of apostles. They were false because they were not pioneer missionaries but had infiltrated into churches founded by other men.

And he's talking about the false apostles of Paul's own time in order to propagate their own opinions and magnify their own persons. They were false apostles above all because neither their message nor their behavior was Christian or Christ-like.

They exalted themselves at the expense of their hearers and they preached another Jesus and a different gospel. How do we discern the true from the false? It's a great question because he goes on to say even Paul could not establish his apostolic title by merely announcing it.

He wouldn't even attempt. I mean though he says by Christ Jesus but men had to make a decision with regard to him. So how do we discern? Maybe only to the degree that we ourselves are true and have a history with truth and love truth and the Lord who is the truth has been communicated to us to the degree that we ourselves have a measure of authentic relationship with him so that anything that purports to represent Christ but lacks the authentic quality of the one whom we have come to know serve, admire and love will instantly give us a check or a resistance to one making a claim.

The fact that they make a claim is itself probably ground for suspicion. No man was more convinced than Paul that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. This however was a proposition he could assert but never prove.

Isn't that remarkable? Paul himself could not prove incontrovertibly that I'm the true thing and somehow those that he faced had to make a decision out of a tension of possibilities. Maybe they were men far more impressive than he because he himself admits that he's not a slick speaker.

And that his presence is not at all outwardly impressive but his epistles. And so there were probably men who shone far above Paul in address, in rhetoric, style, knowledge maybe impressive Jewish backgrounds and the Gentiles newly come to the faith were having to discern who's the real one, who's the false.

And that's a question that's with us still so that the Church of Revelation forgot which one is complimented because it is able to discern those who say they are apostles but are not. So it's evidently not only an issue to the end but it's a profound issue at the end because we can assume that if we give a credibility and an adherence to a false prophet, apostle or prophet laying therefore a false foundation what can we expect for the superstructure that will be raised upon it?

That's why the Lord maybe is wanting to sound a note like this from the very first. Think of the humility of Paul knowing he's an apostle called by Jesus Christ but he cannot prove it. And it's not only that his pride is at stake or his credentials or his identity, self-esteem but he knows if he's not received as one true and one called there's going to be a vacuum filled by someone who is false.

So his jealousy for the Church must burn in his heart over the issue of his own acceptance and his own recognition. But that's the suffering that is intrinsic to being an apostle. One of the aspects of suffering as I can go on to read in both places here that suffering is probably one of the distinctive marks of the apostle because after all if he represents Christ how can he not be a sufferer?

And if he represents Christ in such a way as to depict and set him forth how shall the powers of the air that have crucified Christ not assail him? So we can understand why men made a covenant with each other neither to eat nor drink until he was dead and threw dirt up in the air upon their heads with the cry he's not fit to live.

Isn't that remarkable? God's greatest gift to the nation and to the Church is deemed by those to whom he is sent as not fit to live. Maybe all the more because he does depict and set forth Christ. And the world that is at enmity with Christ will be at enmity with him.

So any so-called apostle who is living it up and most of them do living it up comfortably and having quite a lifestyle of remarkable comfort and benefit in the condescensions of men even by that would indicate that something is amiss in what they purport to be.

There's something about apostolic meekness and there's something about apostolic poverty. I'm not talking about religious self-denial like some ascetic who lives in a miserly way but poverty. The Lord himself said he had not a place to lay his head and Paul worked with his own hands and probably carried what possessions he had with him so few as they were and also talks about making many rich being poor but making many rich.

There's something to be said for poverty but if it's rightly understood and not some jaundiced, sentimentalized, falsely emulated thing. All of the other apostles knew Christ in his pre-crucified life saw him in his resurrection were instructed by him for 40 days before his ascension on the things pertaining to the kingdom but not Paul.

The one who becomes the chief of the apostles and who eclipses all of those who preceded him had not their advantage in an actual personal knowledge of the Christ that they are called to depict. I've just come recently from India and was in the very city where Thomas doubting Thomas began his apostolic ministry in India.

Whatever church there is that's worth that name in that great continent today was begun by this Jewish apostle who brought the reality of Christ remember in his doubt, I will not believe he had a striking demonstration Paul had not that advantage.

He had the vision of the resurrected Christ to call on the road to Damascus so it raises this question how could Paul be the chief of the apostles when in terms of actual access to Christ prior to his crucifixion and after was not his experience.

Where did he gain his knowledge of Christ that he might represent him and be sent of him to depict him to the Gentiles if he did not have the advantage of those who preceded him. That is a great question.

You know why it's a great question? Because it's not only a key to the understanding of Paul but it's a key to the prospect for ourselves of coming into an apostolic reality and an apostolic character because we also have not the advantage of a history with Christ as was enjoyed by the initial apostles so whatever was Paul's route to apostolicity and the knowledge of Christ to such a degree that he could set him forth it's also our possibility.

Isn't that a remarkable thing? I think I'm repeating myself to say that our own knowledge of Christ the truth of our own knowledge would very much be a key in the ability to recognize someone sent who represents him.

There's got to be some knowledge of him by us even before the arrival of such a one and so what is our access? I'm thinking about the woman who made a remark to me in Holland who very much was in opposition to my view of Israel's last days expulsion, exile, time of Jacob's trouble.

She didn't want to hear that. It was too hard a word all the more because she was married to an Israeli and lived in Israel for a number of years didn't want to hear such a scenario and resisted that message until she read the holocaust book.

When she read the holocaust book which speaks of the judgments of God in history including the holocaust she was turned and she made the remark to me. I now agree with you Art I see your perspective but more than that what God has showed me through your book is that the God whom I had thought to worship in the name of Jesus was only Santa Claus upon whom I had put the label Jesus.

Isn't that remarkable? This is not some some carnal flimsy shallow believer a substantial woman whose own view and knowledge of the Lord had to be profoundly adjusted and corrected to the point where she herself spoke that word.

So what is our knowledge of Christ? Which is the knowledge of truth that is a critical key in our own discernment not only of men who are true and false but of issues that are true or false. Here's a quotation from a classic work on the subject of the apostle a German scholar quoted here that the essence of the apostolic office is based upon the certainty that one has so appropriated Christ as to represent him in one's own person and in the fact that he has taken into his hands the whole life of the office bearer that he who has taken into his whole hands is Christ that he has the man lock, stock and barrel.

And that's how an identity of such a kind is established in one's own person it's not a put on it's not a layer of something or a clever vocabulary or some ability to handle problems and resolve difficulties it's the very character and life of the Lord in one's own person because the Lord has taken that one the whole life of that office bearer into himself.

I like that. That the sending must be a personal sending by Jesus of a man who has been in personal contact with him that the chief work of an apostle is the proclamation of a message and the apostle acts with authority so that the message and his actions are bound up with each other that the apostle shares not only in the authority but also in the suffering of the Lord to catch those things.

It's not just what the man says it's what the man is. He bears an authority of the one who sends him and also reflects and makes himself a candidate for the sufferings of the Lord. Paul speaks about the sufferings that need to be filled up in the body.

He can offer himself as a first evidence of that process and the number of beatings the scars that he bears the weight of the church and all the various things that constitute an apostolic suffering. The Shalia principle going back to the Hebrew word is that a man's agent is as the man himself and that somehow there is an organic process and not a series of new administrative devices in the personal commission of the Shalia.

That Hebrew word to act in the person of our Lord himself conveyed afresh to individuals in every generation acting through other individuals who have already personally received that commission to act in his person.

When they so act he himself cannot repudiate their action for a man's representative Shalia is as it were himself. If you receive him, you receive me. Go back to Bob's paper. On the other hand as I said there are those called apostles who are not apostles, they exercise the ability to govern a ministry as tremendous administrators, motivators and organizers.

They are apostles to the world's point of view but they are not apostles by divine calling, practically they are the heads of corporations or denominations. I think that that's very insightful. I kind of agree that what I see of whiz kids and hot shot successful men in the world of religion who are being called apostles and prophets, they give the impression of being CEOs heads of corporations.

There's a business flair and ability about them that Bob is touching here. Did not Jesus promptly shut down a tendency among his apostles that often identifies modern apostolic ministry, the same tendency exists among apostles and quasi-apostles today but it goes unchecked because most of the church lacks the substance maturity, discernment authority, meekness and presence of true apostles.

We defer to CEOs and men with a business kind of flair because the church itself lacks the substance, the maturity the discernment, the authority the meekness. So it's a kind of a dog chasing its tail.

We lack it to the degree that we've never had these qualities set before us by men who bear them and so we have not a model of apostolic and so when those come who have a flair and a certain kind of slick appeal they're likely to be received.

So here is my appeal, Bob says if the Lord called our team to be apostolic, to be true apostles to train others, then let's carefully discern, define and demonstrate the real thing and help revolutionize popular structures today now in view of all this what is an apostle, here I list a few essentials.

I don't want to even take up the question whether any team can do what Bob is hoping for that team to do or whether it could even be a team enterprise, but the intention is understandable. Here are his definitions in the answer to above of what is an apostle.

Apostles Reveal Christ and Establish Authentic Communities

Apostles uniquely reveal Jesus Christ, their life and ministry first and foremost form vessels for an extraordinary revelation of Jesus who is himself the chief cornerstone of the church like the word himself Jesus himself not what we think him to be not what we are encouraged to picture him to be but what he is in himself is the issue of what God is in himself.

What is God in himself authentically because a synonym for the word apostolic is the word authentic. And if we have not an authentic sense of God and of Christ what authenticity for anything will we have, if we don't have it at the root of reality in God and in Christ what then can we recognize as authentic.

Will we be authentic Christians, will we be authentic saints, will we have an authentic church will we have authentic ministries will we have authentic families, will we have authentic marriage. Will our children be authentic.

Authentic is the thing in itself that is unmistakably real, so the apostle sets forth that reality in himself of what Christ is in himself. I can't believe that that can take place without suffering and I don't and I know I'm not talking about external suffering, that will come because the man is that thing but I'm talking about internal suffering.

I'm talking about anguish of soul the dealings of God the pressures of fellowship all of the weight of things. I just got a letter, maybe I'll read it tomorrow from Israel Avi Mitsraki from a ministry in Tel Aviv and the poor guy my heart went out to him.

He came back after a long trip overseas and the moment he returned this was wrong, that was wrong, there was the bombing at the Jerusalem University there were two drunks lying in the hallway of the entrance to their ministry place.

He had hardly gotten into the building. Then the neighbor came down from upstairs the toilet had broken and was flooding the floor and coming down on their ministry place and whose responsibility was it to repair and you imagine talking to an Israeli about this in Hebrew and finally they resolved it and got it fixed and they had a whole day of vexation one after another, frustration delay, confusion, difficulty.

Poor man was stretched to breaking and he goes out. Finally it's time to go home and someone has jammed his car in and he can't even get out from the parking space. I wrote him a little note, you dear man my heart goes out to you for your vexations but pray for me, I'm called to New York and I'm expecting I'll be experiencing comparable vexation.

So this is not an appeal for sympathy but an indication that the kind of character that represents Christ as Christ is not going to come glibly easily or shallowly it's going to come from those vexations what gave to Stephen the first martyr a radiant face of an angel and being full of the spirit, seeing an open heaven and Jesus at the right hand of the Father to such a degree that he did not feel the stones breaking upon his nose and head and the blood running into his eyes and mouth but was full of a heart of forgiveness forgive them for they know not what they do.

Where did he get that it didn't come in the moment of a final suffering but I'm wanting to suggest many times that waiting on the tables of the widows of the Jews and the Greeks was the place where his apostolic character was formed, she got more than me you're partial to her because she's a widow of a Jerusalem Jew and I'm the widow of a Jew in exile in the Hellenistic world and you're prejudiced and you're partial.

I like this, I don't like that this is too hot, that's too cold, too little poor man. Can God shape apostolic character in such attention in which you have to bear the magnanimity of Christ patience and forbearance, sweetness of spirit and wisdom with widows.

We don't know anything else about Stephen but that he was a waiter on tables to the widows and I suspect that the radiant face and the ability for modedom which he gloriously performed, the key to Saul's subsequent conversion took place the formation for it was in the daily vexation of having to serve table to widows so whether it's that formula or another, I can't believe that the character that shows forth Christ as he is himself can come without that kind of suffering so I would be suspicious of any hotshot who has quickly arrived on the scene in a kind of a commanding presence and is already setting up and ordaining others that is the real thing if he has not a history of that kind.

What is the foundation that the apostle and the prophet constitutes for the church? Is it their knowledge coveted though that is, their ability to lay forth the principles of God and set forth the sweeping purposes of God?

Precious as only they can do but the heart of the foundation is what they convey of God as God because if that is not the church's foundation we can fill our heads with all kinds of remarkable end time notions and apocalyptic last days eschatological sweeping vision but at the foundation vision but at the foundation we don't know God as we ought so they communicate God in himself as he is and I'm saying again, that's no cheap and easy school but if we're only looking for effect and impressiveness or superficial ability we will be candidates for deception.

Paul's Conversion and the Formation of an Apostle

What happened in the moment when a zeal, a zealot, persecuting the church in all complete assurance of rectitude and full of swaggering self righteousness, defending the ancient faith, is all of a sudden arrested by a voice that cries out, Saul why for persecutest thou me.

The suffering that takes place in that moment is indescribable. The intensity of that suffering is beyond any ability to assess because in one fell swoop the man is shown his whole life however well meaning or well intended is a lie, and a lie of such a kind as brings him to persecute not only God's old people but the Lord himself.

And if you're a zealous Jew who thought always to regard God highly and to learn that even with that intention of religious righteousness, you are yet a murderer of God himself. What that man experiences in that moment, you wouldn't want to experience if it was drawn out over a course of a dozen years, maybe a hundred years.

Could not, if the Lord was gracious to give it in piecemeal to touch the enormous stamp of God into a man's heart. I don't think that we can understand the ministry of Paul except for that conversion that came to him in that powerful way a complete turning of his world upside down and such a blindness in which he abided for three days neither eating nor drinking, was nothing less than three days in the grave.