What Exactly Is An Apostle?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

What Exactly Is An Apostle?

You’ve seen this title, some people put it with their name, you know, “Apostle So-and so”. Maybe you’ve seen it on a sign, or a business card. But what exactly does it mean? 

It may interest you to know that this term, “Apostle” was not always a religious term. Hopefully you have read my last blog on “The Meaning of ‘Church’”, and discovered that “Church” is a term used for “called out ones” to influence a territory with the culture of the home country. An Apostle is in the same vein.

In Jesus’ day, the whole country where Jesus was born and raised was inhabited by the Romans. They carried their influence through every sector of society with the help of the “church”, people called out from the home society, leaders in their field. These groups of people needed a leader, and that leader was the Apostle. The word “apostle” means “sent”. If you do a word study, (I did by using a Bible web site, going to the name “Apostle”, and searched the New Testament for occurrences of the same word) you will find that this word was used every time  someone used the word “sent”. These are the sent ones. 

History translates the term a little differently, even gives these “Apostles” a military name, equivalent to the English name “Admiral”. They were leaders, their job was to take orders from Roman leadership, and pass it down to the “church”, directives on how to effect the influence of the new territory.

In more ancient times, when a country conquered another country, they would decimated the land, kill off as many as possible, take captives back to the homeland as slaves. Many times this would be done in a parade known as a “Triumph”, and the king would be led naked through the capitol city.

This process tended to be very costly, and the Romans discovered that there was more profit in taxing the new country. It was taken over by placing people in influential positions. By making the whole country like Rome, making people pay for citizenship, they could actually take over a major portion of the world. The problem they had was that they got so spread out it was virtually impossible to maintain control.

The name “Apostle” today should refer to a leader that hears from Heaven about how to effectively lead a chosen group of “called out ones”, and teach them how to influence this world with the culture of Heaven, in whatever sector of society that they are in. Paul said that the job of the “ministry” was to “equip the saints” for ministry. Not in the religious sense, but more like the way that countries have “Minister of Defense”, “Minister of Health”, “Minister of Education”, etc. 

There you have it, the definition of “Apostle”. Probably not what you thought. Many church people think that an “Apostle” is a church leader, planter, someone that administrates multiple congregations.  

Do you know what we need in our world today? We need people who are in tune with the Kingdom of Heaven, who has leadership skills, and can teach, train and “equip” people to “minister” to this world, and to influence it for God’s Kingdom!

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