Apostles

[awareness]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

1. Where in the NT does it say that the gift of apostles is gone? (no one is disputing that the original 12 Apostles + Paul are gone).
2. Is church tradition of shying away from the term Apostle a valid basis for a teaching or shouldn't our basis be the NT?
3. We all agree that the NT is the teaching of the apostles.

Bro Mike will prolly hate this one ; thinking I always wax tangential from the topic.

Have you/we even considered that there may not be any certainty concerning apostles today?

I receive teachings from hundreds of different sources. But I don't need to elevate any of them, or endow them with some special authority.

A Church of Christ sister just recently revealed to me that for as far back as she can remember she's been looking for some authority to hook up to, but hasn't found it.

When I asked why she felt she needed an intermediary she was stunned at why she had never asked herself that question.

All her talk is : "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, is everything, and we depend only upon Him," but here she is looking for an intermediary authority.

Is that why we're so concerned about modern day apostles? Is our inner child guiding us? looking for a security blanket?

Thirty years ago I walked out of the local church because of the apostle thing ; that Lee was the apostle of the age.

I haven't needed an apostle ever since. Paul claimed to be apostle, but he also said he was a wretch.

Apostles? Thanks but no thanks. We're equals or we hint talking any more. And that goes for any of the apostles, if I could have met them.

If I need an answer, I might take a look in a hundred different places ... but ultimately I'm going to God.

And boy would I have lots to say to the self proclaimed apostle Saul. He might have been an apostle, but Paul was a very vexed man, with advertised issues, and even that mysterious thorn in his side. Paul was a thorny man ... we would have been equals.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by awareness

If I need an answer, I might take a look in a hundred different places ... but ultimately I'm going to God.

Praise God! Hallelujah! Hosanna in the highest!

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by awareness

Is that why we're so concerned about modern day apostles? Is our inner child guiding us? looking for a security blanket?

I do not view an apostle as having some kind of intermediary authority. If the Lord sends someone out to do a task, then they have been sent with whatever authority is necessary to accomplish that task because their head is covered with the Lord's authority. I sat in Houston and listened as RG shared on and developed his theories on WL being the MOTA. I listened with respect that I think was due to RG, but I was always somewhat bemused at what the "great revelation" he felt he had was.

So what authority was necessary to teach the Bible and the Life Study trainings? I don't believe God would ever give someone the authority to silence their critics, the Lord said that if they treated Him this way they would treat us worse as the servant is not above the master. Paul was always dealing with critics. So in my mind RG's teaching was irrelevant. Regardless of what is what, WL's teaching would never be elevated to the level of scripture, that thought was never even contemplated by me until I heard it on this forum. Therefore, I continued to treat WL as I had prior to RG, I wanted to learn how to read the Bible for myself, when he shared on a verse I went to the verse to see if I could get into it. LS Trainings were an excuse to focus on one book of the Bible for a few months.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

Regardless of what is what, WL's teaching would never be elevated to the level of scripture, that thought was never even contemplated by me until I heard it on this forum. Therefore, I continued to treat WL as I had prior to RG,

Maybe you've told it and I don't remember. Between what years were you in the local church?

And RG taught that Lee was the minister of the age? What was that to you? Didn't that imply that Lee was something special?

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by awareness

Maybe you've told it and I don't remember. Between what years were you in the local church?

And RG taught that Lee was the minister of the age? What was that to you? Didn't that imply that Lee was something special?

I came into the church in the Spring of '78 and left the same weekend that WL died.

In the Spring of 1981 RG began sharing something that ultimately congealed into his MOTA teaching. It started with the concept that if an apostle is a sent one, and that anyone who is a "sent one" is an apostle then surely WL is an apostle. This would receive a response from some as though this was some great, and deep truth. To me it was "yeah, so what?" But not disrespectfully. He then added to this the verse about how "you owe me even your own life" and started talking about how we owed WL. My response to that was "what are you talking about", but of course I never stood up and said that, more of a keep that to yourself response. Finally, he would say something that I felt was stupid, something to the effect that even if you don't know what you are doing, the safe choice is to follow WL. My response to that was that if you don't know what you are doing, that is the issue. Solve that problem. But all of it seemed contrived to me, he seemed to feel he had some great and deep revelation, and to me it was nothing but foolishness.

In June I went to Irving to build the meeting hall and everything changed. We worked 16 hour days, and we worked 7 days a week. Taking time off to go to the meeting was discouraged. I ignored that and went to the Lord's day meeting. I was asked directly to stop going, but again I just ignored that. My feeling was I'm a volunteer, if you want to send me back to Houston because I am only giving you 100 hours a week on the jobsite instead of 108 go ahead. However, while there I never heard anything more of this teaching by RG.

18 months later we had the Peter training in Irving and immediately after that I moved to Odessa, which was a home meeting at the time. Again, while in Odessa I never heard anything more of RG's teaching or the teaching of the MOTA. I spent one year in New Hampshire in a situation with an even smaller home meeting. Then I went to the FTTT.

I don't really recall ever hearing anything of the teaching after leaving Houston, but I may have heard the term "Minister of the Age" prior to coming to this forum. While in Taiwan I was forced to listen to meetings through translators, so you can miss a lot of what is going on.