- 4 months ago
John and Chino dive deep into the controversial topic of apostles and prophets in today’s church. Drawing from their personal backgrounds, historical examples, and scripture, they explore how modern movements like the New Apostolic Reformation distort biblical definitions of apostleship and prophetic ministry. Along the way, they expose the contradictions in Hobart Freeman’s teachings, William Branham’s claims of being “God in flesh,” and the manipulative practices of leaders who use mystical language to control followers.
This discussion highlights the difference between biblical apostles—those who walked with Christ—and today’s so-called apostles who often function more like salesmen. John and Chino unpack the misuse of the fivefold ministry, show how it can usurp the role of the Holy Spirit, and call for a return to the authority of scripture instead of modern “apostolic” personalities.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Five-Fold Ministry and Apostleship Today
02:00 Hobart Freeman’s Influence and Early Teachings
06:01 Rise of the Prophetic and Apostolic Movements
10:05 Contradictions in Healing Evangelists and Prophets
16:26 Freeman’s Shifting Views and Internal Inconsistencies
20:51 William Branham’s Claims of Prophetic Divinity
25:40 Apostolic Titles vs. Apostolic Authority
31:02 Prophetic Manipulation and False Claims
35:59 Five-Fold Ministry, Latter Rain, and Pyramid Schemes
42:22 Historical Claims of Apostolic Continuity
47:16 Apostleship vs. Missionary Work (The Whiskey Analogy)
52:26 Acts 1: True Apostolic Qualifications
58:04 New Testament Writers and Apostolic Authority
1:01:00 Why Apostolic Authority Ended with the New Testament
1:02:13 Conclusion: Apostleship Usurping the Role of the Holy Spirit
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
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This discussion highlights the difference between biblical apostles—those who walked with Christ—and today’s so-called apostles who often function more like salesmen. John and Chino unpack the misuse of the fivefold ministry, show how it can usurp the role of the Holy Spirit, and call for a return to the authority of scripture instead of modern “apostolic” personalities.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Five-Fold Ministry and Apostleship Today
02:00 Hobart Freeman’s Influence and Early Teachings
06:01 Rise of the Prophetic and Apostolic Movements
10:05 Contradictions in Healing Evangelists and Prophets
16:26 Freeman’s Shifting Views and Internal Inconsistencies
20:51 William Branham’s Claims of Prophetic Divinity
25:40 Apostolic Titles vs. Apostolic Authority
31:02 Prophetic Manipulation and False Claims
35:59 Five-Fold Ministry, Latter Rain, and Pyramid Schemes
42:22 Historical Claims of Apostolic Continuity
47:16 Apostleship vs. Missionary Work (The Whiskey Analogy)
52:26 Acts 1: True Apostolic Qualifications
58:04 New Testament Writers and Apostolic Authority
1:01:00 Why Apostolic Authority Ended with the New Testament
1:02:13 Conclusion: Apostleship Usurping the Role of the Holy Spirit
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross,
00:00:47pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Cheno D. Ross' YouTube
00:00:52channel.
00:00:53Cheno, we've had so much excitement talking about five-fold ministry and other topics
00:00:59that we've done, and looking at today's world, you know, I get all of the comments and people
00:01:07say, well, the five-fold ministry still exists.
00:01:09It's right here in the Bible.
00:01:10Read it.
00:01:11And I read through it.
00:01:13You know, I know the Bible passages.
00:01:15I grew up in this thing.
00:01:16I know all the doctrines.
00:01:17But the way it's being applied today isn't quite right, and it really ties to the upper
00:01:23tiers of that five-fold ministry, which we can talk about today.
00:01:27The role of the apostle, and also closely related to this as it relates to the cult,
00:01:35is the role of the prophet.
00:01:36Sometimes those two just kind of get interchanged and intermingled.
00:01:41So I wanted to get into that today, but I know that people are going to be just up in
00:01:47arms about anything that we say, pro or con.
00:01:50So I'm going to be very careful in this episode, but let's digest the topic of the apostle in
00:01:57today's world.
00:01:59Okay.
00:02:00Yes, John.
00:02:01Well, the last time you and I were together and talking about the five-fold ministry office,
00:02:06I realized that we really struck a nerve that I had not intended or anticipated or realized
00:02:15until we looked at the viewership, because my podcast with you normally are more narrowly
00:02:23confined to Dr. Hobart Freeman.
00:02:27That was the group I was brought up in as a teenager.
00:02:33So it's Dr. Freeman's views on these things that I have more in my mind.
00:02:39The circles that I travel in now, I'm in my late 60s, are that I interact with.
00:02:45Or that I listen to, or that I contribute to, are, they're biblical and theological circles.
00:02:53So, you know, I don't attend any prophets' conferences or apostles' conferences.
00:03:00I don't attend any of those things.
00:03:02And I'm not that aware of them until, you know, I, like everyone else, I pick up my phone
00:03:08and look at YouTube.
00:03:09And then I find out, oh, there's been a big apostles' conference or prophets' conference.
00:03:15And I just kind of smile and chuckle and go my way that day.
00:03:19But it is a big, a big issue out there.
00:03:22But I just had my sights the last time you and I taught really set on Dr. Freeman's inconsistencies
00:03:29in this area because when I first heard Hobart in 1976, I was a newly saved believer in a
00:03:39Presbyterian church, in a really good, reformed, conservative Presbyterian church on the south
00:03:45side of Memphis in Tennessee.
00:03:46So when I heard that God was restoring apostles and prophets based on Ephesians 4.11, the five-fold
00:03:58ministry offices or officers or gifts, everyone wants to argue over, what do you call that?
00:04:05You're welcome to call it whatever.
00:04:07I'm trying to cover all the bases.
00:04:09But those five ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, whether you want
00:04:17to call it an office or a gift or a minister or ministry office, whatever you prefer to
00:04:24call it, I'm really fine with any of that.
00:04:26When I heard that, you know, that was news to me because I was familiar growing up in church.
00:04:32I knew what a pastor was.
00:04:34We had an associate pastor.
00:04:35We had the chairman of the deacon board, the chairman of an elder board.
00:04:40We had the youth minister.
00:04:42I knew what the Sunday school superintendent was and the choir director was.
00:04:48You know, I knew a lot of titles to positions in a local church, but we didn't have any apostles
00:04:57in our Presbyterian church and we didn't have any prophets.
00:05:00And we didn't talk about them as though they were something that we should have in our church.
00:05:08So we definitely weren't longing for apostles or prophets.
00:05:13Today and in the environment in which we're operating, we have a whole different situation
00:05:20on our hand.
00:05:21So you actually have, it goes by the acronym NAR, N-A-R, which itself is something new.
00:05:34That wasn't here in the 1970s or 1980s.
00:05:38I think in maybe the second half of the 1980s is when I began hearing more about a prophetic
00:05:49movement, that there was a prophetic movement that was sweeping the Christian church all around
00:05:56the world.
00:05:57And you had to go maybe a few decades, and then you have what they're now calling the
00:06:03N-A-R, the New Apostolic Restoration or Reformation, or you can make the R mean a lot of different
00:06:11things.
00:06:12But what I see both of those movements, either the prophetic movement or the apostolic restoration
00:06:20movement capitalizing on, are people's hunger in all the churches, people's hunger for God
00:06:28and hunger for truth.
00:06:30And I think maybe even more so, because Christians today seem to be so, I hate to say it, but
00:06:39so biblically illiterate, they know verses, but they don't know the teaching of Scripture.
00:06:46And so what they're looking for is a fresh word, a fresh word from God.
00:06:51And this is what these apostles and prophets have come to offer people.
00:06:56Rather than the old word of God, which would be the Old and New Testament, how about a fresh
00:07:03word from God?
00:07:04And I can remember even hearing Dr. Freeman talking about the dead letter of the law.
00:07:10And that's an interesting passage in one of Paul's epistles, which we won't get off on
00:07:15now, but it is an interesting passage in what people's perception of that was.
00:07:20Hobart's was very clear that what is simply, this is important for people to understand,
00:07:26what is simply written in the Bible is just the dead letter of the law.
00:07:31If it's written on a page of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, that is the letter of the law
00:07:40or the letter of the word.
00:07:41And it just sitting there by itself is dead.
00:07:44You know, that's contrary to everything the Bible claims about itself.
00:07:48It claims that every jot and tittle is a living word of God and will not perish, even though
00:07:54the worlds will pass away, the word of God will not.
00:07:58What Hobart would say about that is you have to have the spirit come into your life and into
00:08:03your mind in order to translate that message from the page into your heart.
00:08:10So you end up, obviously, with this mystical, gnostic, esoteric, super spiritual kind of approach
00:08:21to the actual scriptures.
00:08:24And I don't think that's the way the early church approached the Old Testament, which
00:08:29was their Bible.
00:08:30I think they felt that the entire Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi or Genesis to 2 Chronicles,
00:08:37which may have been the last book actually written in the Old Testament, that that was
00:08:41the very word of God.
00:08:43But anyway, you know, I just went along after hearing Hobart saying that the five-fold ministry
00:08:50offices are valid for today.
00:08:52I just went off happily parroting what he said.
00:08:57And I have no idea what the church leadership in that Presbyterian church thought about me
00:09:03as a 17-year-old talking about apostles and prophets.
00:09:07I mean, they probably just assumed, well, he's been reading his Bible, so he's thinking
00:09:11of those apostles and prophets.
00:09:13But no, I wasn't thinking about those.
00:09:15Those are dead and gone.
00:09:16We're looking for living ones today who can lead and who can guide the church.
00:09:23So what we were looking at last time, John, were the only two points, really.
00:09:27And it just somehow struck a nerve in everyone.
00:09:31I was just looking at what I had grown to see over the years were inconsistencies with Hobart's
00:09:39teaching.
00:09:39I wasn't really, and we weren't really trying last time to address biblically or theologically.
00:09:45I was just looking at my niche market in my life, and that's Hobart Freeman and Faith
00:09:51Assembly.
00:09:52So he had championed this all along, but as I grew a little more in my life, and as I
00:10:00heard later messages and compared them to earlier cassette-taped messages of his, then
00:10:06a couple of things really popped out as an inconsistency.
00:10:10The first one was this.
00:10:12He had used other people whom he claimed to be in the 20th century, apostles and prophets,
00:10:20as part of his proof for, hey, I'm not as crazy as you think I am.
00:10:25Because look, we have had apostles and prophets in our generation in the 1900s.
00:10:33And so he would mention Oral Roberts.
00:10:37You know, Oral Roberts was a great healing evangelist and had healed tens of thousands
00:10:43of people, and he would use T.L.
00:10:46Osborne as an apostle that he would go to Indonesia and preach and raise the dead, and people would
00:10:55walk on water and turn water into wine.
00:10:59Hobart talked all the time in his earlier messages about the miracles in the book of Acts
00:11:06were being duplicated all around the world.
00:11:10I always found it, this is what I came later to see, I always found it interesting that
00:11:15all of these things were always happening in some faraway place.
00:11:19I was never in a meeting where anybody walked on water or turned water into wine or raised
00:11:25the dead.
00:11:26It was always in Indonesia or South America or Africa.
00:11:30It was always in some faraway place.
00:11:33But anyway, he'd say T.L.
00:11:34Osborne was an apostle.
00:11:36I thought, wow, so we have the apostle Matthew and John and Paul and Tommy Osborne is also,
00:11:46we can put him in that group as an apostle.
00:11:49And, you know, when I first heard that, John, I didn't quibble with it at all because Hobart
00:11:54had a verse.
00:11:55That's the problem with proof texting and cherry picking and stringing things together and not
00:12:01studying your own Bible and knowing your own context of that passage didn't bother me at
00:12:07all.
00:12:07I just thought he's an apostle.
00:12:10And then for a prophet, of course, he always used William Branham.
00:12:14He said, William Branham was God's prophet.
00:12:17So on the early tapes, he would use all these.
00:12:21And I just, you know, as you grow and age and mature in your ability to do your own research,
00:12:28and then you realize that in order to be fair to your sources, you know, you have to hold
00:12:36on to whatever you think the truth is, regardless of whatever you can find or can't find.
00:12:42What I found to be disconcerting with Hobart and other charismatic people is they had this
00:12:49view first that I believe in the five-fold ministry office.
00:12:52And then they went looking for proof for that.
00:12:54And so then if you could find some people who call themselves that, or that were referred to
00:13:00by other people under those names or categories, then you just pull that into your wheelhouse
00:13:06as part of the proof.
00:13:09Well, within a couple of years of hearing those claims by Hobart, we've got healing evangelists
00:13:16and we've got apostles and prophets.
00:13:18He was going back and now rejecting all of these men.
00:13:23So he'd go to Oral Roberts and say, yeah, Oral Roberts, he used to believe in healing like
00:13:27we believe in it.
00:13:29But now out there on the campus of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, he's building this great
00:13:35medical complex that he called the city of faith and that Hobart called the city of doubt.
00:13:42And so he said, so see, he's going back.
00:13:44He used to be one of God's healing evangelists and never used any medicine, didn't believe in
00:13:50doctors.
00:13:50And now he's building a medical facility.
00:13:55And then Osborne got off.
00:13:56And then William Branham taught serpent seed and all the other stuff he taught.
00:14:02And so Hobart then rejected these men.
00:14:05And that began to present a problem because now I have no one, now I don't have anybody
00:14:14in the 20th century that I can go to my church leadership and the Presbyterian church and
00:14:20offer up as a present day case example of a healing evangelist or an apostle or prophet.
00:14:27Um, and Hobart always said, well, they got off in their ministry and their message.
00:14:33And so, so, so then what?
00:14:36So they're no longer that.
00:14:38So is it even possible to have ever been an apostle and end up with some erroneous or heretical
00:14:46view?
00:14:46Or is it even possible to have been a prophet and then end up in heresy?
00:14:51I couldn't find good biblical examples of that.
00:14:55Whoever I found in the Old Testament as a prophet, they remained a prophet the rest of
00:15:00their life.
00:15:01And whoever was an apostle, they remained an apostle.
00:15:05So if you brought that up as an objection, then someone like Hobart would say, well, you
00:15:09remember even Peter got off and Paul had to rebuke him.
00:15:13Well, that's the Galatians two episode.
00:15:16Peter never got off in errors and deep, far flung heresy, you know, as a first century
00:15:24apostle, he simply refused because he got under a lot of peer pressure to eat with Gentiles
00:15:32up in Antioch, in Syrian Antioch.
00:15:34You can read the story in Galatians one and two, whenever Jewish believers came to that church
00:15:41from, um, the church in Jerusalem, from James and the church in Jerusalem.
00:15:46So obviously Peter did make a, a, um, a judgmental mistake.
00:15:51He made a personal mistake, but it was simply that where he had been having table fellowship
00:15:57with Gentile Christians, he got under pressure in at least his own mind from the, um, Judaizing
00:16:05people who had come from Jerusalem.
00:16:07So he stopped eating with them.
00:16:09It was a mistake.
00:16:11Paul said he was to be blamed and I withstood him to his face.
00:16:14So he was definitely at fault for doing that, but it wasn't anything doctrinal.
00:16:18It wasn't anything erroneous or heretical in Peter's doctrine.
00:16:23So when they would try to use that example or others, it just didn't make sense to me.
00:16:28So I'm saying the first inconsistency I saw with Hobart's teaching on this is those people
00:16:34he had earlier championed as apostles and prophets no longer were.
00:16:38So now we don't have any, then the second inconsistency I, I came to see, which just
00:16:43became hilarious was in his own church and ministry.
00:16:49He didn't have five ministry offices.
00:16:52You would think that if God had given to Hobart and this was Hobart's claim, the end time
00:16:58message of faith, and that he was the only one who had been given this.
00:17:02And that also is easily documented as a claim of his on his tapes.
00:17:08He said, God has, has revealed the end time message only to one man.
00:17:13And we are like a hub of a wheel and the spokes go out from faith assembly all over the world.
00:17:20He believed that this, his church, his ministry was really the only completely valid one in
00:17:30the world of his day.
00:17:32Well, surely if that's true, and surely if apostles and prophets are for today, you would be overrun
00:17:39with them in your ministry because you are the one who has this end time message.
00:17:45But did they have them?
00:17:46No.
00:17:48And it became, it became comical when you looked at the satellite groups, satellite groups in
00:17:57Illinois, in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio, and in other parts of the United States, for
00:18:03sure.
00:18:04But especially in those surrounding groups, they would talk about, they would tell one
00:18:09another, they would call brother, sister, so-and-so on the phone Monday morning and say,
00:18:14oh, be sure you're there at the meeting tonight, Monday night, because we're going to have a
00:18:20five-fold there tonight.
00:18:21We're going to have a five-fold.
00:18:22And, you know, you had to learn the cult lingo.
00:18:27That was part of their terminology.
00:18:29Somebody else, if you called and said, we're going to have a five-fold, you'd say, what
00:18:33in the world is that?
00:18:34Is that some kind of cake mixture where you're folding ingredients inside of themselves?
00:18:40What would that even be if you're not in this group?
00:18:43But in this group, they knew what a five-fold was.
00:18:46That's one of the five-fold ministry offices.
00:18:49But every time they said, we're going to have a five-fold, guess who came?
00:18:55A teacher, the last of the five ministry offices.
00:19:00A pastor never came, an evangelist, a prophet, an apostle never came.
00:19:05I just would sit back and almost laugh.
00:19:09Even though I believed early in my ministry in the five-fold ministry offices, we didn't
00:19:15go around using that terminology.
00:19:16I was the local pastor of my church in Minnesota, and I was the dominant teacher in that church.
00:19:27I also had later a church in Vermont.
00:19:29I was a pastor of that church, and I was the primary teacher.
00:19:34But no one called me a five-fold.
00:19:36They'd call me pastor, Ross, or teacher.
00:19:39They never called me five-fold because I'm not five-fold.
00:19:42I'm either one or two.
00:19:44I'm either the pastor or the pastor and the teacher, but I'm not those other three.
00:19:50So it just became comical how cute these people were in their terminology, how desperately they
00:19:59wanted to follow Hobart's teaching.
00:20:02If they had somebody in that local group who lived locally and would maybe teach if a minister
00:20:10from Faith Assembly was not coming that particular evening, then I don't know what he was.
00:20:16He was just a local brother.
00:20:17You know, he wasn't really anything.
00:20:20But if you were going to have coming to your assembly or your home church, your satellite
00:20:27group on that particular day, if you're going to have someone sent out from Faith Assembly,
00:20:32then you are going to have a five-fold.
00:20:35And I tried to get them to say, enough of all this nonsense.
00:20:39Stop calling them a five-fold because they're not.
00:20:43They're a one-fold.
00:20:44Just say we've got a teacher coming from Faith Assembly to teach us in our meeting tonight.
00:20:50You know, whenever I had the conversation with you last time, there's a lot of assumptions
00:20:54that I make just because it's so much embedded into my being.
00:21:00But all of the theology that Branham had, if I were to sum that up, and remember, this is
00:21:06a movement with hundreds of ministers, evangelists who are claiming to be apostles, prophets,
00:21:13teachers, all of these things.
00:21:14They're all gathering around William Branham who spearheaded this movement.
00:21:18And they're all eating up whatever it is that he said because he was the prophet for their
00:21:24day.
00:21:25T.L. Osborne, who you just mentioned, basically said he was God in the flesh.
00:21:30Well, there's a reason why he said this.
00:21:32And if you understand that reason, then you understand how wrong the five-fold ministry
00:21:38is that these guys were touting, and also how wrong it is this whole tier of apostle that
00:21:46they've created.
00:21:46So let me read you a quote, but let me preface it by this.
00:21:51If you go on to Branham Sermons and you just type in apostles, prophets, or anything that
00:21:57would bring up the five-fold ministry, you're going to find hundreds, not just one or two,
00:22:02hundreds of these things.
00:22:04Because this is what he is teaching.
00:22:06This is what everybody's eating up.
00:22:08While he's teaching it, he's saying things like this.
00:22:11This is one of many examples that I've come across.
00:22:15We believe that God is to be manifested in the last day among his people.
00:22:21Every Christian believes this.
00:22:23But he goes on to say, to the elect seed, according to the Bible, he'll be manifested in the form
00:22:29of a prophet.
00:22:31That's exactly what the word says.
00:22:32And that's 1964, that's a sermon called The Oddball.
00:22:38He's got many of these sermons.
00:22:40He always will tell you that there is a five-fold ministry in effect today, but within that five-fold
00:22:47ministry, the prophet is the one that's going to be manifested as God.
00:22:52God will be the prophet.
00:22:54And so, if you understand, well, if God's the prophet, well, what do we need the apostle
00:23:01for?
00:23:01The apostle's not going to lead us.
00:23:03God's got to lead us.
00:23:05But he's saying, in the same breath, man, he's saying, we need apostles and prophets and
00:23:11teachers.
00:23:11We need all of these things.
00:23:13Oh, but by the way, I'm a prophet.
00:23:16I'm God.
00:23:18So, there were all kinds of inconsistencies there.
00:23:21Absolutely.
00:23:22I mean, you can't really – there are entire theologies that I don't mention just because
00:23:28like I almost take them for granted.
00:23:30They're so deeply buried and rooted into my head.
00:23:33I tried to wash them all out.
00:23:35You can never get all of this stuff out of your head.
00:23:38But he says things like, for every age, there was a prophet.
00:23:43Not plural.
00:23:44There was a prophet, a single prophet.
00:23:46And he would say things like this, God never, ever sent more than one prophet to any age.
00:23:51You go back through the Bible, the pages of the Bible.
00:23:54Well, the first time I'm reading through the book of Kings as I'm washing all these
00:23:58things out, not Kings, but some of the Old Testament prophets.
00:24:03And I'm reading, in the days of King Darius.
00:24:05And I'm reading another prophet, in the days of King Darius.
00:24:09And I'm like, wait a minute.
00:24:10This guy lied to me.
00:24:12What he was trying to say was that the prophet is how God manifests himself to the people.
00:24:18Not by God.
00:24:20Not through Jesus.
00:24:21Jesus, it is a prophet.
00:24:22And he would go on to further say, God sent a single prophet to an age as his manifestation
00:24:28of God.
00:24:29He would say that the angel who appeared to Abraham was the God.
00:24:34He would say that Moses was the God before the people.
00:24:38And Moses' law was the spoken word for the day.
00:24:42And the people, if you had Moses' spoken word, you had to get in through Moses.
00:24:48You had to get into heaven through Moses.
00:24:50And if you had Paul, who was the manifested prophet for the age, the God for the age, Paul's
00:24:55people had to have Paul's gospel, which wouldn't work for today.
00:24:59You need my gospel.
00:25:00He would say things like this.
00:25:02So he would divide it into these weird things.
00:25:05Well, what he's essentially saying is that he is not just a prophet.
00:25:09But he is this bundle that includes prophet, teacher, the whole thing, the whole five-fold
00:25:14ministry.
00:25:15If you understand that that's what he was teaching and understand that all of these other
00:25:20people who are with him are just cheering him on when they say that.
00:25:23You go listen to the recordings.
00:25:25You're like, amen, brother.
00:25:27You're God before us.
00:25:29I mean, they're all saying those things, right?
00:25:30So if you understand that, you understand that these people did not have a clue what was
00:25:36a apostle or what was a prophet.
00:25:38No.
00:25:38Okay, so let's just raise that question and talk about it for our podcast today.
00:25:43Are apostles and prophets for today?
00:25:48I don't even know what kind of phrase you valid for today.
00:25:52Are those valid ministries?
00:25:55Are they valid ministerial offices?
00:25:59You know, I looked at the comments people made from the first podcast, and everybody wants
00:26:03to use a certain word.
00:26:04So fill in whatever word fits your theology.
00:26:07I don't have a particular one.
00:26:09I'm just saying, are they valid for today?
00:26:11Are apostles and prophets valid for today?
00:26:14I don't know if you've noticed this, John, but one thing I have noticed and I have told
00:26:18the people that are under my ministry today that listen to me, there has been such a reluctance,
00:26:26not across the board.
00:26:28There are exceptions, but overall, there has been a hesitancy for anyone to call themselves
00:26:35an apostle or call themselves a prophet.
00:26:38What I have noticed is this great tendency, they will say they have an apostolic ministry
00:26:45ministry, or they have a prophetic ministry, and I think they're trying to have their cake
00:26:53and eat it too.
00:26:55They're skirting the issue or the question of, is the office of the apostle valid today and
00:27:03the office of the prophet for today?
00:27:06They're skirting that by not using the actual designation apostle.
00:27:13I, John Doe, am an apostle, but they're saying, I have an apostolic ministry or such and such
00:27:23has a prophetic anointing.
00:27:25And I think, yeah, you're a little squirmy on me right there.
00:27:29The prophets of the Old Testament never hesitated calling themselves a prophet, and the apostles
00:27:34of the New Testament never hesitated calling themselves an apostle.
00:27:38They just came right out and said it.
00:27:41If you look at Paul's epistles, I know in Romans, the correspondence to the Corinthians,
00:27:47Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, the pastoral epistles that I can think of off the top of my
00:27:53head, he does not begin every epistle, but the majority of them.
00:27:57How does he begin his epistles?
00:27:59Paul, call to be an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:28:04So he didn't mince words.
00:28:06He didn't say, I'm Paul with an apostolic calling.
00:28:10Because see, if a person says that, then on the one hand to their followers, they're an
00:28:15apostle.
00:28:16But if you challenge them, they will say, well, I never said I was an apostle.
00:28:20I just said I had an apostolic ministry.
00:28:22And I want to say, what's the difference?
00:28:24You know, what's the difference?
00:28:25I think what these people are waiting on, they're waiting for other people to call them
00:28:30that.
00:28:31So they will say, you know, come to our apostolic conference, and then you'll have an apostolic
00:28:37person behind the podium.
00:28:40And then he'll talk about apostolic anointing.
00:28:44And then everyone leaves the conference talking about Brother So-and-So, who was an apostle.
00:28:49And he never called himself that.
00:28:52But see, he didn't need to.
00:28:54If you play the game the right way, you can escape the penalty phase of being that and
00:29:01then proving to be false, but still enjoy the benefit part of it, because they will
00:29:07call you an apostle or prophet, and you don't have to.
00:29:09So if I go back to Hobart's ministry, I don't know if you've noticed that, but I just see
00:29:14a reluctance in people.
00:29:15They want to, they're calling themselves that without calling themselves that.
00:29:20Hobart certainly felt he was a prophet.
00:29:24I've heard all of his tapes.
00:29:26He never, ever said, I am Hobart Edward Freeman, the prophet of the Lord.
00:29:31Never called himself a prophet.
00:29:33Always called himself a teacher, but always called himself a prophetic teacher.
00:29:43And, you know, I think Hobart was biblically literate enough to know what comes with the
00:29:55calling of a prophet and to ever utter a false prophecy.
00:29:58The Old Testament penalty was you were stoned to death, and who wants to run the risk of
00:30:06that?
00:30:07So I think this probably, anyone who has maybe a little bit of biblical literacy in their
00:30:14theology doesn't want to quite go that far and say they're a prophet.
00:30:20But, I mean, take Jeff Barnett.
00:30:22Jeff Barnett is one of these tier one ministers that is still around today.
00:30:27I think he's up in the Northeast somewhere.
00:30:32But he came out of Hobart Freeman's ministry, and he always, for years, I have a text message
00:30:38from him from this year, I may read from on a later podcast, where he said, oh, Chino,
00:30:43I've operated in the prophetic realm for all 50 years of my ministry.
00:30:49And I want to say, what does that mean?
00:30:51You know, don't be a coward.
00:30:55Don't beat around the bush.
00:30:56If you're a prophet, just say you're a prophet.
00:30:58Paul said he was an apostle.
00:31:00He didn't, he just stood up and said it.
00:31:02The prophets just stood up and said, I'm the prophet Isaiah.
00:31:06What do you mean you operate in the prophetic realm?
00:31:09You know, I don't believe that for a minute.
00:31:12I think that someone who wants to be a prophet, but God has never called them there yet.
00:31:18But they really want to be one.
00:31:20They want you to think that they are one.
00:31:22And so they say, I'm operating in the prophetic realm.
00:31:26You know, and speaking of Jeff Barnett, he had this woman, a prophetess in his church by
00:31:35the name of Michelle Seidler.
00:31:36You can find Michelle Seidler stuff all over YouTube.
00:31:42And I just screenshot what she said on her own Facebook page the other day.
00:31:48Here's what she said.
00:31:50I'll just read it.
00:31:51I've heard people say that the enemy can't read your thoughts.
00:31:55I don't believe that's true at all.
00:31:57Listen to her claim.
00:31:58I mean, I'm just reading her claim.
00:32:00I didn't say she said this.
00:32:01This is on her own Facebook page.
00:32:04I've always been able to hear people's thoughts.
00:32:09My daughter has the same gift before being filled with the Holy Spirit and after being
00:32:15filled with the Holy Spirit.
00:32:17Of course, it's not all people all the time, but it's very often.
00:32:22And it's extremely challenging for me having a gift like this.
00:32:27She has written a book called From Psychic to Prophet, and really should be called, since
00:32:34she's a female, From Psychic to Prophetess.
00:32:37But anyway, the name of the book is From Psychic to Prophet, and she was a psychic, and her female
00:32:45heritage is a heritage of psychics.
00:32:48Well, she allegedly got converted, and now she's a prophetess in the church.
00:32:52And Jeff Barnett, a longtime follower of Hobart Freeman, has had her multiple times in his
00:33:00meeting, her up there with her cup of coffee, wanting to give personal prophecies to people.
00:33:05She doesn't know the Bible.
00:33:07She doesn't teach the Bible, in my opinion.
00:33:10You know, we're out there in video land, so in my opinion, she doesn't know the Bible.
00:33:17I don't know that any of these people know the Bible much better than Balaam's ass knew
00:33:21the Bible.
00:33:22But Balaam's ass was able to speak and give an accurate word, you know.
00:33:27Because you can speak, or because you can talk, or because you can say anything, doesn't really
00:33:32mean anything to me.
00:33:34The only thing that means anything to me is if you know the scriptures, if you know God's
00:33:39word.
00:33:39But back to her post, John, she can read your thoughts.
00:33:44I think what these, I don't think she can read my thoughts as much as a man in the moon.
00:33:49And I think we could demonstrate it.
00:33:51You and I could go.
00:33:52I'm going to tell you what my thought is, then we're going to ask her.
00:33:55You say, what's Cheno's thought?
00:33:57And I just told you what it was, and what she says it won't be.
00:34:00Because my thought will probably be something along the line of, how was Dick Van Dyke able
00:34:08to say super catrafragilistic espialidocious backwards?
00:34:12How was he able to do that?
00:34:14No, I don't think Michelle would know what my thoughts are.
00:34:17But what did these people use that for, John?
00:34:20They used that to manipulate gullible people.
00:34:25Hobart used it.
00:34:26I'm a prophetic teacher.
00:34:28I mean, literally, I've had people from Faith Assembly say, I was scared to be around Dr.
00:34:33Freeman because I was afraid he would know my thoughts.
00:34:36He doesn't know your thoughts any more than Balaam's ass knows your thoughts.
00:34:40He's just a man.
00:34:41It's just a donkey.
00:34:42There's only one God in heaven.
00:34:45Don't be afraid of all these people.
00:34:47But they use that to manipulate people, to intimidate people, and they use it definitely
00:34:55to solicit a following.
00:34:59Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of
00:35:04modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
00:35:09movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:35:12You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:35:17william-branham.org.
00:35:19On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
00:35:25Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
00:35:31audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:35:33You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:35:39movements.
00:35:40If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute
00:35:45button at the top.
00:35:47And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:35:52to or watching.
00:35:53On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:35:58So real quick, I'm going to have to correct you because I know that I will get feedback
00:36:02on this one.
00:36:03This one is important, probably the most important thing we did in the podcast.
00:36:07It is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
00:36:12I can't even say it straightforward, let alone backwards.
00:36:16Well, now we've got that out of the way.
00:36:18You know, speaking of movies, you were talking about how these shysters is the word that I
00:36:24would use for them.
00:36:25They will use these dodgy words so that they can lead you to believe something until they're
00:36:30challenged on it, and then they can just become a shyster and go away from it.
00:36:34It reminds me of the movie, Oh Brother, Where Out Thou?, where John Goodman is the Bible
00:36:40salesman, and he's saying, I operate in the spiritual, a spiritual thing.
00:36:45I can't remember exactly how he said it, but he's being really dodgy in the same way that
00:36:49they are.
00:36:50Well, there's a reason why the movies portray these guys in the way that they do whenever
00:36:54they're portraying a con man, because there are enough religious con men that it's very
00:36:59easy and very evident.
00:37:00If you're not under the con man's spell, you can see that this guy clearly is another
00:37:05John Goodman, and he's going to beat you over the head with a stick if he can sell you
00:37:10a Bible and steal your money.
00:37:12That's what these guys are doing.
00:37:14And to further that point, there was a point in time at which if you were proclaiming this
00:37:21five-fold ministry thing, you were associating yourself with latter rain.
00:37:26It isn't that latter rain movement had any sort of copyright on the five-fold ministry.
00:37:33There were other movements that used the same kind of terminology, but the latter rain version
00:37:39of the five-fold ministry is different from what's described in the book of Ephesians and
00:37:44also different from what the other movements had.
00:37:47The five-fold ministry within this movement created a pyramid scheme.
00:37:51And the assemblies of God began to sanction these guys if they had any part with latter
00:37:58rain, and many of them did.
00:38:00That's the funny thing.
00:38:02Even within – I've talked to people who have been with old-timers in the United Pentecostal
00:38:08Church, and they said even their church, which wasn't even a part of this thing, they
00:38:11were entertaining these latter rain guys because you bring them in, and suddenly you've got
00:38:15this massive crowd with a massive tithe basket to come with it.
00:38:21But whenever the assembly started sanctioning the guys, other groups began to do the same
00:38:26thing.
00:38:26They were sanctioning them.
00:38:28Well, the crowd started to diminish, and if you openly advertised that, hey, I'm a five-fold
00:38:33ministry guy, I'm a latter rain guy, well, suddenly your pocketbook got a lot thinner.
00:38:38And like John Goodman, who wants the pocketbook to be thick, these guys do not want their pocketbooks
00:38:44to be thin.
00:38:46Wasn't there another movie, John, that starred Burt Lancaster called Elmer Gantry?
00:38:53Yes.
00:38:54Yeah, so here – I mean, that was – I don't know when that came out, maybe in the 1950s
00:39:00or maybe 1960s, but you've got a traveling medicine man all under the name of Christ, a
00:39:07religious huckster who was out there selling snake oil to heal everybody.
00:39:15And as you're saying, this is a big, big problem.
00:39:19And it did not go away with Burt Lancaster or Elmer Gantry.
00:39:23It is more in vogue today than it's ever been before.
00:39:28Okay, so people say, well, I believe they exist.
00:39:31Well, okay, this is what we saw in some of the comments from the last podcast.
00:39:36Okay, if they do exist, where are they?
00:39:39If they do exist, where are they?
00:39:42So Hobart had a couple of answers to that question.
00:39:46He had a couple of really interesting answers to that question.
00:39:49If you would say, okay, where are they?
00:39:52One answer would be that, you know, and you have to follow this train of thought.
00:39:58What Hobart argued, and it's in his little book, Charismatic Body Ministry, the pink book.
00:40:07We always called it the bubble book because it's got all these bubbles on there.
00:40:11There is an old ancient picture of Dr. Freeman.
00:40:15My copy of this, I bought on May the 10th, 1976.
00:40:20We're talking about almost, we're going on 50 years that this has been sitting there in my library.
00:40:26So Hobart's reasoning would go something like this, and it was very convincing for new Christians and for people who want to believe this kind of thing.
00:40:36He said that everything that we witness in the pages of the New Testament, the raising of the dead, Philip being bodily transported from one city to another, Peter's shadow falling on people, people being healed, the five-fold ministry offices,
00:40:55everything that we witnessed, everything that we witnessed in the New Testament continued uninterruptedly through the first three centuries of the Christian church.
00:41:06And he'd tell you a little, you know, church history story.
00:41:09He said, whenever Constantine in the early part of the 4th century AD became the Roman emperor, he wanted to Christianize the whole Roman empire.
00:41:23So he offered to give everyone who would convert to Christianity a white robe and 30 pieces of silver.
00:41:31And if you would do that, you can be a Christian.
00:41:34And Hobart said it was at that point, because you have so many of the heathen and the unregenerate entering the church that the Holy Spirit went away.
00:41:47And the only place you could find these five-fold ministry offices is they were in just secret, tucked away pockets here and there, all over the world, all through the centuries.
00:42:05And it's a really, it's an interesting idea.
00:42:10You know, basically everything went underground.
00:42:13It's an interesting idea.
00:42:14It's, I have to say, it's also very convenient because if everything's underground, then we can't find it.
00:42:21So you can neither prove it or disprove it.
00:42:25And that's one thing I would say that I don't think that, I don't think that's good church history research.
00:42:33I don't think that people like Dr. Freeman knew how to do church history research.
00:42:38I think if you, if you look for primary sources for this kind of view, I don't think you're going to find them.
00:42:47It's more legend than it is anything.
00:42:51And I've often said, I said the same thing, John, when it comes to Bible verses, you know, you and I read a Bible verse.
00:42:57We think it means, you know, ABC.
00:42:59And then one of these people, they'll say, no, you missed the whole meaning.
00:43:04The meaning is secret and it's hidden in the verse.
00:43:09And, and that's a very popular view.
00:43:11That's a very popular view.
00:43:12That's a popular view among lay people today.
00:43:14That simply by reading the text, that's not enough.
00:43:18Reading the text, reading the context prior and the context following, understanding the authorship,
00:43:24being a Christian, being a desirous to know God's word, having, you know, the spiritual qualities to understand the Bible.
00:43:34None of that's enough.
00:43:35You have to be one of the secret initiates in order to know what that verse really means.
00:43:41And it's kind of the same thing, I think, with these five-fold ministry offices.
00:43:45They say that they've existed, you know, all through the last 2,000 years.
00:43:49You're just not looking in the right place.
00:43:52You know, you wouldn't find them in the Roman Catholic Church.
00:43:54You're not going to find them in the Lutheran Church or the Presbyterian Church.
00:43:58You know, they were in secret.
00:44:00They were tucked away all through the centuries in countries all around the world.
00:44:05But I don't think that Hobart could prove that any more than I could disprove that.
00:44:14I don't think anyone could prove they have existed down through the centuries.
00:44:18I'm welcome to look at your primary source evidence for that.
00:44:22I don't think they could prove their existence any more than I could disprove it.
00:44:27I think, actually, it's easier to disprove it because if they don't exist, there's nothing there to prove or disprove.
00:44:33It's just empty air.
00:44:34I think the reason that they are hidden so well in church history is because they don't exist.
00:44:45I've said the same thing about various interpretations in the Bible.
00:44:49The reason that meaning is so deeply hidden is because it's not there.
00:44:53And that's why it's very difficult to see.
00:44:56Now, Hobart would go and try to find things down through history like he would go to the Reformers like Martin Luther.
00:45:06And I can remember hearing tapes.
00:45:08I was assured by Hobart that John Calvin had the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and that Martin Luther did, that all the great church people did.
00:45:18And his proof of that would be in some of the hymns, like Luther wrote, Mighty Fortress is our God.
00:45:27And in one of the, I think, maybe the fourth verse of Luther's hymn, Mighty Fortress is our God, he said, the Spirit and the gifts are ours.
00:45:37So he believed that the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the gifts are ours.
00:45:42But we don't know what he meant by the gifts.
00:45:44He did not enumerate what gifts are you talking about.
00:45:47And in what way are they ours?
00:45:50And in what way is the Holy Spirit ours?
00:45:53I believe that Martin Luther did believe that.
00:45:55But we don't know in what way he believed that.
00:45:58But here, Pentecostal and charismatic people are just too quick to try to find support and justification.
00:46:07And you don't need to.
00:46:08If it's biblical, it's biblical.
00:46:09You don't need to find justification anywhere else.
00:46:13Somewhere else Hobart would go would be to the Wesley brothers.
00:46:16We know that John Wesley, you know, was basically the founder of the Methodist faith and his brother, Charles Wesley, you know, was a great hymn writer.
00:46:28He wrote a lot of hymns.
00:46:29And so Charles Wesley wrote a hymn entitled, O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing My Redeemer's Praise.
00:46:37And so Hobart would say that's proof for the fact that Charles Wesley spoke in tongues.
00:46:45I don't think that's proof of that.
00:46:47Maybe he did.
00:46:47Maybe he didn't.
00:46:48But I would have to have some other evidence than that.
00:46:51I think that's simply a hymn writer in his thoughts of adoration towards God saying,
00:46:57I wish I had a thousand different languages that I knew so that I could praise God in a thousand different languages.
00:47:04And if he had a thousand different languages, you know, more power to him.
00:47:09But I don't think that you can prove that from that hymn or from Martin Luther's hymn.
00:47:15So my point so far in this part, John, is that Hobart would say that if we're asking where are the prophets and the apostles,
00:47:25he would say that they are secretly tucked away throughout the centuries, throughout the countries, and they've always been there.
00:47:33For me, it's this simple.
00:47:34And I'm going to agree with the people that say after Paul, we still had apostles.
00:47:39But I'm going to agree with it in this way.
00:47:42There's a phrase, you're from Kentucky, so you will understand this.
00:47:48All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.
00:47:51And if you understand what that means, it means that bourbon is the highest quality whiskey, but it is yet still whiskey.
00:47:58You can only call it bourbon because it comes from Kentucky.
00:48:02And you can really only say that it's the highest quality if you come from Kentucky.
00:48:07I think the people in Scotland might disagree that their Scotch whiskey is better.
00:48:11Well, the word apostle means in Greek, the language, and I'm no Greek theologian, but this is common knowledge.
00:48:19This is not something that I have to really study for.
00:48:22The word apostle means to send out somebody who's dispatched with a mission.
00:48:27That is, it's essentially the same thing as a missionary.
00:48:30In fact, the Greek words, if you go look up the meaning of each one, basically the only difference between the apostle and the missionary, both are sent as missionaries, but the apostles were the ones who had come in contact with Jesus.
00:48:48And so, therefore, the people were more interested to hear from them because they were a direct channel.
00:48:55There was no third person, fourth person, fifth person between them and Jesus.
00:48:59We can hear the closest thing to what Jesus said because we're talking right to this apostle who talked to Jesus.
00:49:06But he's basically the same thing as a missionary, if you understand the meaning of the word.
00:49:10So, not all missionaries are apostles, in the same way that you can use the same phrase with the whiskey and the bourbon.
00:49:22If you compare that to what the people are saying, we had apostles after Paul.
00:49:28Absolutely, you had missionaries after Paul.
00:49:31However, not a single one of them had seen Jesus.
00:49:34So, you really can't say that they're the same type of apostle.
00:49:38Yes, they were sent out.
00:49:40They did not have the same authority.
00:49:42Maybe they had some authority because maybe they were working closely with scholars.
00:49:48So, you had a variation of the word apostle, but you did not have the biblical apostles.
00:49:55In today's world, this NAR, NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, however you say it, not a single one of these guys are a missionary.
00:50:04They're wanting you to become the one who sent out to go into their congregation and give them your money so they can buy their fancy cars.
00:50:13That's the role of the apostle today is so that they can receive, like John Goodman beating you over the head with a stick.
00:50:21They want to beat you over the head with a Bible and you give them their money.
00:50:25That is not a biblical apostle.
00:50:27They're using the phrase, the term apostle, yes, but it is no way, shape, or form the same thing.
00:50:33Speaking of bourbon, we are proud in Kentucky of our bourbon.
00:50:38So, for it to be bourbon, in Kentucky even, it has to be made of at least 50% corn base and it has to be aged for at least two years.
00:50:48It can be longer, but at least two years in a charred white oak barrel.
00:50:51And then if you've met those requirements, those are bare minimum, then you can be bourbon in Kentucky.
00:50:59And if you want the really good stuff, like Pappy Van Winkle, 23 Pappy Van Winkle, then you've got to sit in that charred white oak barrel for 23 years.
00:51:08Yeah, John, I think these guys are fighting an uphill battle biblically and theologically, at least as far as the apostles are concerned.
00:51:19They're fighting an uphill battle because probably the best chapter in the Bible for a person to study concerning the validity of apostleship would be Acts chapter 1,
00:51:33where we know that Jesus started with 12 apostles.
00:51:37Judas Iscariot is now off the scene, and they need a 12th member to complete the apostolic band of the 12 apostles.
00:51:47And they select two men, but they have a larger group from which to choose.
00:51:52Remember, Jesus not only had 12 apostles, he had 70 disciples in Matthew 10 that he sent out with power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leopard, and cast out demons.
00:52:03He had 70 in addition to the 12.
00:52:06So the 11 apostles remaining in Acts 11 have a large pool from which to choose, but here were their very important conditions.
00:52:17Not only did this new potential apostle have to have seen the risen Lord, and he did, but it went back much further than that.
00:52:27They said, this man has to have been a part of everything that Jesus said and did, beginning from the baptism of John.
00:52:38In other words, they had to have been there for the entire three and a half year public ministry of Jesus.
00:52:44They didn't have to know him as an infant or a 12-year-old in the temple, but from the baptism of John,
00:52:50this is in the end of Matthew 3, all the way through to his death, burial, and his resurrection, they had to have been a part of that.
00:53:01That's what we're going to make you an apostle.
00:53:04You know, if you don't meet those qualifications, you couldn't be an apostle.
00:53:09And so that's the particular problem that the apostle Paul was facing.
00:53:13Because of all of the apostles in the New Testament, he was one who was not there from the baptism of John.
00:53:20And I think that is why I fully believe Paul was an apostle.
00:53:25I fully believe he was an exception to that Acts 1 requirement.
00:53:29And the reason I think that Luke, who is the church's early historian and wrote the book of Acts,
00:53:37gave us three separate accounts of Paul's conversion and calling experience,
00:53:44chapter 9, chapter 22, and chapter 26, when one would be enough.
00:53:50You know, you're trying to write the first 20 years of the church's history where space is at a premium here.
00:53:57And he repeats Paul's conversion experience three times because it was that important to the early church to know
00:54:05that even though this man did not fit the bill, according to Acts 1,
00:54:10the Lord Jesus had personally, directly appeared to him on the road to Damascus.
00:54:17Paul was converted, and he was called to be an apostle.
00:54:21And if you look in the New Testament, you've got the original 12.
00:54:25You've got Judas's replacement, whose name was Matthias, in the end of Acts 1.
00:54:31So now we have 13.
00:54:32You have Paul, who was 14.
00:54:35The only other one called, actually called an apostle, was Barnabas.
00:54:40And Luke calls him this in Acts 14, verse 14.
00:54:43So at maximum, people called an apostle by the New Testament would be 15 people.
00:54:50Hobart loved to play gymnastics with that because he's always looking for more justification for his belief.
00:54:59And he would say, oh, you can find at least 19 apostles in the New Testament if you just look.
00:55:06Well, really, you can't.
00:55:07He would include people like Andronicus and Junius, who are mentioned in the last chapter of Paul's epistle to Rome, Romans 16.
00:55:19And it simply says of those two particular people, one of them who is evidently a female,
00:55:24it says that they were of note among the apostles, and they had come to Christianity, come to Christ before Paul had.
00:55:31So it doesn't call them an apostle.
00:55:33They were just noteworthy among the apostles.
00:55:36These were two very important early Christian believers.
00:55:40And the same could be said of Apollos.
00:55:44He's never called an apostle.
00:55:46I mean, maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but he's never called that.
00:55:50And the Ananias and Sapphira, I started to say, no, they were killed.
00:55:58They definitely weren't.
00:55:59But the other people that you see there in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, none of them are called an apostle.
00:56:07So I think you're fighting an uphill battle.
00:56:10I think that the apostolic band was important for founding Christianity.
00:56:17I mean, they were foundational in the establishment of Christianity, and they were foundational in the writing of Scripture.
00:56:24When we come to prophets, I think that's just a secondary consideration.
00:56:31There were definitely prophets in the New Testament.
00:56:34Some are mentioned by name.
00:56:37Silas, who traveled with Paul in Acts 15, is mentioned by name as a prophet.
00:56:42When Luke tells us the ministers who were at the church in Antioch in the first couple of verses of Acts 13, he said there were in the church at Antioch certain prophets and teachers, prophets and teachers.
00:56:56He goes on to name five.
00:56:57He begins with Barnabas and ends with Saul, whose name had not been changed to Paul yet, and they're three in between those two men.
00:57:05And so they were either prophets or teachers or both.
00:57:11So you can get that from Scripture.
00:57:15But I think it's a secondary issue that is worthy of further discussion if people wanted to.
00:57:23I don't think there's just any way that you can make a claim biblically for there being apostles today.
00:57:31I think they were foundational for the church.
00:57:33I think they did the writing of Scripture, those books written by people that we don't think were apostles, such as Mark, his gospel, and Luke's gospel, James's epistle, Jude's epistle.
00:57:52Everything else is written by a recognized apostle.
00:57:56Matthew and John wrote two gospels.
00:57:58We know they were apostles.
00:57:59John wrote his three epistles in the book of Revelation.
00:58:03Peter wrote two epistles.
00:58:05Paul wrote so much of the New Testament as far as the number of books.
00:58:09We know he was an apostle.
00:58:11That only leaves us with a handful of books, one being Mark, the other being Luke, and then the two little epistles, James and Jude.
00:58:20Well, James and Jude were half brothers of Jesus.
00:58:23So they were with him from birth all the way through death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.
00:58:31The New Testament never calls them apostles, but they obviously were familiar with everything that had happened in Jesus' earthly ministry, and they had apostles around them.
00:58:42It only leaves us then with two other New Testament books, and that's Mark that I can think of.
00:58:48Well, Hebrews.
00:58:50We don't know exactly who wrote Hebrews, either Paul or someone else under apostolic authority.
00:58:56But we have Mark and Luke as two other New Testament books.
00:59:00Well, Mark was a traveling companion of the apostle Paul.
00:59:04He was with him on his first journey.
00:59:07He was a cousin to Barnabas, who we saw earlier was an apostle.
00:59:13Acts 14.14 calls him that.
00:59:16Mark's mother, Mary, had a house church in Jerusalem.
00:59:21We learn that in Acts 12.
00:59:23Mark was a son in the faith to Peter.
00:59:27Peter calls him that in the end of 1 Peter 5.
00:59:32Mark is so valuable to Paul that even though they have a little falling out because Mark goes with him part of the way on Paul's first journey and wants to go back home after that,
00:59:42he and Barnabas end up separating on the second journey because Barnabas wants to take his cousin Mark.
00:59:48And Paul said no because he wasn't up for it, and I'm going to take Silas with me.
00:59:53Well, if you read in 2 Timothy 4, the very end of Paul's life, he said, bring Mark with you.
01:00:00He is much profit.
01:00:02He's very profitable to me and my ministry.
01:00:05So I'm just saying he was under complete apostolic care and ministry and authority his whole life.
01:00:13And the same is true with Luke.
01:00:14Luke, who wrote his gospel and who wrote the book of Acts, was a traveling companion of Paul through much of Acts.
01:00:23And you can see that when you can see when Luke comes on the picture in chapter 16,
01:00:29because the pronouns go from him telling the story about they and them to in Acts 16,
01:00:37him telling the story about us and we because he's now traveling with Paul.
01:00:42So I said all of that to say this, that I think one of the most important roles that the apostles were to fulfill,
01:00:52not only the 12, but Paul as well, was the foundational establishment of the church
01:01:00and the writing of the New Testament canon of scripture.
01:01:03And once we have those 27 books, which we have, I think the need for that kind of foundational authority
01:01:12and the inscripturation of God's word has passed off the scene and is no longer with us today.
01:01:21I would absolutely agree.
01:01:23And I would also emphasize we don't need more John Goodmans behind the pulpit with sticks to beat you over the head
01:01:30and take your money. And the sad truth is after you've been out of this type of thing for any period
01:01:37of time, you look back at that and that's really all you can see in most of these men.
01:01:41And you begin to wonder what on earth did everybody else think about you who wasn't in this,
01:01:47who was in a normal Christian church? They could see it too. It was as plain as day.
01:01:52They're not going to go behind the tree with John Goodman and get beat over the head with a stick.
01:01:56They can see that you're willingly submitting yourself to this. So I have to wonder what
01:02:01people thought about me when I was in it. Fortunately, I'm no longer in it. And I wish
01:02:06that everybody else could escape this. You don't need an apostle. The way that they have presented
01:02:12the apostle, I'll end with this. If you understand the way that they're teaching you the need for the
01:02:18apostle, they're basically usurping the role of the Holy Spirit. You don't need the Holy Spirit
01:02:24because you have me, the apostle. And if you do have the Holy Spirit, it's more
01:02:28to the point that you can become more, you can become closer to your apostle if you have the
01:02:35Holy Spirit. That's not the way this works, but that's what they're essentially, that's what
01:02:40they're teaching if you follow all of their paths out to its logical conclusion. So you don't need
01:02:46this. I no longer have it. And hopefully people can wake up. So thank you for doing this.
01:02:50Thanks for having me, John. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information,
01:02:54you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark
01:02:59side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity
01:03:04to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:03:20Thank you, John.
01:03:21Thank you, John.
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