No 7

(Its gifted men)

When the Lord gave the 11 Apostles the commission to « go and teach all nations » in Matthew 28 :19, He knew very well that as a group on that day on the top of a mountain in Galilee, that they were totally incapable of performing the task that He was asking them to do. They also knew that, so what were they to do? Start forming evangelism committees? Putting people in a door-to-door ministry? No!! They went together and prayed because the Lord said : « But ye shall receive power from the Holy Ghost » (Acts 1 :8). When the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, they received gifts and were thus able to boldly and unequivocally preach the Gospel. They became gifted men and eloquent preachers without any formal theological training; except for Paul who studied at the feet of Gameliel. The Body of Christ today, has these gifted men that do the Lord’s work just as they did in the early Church. These men are used by Christ to perform duties that are required to build His Church. But who are these men?

They are described in Ephesians 4 :11, 12 « And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastor teachers ». What is their job? «For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifyimg of the Body of Christ » Their job is to preach the Word so that the saints will be built up and will « come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God » (Eph 4 :13). Once the saints are built up and perfected, they will do the work of the ministry. No one will have to tell them to go out and evangelise, they’ll do it automatically because the result of building up the saints is that they will no longer be « children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine but will speak the truth in love » (Eph 4 :14, 15). We will discuss, at length, the specific gifts of the Holy Spirit in coming studies. Suffice to say for now that Christ has equipped His Church with exactly the right number of gifted men and if the rapture were to occur today, the Church is ready!