Aposotolic Centers 5 8-11-24

The speaker talks about the concept of the "rabbit anointing" and how it signifies multiplication in a positive sense. They also discuss the idea of the temple and how Jesus referred to his own body as a temple that would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. The speaker relates this to the church and how it went through a period of decline but is now being restored to its original glory. They emphasize the importance of occupying and taking the planet for Jesus, battling against spiritual forces rather than individuals. The speaker also talks about the need for a new wineskin, symbolizing being ready for the Holy Spirit and being open to change. They discuss the difference between the apostolic and pastoral models of the church and the need to return to the early church model. But it's really kind of like a sequel to the Kingdom series I preached some, I don't know, a year ago? Eight months ago? Everything just seems compressed in my mind. It's like I can't... Could have been five years ago, but it feels like yesterday. I don't know. Maybe that's something about getting old. Or maybe that's the times we're living in. You know, I found it very interesting. God told me years ago that the way church has a rabbit anointing. Multiplication is what He was talking about. Multiplication. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had a rabbit give birth on our front porch. In... Yale has a porch garden. We have all these containers with different plants. Wouldn't you know it, that rabbit picked the carrot bucket to give birth. The carrot bucket. So you can't tell me that rabbits aren't smart. She knew where to go. So that just keeps reminding me we have the rabbit anointing. With the way having the rabbit anointing, if you come to the way, you also have the rabbit anointing. Multiplication. In every sense of the word in our lives. Multiplication. But only the good stuff. Not multiplying the bad. Just multiplying the good. So Jesus said, destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days. Of course, He said that standing in the temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago or so. And yes, He definitely was speaking of His own body. See, they thought He was talking about the temple that was around Him. And they laughed, of course. But really, Jesus could have spoke one word and that whole temple would have been raised to the ground. And then He could have spoken another one word and that temple would have been rebuilt. Because He's God. He created everything. He could have done that. He could have done that. But that's not really what He was talking about. I figure He was talking about two things. One was His own body, for one. Because He calls us now, thanks to Jesus, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And He's telling everybody, you will think you're going to be able to destroy this temple, but I'm going to rise again in three days. And He did exactly that. And it's a good thing for us that He did. But He was also, figuratively even more so, I think, You know, the Bible has different layers. There's the context, the historical, and everything. There's a lot of symbolism in the Bible, of course. There's poetic language. There's figurative language. So there's all these levels to Scripture. No other book has that. No other book can even come close to that kind of thing. Because there's no other book that actually is referred to as God Himself. The Bible is referred to in the Bible as the Word. And who's the Word? Jesus Christ is the Word. So there's no other book that can make that claim. But the Bible is so amazing that you could read this one passage and you could glean something new from it every time you read it for your entire life. It's amazing. Amazing. Well, He was also, I think, talking about the body of Christ, us, and saying, we looked at some of the history. The early church was fully alive. And then when Constantine took over the Roman Empire in the 4th century, and then all the alive stuff in the church got turned into dead. And the church was dead for around a thousand years. It was dead as a doornail. But then, starting with the reformers like Wycliffe and all those guys, starting with them, the church started coming back to life. And it has taken a little bit of time. That was over 500 years ago. God's been working. But we pretty much have had everything restored to us that we lost. And we're moving into the new, but all we're really doing is moving into what the first church really was. God's bringing us back to the glory of the original church that He set up. And it doesn't look anything like American church. Not at all. That's pretty much what we've been talking about. But we are, Jesus said, destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days. Well, the temple was destroyed, if you're looking at it as the church, was destroyed in the 4th century. That's when it started to be destroyed. And then we are now the third millennium, right? Because Jesus was 2,000 years ago. That's two millennium. We are now, when we turn into the 21st century, these numbers are already starting to hurt me. It's like there's too much math at Sunday morning. I can't handle that. So if I get lost here in the numbers, forgive me. I come by it honestly. I don't like numbers. So we are in the third day. There's two reasons why that old band, and it's weird saying third day is an old band, but they started in the 90s, so they're pretty old. You've got to remember how old we are now. They were talking about two different things, the third day Jesus rose again, but also we are the third day church. Because we're in the third millennium of the church, of Jesus Christ, of the kingdom of God on the earth. We're the third day ecclesia. And basically it is the kingdom of God with Jesus resurrected in full. He's not coming back tomorrow. I hate to break anybody's bubble, but He's not coming back tomorrow. There's too much that still needs to be done with biblical prophecy that hasn't occurred yet. That has to happen before Jesus can return. It's not even imminent. So if you have friends that are in a bunker someplace just waiting for Jesus to return, tell them, don't be an idiot, get out of your bunker and go out and occupy until He returns. Because that's what Jesus told us to do. And if you're in a bunker someplace, or you're holy huddle and saying, us four no more, you're not occupying. Occupying is a military term. We are taking this planet for Jesus by force if necessary. And remember, the force that we exert is prayer and the power of God. But it is not against people. It's against powers and principalities, demons, you know, all the demon stuff. The person in front of us, they may be swearing at you when you tell them about Jesus. That person isn't the one you're battling. It's the demons in the person. You've got to remember that. It's nothing personal. It's just the fact that the demons hate us. Not just Christians. The demons hate humans, period. Because we were created in the likeness of God. And Lucifer himself can't stand that. He can't handle that. So that's why he wants to kill us all. Jews, Christians, but he really would be fine. Lucifer and the demons would be fine if they killed every human. They wouldn't lose any sleep over that. Trust me, they hate us. So don't feel bad if you're casting a bunch of demons out of somebody. They're not supposed to be in there anyway. They're here illegally. They're doing what they're doing illegally. The way that most Christians do church today, if you've missed the last few weeks, this may not make too much sense, but they are being recorded. Church today, even here, right now, even in this church, it resembles what Constantine started more than the early church that Jesus started. That we read about in the New Testament, in the book of Acts and everything. And that we read about in sources that are outside of the Bible. Like I read last week, and I might have one I'm reading this week, I don't remember. Somebody like Irenaeus, I think he was like 150 A.D. or something like that. He went to church services in Israel in his lifetime over there. Only a hundred and so years after Jesus went back to heaven. And he wrote about what he saw. We've got multiple people like that that wrote about what an early church, what they did. And they didn't do this. They really didn't do this. God is taking us back to a church that looks like the book of Acts again. That we're actually making a difference in the world, out on the street, in the marketplace. The holy huddles. Pastors that are trying to keep everybody in the building are going to find out pretty soon that that is not what God wants. He doesn't want to keep us in the building. But pastors want to keep you in the building. And we'll be talking about that as we look at later, maybe not today, but it depends on how far we get. That the early church was operating in what I call the apostolic model of the church. But from the 3rd, 4th century, we've been working in the pastoral model of the church. And God didn't institute a pastoral model of the church. And we'll go into that in detail. I had been mentioning wineskin a few times. And then I realized there may be some folks that don't know what a wineskin is. Especially when this goes out on the radio. So I figured I'd explain that. Because we don't have those today. We don't use wineskins. We've got plastic bottles. So, you know, we don't have to do that. A wineskin is basically a leather bottle for holding wine or grape juice or whatever. And if you put fermenting grape juice in an old wineskin, the old wineskin's going to crack and it will develop holes. And you don't want to put new wine into a wineskin. It's just going to leak right out. So you need to put new wine in a brand new wineskin where the leather is supple and it can expand without holes. No leaking. We are our wineskin for Holy Spirit. Because in the Bible, if you see wine or anything like that or water, a lot of times it's symbolizing Holy Spirit. And when the Bible's talking about a wineskin, that's what it's talking about. We need to make sure that we are a new wineskin for the Holy Spirit, not the old wineskin. Because if Holy Spirit comes to an old wineskin, He's going to leak out and you're going to be very ineffective. So you've got to be ready for the new. You can't let your wineskin get old, hard, brittle, which is referring to us being hardened in our heart saying, I don't care, I'm going to do it my way. Anybody ever do it your way? Did that work out well? And we have Christians, and I'm sure a lot of us in here, have prayed for revival. But there are a lot of Christians that they're praying for revival, but all they're really praying for is the Holy Spirit would come and bring the new wine into their old wineskin. They want Holy Spirit to come and do church like we're doing church in America today. And there have been times when Holy Spirit has descended in revival and awakening, and He was willing to do it in an old church structure, an old wineskin. And He's willing to do that. But I'm telling you, from today until Jesus returns, He's not willing to do that anymore. He wants to come into churches, Christians, because we are the church, right? It's not a building. He wants to come to Christians who will accept what He's doing now, today. And too many Christians are following the historical Jesus when they should be following the Jesus today. You've got to be careful whenever you're hearing about somebody talking about the historical Jesus. That is satanic information couched as truth. But it's not truth. They're just saying, oh yeah, Jesus existed. Well, of course, even the demons know Jesus existed. Come on. But we're not following the historical Jesus. A person who lived and died 2,000 years ago and then nothing. No, Jesus, if you're a Christian, if you're a Christian, He's in you right now. Right now. He's in all of us. He's everywhere. His Holy Spirit's everywhere. This historical Jesus thing, it's just a lie. You've got to really pay attention. And they talk about that on the History Channel a lot. Don't even watch the History Channel if it's going to talk about anything that has to do with Christianity because 100% of the information that they put on there, whether they're talking about biblical archaeology or whatever, it's a lie. They're trying to actually... The History Channel's very secular. Now, I watch stuff on the History Channel that has to do with World War II and stuff like that, and that's generally fine. But I won't even watch that stuff. I've had too many Christians that I knew, especially some of my students from years ago, that the History Channel alone started them on a path of questioning the Bible and for some of them at this moment, as far as I know, haven't pulled themselves out of that yet. But you know there's a lot of lies in the media. Shocked. I know you're shocked that the media lies, right? No way, the media? No. No. What's the latest statistics? Probably 30% of what you see on the Internet is true. And I'll bet you in a week it'll be down to like 20. You know. You just can't... Oh, but I saw it on Facebook. Well, that's about 30% wrong. So be careful. So anyway, we want the new wine, we want the Holy Spirit to move in our midst, in us, through us, and we want to follow Him where He's going. We don't want to follow where we think He went 2,000 years ago. That's not going to get you very far. There was a revival around 1903, 1904 in the country of Wales, part of the British Isles. And it was a huge revival. It was said that at one point during the revival, there were cities in the nation of Wales where they couldn't find one person who wasn't born again. Cities where there wasn't even a single non-born-again person. Tremendous revival. Tremendous revival. Coal miners were getting saved in the mine. No preacher around. No Bible around. The coal miners in the mine were getting saved because the power of God fell on Wales for like a two or three year period. It was tremendous. Tremendous revival. I've talked about it before. I'm not going to spend much time on it. But a lot of teachers don't talk about what happened after the revival in Wales. Within a hundred years, in other words, if you go to Wales now, because we're over a hundred years from there, if you go to Wales now, you'll find out that the statistic is true with your own eyes that now the nation of Wales is only about 5% born again. Five percent. A hundred years ago, it was pretty close to 100%. That's because the Holy Spirit fell. His people were praying. The Holy Spirit fell. Revival happened. A lot of people came to the Lord, but a lot of people didn't stay in the Lord. Because the Spirit fell on old wineskins, the church leaders tried to still keep doing church their own way instead of God's way. And a hundred years later, the nation's a mess. Probably worse off than when they started. That's very common. But like I said, God's not going to do that anymore. He's going to show up where He's truly, truly treasured and loved and knows that the people that He's coming down on, like us, the Holy Spirit's been here every... I've been preaching here for 12 years. For 12 years now. And even if I walk in the building during the week, I can feel the presence of God. And it's been like that from day one. So, we're on the right track. But we have to be careful. Because deceived people don't know they're deceived. That's the thing about deception. You need somebody else to point it out to you. And then you've got to have the ability to tamp down your pride and say you were wrong. Ooh, we don't like that. Especially men. The male pride is huge. It's strong. And it's tough. I know. I've been there. You know. I've had to say I was wrong more times than I would like to confess. And there will probably be more. Many more. I'm human. I'm not perfect. And neither are you. Jesus is the only perfect person who ever lived. That's it. There's no other perfect person. Just Jesus. So don't yell at yourself for making mistakes. You're going to make them. And God knew you were going to make them. And He loves you anyway. That's why it's amazing grace. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't earn it. Oh, it is said from missionary groups that do these studies that Wales today is one of the least Christian countries in all of Europe. Yet 120 years ago, they were probably the most. So as Christians, we can't rest on our laurels. We have to continue going forward with Jesus no matter what. I'd say 20 years ago, give or take, a bunch of friends, Christians, Spirit-filled Christians that I know, just tell me. You've got to read this book. This is a great book. You've got to read this. It's called The Purpose-Driven Church. Anybody remember that? Rick Warren. Pastor Rick Warren, Purpose-Driven Church. It was a bestseller and everything. And I was nice to everybody. You know, just nod and wave. But as soon as I heard the title, and I didn't know anything about Rick Warren at the time, but as soon as I heard the title, I knew that it wasn't for me. Because the church isn't purpose-driven. It's supposed to be presence-driven. And I told God when He told me that you're taking over here 12 years ago, I said, good, I don't want people. I want you. I want Him. I preached to my family for a while. I didn't care. Still don't care. Doesn't bother me a bit. I want God. We are a presence-driven church. And we're going to stay that way. But it was a huge bestseller, which tells you the state of the American church. They were going on the wrong tangent. And the church tends to do that throughout history if you know church history. To semi-quote President Trump, the purpose-driven church was fake news. In Ephesians 4, verses 8-13 will be our main Scripture for this morning. Ephesians 4, verses 8-13. I'm sure you've all heard this before. It says, When He ascended on high, He led captives away and gave gifts to men. I'm skipping verses 9 and 10. And it was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ. What that is describing, that section, that is describing the true administration of the church, the ecclesia. That is the true administration. Today we call that the five-fold ministry. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. And it tells us right there in Ephesians 4 that the five-fold ministry exists. Those giftings are here to equip God's people for ministry. Notice it doesn't say to equip the pastor to do all the ministry. Do I have to say that again? That's part of one of the problems with the American church because everybody in the pews just thinks they're in a movie. They want the pastor to do everything. So they can just watch and soak it all in. Well, that's not what Jesus started. And that's not what Ephesians 4 here is talking about, is it? To me, we're killing another sacred cow. And I love killing sacred cows. I have nothing against cows. They're delicious. But I like killing these sacred cows. Things that Christians have been thinking, especially American Christians, have been thinking for years and years, hundreds of years. It's like, no, a lot of times that's really not even what the Scripture says. And in this case, the Scripture's talking about the administration of the church that most churches don't have today. But they had it in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries. That's what they had. They had the five-fold ministry running things. The pastor is just one of the five gifts. But today, the pastor's everything. Everything. Somebody comes into a church, first thing they want to know is who's the pastor? Which one's the pastor? You know, pick them up. Or her. And this is just one of the positions that's supposed to be helping to equip you guys to do the ministry. Not just me. It's not that I'm not going to do anything. But, you know, it's not the one-fold ministry. It's five for one thing. And really, the church in America, not necessarily the charismatic, spirit-filled church of which we're part of, but overall the church in America is rebelling against Ephesians 4 big time. They don't want to hear it. They don't care. They think that all went away with the urban church. Well, there's no proof of that, for one. All the proof points to the Bible being what it says it is. That's where the proof shows. And there's no Scripture that says that the gifts of the Holy Spirit cease to exist after the first apostles died. But that's what most churches in America teach their people. And it's shameful. It's just truly shameful. They want to keep... And these are pastors I'm talking about. They went to seminary. And these seminaries, they have an ulterior motive here. They want to maintain control is what they want to do. And we're going to talk about that and where that comes from as we move along. A couple of weeks ago, I don't think it was last week, a couple of weeks ago, I had given you some statistics. Remember, one of them was that around 80% of pastors are burned out and depressed. 80%. I was like, wow, that was even high for me to figure. And I've known a lot of pastors in my life. And it's like, wow, that's high. But could that be that they're that depressed and burned out? Maybe it's because they're being asked to do all this stuff that they weren't really supposed to be doing. That they're not gifted to do even. And let me be the first to tell you that just about, even in the charismatic church, I'd say 80% of pastors, if not higher, aren't even really pastors, biblically. There isn't a single person. And you can look this up. And if I'm wrong, correct me. But there's not a single person in the New Testament. You know, Paul mentions all these people. My thanks to this person and that person and give my love to this person. There's not a single person that Paul wrote about that he called pastor. Not one. Zero. And the word pastor is only in the New Testament. And it's not in the Old Testament. But the word pastor is only there one time in the entire New Testament and we just read it. That's it. Do a word search. Pastor doesn't show up anywhere else. And yet, what's the most prominent position and office in the church today, especially in America? Pastor. It's everything. The pastor is the church. Look at all these. Even this church here. We started going here. There was 100 people that came here. And then the administration fell and everybody left. Ask Leon and Joanne. They're the only ones that were left. They were elders then and they decided rightly that we're not going to let this fall apart. We're going to keep going. So we're still here today. As the only people left and as the elders, they could have just shut the door. And nobody, even God, couldn't have said anything against them because we were there. It was a mess. It was a mess. And it remained a mess for a long time too. We had a lot of work to do. First of which was to regain our good name in the community. Pardon me. If I was heading somewhere, I don't remember where I was headed. We're just going to go back to the notes. At least I'm kind of safe there. Sometimes I go off on a squirrel and sometimes the squirrels are Shawn squirrels and sometimes the squirrels are Holy Spirit squirrels. So that squirrel I was just on, I don't know which one that was. But the nice thing about the New Testament is God puts the onus on you guys to test all the information coming out. Not that I'm going to ever try to be wrong. I try to give you guys the truth. I try real hard. And I tend to look things up. As best I can. I try. I'm not perfect. Working with, according to Dr. Robert Heidler and Chuck Pierce and many other people, Cindy Jacobs and others, working with the five-fold ministry is a huge part of the new wineskin, the new apostolic reformation that started 24 years ago. That's a big part of it. And that's why the rest of the church in America and around the world, a big portion of them, they're attacking that. They're attacking that. Because if you let... I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'll get to that. Dr. Robert Heidler, he's Chuck Pierce's right-hand man. He's probably the best Bible teacher in the world that's maybe ever lived. I love the man. Never met him. I have all of his books. And you can hear him on YouTube. He has teachings on there and everything. Dr. Robert Heidler, H-E-I-D-L-E-R if you want to look that up. He's tremendous. He knows his Jewish roots down pat. Down pat. Well, he said this, One of the highest responsibilities of any church is to ensure that every member has access to all five of the five-fold ministries. I'll repeat that. One of the highest responsibilities of any church is to ensure that every member has access to all five of the five-fold ministries. So I thought to myself when I read that, Okay, let's check out. Let's put that to the test here at the way. Let's play that out. We have pastors. We got Lyman and myself. We have pastors. We got that. Check. We have an apostle. I don't think most of you, except for some visitors, have seen him. And if you come to our conference in November, you'll see him again. You'll see him there. Apostle Joe Perosich from down in Morgantown. He's our apostle. He's a true apostle. He's not just one of these people that somebody threw a name at. God anointed him as an apostle. He does the job of an apostle just like it's talked about in the New Testament. Check. Apostle. So we got pastor and apostle. Check. Check. We have multiple teachers. There's a bunch of people in here that have a teaching gift. You know, Pastor Lyman. Me, I'm more of a teacher than a preacher. You know, that's me. I'm more of a teacher. That's why I said earlier, I said most pastors aren't pastors. It says reverend in front of my name, and it has for quite some time. But I'm a teacher. If I had the choice, if God said, you know, back when I first got ordained, I don't know, mid-90s or something like that, if He would have said, okay, which one of these are you in the fivefold ministries? Or if you could be one of these, because not every Christian is part of the fivefold ministry, but you all are ministers, which one would you pick? You know, I went to St. Vincent to be a teacher, so that's kind of like, I'm a teacher, you know. But churches don't hire teachers, do they? They don't appoint teachers to lead a church. Even in the Charismatic Church, what do teachers do? Well, I point out to you that lady with the black hair, Joyce Meyer. I point Joyce Meyer out to you. If you've ever heard her preach or teach or whatever, and we've seen her live, she's a teacher. But because she's a teacher, she doesn't lead a church. I'm sure she could because she's so good. Down to earth, she takes biblical principles and makes it easy for us stupid people to figure out and everything. She's great. She's anointed. She's anointed out in my mind. I've read a lot of her books too. I highly recommend every one of them. So anyway, we have multiple teachers. My wife, also a teacher. She taught in schools. Maureen is a teacher. Some of you are teachers and you don't even know it yet. So teacher, check. So we have pastor, apostle, teacher, check, check, check. And we have a prophet that you have access to all the time. Dr. Rena, Apostle Joe's wife, has been called out by apostles as a prophet. She's not like me who works and moves in the prophetic. That's not the same thing. I'm not in the office of prophet, but she is. And you all have access to her. She visits here regularly. She's always at our conference. If you needed to talk to her, you could call her. She'd be fine with that. So you have access. And we've got prophet, check. Prophet Bill Young comes to our conference every year. He's coming back this year again, by the way. He just gave me the yes this past week. So we've got that. Prophet, check. And we have... I don't know if you remember, when we did that exercise a few weeks back, I wanted some of you to see that God speaks to you and that a lot of you gave prophetic words. Was it to Angel? Yes. A lot of you gave prophetic words to Angel. So, a lot of us hear God. Which, if you're born again, and especially if you're Spirit filled, and most of you are, I know, then you can prophesy. And the Apostle Paul even wrote, I desire that all of you prophesy. Why? Because modern prophecy isn't anything like Old Testament prophecy. It's completely different. Completely different. Modern prophecy is all about building people up. Encouraging people. And that's what all of us did when Angel was standing up there. You know. So there's a lot of us that move in the prophetic. And some of you maybe have never done it. You've never done it? Well, you're going to. You're going to. Why wouldn't you? Because the Apostle Paul said he wants all of us. And he said all of us can. All of us can. So we have no lack of saints that hear from God. So prophet. Check. So we've got apostles. Well, we have an apostle. Pastor. Teacher. Prophet. The only one that we really don't have is that last one called evangelist. To my knowledge, I don't think there's anybody that calls the way church their home that would qualify as being in the office of evangelist. But that doesn't mean you won't be. I'm just saying. Some of you are feeling the sweat starting to pour down your head. It's just that evangelist is the one gift in the fivefold ministry gifts that we really don't have installed and working and doing all that here. What we do have is a church full of saints who do evangelize. You see people out on the street. You pray for them. Hopefully, you didn't run over them first. Because they should be walking on the sidewalk. And what are you doing driving on the sidewalk? You do that. Your neighbor has some problems, so you'll go and talk to them and pray for them and everything. Well, that's doing the work of an evangelist, but that doesn't mean you're in the office of that. It's the same way as I move in the prophetic, but I'm not a prophet. Same thing. But I know some evangelists. And we have had a few people come here to speak that did and do have, I think, the office of evangelist. And one of them, Pastor Chris, I don't even know if he knows that he is, but he is. He is. And he'll be back. He moved back to West Virginia I think to stay, so we'll get him up here more often. So, you know, we have access to that. And that's what Dr. Robert Heidler was saying. We should have access to all that. Every church doesn't have to have all five in their church. You just have access to that. And still running that. Apostle Joe is our... well, he's my spiritual father. And I'm your spiritual father. Even though that really sounds weird in my mouth and in my ears to hear that me. I mean, I'm my daughter's father, but all of you guys? That still sounds weird to me. It just does. There's not much I can do about that. It sounds weird. It'll get better probably over the years. But it's quite possible somebody sitting here may be in the office of evangelist at some point in the future. I don't know. You're probably safe right now because God hasn't told me that there's anybody. He hasn't said, hey, this person. I haven't told you anything yet, but this person is going to be an evangelist. Well, He hasn't told me any of that. So you're probably fairly safe. But then again, He could tell my mom that. He could tell Maureen that. He could tell Lisa that. He could tell Joanne that and Pastor Lyman. There's all kinds of people here to hear from the Lord. And so, you know, He could be telling them that. He doesn't have to tell me everything. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Because we're a team. The ecclesia, the church, is a team. And when it comes to evangelism, we all have to do that. You know, that's our job. Go, Jesus, go ye into all the world. And all of us, we're all supposed to do that. But the statistics, in case you didn't know, the statistics, and I've heard these statistics all my life. I've been in the church all my life. The overwhelming majority of church goers are there because someone invited them to be there. The overwhelming majority were invited to church. It's not rocket science. Sorry, Dr. Lyman. But it's not. It's pretty simple. You know, you don't necessarily, if you're really shy, and I'm shy by nature, if you're really shy, we're not saying you have to go up to all these people on the street, stop them, stand in front of them as they're walking down a sidewalk and say, hey, you know Jesus. But you don't necessarily have to do that. But if God's telling you to do that, by all means, go ahead. It could be as simple as inviting them to church. Because that's how most of us got here. You know. I didn't have that option. I grew up in a Christian family. I went to church. My brother, we didn't have a choice. There was no choice. You're going to church. It's really, you know, maybe that's an old-fashioned notion. But when you grow up in a Christian family, you're going to church. There's no choice in the matter. These parents that ask their kids, would you like to give me a break? My mom and dad never couched anything as a question. It was a command. And if I didn't do it, smack on the behind. I got spanked a lot. And I deserved every one of them. I don't remember them all. And I don't remember everything I did, but I bet I deserved every one of them. Did it do any good? I don't know. Ask my mom. She might know. I don't know. I was stubborn and stupid. I don't remember when this was. Probably two or three weeks ago. I mentioned that there are two components, basically, to what Chuck Pierce calls the triumphant reserve. We talked about that before. And how we're growing to be a triumphant reserve apostolic center. The two big components to that, number one, is a focus on the presence of God. And really, if you've got that, you're already moving ahead with God. If your church is following and your focus is the presence of God, you're 99% there. If only the other churches just would grasp that. It's not that difficult. The other component, number two, we have 90.999% carry the two, divide by pi, r squared, of the five-fold ministries in operation. You want me to say that again? Don't ask me if this is true. Dr. Lyman is doing the calculations in his head right now. We have 90.999% carry the two, divide by pi, r squared, of the five-fold ministries in operation here at The Way. I put that in there just for Dr. Lyman who actually thinks like that. He's a nuclear engineer. He thinks like that. I don't think like that. That's right. For your viewing pleasure, you guys can come on up here who's supposed to be up here. We have a visual example of the five-fold ministry at work. It's a little skit that we put together for you. So this is just a visual example of the five-fold ministries. And your humble servant is just the narrator. Pretend I'm not here. The evangelist is gifted to birth babies into the kingdom. There is nothing the evangelist loves more than birthing babies. When a new Christian is born, the evangelist gets very excited. The evangelist is very excited to see a new baby born into the kingdom. But that excitement lasts about five minutes. Then the evangelist is ready to move on and birth another baby. It's not the evangelist's gift to nurture babies, just birth them. The job of the pastor is nurturing babies. The pastor's gift is to nurture, to comfort, and protect. A pastor is like the nurse in the delivery room who takes a newborn baby, cleans it up, makes sure it's healthy and fed and protected. We need pastors in the church. They are a vital element in the kingdom. And what we really don't need are Christians under pastoral care who still need a pat on the head 20 years after they became a Christian. Alright, pass that baby along. The prophet. It's good, the prophet says, that you're comfortable and well fed, but you have a call of God on your life. You have a destiny greater than you can imagine. There are things God wants you to do. So the prophet gives vision for the future. But baby Christian may still fail because the prophet doesn't know how to get the baby to that point. Yes, baby Christian, you have a call on your life. But you need to understand some things like how to walk with God, how to operate in the power of God, and how to experience God's blessings. Now, the apostle has set all of this in motion. He watches carefully as baby Christian moves through the progression to be sure he is growing and developing. Finally, the apostle says, I think you're ready to be launched into ministry. However, many times a baby Christian crashes and burns the first time out. So you need a pastor there to comfort and minister to him. And your pastor just told somebody to put the baby on the floor. I'm just pointing that out. The pastor said, drop the baby. So the pastor will comfort and minister to the baby. The prophet is there to say, you messed up. But you still have the call of God on your life. Don't give up. The teacher says, you crashed and burned because there are some things you did not understand. Let me explain some things to you. And then the apostle says, it's time for you to try again. And hopefully before long, baby Christian is no longer a baby. He or she is a mature and equipped ambassador for Jesus. So let's thank our actors. They practiced all day for that. As you're aware, the early church that you read about in the book of Acts, didn't slap a pastor label on all their leaders and give them that same job description. As you read the New Testament, I spoke about this a little bit before, you'll see that some leaders, when Paul's talking about them and giving my thanks, some leaders he referred to as prophets. Some were called teachers. Some were called apostles and so on. But as I said, that Scripture from Ephesians 4 is the only place the word pastor even shows up in the New Testament. So it just boggles the mind from a biblical standpoint how the pastor became the most important person in any church. And it's really not what was supposed to happen. I mentioned before there are basically two models of church administration. One is the pastoral model and the other is the apostolic model. We're going to spend a little bit of time looking at the pastoral model first. We're very familiar with the pastoral model of the church. It consists of the pastor and the congregation. That's your pastoral model right there. The congregation in some churches is referred to as layman. A layman is defined as a person without knowledge or training. Now I know some of the men would love to be a person without knowledge or training in the church. Because I know how men think. You know, we're fine just sitting back, you know, relaxing. But that's really not what God wants to happen. In the kingdom of God, there are no laymen. There's no such thing. Even the term layman, the idea behind it, was a man-made idea. But in many churches, the laymen are expected to attend church, give money, read their Bibles, and be good boys and girls in society. And that's pretty much about it, right? But one of the first evangelists, maybe the first evangelist. I haven't looked that up to see if she's the first. But the woman at the well kind of goes against a lot of that. The woman at the well kind of goes against this pastor and congregation model. Because mere minutes after meeting Jesus, He sent her off to be an evangelist. And we know she evangelized her entire city. She had very little knowledge and no training. And Jesus was fine with that. He really was. So that tells me that all of us have a job to do. It may not be apostle. It may not be pastor. It may not be evangelist or whatever. But we all have a job to do. We all have ministry, gifting. All of us. You may not think you have. You may not have ever looked in your life in thinking that I have a ministry. But you do. You do. You have a purpose. You have a ministry. God put you here for such a time as this. I have no doubt about that. So you have the congregation and you have the pastor and the pastoral model. Whatever ministry is needed, the pastor is the one to do it. The pastor is the administrator. The pastor visits the sick. The pastor counsels the afflicted. The pastor takes care of the flock. The layman. The helpless sheepies. Poor, helpless sheepies. You're so helpless. You didn't know you were helpless. But according to 99% of the churches in America, you're helpless. Doesn't that irritate you to be called helpless? Well, that's what's happening in most every church in America. Right now, Sunday morning. Because you're in the congregation and you're not doing anything. You're not expected to do anything. Poor, helpless sheepies. What would you do without the pastor? The pastor knows the mysteries of God after all. Let's ask the pastor. He knows all. He's the man of God and He will answer our... He will have His prayers answered by God. He performs communion. He officiates the weddings, the funerals. He blesses the food at the potluck. Very important. Very important. The visitors come in and the first person they want to meet is the pastor. He's in charge. He meets our needs. That has been the norm in the church for 1,500 years. What I just described. I'm not putting it down completely because we all got saved under that model, didn't we? If you know Jesus as Lord and Savior, then you got saved under the pastoral model. It's not necessarily from hell. It's just that the apostolic model from the book of Acts that God set up is better. Don't get me wrong. In the apostolic model, the pastor is one of the fivefold ministers who helps to equip the flock to do the ministry. Now I know what some of you may be thinking. I'm almost done here. It's one of those sticky thoughts. It creeps into your mind. Oh, he's just trying to shirk his responsibilities. He's just trying to pass off all of his hard work on somebody else. And if he doesn't, we'll just bring in the next person to do it. We'll have a meeting and we'll kick him out. And we'll just bring in the other guy. After all, there are more people today graduating from ministry colleges than there are openings for them. Just like teachers in the public school system. There are more teachers in Pennsylvania that graduate as a teacher from college than there are positions in Pennsylvania. So most of them have to go somewhere else and then come back. Because a lot of them want to come back. There are pastors in churches right now, they want to adopt the apostolic model. They want to. But they're afraid. They're afraid to lose their job. So they just keep their mouth shut. They soldier on. They just soldier on and that's why 80% are depressed. They just keep soldiering on doing something that they may not even be gifted to do. And in five years, he burns up. Or she. Mind you, when I'm saying he, I'm saying he or she. We have female pastors. Not a big deal. For a lot of churches, not here, because we've been trying to do the apostolic model and we're working toward that. Not a problem. But in a lot of churches, to completely adopt the apostolic model, it's going to take extreme bravery and extreme willpower for this to happen. Because they're going to have to overcome 1500 years of Christian thinking. The only way Christians thought about church for 1500 years. That's going to be hard. A lot of pastors are going to have a hard time with that. A lot of them may get fired. But that's okay. If they get fired, go start a church following the apostolic model. If you start from the beginning, it's a lot easier that way. Because everybody that comes in after that is going to see the apostolic model. So fighting against 1500 years is going to be tough. And what you're also fighting against, to quote my favorite Broadway star, Hollywood star, my favorite Jewish dude, Tradition. You're fighting against 1500 years of Tradition. Tradition. The problem is, it's 1500 years of man's tradition. Not God's. Man's. That's what they're up against. That's what we're up against. Exactly. Oh, you did find that. You did find that. You were ready for that, weren't you? Because as you're looking through that, you're paying attention. I even had written here, have Yael play the part where Tevye says Tradition. So I messed that up royally. But I've got to finish up anyway. Remember when I did a Jewish Roots series probably a year ago. Jesus wasn't attacking the law as much as he was attacking the traditions that crept into the Jewish religion in the Old Testament. He was attacking the rabbinical traditions. Well, that's kind of what I'm doing. I'm attacking modern church tradition. You know. And I know most of you well enough to know that you want God's presence here. You want God's presence in your lives. You want God's presence in your workplaces. Everywhere. Your neighborhood. Latrobe, Westmoreland County. We want God's presence to fall here. To be here and just stay. Take care of things that we can't take care of. Take care of things like the drug trafficking that the police can't possibly take care of. And money can't take care of that either. Because look at all the big cities in America that have been throwing money at the drug problem. And what has it done? Nothing. It can't. We need God to take care of that because only God can take care of that. The police are outmanned, outgunned. Out everything. It's not their fault either. You know. Sin. It's sin. And we need God to take care of that. And He's going to. That's one of the things that does happen during revivals in history. With the Welsh revival, there were people that felt so convicted of sin that they went and rushed the police station because they felt guilty. So they must have done some crime. So please put me in jail. The police were like, get off my steps. Because they hadn't committed any crime, right? Not man's crime, right? But they've sinned. And they knew it. Because that's what happens in revival. You're very conscious of where you stand between God and yourself in revival. Very conscious. In attacking tradition, it's not comfortable. It may look different. It may feel different. But here the way we are working towards becoming God's freedom outpost, apostolic center. That's what God showed Chuck Pierce in 2008. He showed him all of the United States and showed him where these freedom outposts, apostolic centers were going to be. God showed Chuck how certain states actually have a covenant that was made with God. But he showed him that also there are states that never made a covenant with Almighty God. But you know, I'm sure, that Pennsylvania made a covenant with William Penn and others that will make it easier for the church to do what it needs to do in Pennsylvania. Because God never forgets a covenant. Never. He never forgets it. And He's not going to forget it now. So let's pray. Father, we thank You. We thank You that over 200 years ago now, I'm not doing the math, but over 200 years ago, You moved on William Penn's heart. And the two of You made a covenant for Pennsylvania. He didn't really necessarily need it then, but we sure need it now. You saw to the future where You're going to need covenants all over the world. Where there were wells of revival and You're going to need covenants to uncap those wells. Because You work through covenant. You work through those wells. There have been many revivals where wells just gushed. It comes out of the whole thing with the flood of Noah. That most of the water that came and flooded the earth didn't come from the clouds. It came from the earth. Those wells were opened up and the wells of the deep just into the earth opened and just flooded things so quickly. Well, that's a picture of the Holy Spirit in a revival. Those wells of Holy Spirit revival are going to be uncapped again. Some are already uncapped. We know we've been shown, Maureen or Jeff or both of them, we're shown that there is a well that needs to be uncapped under Latrobe Steel. And that makes, as somebody who's lived in Latrobe all of his life with only like 6 or 7 years outside of Latrobe, that makes perfect sense to a Latrobian that the well would be under Latrobe Steel. Perfect sense. I get that. And Lord, we ask that You would just uncork that puppy right now. Just send Your Spirit all throughout every home, every business, the highways, the byways of this area. Send Your Spirit to every church. We know that the third great awakening is going to happen here in this nation. The first two were tremendous. The first two got us through two wars. The Revolution and the Civil War. This next awakening is going to get us to the Second Coming, I believe. It's part of preparing the way and it's going to take some time. But it's coming. Touch every child. We have children in this area. They're in danger. They're being abused. We have children in this area that aren't being abused right now, but they might be in the future. Because human trafficking is only getting worse, not better. But Lord, when it comes to drug trafficking and human trafficking, You're the only one that can fix that. I mean, there's been human trafficking since biblical times. Joseph from the Old Testament was trafficked for Pete's sake. It's been around forever. Well, it needs to stop right now. We proclaim its end in Latrobe, in Westmoreland County, western Pennsylvania, wherever we have authority, Father. We speak an end to the drug trafficking, human trafficking, sex trafficking, all of that. And I know there are, because I actually know one, a family of a child who's been missing for over ten years. Lord, bring them home. Bring them home. Get them out of those situations. Make their captor or captors make mistakes and get them out. Get them out. You said in Your Word in multiple places that You came to set the captives free. And I know a lot of that is, of course, spiritual because it's referring to sin. But I also know that some of that is there are real captives out there that need to be released, including the ones in Israel from Hamas. They need released too, in Jesus' name. So we thank You, Lord. You are amazing. You can do this. This is easy for You. Have Your way in America, Lord. Have Your way. Thank You, Jesus. Protect all of our leaders in this nation from president all the way down to mayors, town councils, whatever. Protect our leaders. Protect our first responders. Many of them are volunteers. They run into danger and they don't even get paid. So bless them. Protect them. We have great fire departments in our area. Great police departments in our area. They do a great job. The EMTs, they do a great job. Thank You, Lord. We need them. So bless them. Give those entities all the money they need to do Your work. And providing justice law and justice law and order is a biblical concept. Anarchy is not what God has ever wanted. So we thank You, Lord, that the United States is a nation under God, under the order that is provided for in the New Testament. The fact that the Bible was and is the foundation to our Constitution is amazing. Just the fact that You set that up in the late 1700s. You set that up. And we need it now more than ever. Thank You, Jesus. And we know if it comes from God's Word, it's going to work. And it works well. It's just that man gets their grubby little fingers in there and things go sideways. And I say no to socialism and communism in this nation. I heard some crazy person on TV yesterday, some professor, saying, oh, but the word socialism isn't inherently bad. I'm like, what? She's supposedly a professor and hasn't a clue that socialism and communism, there's nothing good about it whatsoever, either one. They're both anti-God and anti-Bible. And those are people that are teaching our kids. That's the other place we need You, Father, is in our schools. From kindergarten all the way to graduate schools, Lord. Lord, invade our classrooms. We have students that are standing up for righteousness all over the country. Give them strength. Protect them. And give them a platform that the enemy will never shut up. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Lord. And I speak blessing and favor over everybody here, over those who couldn't be here this morning, and I thank You and praise You. I also pray, Lord, for all of those of us traveling to our amazing day, Tuesday, for my daughter and Michael. I pray, Lord, that everybody traveling will have Your traveling mercies be protected. There will be no difficulties with vehicles. Nothing. That it would just be a wonderful time in Your presence watching the beginning of a marriage that we just declare right now will be Spirit-filled at all times, in all years. I pray that the two of them will grow closer to each other every day. They will grow in love for each other every day. Bless them, Father. We're going to bless them again on Tuesday, of course, but there's no time like the present. Start blessing them. So we thank You and praise You. In Jesus' name, Amen.