AND YOU THINK YOU ARE AN APOSTLE, HUH?

By Akin Ojumu

For anyone who cares to look into the perfect law of liberty that is able to set them free from bondage of deception, the Bible spells out the criteria and qualifications for apostleship, quite clearly and pretty explicitly.

To be called an Apostle, you must have been:

(1) With the Lord Jesus from the very beginning of His ministry and,

(2) Chosen and commissioned directly and personally by Jesus Christ himself and,

(3) An eyewitness to the resurrected Christ 

Mark 3:13

“Then Jesus went up on the mountain and called for those He wanted, and they came to Him.”

Acts 1:21–26

“So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us – one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.”

The above three criteria are the primary and fundamental definition of the term Apostle (Greek: apostolos) in the New Testament. Besides the 12 disciples of Jesus and Matthias who was later on elected to replace Judas Iscariot, the only other person that met two of the three criteria was Apostle Paul who had an encounter with the Lord Jesus on the way to Damascus in Acts 9 and was specifically called and personally commissioned by the risen Christ Himself to be an Apostle. 

Romans 1:1

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.”

1 Corinthians 1:1

“Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 1:1

“Paul, an apostle – not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”

There is, however, a second general use of the term apostle in the New Testament and it refers to “messengers of the churches.” The word messenger is the Greek word apostoloi. These apostoloi include faithful men such as:

TITUS

2 Corinthians 8:23

“As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker for your benefit. And as for our brothers, they are messengers of the churches, the glory of Christ.”

ANDRONICUS and JUNIA

Romans 16:7

“Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow countrymen and fellow prisoners. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.”

 

BARNABAS

Acts 14:3-4

“So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who affirmed the message of His grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. The people of the city were divided. Some sided with the Jews, and others with the apostles..” 

SILAS and TIMOTHY

1 Thessalonians 1:1 and 2:6

“Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you…We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our authority.”

If we were to rely strictly on the Bible and go by what the Word of God says, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. That’s the fact that it is scripturally impossible for there to be Apostles in the church today and it is a biblical implausibility for anyone to lay claim to the mantle of an Apostle in our day. 

Neither the Apostles nor the messengers of the churches were self-perpetuating. There’s no record in the New Testament or in Church history that the apostolos and apostoloi were replaced by modern day apostles. After the last of them died, the mantle of the First Century Apostles was not passed on to or inherited by any other person. Anyone laying claim to the mantle of Apostle today is a liar and an impostor.

But heck, what does the Bible know? Who cares what God says in His Word? What is to stop anyone from giving themselves the title of apostle? Who is there to prevent them from joining the ranks of apostlenaires?

Irrespective of how highly these modern-day self-appointed and self-commissioned apostles think of themselves, the reality is, they will never be reckoned as true Apostles. Regardless of their sorcery and the New Age abracadabra show they put on, they will never measure up to the real Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me now talk directly to you who call yourself an apostle. The only scenario in which you could possibly or remotely be regarded as an apostle is…

If you have gone on up to 4 missionary travels traversing many nations

If you have traveled more than 10,000 miles on the sea

If you’ve had to walk additional 10,000 miles on foot

If you spent more than 300 days crisscrossing the Roman Empire

If it took you 11 years or more preaching the good news to people in places far from home

If each of these trips cost you close to 5,000 Denarii of your own money (1 Denarius is a day’s wage) on transportation alone not counting food, lodging, and other essentials

If you had to ford rivers

If you had to fend off robbers

If you struggled with friends and you battled with foes

If you have been at risk in the city and in peril in the country

If you have been endangered by desert sun and tempestuous wind

If you have been shipwrecked by the sheer brutal force of a raging storm

If you have been betrayed by those who were supposed to be brothers

If you have known drudgery and hard labor

If you have gone many a long and lonely night without sleep

If you have missed many meals and have had to fast for many days

If you have endured severe poverty and have had to go about in tattered clothing

If you have been blasted by the cold

If you have had to go naked in nasty weather because you had no clothes

If you have been arrested and imprisoned multiple times for preaching the Gospel

If you have endured the humiliating, painful, and bloody ordeal of being stripped naked and beaten senseless countless time

If the wounds from your beatings had been left untreated, become infected, and oozing purulent stench

If you have had to sit in a dark damp prison with your painful feet and wrists bound in chains. 

If your mutilated, blood-stained clothing was not replaced, even in the cold of winter.

If you founded more than 12 Churches in multiple cities

If you authored 13 or 14 of the 27 Books in the New Testament Bible,

If it was through your preaching that more half of the Christian world came to Christ

If through it all you did not take a cent in salary from the Church or demand a dime in compensation from the congregation 

If in it all you earned your own wages working with your own hands

If you did not think you deserve to buy yourself a horse or a chariot

If you did not see it fit to own a fleet of ship all of your own

If all your possession in the world was limited to the tattered clothes on your back, the worn-out sandals on your feet, and the stick in your hand

If your life exemplifies all the above scenarios and experiences, surely, you bear in your body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without a shadow of doubt, you have earned the right to the claim of Apostleship. 

But we know that no man alive today can definitively say their life epitomizes all of the above scenarios. Yet, the world we live in is filled with flim-flam “apostles.” The Church is teeming with boastful, bashful, puffed up, all hat and no cattle impostors who vaunt themselves as something extraordinarily special. This bunch of loudmouth braggarts are nothing but pseudo-apostles, lying preachers, crooked workers of lawlessness posing as Christ’s agents. All their braggadocio and pompous verbosity is nothing but a wicked sham. 

Sadly, church folks heap praise and adulation on these egomaniacs of the pulpit. Undiscerning believers bow down and worship with these bigshot “super-apostles,” and they swallow up everything they say without question or a moment’s hesitation. Easy-to-please Christians, drawn like flies to rotten carcasses, flock to these deceivers and they run towards the well-rehearsed voices of the snake-oil salesmen posing as servants of Christ. They are swept off their feet by charlatans who speak with mastered smooth eloquence, sending a tingling exhilaration down their spin.

As though bewitched and enchanted, easy-to-deceive church folks display such an admirable tolerance and acceptance for impostors who rob them of their freedom, rip them off, steal them blind, put them down – even slap their faces!

Unless the comatose Body of Christ wakes them up from their slumber, they will forever be led astray. Until God, in His infinite mercies, allows the truth of the Gospel to illuminate their darkness, duped believers will continue to go about like someone running aimlessly and like a boxer beating the air. And they’ll never get to fight the good fight of faith, and they may never take hold of the eternal life to which they were called when they made their good confession in the presence of many witnesses.