“And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.” (1 Cor. 12:28, NKJV)
We are currently examining the ninth myth of the contemporary church: The reverend or pastor is the one around which the entire church community revolves, and without him/her the church cannot function optimally. In the previous teaching we pointed out that this statement is a deeply-rooted myth established over centuries, and that it has no Biblical grounding.
Part of the discussion found in earlier teachings (from Day 842-851) is returned to here. It concerns the apostasy of the contemporary church, in other words the fact that people who have “a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5) make up the organised core of the church. In these teachings we found that the institution which accommodates “the coming of the lawless one … with all power, signs, and lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9) in order to keep a false salvation in the church, is classified as the institutionalised church system. Those “who have missed the mark and swerved from the truth” (2 Tim. 2:18, IGNT) are within the visible church, not outside it. It was pointed out that everything that is not Christ, is still controlled by carnal nature, and thus by Evil. Within the institutionalised Babylonian church system perverted believers thus form part of a demonic “many-membered man” that directly opposes the Bride of Christ as “many-membered man”. The apostate church system veils the believers within it so that they cannot understand how this system prevents that “the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition”, WITHIN them.
From this follows the fact that the un-Biblical system perpetuated by the reverend or pastor serves this perversity. In his book Doing A New Thing, Brian Hewitt writes about his attitude when it comes to establishing new home churches: “The leaders of the new churches all shared the same goal: the rebuilding or restoring of the present-day church to its New Testament splendour. And they shared the same conviction that God was actively at work in the last days to bring this to pass. Those Christians who had come to believe that a period of lukewarmness and backsliding in the church would be a sign of the nearness of Christ’s return WERE WRONG – the era of the apostle, not the era of apostasy was at hand.”
We are in the time where the focus falls on the role of the five-fold ministry as the Hand of God in the establishing of the Body of Christ. “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:19-22). We need to move away from a mentality of sporadic visitation after continual habitation. As the opening Scripture makes clear, the teacher is not the central figure of a church. (And remember – the position of the revered/pastor-cum-shepherd/teacher is not yet even discussed here).
- Selah: Are there anointed apostles and prophets in your faith community?
- Read: 81, 88 & 92
- Memorise: 81:12
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read Brian Hewitt’s book.
