An Apostle is a person who has matured in his/her specific calling and giftings and who receives from God the mandate and mantle to train others and bring them to maturity IN Christ.

This definition the Lord gave me while I was in the States in 1997.

I had met several people over there , who had called themselves apostle, but yet did not really seem to know what it meant to be an apostle.

In the New Testament Jesus is called an apostle in John 3: 34

For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. (John 3:34 AV)

Have you ever asked yourself the question why God calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Why doesn't He call Himself the God of Moses, or the God of David ?

Nothing written in the Bible is without significance.

Much teaching about the apostle today is taken from the history of the first apostles in the New Testament. Others use the apostle Paul as an example . But we need to look back much further at the beginning of time.

Much is said about the fatherhood of the believer and the emphasis is on making sons and fathering them and by that, unfortunately, is many times meant that an apostle should have control over those whom he 'fathers'.

Jesus said that we are to call nobody our father. God is our Father.

The God of Abraham.

At first Abraham was called Abram and when Isaac was born his name was changed into Abraham, father of many nations.

As I understand it, Abraham was the first type of an apostle which we find in the Bible.

He was a type of the apostles of the Lamb, or the first apostles in the church in Jerusalem.

Like them he was called to leave his country and family and he was sent forth to the promised land Canaan. The disciples said to Jesus that they had left all to follow Him.

Their commision was to go into all the world and make disciples, to reproduce themselves in others.

On his journey to the promised land, Abraham dug several wells and they are the type of the apostles' doctrines which were taught from house to house in the first church and also the teachings of Paul as written in the New Testament.

Abraham was a foundation builder. He was the first one who was called a friend of God (Isa),

He received a son from God but his relationship with God was more important than his son. It was at that time that God provided a lamb. So it was with the disciples that were with Jesus.

They had high expectations of what would happen when Jesus would appoint them and send them forth, but first their expectations had to die and God again provided a lamb.

Jesus died . And then Jesus rose from the dead and after they had received the Holy Spirit, they were sent forth to reproduce themselves in others. Abraham had a special commission

from the Lord, he was to bring his household to the promised land. The apostles of the Lamb had a commission from God to preach the gospel to all nations. The first church in Jerusalem started in a blaze of glory. Great miracles were performed by the apostles and God added to the church daily such as should be saved. The fear of God was in the hearts of the people and His Presence was amongst them and in them in a tangible way. When Ananias and Sapphira tried to bring in their 'Ishmael' (something that looked real, but was not inspired and according to the instructions of the Holy Spirit for that community), they dropped dead.

So they did away with Ishmael. The church was there and the church was growing.

When Jesus died the veil in the temple was torn, God came to live in a new house, he came to tabernacle with men, human vessels, filled with the treasure of God's Presence. Wells full of water. But then the priests sewed the veil together again and so it was with the early church, religion (the veil) took over and slowly but surely the wells got full of dust (human tradition ) and God said about His church, what He said about His people in Jeremiah 2: 13

Abraham married Keturah after his wife Sarah died, her name means 'to burn incense in a closed room', which is just what religion is all about. It centers around itself and has no vision

for the lost. And so Midian was born. Midian means 'strife'.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? {divisions: or, factions} {as men: Gr. according to man?} (1 Corinthians 3:3 AV)

I would say that such was the church right up to the beginning of this century. The wells were blocked and were dried up and the well of living water was forsaken and then it was time for a new kind of apostle to come on the scene.

The God of Isaac.

Isaac means 'laughter'.

In the Presence of the Lord there is fulness of joy. That is what the Bible says and that is what God's plan was all along, he wanted to be the fountain of living waters to His people, He wanted to tabernacle with men

And so He sent Isaac and gave him the commission to unstop the wells his father had dug.

First we see how Isaac dug up several wells. Since the beginning of this centuray there have been men and women who were sent by God to restore certain things to the Church.

First there was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a great measure and the Pentecostal movement was born and then we saw the different ministries restored. The ministry of an Evangelist. Great healing revivals. After that the Teacher and others. All wells that provided much needed water for the Church but then the well of living waters was found and opened.

In the days of Isaac we read the following story

The servants of Isaac had found the well of Living waters and the herdmen, the other shepherds from Gerar strove with them .

Gerar means "chewing the cud" which is a type of meditating in the Word.

Smith Wigglesworth prophesied that the time would come that the people of the Word and the people of the Spirit would come together and then the great endtime revival would begin. At the moment, just like in the days of Isaac, they are still seperate and striving over the well of living waters.

What do I mean by this. As I said before, the name Isaac means 'laughter'. When i started reading the story about Isaac I thought about what happened in 1994. That is when the so-called 'laughter revival' started in Toronto. Actually it started with Rodney Howard Browne, who came to the States and God gave him an apostolic mantle . He was used to bring refreshing and restoration to many weary saints. Randy Clarke , who went to Rodney's meetings, brought what he had received to Toronto and the rest we know. We also know that the fruit of this was a new intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, Who is our well of living waters. And yes, the strife was there too. There has been much strife over what has happened worldwide since then. The people of the Word versus the people of the Spirit. Only when they come together will we see a new move and a new type of apostle . Right now the Church-to-be is like the sons that were born to Isaac.

Jacob and Esau. Esau was the eldest son and by right of birth he should inherit the blessing, but he sold his birthright for a pot of soup and Jacob was blessed instead. The apostle of tomorrow, yet to come is like Jacob. He had to leave his fathers house and I believe that that type of apostle will come forth out of the company of those who have left the existing churchsystem in search of "their promised land"

Like Jacob they had to leave their home and move into the unknown. They are misunderstood and labelled as being rebellious. But they are on a journey where they will first be led into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Jacob had this experience on his way, when he saw the heavens opened in his dream and it was there he made a covenant with God. His own, not that of his father. Eventually when he became mature God gave him sons which are a type of the endtime church .

So the type of apostle we see today is that of Isaac. Their task is to find and unstop the wells which Abraham dug and to lead the people (by example) to the well of living waters. Into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, to prepare a vessel that can be filled with the glory of God. The emphasis at the monment is not on church-growth, not even on the church and how it should function or be built. The emphasis at the moment is on the tabernacle or temple which the Lord wants to build, where He wants to live in all His glory.

That temple is our body, the temple of the Lord. When Jesus left He promised that the Holy Spirit would come and He would come with fire and purge His floor. The only fruit we are required to bring forth is the fruit of holiness (Rom 6:22) and when we are obedient, Jesus promised that He and the Father would come and live inside of us

Religion is like the veil that was sewed up and put back in his place in the temple, seperating God and men, but once again God is removing the veil as we go through the fellowship of Christ's suffering and find ourselves not only by faith, but by experience, like the apostle Paul, crucified with Christ and it is then that we know that the life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God who died for us.

I was asking myself how that could be. It is one thing to read this statement in the Bible but another thing to know it by experience. Do I have to be crucified? How?

It has been done. When I asked the Holy Spirit about this, He took me to the garden where Jesus prayed and I saw the disciples laying there, sleeping. What a useless bunch of people, yet they became vessels filled with the glory of God. And when I looked at them the Holy Spirit said to me: just like you accepted Christ by faith, so this is by faith, through grace. It is part of our inheritance. We must strive to enter into that rest, which means to cease from our own works. We must just move by grace behind the veil and sit on Father's lap and let Him

Be Who He is ,through us

This is His perfect will for us. It makes me think of a vision I once had while I was in a service. I suddenly saw the bush which Moses saw and it was burning with God's glory and Presence and then I saw a field that was on fire and when the fire had died down, all I saw was black ashes and I asked God if that was all that would be left of what we were experiencing right then. It was in 1995. And then the Holy Spirit showed me that burning bush, the only bush that was still standing there and a voice said: This bush is not consumed, because it does not add anything of itself to fuel the fire. So that was it, it ceased from its own works. Very difficult for us humans to get there, to enter into that rest.

But God wants to get all the glory and He does not leave us to ourselves. Nobody can just come that close to God because he is a devouring fire. I heard John Bevere speak on the glory and the fear of God and he said that God said to Moses that the Israelites were right, that they didn't dare come close to the mountain because they would surely be consumed by the fire. But God wants to draw us closer to Himself. For that we need to be clothed in the robes of His righteousness and how we get those is described in Isa 61 and Mal 3. I suggest you read those chapters for yourself.

The daughter of a friend had a dream just recently. She saw in her dream how people were obsessed with making preparations for the year 2000 and all the calamities they expect to happen at the change of the century. She wondered what was going on and she heard a voice say behind her: Come I will take you and show you what will happen then. She saw that the night was coming and the sun was going down and she expected the moon to come up, but there was no more moon. Instead a new sun rose up, very bright and the voice said: they need no light because of the light of the sun. Then she woke up.

When she looked in her Bible she found a scripture in revelations where it was said about the New Jerusalem that the city needed no light, because God was there. Her mom shared the dream with me and I asked the Holy Spirit about it. he gave me two scriptures: Heb. 1:1 and Mal 4 about the Sun of righteousness which would rise up with healing in His wings.

As I understand it, this is what God is saying. He is coming closer and we are being purified so we will be the place where His glory dwells, inside of us. Up till now the church and we are the church has been like the moon. We have reflected the sun, which is a type of God.

He spoke to His prophets and they spoke to the people and that is still happening today.

Very few Christians have learned to hear the Lord for Himself, but God says that He is speaking to us through His son now. That means, no more reflecting the light of the sun, but letting the Sun of righteousness shine through us. When you look at the natural sun, you see all that power and all that energy and fire which is held together by something, otherwise it would explode all over the place. Well that something that holds it together is the vessel and you must have noticed, that vessel is invisible. No longer I who live, but Christ living in and through me. Being changed from glory to glory. That is the new sun that is rising in the dream. I hope you can understand this. In Matthew 13 from verse 41 we read about the purifying proces we have to go through and then it says: And then the righteous will shine like the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. Let him who has ears, hear.

Just in closing, this comes from the same chapter where Jesus is giving us more pictures about the Kingdom and one is about the field with the precious pearl hidden in it and a man selling all to buy this field. Are we ready to sell all to buy this field? Let us strive to enter into this rest .