Transcript
It’s time to start our service, and I am so glad you are here with us. I send my love and greetings to you all.
I want to send a special greeting today to our friends at Faith Assembly who are listening regularly to all our services. God bless you all. I am thankful for the different ones who reached out again over the past week. We are keeping you all in our prayers.
I also want to send greetings to all our friends around the world. I have had conversations with saints in the United Kingdom and Germany over the past week – and we are praying for everyone there. And let’s continue to remember the brothers and sisters in Israel. Things are continuing to be very tense there, so let us continue to pray for their safety.
I am also very thankful for the good news we are continuing to hear coming from all the brothers in Africa. And it’s been on my heart this week to pray for the other ministering brothers here in the United States. There are quite a few now who are doing so much to help people, so let’s just make sure we pray for them all. Every voice is important as we do our best to lead the people back to Christ.
And if this is your first time joining us here and you wonder who we are and what we are all about, my name is Charles Paisley. I and most of our listeners here are formerly part of the cult following of William Branham known as the Message. The Message is a global movement, with thousands of churches and millions of members. It is a doomsday cult, and some parts are very dangerous and abusive, and it is organized in such a way that makes it nearly impossible for them to reform. Things are generally just trending worse and worse, and some of them have already entered into things that are outright deadly, and others are not far behind.
I am formerly the associate pastor of the second oldest Message church in the world, right here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where the whole thing started. And this is just a little mission we operate to offer help and encouragement to those who are exiting the Message. And a big part of what we do is to just take a look at the plain reading of scripture together, and that is what we are doing today. We are in the book of Ephesians, and I invite you to turn there with me. I am going to read in the fourth chapter, and I will read from verse seven down to verse 13. Paul wrote:
“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:7-13 ESV
Let us pray.
Lord God, we thank you for your mercy to each of us. When we were still ignorant and trapped in a cult, you showed us your love by delivering us. And Lord, it is our humble desire to better understand the Bible so we might wash from our minds the influence of the past. We desire to know the truth because the truth will set us free. May the Holy Spirit grant us understanding, we pray, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Introduction
We have finally arrived at what is one of the most important passages of scripture to the doomsday cult we have escaped. This passage holds significant importance, ranking among the top ten most crucial passages of the entire Bible in the context of the groups descended from the latter rain movement. These verses are foundational to the ideology of the movement.
I have prayed long and hard about the best way to present this lesson today, considering the various approaches we could take. Today, I am going to follow a slightly different pattern than I have with the rest of our lessons on the book of Ephesians.
So, please bear with me as there may be some aspects of these verses we don’t cover today. My main focus will be on comparing the plain reading of these verses to what we were taught about them in the message.
If you are just picking up this lesson here, it’s important for you to know that this is part of a series. We have been examining the book of Ephesians in detail all the way from chapter 1. This thorough approach is necessary because understanding this passage in chapter four requires us to first grasp what Paul has said in the preceding chapters.
Paul has already laid the groundwork for understanding concepts like unity, fullness, and the roles of apostles and prophets in chapters 1, 2, and 3. So, when we approach chapter 4 and encounter these themes again, we will interpret them in the same manner as Paul has already explained.
Today, I am going to focus especially on verse 11. Please bear with me as this might be a little longer than usual, but I intend to cover all the important parts in one lesson. To start, I want to review these verses and point out some things that were never highlighted in the places we come from—things that are plainly evident in the scripture but were overlooked in our previous teachings.
The Origins of the Five-Fold Ministry
Let’s get started. Before I delve into examining these verses, let me first walk you through what The Message tells us these verses are. I’ll mainly be using the explanation given by the preachers in the churches I come from, which may differ somewhat from how other message groups interpret these passages. But I’ll explain how we looked at this passage in our churches.
I’ve titled today’s lesson “The Five-Fold Ministry” and added a question mark at the end because I no longer believe what the message taught us about these verses is correct. I believe there were fundamental mistakes in some very important key points here.
The first thing important for us to understand is where the Message’s explanation for these verses of scripture comes from. How did we even come to have the term “five-fold ministry”? Who started calling verse 11 “the five-fold ministry”? Where did that come from?
Like the word Trinity, Shekinah glory, or the mercy seat, the phrase “five-fold ministry” is not found in the Bible. There are many phrases in The Message that simply are not in the Bible. You can read the Bible front to back, and you won’t find the phrase “five-fold ministry” in there.
It’s not that it’s wrong to use those phrases. If someone says Shekinah glory, I can understand what they mean, even though that word is not in the Bible. But we have to realize that somebody came up with that phrase, and it wasn’t the men who wrote the Bible. These are phrases invented to describe things that people saw in the Bible, rather than something they read from the Bible directly.
At its most basic, I don’t really think there is anything wrong with that. We would agree the word rapture is not in the Bible, but we understand that people who use that word are talking about the catching away Paul talks about in Thessalonians.
So, at a basic level, we don’t say there is anything wrong with using a word that is not in the Bible to describe something. However, it’s probably better if we can stick with scripture. Sometimes we do use phrases to describe what we see in the Bible, even though that word or phrase itself is not in the Bible. As long as we make it clear what we are talking about.
But know that – know there is a word or phrase people use which is not in the bible itself. That should raise a very simple question. A question that should have an answer. Since that word or phrase is not the bible – where did it come from? Who invented that word? Who came up with that?
We would do that with Trinity for example. The word trinity is not the bible. And so, we ask the question – where did that word come from? Who came up with that word?
And we could go into history, and we find out who it was that came up with that word. And who were the first people to use that word. And we could then trace how the usage of that word spread and became more commonly used.
And we can do the same thing with the five-fold ministry. That is not a word you find in the bible. So, who came up with it? Who invented that phrase? And how did that spread around and become more common? And how did it get to us when we were in The Message?
And it’s important to recognize something like this because you can trace where the things you believe come from.
I learned the five-fold ministry teachings from Raymond Jackson. And Raymond Jackson learned it from William Branham. But what about William Branham? Where did he get it?
And if we take the time to study and to look, we could find the answer to that question. The phrase fivefold ministry was first created in the middle 1800s. There was a group who were in Scotland who came up with it. The lead of their group was named Edward Irving. And he called their group the Catholic Apostolic Church. And their group was very small and obscure – and their church faded away over one hundred years ago, and there are none of them left.
But their ideas got picked up by another man from Scotland. His name was John Alexander Dowie. And John Alexander Dowie moved to America, and he built a city north of Chicago called Zion. And they were a group of people known as British Israelites. They believed they were the ten lost tribes of Israel. That is why they named their city Zion. And they believed they were restoring the church back to its original form. And they believed they needed to restore the church before the second coming could happen. And they believed restoring the fivefold ministry was part of what they needed to do in order to have the return of Jesus Christ.
And I will tell you the truth about John Dowie and his followers – they were really a very terrible cult. They were one of the worst cults in American history. They killed many people. They robbed many people. It was a great big ugly scary cult.
And that is where this fivefold ministry phrase comes from. After John Alexander died, the people who lived in his cult commune broke up and moved out to different places. Most of them became Pentecostals of some sort of another. And this is where Gordon Lindsay comes from. That’s where FF Bosworth comes from. That’s where Charles Parham was spending a lot of time. It’s where John lake came from. All of these figures who are so important to the history of the message, that is where they came from. They came from the city of Zion. And these beliefs, like fivefold ministry, and like the return of Elijah, they already had those beliefs in Zion. As the people of Zion spread out, and held on to some of those ideas. They spread those ideas. And as you come up into the 1940s.
There was a man named George Hawtin. George Hawtin was in The Message. His Brother, Earnest Hawtin was in the message. He was a friend of William Branham’s. And George and Ernest Hawtin were still visiting and preaching at Message churches until George died in the early 1990s.
George Hawtin was a British Israelite, and he believed and taught a lot of their ideas. And he got those beliefs straight from people who came out of Zion. Including five-fold ministry idea. And George Hawtin became one of the most important leaders of the Latter Rain movement in the 1940s. And George Hawtin gave the latter rain movement its five-fold ministry ideas. And William Branham spent a lot of time with the latter rain people. And he picked up the fivefold ministry teachings from the Latter Rain movement. And a lot of our early message forefathers came directly from the latter Rain movement. Quite a few of them were right there at the heart of the Latter Rain revivals from the earliest days. Lee Vayle, Fred Sothman, and you can go down the list. They were in the Latter Rain revivals from very early on. They were in the Latter Rain movement before they started working with William Branham. And when William Branham came around, preaching the same things – they followed him. And so, it is very accurate to say, The Message got fivefold ministry from the Latter Rain movement. That is where William Branham and the other early Message leaders learned it.
If you are in The Message today and you believe in the Five Fold Ministry, you believe something that you got from the latter rain movement. And like very many of your beliefs – this is where it comes from. We learned it from our message leaders. Who learned it from the latter rain movement. Who learned it from people who came out of Zion. Who learned it from John Alexander Dowie. Who learned it from the original people who came up phrase back in Scotland in the mid 1800s.
Methodists do not use the phrase fivefold ministry. The Presbyterians don’t, the Catholics don’t, the Jehovah Witnesses don’t, the Baptists don’t, the old school Pentecostals don’t. That phrase, fivefold ministry, was only used by the British Israelites until the 1940s. You cannot find anyone else using that phrase before the 1940s who was not a British Israelite. That is where it comes from. It was British Israelites who started the Latter Rain movement. And that is where our early Message leaders learned it.
And so, just like we could trace the use of the word trinity, to take the word back to the people who originated it, we can do the same thing with fivefold ministry. And we can trace it back to the place where that phrase originated.
A Restored Truth?
So that is where the phrase comes from.
And, as I already said, I don’t really see anything wrong with using a phrase to describe something we see in the bible. If you want to use the phrase fivefold ministry to describe Ephesians 4:11, I really don’t see anything wrong with that. But just know where that phrase comes from. And let that serve as a witness to you about the origin of your beliefs.
Now some people may say, this ideology did not come from the latter rain movement or British Israelites. They will say, this ideology comes from God. And I would have to differ with you right there. Because God did not appear to you and give you this revelation. Somewhere you learned it from other people. And somewhere you may feel God confirmed it to you as the truth. But God certainly did not come and give you this revelation.
You learned it from people, who learned it from people, who learned it from the latter rain movement, who learned it from the British Israelites. That is where it came from.
And here is the thing. We did not just simply use the phrase five fold ministry, in the message. But we also used a definition for that phrase. And the definition for that phrase is also from the Latter Rain movement. When we say five fold ministry, in the message, we mean the same thing the people in the latter rain movement mean when they said five old ministry.
And so, it’s more than just the phrase itself we got from them. We also got the definition of what it means from them too. And knowing that is the most important thing of all here.
And now let me describe what it means – which is in effect what we believed these verses here in Ephesian meant.
The Message believes that in the early church, there was a five fold ministry: Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. And the five fold ministry is the God appointed way for the church to be led and governed. It is the perfect, biblical, apostolic model of church leadership and governance. But somewhere in the history of the church – the true understanding and purpose of this five fold ministry was lost. But In the last days, before the second coming of Jesus, this five fold ministry must be restored. And it has to be restored because the five fold ministry has a special mission to fulfill. And that special mission is what we read here in verse 12 and 13. And that mission is to make the church perfect. And the church has to be made perfect so they can go in the rapture. And it is the job of the five fold ministry to get the church perfected, so the end can finally come.
Now the perfection of the church has three parts. First, it is to bring a perfect understanding of the Bible. Second, it is to bring everyone into perfect unity with each other. And third, to bring each individual to the Stature of a perfect man.
And it is going to take everyone reaching that perfection for there to finally be the second coming of Jesus Christ. And only the people who reach that perfection, will be saved from the tribulation. And so, this five fold ministry has a critical and special role to play in preparing the church for the second coming, and to escape the tribulation.
And that is, in a nutshell, what most Message preachers believe these verses mean. That’s what William Branham himself taught. And William Branham and our early message leaders got it from the Latter Rain movement. And the latter rain movement got it from the British Israelite preachers.
And today, you may go out and find lots of churches that believe in five fold ministry. Especially Pentecostal and charismatic type churches. But they all got it from the same place too. They all got it from the Latter Rain movement too. The Latter Rain movement has many branches – The Message is just one of them. And I promise you, any group you find out there that talks about five-fold ministry. If you will spend enough time looking at where they came from. And you are going to always be able to connect the dots back to the Latter Rain movement.
Five (or four) Gifts of Ministry
Ok, so that is a short description of the Message beliefs. And a history of where it came from.
So now, let’s take a little time to look at verse 11. And let me read it again. Verse 11. It says:
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.”
So there, we see, Paul is indeed describing five different gifts of ministry.
And, let me first point out to you. Some people say there are only four gifts of ministry here. They will say the last one – pastors and teachers – is a single gift. So, it is the gift of pastor-teacher, they would say.
And, I will be honest, as I look at it – I really don’t think it matters. Teaching is a gift, all on its own. We find that elsewhere in scripture – like Romans 12 or in the book of Titus. And not all teachers are necessarily pastors.
So whether you say there are five here, or whether you say there are four, I think it all ends up being the same. Because the apostles are teachers. The prophets are teachers. The evangelists are teachers. And the pastors are teachers. They are all teachers. And then there is still a gift of teaching, all by itself.
So, even if Paul is only talking about four gifts of ministry here, there is still a fifth gift of teaching we can find in other epistles Paul wrote. So it’s kind of a moot point, in my view.
Apostles
So let me go through these five, or four ministries here. And let’s just describe them a bit. And I think we all have a good approximate idea of what these ministries do. And apostles come first here in the list. And I like to just let the bible tell us what these gifts of ministry are. I am not going to run through all the scriptures today for each one. But I will give you just a summary. And I encourage you, if you want to understand each of these gifts of ministry in a deeper way than just read the bible and study the ministers in the bible who had these gifts. And that will give you a good understanding of what is contained in each of these ministries.
And, if we examine the apostles in scriptures, we would find there are two sorts of apostles. There are, what we might call the capital A apostles. Peter, and Paul, and James and John and the apostles of that caliber. They were the apostles who were appointed by Jesus, in person, and they were given a special tasks to complete. And, as Paul already mentioned in chapter 2 – those apostles laid the foundation. And Paul tells us also in 1st Corinthians that no other foundation needs laid, or can be laid. And Paul tells us the foundation is already laid down.
And so, the apostles of that calibre, finished their job. We have no need of apostles to lay a new foundation. Because they already did it. Peter and Paul and James and John – they already laid the foundation. They left us the bible. They laid the foundation of the church. And there will never be anymore foundation layers.
There will never be more apostles of the caliber of Peter and Paul and James and John. There will not come new apostles who will write books of the bible. The bible is finished. The foundation is laid. And there will never be apostles of that sort that again. They were special. And they only needed to be sent once. And we still have their teachings, right here in the bible.
And so, there are no more apostles like that coming. And so, besides those apostles who laid the foundation, we also find other apostles in scripture. Men like Barnabas and Apollos. And we apostles like them operating as what we would call today missionaries. They are out spreading the gospel, starting new churches. And that seems to have been their primary function.
And, the word apostle. That word means – someone who is sent. Someone on a mission. And the word apostle really has the same meaning as missionary. It is someone sent on a mission. And so – I think it is important that we recognize that there are these two varieties of apostles. The apostles who laid the foundation – who only come once – because there is only one foundation to lay. And then there was the apostles who operated like missionaries still do today – taking the gospel to new places and starting new churches.
And there is still a place for ministries like that. There is still a place for people taking the gospel to new lands and new people and growing the church. But there is not a place for preachers to hear from God in such a way that they are adding to the bible. And very sadly, that is exactly what most of our so called apostles in the message did. And they did in very subtle ways. They didn’t outright say – hey guys – we are adding to the bible. Here is the new word of God. Now, there were a few who did do that. But most of them, it was not anywhere nearly that obvious. They did in subtle ways. They would go into the scripture, and they would read things into the scripture that are not there. For example – they would tell you William Branham’s message was the shout. When the bible says no such thing. Or they would tell you they tell you this thing from the old testament is a type of this or that. When the bible says no such thing. Or they would go to the parables of Jesus or the symbols in the book of revelation. And they would assign meanings to those symbols. And the meaning of those symbols are not in the bible. They were just making stuff up. And then they would build huge elaborate doctrines and these things, which have no basis in scripture whatsoever.
Their basis is entirely that, God revealed to them the hidden meaning of this passage of scripture. Or the hidden meaning of this or that symbol. But brothers and sisters – that is adding to the bible. That is not taking the plain reading of scripture. And it is really dangerous to be trying to tease out details like that. For example – in the book of revelation – there is the beast which had seven heads, and the eight head was of the seventh. And Raymond Jackson told us the name of all those heads. One was Constantine. One was August Ceasar. One was Vespasian. He went down the list. And gave us the name of all those heads. But that is not in the bible. He was just guessing. And if it really mattered for us to know something like that – God would have put it in the bible.
And the book of revelation – it says anyone who adds to or takes away will be cursed. And when you put more interpretation on those symbols – than you can get from the plain reading. That is exactly what you are doing. You are adding to the book. You are adding things more than what is wrote. And we can look at the message. It is cursed. The word of God is true. The entire message is a cursed cult. They are blind and naked and in bondage. And they don’t even know it. It is a terrible curse on them. And at the root of it all lies them taking away and adding to the scripture.
So flee from that sort of thing. It is dangerous. And I might be a little hyper vigilant on this front now. Having escaped from the cult like we did. But I hear someone adding to scripture, things I can see in the plain reading. That makes me want to get away from them. I done been cursed once, with a spirit of delusion. I don’t want that again.
And, as we bring that back here to Ephesians. God is not sending new apostles to add to the bible. It’s not going to happen. The job of the apostles, as it relates to laying the foundation of our faith – that is over and done. There are not more coming to do that. We are not waiting on a prophet to come reveal some new mystery. We are not waiting on an apostles to come add to the bible. What we are waiting on is Jesus. We are waiting on Jesus to come back. And when that happens – then we will know everything. We shall be as he is, when he appears. That is what we are waiting for. And we already have everything last thing we need to get to that day, right in the gospel message. We don’t need anything else.
And the very premise that we need something else is heresy. Being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath. The same spirit which raised up Jesus dwells in us. And it will raise us up on that day. And that is the one hope of our calling – which Paul mentioned in verse four and five. And every last one of us who has saving faith in
Jesus Christ will partake of that one hope.
Prophets
So coming next on the list is prophets. And these are new testament prophets. And I remember that Paul talked about these prophets back in chapter 2 also. These prophets played a role in laying the foundation. And in that respect, there will be no foundation laying prophets to come along. The foundation is laid. And that is not going to happen again.
And, if you read the bible carefully, you will find that the prophet Silas helped write the book of second Peter. You will also find the prophet Silas helped write second Thessalonians. And those are a couple examples to help you see – that the prophets were helping to lay the foundation too.
But, there is no more foundation to be laid.
But the prophets also played another role in the church. If we looked at the prophet Aghabus for example, he forewarned the church about a coming famine, so they could store up some food in advance. Or we see other examples, where the prophets in the New Testament brought a word of warning or guidance like that. Which was something to help the people.
And I believe we still have men of that caliber. God has given them a gift to offer warnings and guidance to help people. If they will listen. And we hear stories of that sort of thing happening throughout the history of the church.
Evangelists
And then evangelists come next. And the word evangel – that is the Greek word for gospel. And so, evangelists, that word literally means gospel preacher. The evangelists is a ministry who is especially concerned with preaching the gospel. That is the very definition of the word evangelists.
We could look in scripture at men like Phillip. And we could see how he led people to Christ, and baptized them. That is being an evangelists.
And, where we come from – the evangelist is the most screwed up ministry of all. And, its because we didn’t believe the gospel. And so, if we don’t believe the gospel – then what is the evangelist supposed to do?
And so – where we come from – the evangelists is the guy who yells and screams at everyone who broke the rules. And they never preach the gospel. I could count on one hand the number of salvation sermons I heard in the message. And then, it was message salvation. It was not the gospel. It was not grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. It was not that. It was not the gospel. It was the token. It was the message salvation formula. And in the message, you had to keep all the rules to be in the bride of Christ. And so the evangelist really thought he was saving you by yelling and screaming at your for breaking all their manmade rules.
So we didn’t really have evangelists. We just have been who said they were evangelists. And then yelled and screamed and everyone for a good hour solid every week.
We even had this one fake evangelist. And one time he said, that everyone had already been saved. And so since all the bride was already saved – he still needed something to preach. And that is why he just screamed and yelled at people for breaking the rules. Because there was no one left to be saved – according to him. He couldn’t save anyone new – but he could perfect people who were already saved by screaming at them. And that is what he did. And when I scream and yell, I literally mean scream and yell. And top of his lungs. Tell people they was fat, and ugly. All kinds of stuff. You never knew what he would say.
And so, that is, I think the mindset of many message evangelists. Which are fake evangelists.
So, Paul here is not describing fake evangelists. He is describing real evangelists. The kind who actually evangelize with the gospel.
Pastors
Now next on the list here is pastors. And I don’t think this one needs much explanation. But as pastor is the same word as shepherd. They are ones caring for the sheep. And there is a relationship of love there, between the shepherd and the sheep. He watches over the flock and tends to them, and cares for them, and is protective of them.
Titus was a pastor – you could read the book of Titus to get an understanding of pastors. Timothy was a pastor, as you read first and second Timothy.
And pastors have a special place, because they are taking care of a church of people. They are checking on their needs. They are helping them to grow. They are showing them love and compassion. And, they are very important to the day to day lives of the people in their community.
They are someone who can be depended on for advice or counsel. Someone who can offer a helping hand when you need it. Someone who cares for your well-being. That is a pastor.
And, sadly, there is not a lot of that in the message either. In many message churches, the pastor is not really concerned with the flock in that sort of way. They are concerned about anyone who challenges their authority. Anyone who is not in perfect submission.
They are on the watch for anyone not towing the line or getting ideas about the bible. And so, in that respect they would say they care. They care about what you believe. They care about how you behave. They care that you are in submission.
But besides that – you pretty well on your own in the message. I know our church. Don’t try to call the pastor for advice or counsel. You will get in big trouble. You better not ask for help at all. Or you will end up in trouble. And the pastor is not proactive at all.
They are not following the biblical pattern – and having the deacons check in on those in need. Everyone is just one their own. There is not any real pastorship going on.
And, I think most people in the message don’t even have an understanding of what a loving and authentic Christian pastor is like. Pastors tend to be very defensive, unapproachable, and always think someone is about to pull something.
And the truth is – in the message – they are probably right. The message is so full of nut jobs who are trying to split churches and break up home and everything else. And it is so full of hairbrained ideas and crazed nuts.
It’s no wonder the pastors end up that way. And, very sadly, there is no way out. As long as you are in the message – it will always be that way. Because it is the message itself which creates all that chaos. It is the message that attracts all those crazed nuts.
And the message makes people go crazy. That is why there are so many. And the message pastors can’t actually fix the underlying cause of it all. Because it is the message itself which creates the problem.
It’s just a message.
Teachers
Now that brings us to the last gift of ministry here. And as you read the bible, you will find that some people had more than one of these gifts. For example, Timothy was a pastor and he was an evangelist. Or Paul, Acts 13 says Paul was a prophet, and we know he was also an apostle. And as you come to the last gift of ministry here – teachers – it’s the same thing. The apostles were also teachers. The pastors are also teachers. All of these other gifts of ministry are teachers of some sort or another.
Teachers can open the bible and teach what’s in it. And they can model it with their own life, as good examples. Teachers help others learn. And the truth is – every one of us has some measure of the gift of teachings. Parents teach their children. If you read Titus, women are told to teach other women. Women can be teachers, in that respect. Teaching is a gift that is open to us all. We might not all teach from a platform. But we all have a capacity to teach others about the scripture in our day to day, both with our words and with our actions. When we are a good example to others, that is itself a form of teaching.
And teaching can be that simple of a thing – just teaching by your own example, all the way up to standing before the crowds, and going into scripture, and preaching.
And as I say that, I want to take you back to the scripture here. And I want to point out something to you that mentioned in our last lesson. And if you look in verse 7, it says:
“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
So verse 7 is saying that each one of us – that we be every last person who is saved – has been given a gift. There are no exceptions in verse 7 – everyone has a gift. And then when we come down to verse 11, Paul mentions the give gifts he has in mind. So, when we read this all together, it appears to me that Paul is saying every single person has one of these gifts.
The plain reading here – is that every single person has some gift of ministry. And – this is not something we believed where we came from. But most Christians believe exactly what I am telling you. They believe this verse means that everybody has a gift of ministry. And that no one is left out.
And, I think, at the very least – we all have some role to play as teachers. Some are more gifted than others. Some stand at a podium and preach. Some teach their family at home. Some teach through showing a good example to others. But everyone has a gift of ministry. And no one is left out.
And when I tell you that, and if you can see that is what this passage actually says – in the plain reading, it is just the first stick of dynamite in the side of the so-called five-fold ministry. Because the five-fold ministry idea tells us – that is not true. In the message, we are told it is just a select group of people who get to make up verse 11. But that is not what the plain reading tells us.
The plain reading tells us verse 11 is open to everyone. There is an elite group that gets to dictate all this to us. I believe we all have a right to a gift there in verse 11. Every last one of us has a right to a gift that the message would tell us is the five-fold ministry. Even women. And that doesn’t mean women preachers. But it does mean women teachers for sure. The kind we read about in the book of Titus. And what this does – is it starts to blow apart the idea of a special elite group of leaders who are going to perfect the rest of us.
Past Tense
Now I have one last point I want to make and show you before we close this lesson today. And for this point, we need to back up just a bit to verse 7 again. In verse seven, Paul talks about everyone being given a gift. And then in verse 8, Paul begins to explain where these gifts came from. In verse 8, 9, and 10, Paul describes the death of Jesus, the resurrection, and his ascension into heaven.
That was when and where these gifts of ministry came from. They came through his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. And as we read these verses here, I want you to notice they are all written in the past tense. He ascended – past tense. He gave gifts to men – past tense. And when we come to verse 11 – do you notice it is still in the past tense? Verse 11 says, and he gave – past tense.
And I think this is important to notice. It doesn’t say – he will give – future tense. It says he gave already – past tense. Paul is not talking about something in the future in verse 11. He is talking about something in the past. Paul doesn’t start talking about the future until you get to verse 13.
And this is important because – where we come from – they tend to take verse 11 and apply it to the future. But that is not what Paul is doing here. Paul is putting verse 11 in the past. Christ already gave these gifts of ministry. And Paul has a certain people in mind when he writes verse 11.
And it’s not us, living 2000 years later. In verse 11, Paul had in mind people who were living in the day he was living. And he is talking specifically about Christ giving these people gifts after his resurrection. And we know that is exactly what happened.
Jesus resurrected from the grave, and he appeared to the disciples. And he gave some of them the gift of apostle. And some of them the gift of prophet. And on down the line. Christ gave these gifts to these men in a very direct personal way.
They didn’t have a dream, and wake up, and say – I dreamed I am apostle. So I must be an apostle. Or I just felt one day I was called to be a prophet. And so I am a prophet. That is not what Paul is describing here. Paul is describing what Jesus did – in a personal and direct way – after he raised from the grave.
And what did he do? He appeared – as the risen Lord – and he gave a commission to these men. And he did it in person – in the flesh. He gave them a commission – he gave them personal directions. And when he was all done – he floated up into the sky and he disappeared into a cloud.
I believe, if we read this the way it is written, it very obviously leads us to that conclusion. Paul is talking in the past tense. He is talking about Christ after his resurrection. And he is talking about the gifts Christ gave in that very direct and personal way.
He is not talking about something in the future. He is talking about something in the past.
Let me read it to you again. See what you think. Starting in verse 8:
“Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.”
It is very, very hard to say Paul was talking about some future event here. It’s very, very hard to say Paul has in mind some sort of a last-day restoration of a five-fold ministry. Paul is very clearly talking about the ministry of the early church, the men who were living right there in that day and time with him.
And yes, there are still gifts of ministry today. Yes, we still have preachers called of God today. But that is not what Paul is talking about here.
Paul is not talking about a ministry in the future. He is talking about men who were already living right there alongside him, who were already given gifts by Christ, before he ever started writing down this book of Ephesians.
And I think this is another very important thing to recognize here, because it is another stick of dynamite in the side of this five-fold ministry idea.
Brothers and sisters, there is nothing whatsoever here that should lead us to think we need a last-day restoration of verse 11. There is nothing here to lead us to think Paul had that in mind at all.
We didn’t believe in that because the Bible said it. We believed it because our message preachers told us it was here. But when we read it plainly, it is not here. They were tricking us, and very sadly, a lot of them were tricked themselves.
The foundation is already laid. We already have a complete Bible. We don’t need a restoration of people to lay a new foundation. We still have the original foundation, and it’s still good. We have the writings of the apostles and prophets. We already have from them the knowledge of everything we need to be saved. There is nothing that needs to be added to it.
I am not saying we don’t have missionaries today. I am not saying people can’t be gifted with prophecy today. But I am saying there is nothing in this passage which makes it necessary for there to be a restoration of prophets and apostles of the caliber of those we read about in the New Testament.
That is a latter rain idea, and they got it from this passage. But it’s simply not here. It’s not in the plain reading.
And now, you might say, “Well, brother Charles, true, it is past tense down to verse 12. But in verse 13, it is future tense. And so, they have to be restored so we can have verse 13 and 14.”
And if that is what you are saying, then I want to invite you to come back next time, because we will start getting to those verses, and you are going to find out that you have been misreading them just as badly as the first 11 verses.
Closing
So as I bring this lesson to a close, let me just summarize it again. The five-fold ministry is a belief The Message imported from the Latter Rain movement. It is not actually in the plain reading of scripture. Paul here is talking in the past tense, not the future tense. And there is no need to restore something that was never lost. The teachings of the apostles were not lost. We still have it right here in the Bible. It’s not lost. We don’t need a return of apostles to restore something we never lost.
And when you read verse 7, it’s pretty clear Paul is saying that everyone has a gift of ministry. This is not some elite group of leaders we all have to endlessly submit ourselves to, so we can be perfected. But Christ has given each of us a gift of ministry – all our own. It’s open to us all. And in our next lesson, verse 12 is going to explain that more.
So come back next time, and we will begin looking at the “perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry.”
Prayer
Amen. Let me close in prayer.
Lord God, thank you for the Bible, and thank you for the Holy Spirit who is our teacher. God, I know that upon hearing these things for the first time, it can be very confusing to someone who has come from the doomsday cult we escaped. This is so contrary to everything we have ever been told about these verses. Lord God, I pray you break the spirit of delusion. Let them read the Bible in the plain, direct way. Not changing the definition of the words, but let them see the plain reading of the scripture. I pray that you show them the truth, because the truth will set them free.
This I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.