The Role of Fivefold Ministry (Part 3)

Now as pointed out before (in the book, Charismatic Captivation), the Church is the quintessential Theocracy. Its govern­ment is not a political government wherein the governed themselves constitute, devise, and effect their own government, such as that of this nation, the United States, which is a form of democracy (republic), supposedly “of the people, for the people, and by the people.”  Rather, the Church is literally governed by a singular Supreme Potentate—the Lord Jesus Christ—who God has appointed as its Sole and Sovereign Head. The absolute necessity of understanding this one concept is emphasized and re‑emphasized repeatedly in this volume, and indeed is the ultimate and salient point of this book.

But, once it is understood that Christ Jesus Himself is the ultimate Head and Cornerstone of the Church, it is just as vital to understand that the government that Jesus presides over is an intermediated or proxy government in its physical application. In other words, He does not govern alone, nor directly, nor even in person. Rather, His government is a “representative” or “delegate” form of government, if you will. This is to say that as God set apart and specially consecrated the Levites to represent Himself unto the people, so also Jesus appoints, anoints, and sends special envoys, ambassadors, to represent Him and His government unto the Church. These envoys are His personal proxies, His delegates, His stand‑ins, whom He sends to convey and effect His purposes, plans, pleasures, and passions.

A NOW Prophetic Word to Local Church Leaders

The greatest church-growth program ever devised in the history of mankind and the church Jesus is building is the Fivefold Ministry Model outlined in Ephesians 4:4-16. Every senior church leader in America and some other nations around the world has at their ready disposal some of the most battle-tested, God-anointed, God-appointed, life-experienced Fivefold Ministers on the planet living right in their “backyard,” so to speak, in the form of highly-experienced preachers/teachers/ministers who reside in their geographical sphere of operation — in their immediate locality, their region, or state. God has distributed these mighty warriors of God all around you like salt on a plate of food.

Moreover, the fact of the matter is: the Ephesian Four text indicates you cannot possibly accomplish what God wants for you to accomplish in the establishment and edifying of a local church WITHOUT utilizing these Fivefold Ministry officers and functionates in your local church. It’s impossible to properly build the local church according to the Biblical model without them! No matter who you are, how anointed you think you are, how brilliant you think you are, and how successful you see yourself as being, you CANNOT do it all yourself, by yourself, and for yourself! To think otherwise is total deception and foolishness!

Biblical Hate Speech

The undeniable and irrefutable bottom-line of the collection of Scriptures that follow is that while God is the God of Agape-Love, and actually the author/originator of same, that same God is also a God who HATES, that is holds utter contempt for those who hate and oppose Him, His Word, Will, and Ways. To say otherwise is to call God a liar and His Holy Word a lie!

PRESSING ON TO MATURITY

It is now time that individual believers and the collective Church that Jesus is building MUST begin to advance toward the accomplishment of the end-times purposes and plans of God!

God is doing a NEW THING as He promised in His word He is constantly doing, and it is up to every genuine believer in Christ and the collective church to know, understand, comprehend what those new things are and begin to walk in and according to them!

Running Out Ahead of God?

While we certainly want to guard against the disastrous mistake of preempting patience to take matters into our own hands with respect to the major God-assigned purposes of our lives as did Abraham and thereby produce Ishmaels instead of Isaacs, in the post-resurrection era in which we live we have the fruit of the Holy Spirit of supernatural patience to help us with that, if only we will “walk by the Spirit” and thereby “not carry out the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16-25). Our common problem is not so much getting ahead of God, but rather usually lagging far behind His purposes and plans for our lives.

The Consequences of Spiritual Barrenness

Sadly, so many believers today hold the view that because they identify as Christians they are and will be subject to virtually or literally no kind of judgment whatsover. It has been disturbing and disappointing to me to learn over time that many in the Pentecostal and Charismatic streams have adopted this mindset as well. They have been indoctrinated with these utterly false, unscriptural, and demonically-inspired notions. In the case of some of these purporting believers, these “doctrines of demons” that are invented and promulgated by “deceiving spirits,” as Scripture foretells, have been seared into their conscience as with a branding iron (1 Tim. 4:1-2), meaning that without miraculous intervention from God (i.e., deliverance), these victims of deception will ultimately, upon their physical death, receive “the shock of their lives” as they are instantaneously confronted with “the One who has been appointed by God as the judge of the living and the dead,” (Acts 10:42), namely the Lord Jesus Christ!