The Truth About Contemporary Apostolic Ministry

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If you'd like to learn more about Truth Network, visit our website at truthnetwork.org. Yes, of course, historically, the bishops of the church were the successors of the apostles. And so even after John the Apostle passed away, he had people like Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius, and others who were part of his school that would carry on the teachings and the traditions of the church. And some of them weren't even called bishops at first, but eventually, by the time of Ignatius, they were called bishops. And many think it's because out of respect for the original 12 apostles, they didn't call them apostles, but they called them bishops. And so you have a history of apostolicity right after all the original apostles passed on. And whether it's through Polycarp or Irenaeus of the second century, Adonysius, Augustine, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and then some of the popes like Gregory the Great, and then, you know, moving forward to John Hoose, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, John Wesley, you know, so many others that we could mention, even D.L. Moody, I would say Billy Graham was an apostle. He not only evangelized, he started, he helped start schools like Fuller, Christianity Today magazine, he helped launch the National Association of Evangelicals with people like esteemed scholar John Stott and Harold Akengay and others.

So Billy Graham has an institution and an institutional influence that transcends his bodily presence on the earth, and it's still making an impact. So there's always been apostles, even if we don't call them apostles. That's just a gift that God gives to the church to advance the gospel. So do you think it's helpful to identify people as apostles to to enable them to understand their calling better, or is it abusive to have someone called an apostle? Well, you know, the funny thing is most people who call themselves apostles have very little apostolic fruit in my nation, and the ones that don't call themselves apostles, that are apostles, are numerous. Most of the true apostles do not call themselves that.

There are some exceptions to that, of course. But yeah, I think it's harmful when you go in a region and you commission someone to be an apostle without the other church fathers and mothers being involved, without bearing witness to that person's reputation and fruit, and then without a process involved wherein without doing it the right way, that person may think they have more authority than other people in the region, or the other pastors may think that person is being lifted up over others. And very, very rarely have I seen people go into a region commissioning people as apostles and it going okay.

Most of the time it causes problems because, you know, it's probably not necessary. It's better to be done in-house than do some kind of public thing without the respect of the other leaders. For example, when I was consecrated a bishop, there were local and national bishops, 12 involved in my commissioning. It was a college of bishops. There were 12 apostolic leaders involved that convened an apostolic presbytery, so 24 people laid hands on me. Locally and nationally, 50 altogether were involved. And so there was no doubt as to the validity of the process and or the commissioning based on their opinion.

Got it. So for those not familiar, there have been some leaders that have gone into other countries or cities and designated, okay, Pastor Smith here, we recognize you as the apostle of the region. And I was like, who gave you the right to do that? You know, and as opposed to, like the people that I know really are apostolic and my friend Yesupanam in India, who's planted over 10,000 churches and tribal regions, who started ministries in multiple nations, who has raised up, you know, has schools and orphanages and hospitals and, you know, literally launched movements. Everyone recognizes who he is because of the authority that God's given him and the function of his ministry.

And it's just my privilege to serve together with him, but that goes before him. So they're having these abuses and a lot of the so-called, the accusations against so-called NAR, which we'll get into a little later. We've talked about it before, the New Apostolic Reformation.

A lot of the abuses are just that, abuses that we've never agreed with or practiced. So we come back, I want to dig into your book more, and then we'll talk about the statement that we put out together, gnarancristiannationalism.com. But the book, friends, is the book. People always say, what do these guys mean about apostolic ministry?

They say they're not part of NAR. Well, what do they believe? This is the book to get. And it's written by one of the key authorities. Again, I couldn't think of someone better to write the book than my friend, Joel Matera. Bishop, Dr. Joel Matera. The global apostolic movement and the progress of the gospel.

You can get it in paperback, or if you like to read on Kindle, you can get it as an e-book to read, Joseph Matera, M-A-T-T-E-R-A. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34 TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today's special broadcast with my dear friend and colleague, Joel Matera. It's scary sometimes how much we are in sync on different issues, but it's not like we're the only ones. Many feel the same things we feel, and that's why it's so good to have written material out. Joel writes a lot, writes articles like I do, has lots of books out. I wrote the foreword for his book on prophetic ministry, which is so clear and incisive. But the book we want to talk about today, The Global Apostolic Movement and the Progress of the Gospel. So, Joel, I'm asking you to do this. This is not you boasting about the book, but since you've done the research, what makes your book unique?

What's in your book that has not been put out in comprehensive form before? Well, I'm writing as an insider, not just a scholar. So I was a part of the very beginnings of the ICA movement that was launched by my overseer, John Kelly, then taken over by Peter Wagner, then given back to John. Then they commissioned me to start the United States Coalition of EpiStock Leaders. I've been involved front and center with some of the top international national EpiStock leaders in the world. And US Cal was probably and is probably the largest collection of EpiStock leaders in the nation to get together. So I'm writing as a practitioner, an insider.

I give the history of ICA, then it became my Cal and US Cal. Some background detail, some definitions from people like Peter and some of the prominent writers that have shaped the EpiStock movement like Kevin Conner and Alan Hirsch, Dr. Ron Cottle, and some other eminent figures that have had an enormous influence in the world, especially in the shaping of the EpiStock movement in the last 20 years. So the book combines practical insight on how a network is built, how to build an apostolic kind of church, using our church as a model, using our church as a model, and then also scholarly research that shows what it means to be apostolic, what it doesn't mean, some of the cultural challenges that EpiStock leaders have in different continents, some of the next generation challenges EpiStock leaders will have. And then we talk about the potential of a huge convergence between the apostolic, the charismatic, the evangelical movements that is taking place right now where there may not be much of a difference in the next 20 years. That's how much the EpiStock movement is growing, expanding, and even the language and the practice and knowledge of it is penetrating, even denominational Pentecostal movements as well as evangelical movements and traditional denominational movements.

It's amazing what's happening. It's probably the fastest expression of the church today that we see. So let's just break this down a little bit, because people are hearing this, and they say, wait, Peter Wagner, and you said the New Apostolic Reformation, and isn't that all this bad stuff and all the abuses and crazy teachings and super apostles who have special authority and making these decrees and so on.

So let's break this down. When Peter Wagner initially, as a former missionary, then as a seminary professor and a theorist, just trying to analyze movements, when he first talked about, quote, a New Apostolic Reformation, he was looking at church growth over like a hundred year period, early 1900s from China to Latin America, and noticing that a lot of it was happening outside of traditional denominations. In fact, I was told that he originally was just going to call it post-denominational, but then that could seem to be insulting to those that were in healthy denominations. But to him, there was no unity of leaders. It was just a spiritual phenomenon that he identified as churches growing around the world or movements growing that were outside of traditional denominations.

Is that fairly accurate in terms of what he was first looking at? Yeah, well, in full theological seminary in 1995, he convened a meeting with about 500 people called a symposium on post-denominationalism. And that was where he met apostolic leaders like John Kelly that began to influence him and help him understand this burgeoning movement that was greatly impacting the church all over the world. So I never heard him say that, but I'm assuming that to be the case, he probably initially wanted to call post-denominationalism because that was the name of his symposium in 1995.

Got it. So it was not an organized thing where people, this leader knows that leader, more churches growing around the world, and he was putting a name on it. He was trying to describe it as a missiologist. What then happened with what was specifically associated with Peter Wagner's name as the leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, otherwise known as NAR and AR? What then shifted as it was something associated more with his leadership and certain distinctives, some of which we'd agree with, some of which we wouldn't agree with?

How did that take place? Well, John Kelly initiated ICA, and then after two years, he handed it over to Peter because Peter had more name recognition, and he thought he could take the movement further, and he did. It went from several dozen to almost 500 members within five years. Not all of them were true apostolic. You know, many of them were just prophetic intercessors that followed him from his teaching on spiritual warfare, but anyway, it did popularize the movement, and the word NAR or the New Apostolic Reformation was just him as a sociologist, researcher trying to put a name to somebody who was not talking about some global conspiracy or organization that was able to garner everybody around the world who called themselves apostles. Most of these apostolic leaders never even heard of the NAR until probably recently, so it's definitely organized, but we have to understand Peter was not a theologian, so he did not have a concise understanding theologically of apostolicity and some of the things that we're concerned about, and also we have to understand he was never a pastor, so that's another issue.

He was speaking as a parachurch leader, as a professor, and certain things that he focused on, you know, like he helped commission apostles of different things in different regions. He just didn't know any better how that can cause problems with pastors, so whenever somebody's trying to restore an imbalance, they make a lot of mistakes, and that's what happened with ICA. I'd say 80% of all of it was great, but there were some things that were done that upset some of us, and I was even going to leave ICA and start another movement. I even had my first meeting in the Newark Airport area and had about 40 key leaders come, and then Peter Wagner called up John Kelly and said, I'm giving you ICA, and then John called me and said, Joe, don't do this. Just, you know, let's work together with ICA, and that's what I did, and so, yeah, I mean, I was upset over, look, what we, what me and you said about NAR, we've been saying the same things for 15 years. I mean, I called out Todd Bentley when he was in his height of glory with the Lakeland things, with some of the things he taught, and we were against him getting commissioned as an apostle, so some of the things we're articulating now is not in response to NAR critique. We've been talking about this stuff for 10, 15 years. Yep, and in fact, so ICA, International Coalition of Apostles, I never joined it because of differences. When you took it over, shifted the name to International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders and asked me to join, I said, yeah, I mean, absolutely, because I knew we were in harmony. We had been grieved over the same abuses. You know, I expressed recently to Doug Givette and Holly Pivik, you spent some hours with them on the phone.

I spent, had some dialogues, I spent four and a half hours with them face-to-face dialoguing for future footage of American gospel documentaries, and we agree on some of the abuses and wrong things. We agree, we've never taught. The abuses are things we never taught. We always repudiate it, which is why it's so bizarre that we're so-called leaders of NAR, whereas you say, what are the fundamental tenets, X, Y, Z? Well, we disagree with all those.

But, you know, to the hyper-critics, it doesn't matter, unfortunately. But, you know, talking to Doug and Holly, I told them recently, you know, our statement, NAR and Christian nationalism, is not in response to them. We're just reiterating things we've believed for years and addressing abuses and errors and saying this is what we do believe. To respond to them, we take book-length responses where we agree, where we differ. But do you go through a lot of that history in your book, The Global Apostolic Movement and the Progress of the Gospel? Well, I go over a lot of the critiques that Doug and Holly have. I actually recommend people to read their two books.

I thought it was very good. I didn't agree with everything. But I'd say 90% of all their concerns, I had the same concerns.

Some of the extremes in spiritual warfare, the extremes in Seven Mountain Mandate, the extremes in autocratic leadership, apostolically, some of the other things they brought out. So, if you read my book, it's going to deconstruct a lot of the stuff that the NAR stands for. And, by the way, I've been writing this for seven years.

So, again, it wasn't in response to Doug and Holly or anything else. It was something that I've been involved in. And so, I try to bring balance, biblical balance, and at the same time, not quenching the spirit of spiritual warfare, so-called, or apostolicity, or the prophetic, but trying to bring out the theological perspective from a practitioner's standpoint, what the Bible says about these important truths. Yeah. And again, it's not just you've written about these things, been working on this magnum opus for seven years, but these were convictions you had.

And again, conversations you and I had years ago. And that's why, again, we gladly, proudly defend what we believe. Absolutely. We're Pentecostal. We're charismatic. We believe in five-fold ministry.

Absolutely. We rejoice in that. We believe it's scriptural and biblical, what God's doing. But if you accuse us of holding things we don't believe, that's what we distance ourselves from. That's why I said to Doug and Holly, why do you think I am taking issue with these things? If I differ with what you differ with, why am I raising the issue?

It's because of the broad brush that's painted with where people are wrongly put in categories. All right, we'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, Michael Brown here, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Tune into the broadcast. I guarantee every day, every day you'll get a healthy dose of moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Today focusing on spiritual clarity, the important book, one of a kind book by Dr. Joseph Matera, M-A-T-T-E-R-A, The Global Apostolic Movement and the Progress of the Gospel. So Joe, when I've been part of Zoom calls with you and leadership meetings and getting to meet some guys you work with around the world, there's some people with some extraordinary ministries in different countries.

You know, I'm just getting to know them. You're much more connected to a lot of these worldwide folks than I am, but I've been blown away by some of what God is doing in what we're referring to as this apostolic movement. Can you, you may want to mention names or not, or just countries, but can you give me a glimpse of some of the progress of the gospel that's happening throughout apostolic ministry in different countries? Well, yeah, I have a friend in China who is one of the top leaders of the underground and overground church. He's got favor even with the communist government, believe it or not, and so he is teaching the way of Christ and his apostles, and he's going to work on getting my book translated, ask me to mentor him, and there's an extraordinary expansion of Christianity, and they would identify with all the principles in my book.

I won't name his name because of the persecution. Yeah. Another friend in India has one of the largest church planning movements in the world, one of the largest churches in India, maybe the largest church, and he is getting this book translated. He absolutely loves what we're talking about, and he's based his church upon the principles in this book, not because of the book, but because of similar influences, and just extraordinary expansion of the gospel taking place in India.

Yeah. I was this week with some global leaders, one, his name is Thamo Naidoo, good friend of mine. The last time I was in South Africa, he hosted me in three cities. He brought as many as 4,000 leaders from all over Africa and had me teach for three days on two different occasions. Another one, Stegi Govender in Durban, he convenes three to 500 pastors twice a week, twice.

The greatest example of one church, one city I've ever seen. He's another dear friend of mine, and they're doing exactly doing extraordinary work, and we're going to be shipping many of my books over there. And so, also, another leader, Gustavo Lara-Unhe is the network he leads, and he's got hundreds of movement leaders that converge in different parts of Latin America. I was with him a few months ago, and he must have had 7,000 people in his conference, 4,000 marketplace leaders, at least 1,000 pastors.

He brought me in to teach for several days, and he's a close friend of mine. He represents an explosion of apostolicity that's taking place in Latin America. My other dear friend, Ben Pass, he's a local leader here in New York City. He's got probably the second largest Spanish-speaking church in the city, and he's got huge conferences, 500 to 800 pastors showing up from all over the country, and we're very, very close, and we're working together for this global movement. I recently met some leaders from England and Scotland that are leading launch movements and networks that are affecting the world, and boy, I could go on and on.

In ICAL, we have a guy named Rene Terranoso. He's got a church of over 100,000 in the Amazon jungle. He's got 3,000 apostolic leaders connected to him, 25,000 pastors. Another friend of mine, Peter Hornig, had a church of 160,000.

It might even be a lot more than that in the capital, Peru, and he's one of the main leaders of ICAL. And a dear friend of mine has the largest church in Rwanda, Apostle Paul Gitwaza. I preached to over 20,000 people and did conferences for 500 pastors from all over Africa every year for him in Rwanda. And then in Nigeria, my friend, Bishop Joseph Adafarassa convened 500 apostolic and prophetic leaders in Lagos, and then in Abuja. Then we have extraordinary leaders in Kampala. I was going there, and my friend, Bishop Arnold Mwange would convene 2,200 pastors from all over Uganda and Africa, and I'd come twice a year to teach.

I could go on and on and on and on. Yeah, and you're not there telling people how to get rich. You're not there telling them that Jesus is the key to financial success, so just sign up here and get rich. You're not preaching a carnal American prosperity gospel, and a lot of these churches are thriving in the midst of poverty and persecution. And for everybody listening that you say, I don't believe in apostolic ministry today. Well, what would you call these leaders who are who are leaders of movements, who are, they're not just local church pastors, they're pastors of pastors. They are pastors of national leaders, many times government leaders, they're discipling.

They, you know, again, people I've worked with, Joe, you're far more connected to these folks around the world than I am, but some that I've worked with, I mean, I don't know another biblical term to use to describe them. They're not primarily prophets, they're not primarily evangelists, they're not primarily pastors, they're not primarily teachers, but they do all these different things and lead whole movements and have the ability to gather thousands of leaders together and bring them to one place to be trained and equipped to go out. Great commission, I mean, God's doing amazing things in the midst of a lot of apostasy in America and Europe. God is really doing amazing things around the world, and the key thing is discipleship because the growth is so rapid, and that's why getting your book out to leaders is so important. So leaders in particular encourage you to read the global apostolic movement and the progress of the gospel. Joe, when, I don't know if you can talk about this, you've been in the Middle East recently, are you allowed to talk about that publicly or no?

I guess so. All right, so this is to me another aspect of your apostolic calling, that you train leaders, that you influence people not just in the church but in the marketplace to do the work of evangelists and things like that, but you've also been able to interface with governments in different parts of the world. So what happened with that? You've had some extraordinary trips recently. Yeah, well, through mutual friends, after the, put it this way, after the explosion in Beirut, God really pricked my heart to do something about it. So one of the leaders, after stock leaders in Boston who's Lebanese, Raful Najen, knew three pastors in the city of Beirut, and we had Zoom meetings with them. We were able to raise a lot of money and help them. We started something called the Lebanon Project. We took our first trip in September of 2021. God gave us so much favor that we were able to be, through speaking in gatherings of parliament, I don't know what they call them, but top leaders in the government and church, God was able to use me to get favor with a lot of these leaders, and then I became very close with the general, General Abbas Ibrahim, a Shiite Muslim, who provides security for us everywhere we go and meet with the president at least once every trip.

We've had three trips. One, I went by myself with one of my assistants, the other two without a movement that I oversee called Christ Covenant Coalition, a coalition of after stock leaders, and yeah, and at first we were training Pentecostal leaders, and then we met with the leader of the evangelical movement, and through him we were able to do a conference for evangelical leaders, and two of my books are getting, one is already translated, two more are getting translated in Arabic. We're giving them out. As a matter of fact, this book, the Global After Stock Movement, I just got a price quote the other day. I need to raise like $6,000 to get about 500 of those books translated and printed and given out to pastors. That book revolutionized that whole area, so we're really trying to pour into the body of Christ. Our movement has also adopted a few evangelical schools.

We opened up a bank account. We're paying teachers, and we're helping students who don't have money for tuition as well as bringing tons of humanitarian aid, and so yeah, it's a Lebanon project, and next year we're also going to go to Armenia and help the pastors there. So we're excited over what God is doing.

We didn't make this happen. This was the Lord. This is a great example of being prophetically led, and then when you get to a place, apostolically the ministry just takes shape in bringing aid and having a plan that's consistent and focused and systematic. Exciting.

It is. It is exciting, and folks, I hope you can hear, these are not just numbers. We're talking about lives being changed, people coming to Jesus, the needs of the poor and hurting being met, and I never thought of this particular analogy until just this moment, but I've thought over the years about how important it is for someone to really recognize their calling. If someone's really a teacher and you've got them functioning as an evangelist, man, everybody's going to be frustrated, or if you're really an evangelist and you've got this person just trying to teach didactic point-by-point lessons just for the believers, everybody's going to be frustrated. So it's important people recognize their callings.

It struck me like this. Someone with a real apostolic calling, it's like you're playing an instrument in an orchestra, but you're called to be a conductor and a symphony writer, and it's like, I'm not satisfied just playing this instrument. It's not an ego thing. It's a calling thing, and then when you're released into that, the whole orchestra gets healthy and thrives. So friends, I want to encourage you.

It's not a matter of ego. I want to be an apostle. If you are called to be an apostle, God's going to crush that and burn that out of you before he ever uses you in those ways, as the apostles often leading the way are going to suffer the most and come under the most pressure and attack, but friends, I just want you to recognize that there's diversity in the body, and there is great value in recognizing the importance of apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral, and teaching ministry, and there are other aspects of ministry service, of course, that Paul addresses elsewhere in his letters and that we see examples of elsewhere in the New Testament, but these fundamental, in terms of leadership callings, it's just healthy to recognize them, to release people into them, and then as they thrive, then the rest of the body thrives, and others get healthy, and Joe, what's your website?

Folks want to find out more just about the broader work you're doing? Sure, it's josephmatera.org. Right, and friends, that's with two T's, josephmatera.org. We come back. Let's focus in on the statement that we helped co-author on NAR and Christian nationalism, so you can read it at N-A-R, NARandChristianNationalism.com.

If you're a leader, we encourage you to join the hundreds who've already signed it. We'll talk about some of the abuses, some of the concerns we have, when we come back, I'm here to send you a break. This is how we rise up. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I've got one more segment with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Bishop Joe Matera, website josephmatera.org, and his new book, his magnum opus on the global apostolic movement and the progress of the gospel. So, Joe, you and I began to get concerned during all the the lead up to the 2020 elections with the the open prophetic voices all saying Trump's going to be re-elected, etc. And we had plenty of friends that were prophetic that never said that, but there were the prominent voices were saying it, and we began to talk that if this doesn't happen, because we didn't know who's going to win, that there's going to be a lot of fallout, people are going to lose their faith, it's going to bring mockery to the things of the spirit, it's going to bring disrepute to the name of Jesus. So we worked and then with the help of other leaders put out propheticstandards.com saying prophetic ministry is valid but here are abuses and here's how we have accountability. And then we both started to see okay there's this whole thing now this alleged NAR that's kind of all the aberrations in the charismatic movement worldwide are now grouped together under this heading of NAR and now this is now grouped together with dominionism and political movements and now so Christians trying to take over the country and maybe by force and they're all part of NAR so we thought okay here's here's another storm coming let's do what we can to speak the truth to say here are abuses here's what we believe in about apostolic ministry here's what we do not believe in and here's what we believe in in terms of a healthy Christian patriotism and here's what's an unhealthy Christian nationalism. So when it comes specifically to quote apostolic ministry Doug and Holly have their book on super apostles and all of this so what are the main abuses that that you and I agree on that we have both seen over the years in so-called apostolic ministry and friends you can read the statement again at NAR and christiannationalism.com but the the biggest ones you mentioned them in passing before but what would those be the top on your list? Well in terms of the prophetic abuses you have utilizing the prophetic gift to garner a crowd on social media without accountability just dropping words and then using it for a non-crystallogical function of predicting elections didn't seem to glorify the Lord in the way it was done and then I've seen I heard recently from my friend in South Africa that one prophet went to his country and commissioned hundreds of apostles in one trip yikes another guy that I met when I was in Cleveland he's a pastor in Italy he's helping pastors in a certain part of Italy and he said that I don't want to mention names but some national leaders went to Italy commissioned people apostles and when he went back a year later he expected it to be stronger he expected the region to be stronger in terms of the church and he said they were divided they were territorial they were fighting each other he said it was a disaster and so a top-down leadership territorial leadership where you're the apostle of the city there's no such thing as the apostle of the city especially a city as big as Chicago or New York or Toronto there are many people in New York City never even heard of me because there's different enclaves there are you know maybe Ukrainian apostolic movements and Haitian apostolic movements and some Russian apostolic movements there's so many different enclaves in complex urban centers to say that one person is the apostle I mean another time one of the people at ICA again I'm leaving them nameless right now was proclaimed to be the apostle to the United States how did that work out so I mean and then prematurely laying hands on Todd Bentley and then not long after that the scandal emerges so there's just a lot of nonsense and by the way most of it and most of the apostolic leaders we know are not involved in any of this I agree this is the exception I just want to make it clear but the in my book essays on apostolic leadership which I released I think in 2015 I talk about the abuses and the blessings of the apostolic movement way before Holly and Doug wrote any of their stuff and in that book in one of my chapters I do say the new after stock reformation and so some knucklehead could look at that and say you see he's part of NAR in those days it wasn't the bogeyman which is a sociological term like Peter Wagner used it to describe the phenomena that was not denominationally driven so to say that I'm part of the NAR because one of my you know chapters mentions the new after stock reformation is ridiculous it's not understanding the context and the evolution of the term so yeah I mean there's a lot of things that we could talk about yeah and you know the biggest thing is if someone somehow thinks okay I have this name or this title that gives me authority over other leaders that now quote I'm the apostle and apostles are over pastors so pastors don't have to submit to me and I have the special authority as an apostle I can I can I just saw somebody decree something the other day for everyone that reads it no more like depression in their lives like that'd be that'd be sweet if you had that kind of authority buddy Paul himself would never have done that I decree no you know let's just decree no more war on the earth let's just decree it it's so so some of these things it's just fantasy but it becomes abusive when it's like well I am the man and we know we know a non-charismatic church ministry that there can be abusive pastors it can happen anywhere leaders can be abusive in any setting but all the more if you claim this special anointing and now not just an anointing but the title apostle because like Paul is an apostle to peter is a possible I'm an apostle so it that that self-proclaimed authority that I did it you have authority over leaders you can dictate what local churches do that's just bogus and that's nothing that I've ever gone near in my life or whatever dream of thinking about nor has it been anything that you've ever ministered so we just we gladly embrace apostolic ministry as God intended it and the word says it and we see God doing amazing things around the world and we clearly repudiate the abuses and we're not part of those never have been in fact would you say in a sense the apostle has to be the servant of all yeah Jesus washed feet and he said do likewise so to me apostolic ministry is the lowest of all the ministries because you're a foundation and you don't see foundations you walk on them they suffer the most and apostles of Christ don't just represent a denomination or a network they represent the body of Christ there's very few apostles of Christ in the earth today possibly less than a dozen um and so we throw these titles around and it's it's ludicrous it's superfluous um and we we have to be very very careful uh you know you have some people they got up and they decreed that covid was going to go away yeah you have another one call down angels to await spiritual warfare so the election could be overturned this is all foolishness and where do we see this exemplified in scripture i mean not even extrapolated in any principle in scripture so uh i'm just i'm just yeah we that's why we wrote this statement to primarily educate those in our own movements we're not going to convert those who are gainsayers maybe a few but it's primarily to give discernment to those that are in our own orbits that's that's our motivation yeah again friends read it at nar and christiannationalism.com just read it for your own understanding these are things we've held to believe for many many years again this is not a response to a particular critic or group this is us saying hey these are concerns we want to get out these are issues we want to raise these are things we want to reaffirm both on the apostolic ministry end and on the the idea of quote christian nationalism is that a healthy idea an unhealthy idea let's lay that out very very clearly and we got a number of several score key leaders denominational leaders educators professors different things and then hundreds of other leaders have signed on so joe we've got two minutes but what's the difference between an apostolic movement and a denomination well all denominations first started off as apostolic movements people like john wesley was able to garner huge crowds and bring a lot of people to christ and disciple a lot of people but a second or third generation it was taken over by administrators who were not apostolic and so whenever you go from a visionary to a administrator a competent administrator you stop afterstolicity so in order to have a permanent revolution you need to always appoint apostolic leaders and by the way we always say apostolic i stay away from using it as an office it's more of an adjective that helps alleviate some of the abuse denominations a lot of times will protect and focus more on the past and tradition while apostolic leaders are really focused more on the present and the future the denominational leaders a lot of times are focused on preserving what they have where apostolic leaders are constantly expanding and moving and growing now some denominational leaders can be apostolic yeah so but we're talking in broad brush right here but yeah there are just some a lot of times denominations are led by committees and boards whereas apostolic leaders are led by vision they're visionary leaders and then they may have a multiplicity of elders or leaders or other apostolic leaders they work with that they get consensus from but they try to hear from god they don't exist on committees so there's a lot of differences that we could talk about that's in one of my chapters good good yeah i friends the book is really rich trust trust me on that the book is really rich scripturally grounded and it's super relevant because this is what god is doing in the earth today glorious and friends you should rejoice there are abuses there's junk out there there's exaggerations about abuses but god is doing some real powerful wonderful things you should rejoice the book joseph matera m-a-t-t-e-r-a the global apostolic movement and the progress of the gospel the website josephmatera.org hey dot or kate joe thanks for joining us this has been rich and wonderful all the success on getting the book out thank you my dear friend keep up the good work all right god bless all right bless us another program powered by the truth network