Hallmarks Of The Apostolic Church

Pick your bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad, hallelujah.

Let's say this together say heavenly Father Glad to be here tonight.

Thank God for the Holy Ghost.

He's revealing to me the Word of God and I'm not just a hearer, I'm a doer of the Word.

I'm committed to accomplishing my purpose for living in the last days in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look at 2 Kings, chapter 4.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

That sounds familiar because I've preached out of the identical verses this morning.

So we're going to climb the mountain a little different way tonight.

Same testimony of Elisha, verse 1, 2 Kings 4, 1.

Now there cried a certain woman of the wives, of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha Say thy servant, my herosman, is dead and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord.

And the creditor has come to take unto him my two sons to be bond with me.

And Elisha said unto her what shall I do for thee?

Tell me, what hath thou in the house?

And she said thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil.

Then he said go, borrow thee vessels abroad.

Of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few.

My margin says scant not.

And when you are come in, you shall shut the door upon you and your sons and you shall pour out into all those vessels and thou shalt set aside that which is full.

And so she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons and brought the vessels to her and she poured out and it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son bring me yet a vessel.

And he said unto her there is not a vessel bore and the oil stayed.

Then she came and told the man of God and he said go, sell the oil, pay your debt and live, thou and thy children, of the rest.

So tonight I wanted to share a message entitled Hallmarks of the Apostolic Church, and recently I've been sharing with you the Joseph Church, one message on the Joseph generation, and the subject of that is the measure of the apostolic.

You know, since the pastor of St Louis went to heaven and I received my inheritance and I knew that God had called me to father, be a father.

I was a pastor before, but then you know there's another level and one of the things about an apostle is it's a fathering spirit and it literally means a sent one, of course, in the sense that I was sent out by my father.

You know the apostolic.

It needs fathers and sons to have relations, relationships.

That's why the church is so weak, because we have a lot of.

You know, some people were sent and some just went, and the ones that just went are missing the double portion, and the double portion is a measure of the apostolic.

That's what it takes.

So here we have Elisha functioning in the double anointing.

If you go back two chapters first, second Kings, chapter two, you see what happened with Elijah and Elisha.

I gave mention of it this morning.

But you know we have new people and sometimes we need a refresher course on what this means.

You know everything in the Old Testament is typed in shadow of what we have in the new.

So we're glinging a lot.

God gave me a lot of revelation back in 1999, all the way through, really, during the years we were in the seventh day Adventist church, god began to deal with me about the apostolic Way before we were walking in any kind of measure of that power.

But we're beginning to get into that measure, amen.

And so you know it's been said over this church it's an apostolic vine with a prophetic river.

It's always had that quality.

And so since I was sent, you know, it always had an apostolic dimension to this church, because we began the church, we started the church, and not all churches are that way.

Sometimes churches hire their pastors and so forth, and so you cut off the apostolic there.

So when Elijah you know Elisha was his minister, followed him around for 20 years, and when it came time for Elijah to be taken up to heaven and he's up there right now as a human, I mean a human being.

I mean he's not a spirit, I mean he's walking up there on the streets of gold, just like you and I.

You know, it's amazing.

You think about Elijah up there and Enoch same thing.

You've got two human beings up there.

They're not spirits, and Well, what a tale they could tell.

But when he went up you know Elisha he said Elisha asked me what you have me do for you.

He said, father, that a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

He said well, you've asked a hard thing.

That's quite a tall order, but nevertheless, if you see me, it shall be.

So.

In other words, he had to keep his eyes, with all the fireworks, the fiery chariot, the angels, all this stuff going on in glory.

I mean, he kept his eyes on his father, elisha, and he said, as he was taken up let me see if I can find that my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horseman thereof See so that he focused on his father, elisha, and Elisha tossed his mantle, which is the symbol of his mandate.

It's the mandate, you know, is the authorization to act.

And so when he picked up that mantle, he slapped the water and said where is the Lord, god of Elijah?

And the water parted hither and thither and he went over on dry ground and he began to walk in that anointing double portion.

And so what it is is a type and shadow of Jesus.

Jesus is the man in heaven.

He went up to heaven.

He said I do the works, the man on earth, the works that I do shall you do also in greater works?

So Elisha is a type of the church, and the greater works Jesus works, church, greater works Jesus anointed.

Really, the double portion belongs to the church.

So one of the reasons why we have what we have in the earth, the way it is right now, is there's a lack of any kind of walking in that double portion anointing.

This church has got a double portion anointing for a church this size.

It's not by measure of people, it's not a mega church, and yet we're doing things that are worthy of a mega church.

In the way that we're approaching things I'm not bragging, I'm just reporting it's because of the double portion.

So, in order to do the greater works, the church has to be apostolic, it has to walk in a double anointing.

So in this chapter alone, chapter four, second Kings, we see five miracles, which are the greater works that Elisha began to be part of, and so I wanted to give you five hallmarks of the apostolic church.

Some things that we have manifested in this church will manifest it to a greater degree as we're going forward, but the only way we can is for everybody to understand what kind of church you're going to.

That's why I keep preaching this.

I preach this before.

I'll preach it again because why?

Well, we need to know what kind of DNA we have.

I mean, when you go to the doctor, you find out, well, what age was your father when he died?

Oh, he's still alive how old they ask you all these questions about to determine what kind of DNA you've got, what your tendencies are and you're well.

So we ought to have some tendencies in this church.

A spiritual DNA, amen.

So this testimony about the poor widow who had the merciless creditors that were coming after her, we see supernatural provision, see.

I mean he said go borrow some.

What have you got?

I've just got a jar of our gold.

Borrow some, some jars, and pour out and set aside that which is full.

So he spoke the miracle.

This is a mighty.

This is a manifestation of the gift of faith and working of miracles that the prophet.

This wasn't just normal faith.

Your normal faith can't take a jar of oil and fill 50 gallons worth of vessels I don't know how many gallons it was, but it's vessels more than she had Enough for her to sell.

Pay all of her creditors off.

So another thing there is asset protection her boys.

That's an asset.

If she loses her boys, she loses her living.

She's probably gonna starve to death.

She's a poor widow.

She's a poor widow.

She has nothing.

And now her husband's gone.

All she's got left is her boys, and in the Jewish tradition their boys are responsible for their mother Long as they live.

They gotta take care of their mother and all of a sudden they're gonna be taken as bond servants to the creditors.

So you have supernatural provision, you have debt cancellation.

Debt cancellation, I mean she got enough money to pay that debt.

Supernatural provision, debt cancellation, asset protection and that's what's manifested in this building that you're sitting in.

I mean, we had a land miracle.

I mean, you know, this is amazing.

This is a bonafide miracle of provision for us, the church, the size we have, the budget we have for us to possess what we've possessed and now parlay that into a campus that's completely paid for.

Debt cancellation, amen, asset, listen, I think about the asset protection.

I mean, you know we could have lost everything.

We had a significant debt when 9-11 hit.

We owed money on that land over there.

You know what the payments were, just on the land $5,700 a month.

How would you like to have to write a check?

$5,700.

And then the rent it started out at $12,000.

And then, when we prayed the other church out of the middle section and started having the whole building, we had the whole building.

It was $16,000 a month.

Payments, rent payments.

Let me tell you we're responsible for that seventh day church to even be there.

They would have gone broke.

They couldn't make the payments on their mortgage without us.

We blessed their socks off and Dr Pagani knew that he was always grateful to me.

The pastor didn't know it, he was always kind of a goofball, but anyway, that's all right.

Praise the Lord Religious.

You know, seventh day.

It could be good people, but that guy was kind of hard.

I mean, you know, to make us move out of our sanctuary.

I've tried to forgive him but I can't know you, I have forgiven him, moved us out on Easter Sunday morning, moved us out of the sanctuary.

We're paying the rent.

Ask us to get out of the sanctuary on Sunday.

I mean, you gotta be this.

Well, you were here Saturday.

What do you mean?

You make us and God said don't argue, just do it.

I said, all right, oh, I'm talking about God has been with us.

I mean God has intervened for us over all these years.

All right, so that supernatural provision, debt cancellation, asset protection, that's personally and corporately, not just for the church.

You Something you have a right to.

Oh, not listen.

Supernatural, amen, all right.

Then verse eight, down to 17,.

That's the story of the woman that there was, a great woman and shunemite woman and she said I perceived there's a holy man of God passing by us continually and he's been staying with us.

Talk to her husband, he's been staying with us.

I propose that we build a wall of quarters.

That's where we get profit quarters from profit chamber.

I think we ought to build a chamber for him, to put a table and a chair and a candlestick and a bed in there and keep him when he's in town.

And so she provided for him and in return he sent his gauzei, his servant.

Ask her what does she want us to do for all this care?

Oh, I dwell among my.

You want us to speak to the king.

You want us to use our favor?

Oh, no, I dwell among my own people.

I don't need anything.

I don't want anything.

And Gauzei said well, she's older and her husband's old and she is bare and she wants a baby.

He said go tell her, this time next year she'll have a child.

She said don't you mess with me, preacher, don't you be prophesying some some?

You know?

Basically that's what she said.

Don't you toy with my emotions.

But he wasn't.

And she had a child.

She had a child, she had a child.

And so what you have there is discipleship.

An apostolic hallmark is discipleship birthing, turning barren into fertile crop failures, into producers.

I just think about people that started coming to this church and they were busy about failing.

And the next thing, you know, they get the word of God in them and they start learning and they start becoming disciples and they start learning how to do things God's way.

They start learning how to be led by the spirit, amen.

I mean it impacts every part of their life and, instead of being crop failures, they're producers and they're distributors.

You know, I think about when I read this.

I think about what brother Osteen used to say give me a year of your life.

That's what I usually tell new members.

I tell them give me a year of your life.

It takes at least a year for me to just cover the base, to just cover the basics.

I mean it tells you, you know, we live in a society where people just skip around like a bunch of grasshoppers.

This is guaranteed for you to become spiritually confused.

You will not succeed like that.

And this mobile society where people move all over the country they hear they're there, they're there other places, they did, they did, they did, they did.

I tell you what.

You know, there's not a glorious way.

Church on every corner, I'm sorry to say.

I mean, I know we're not the only church, but I'm telling you there's not a whole lot of them out there teaching and preaching the Word and standing for what we stand for.

And so it takes discipleship.

I just so appreciate everybody's pitching in to do the things that we do.

We have a movie night.

It takes people down here helping us Children's Church.

Recently, I understand a bunch of people got involved in painting and building and doing all kind of things back there and kind of a shot in the arm.

You know, and like I said, you know, last Sunday 10 children said the sinner's prayer got saved.

10 kids.

That's never happened in the history of this church that I know of that we had 10 children.

So you know, when you start paying attention to something and people start filling that jar with oil, are you with me now, hallelujah.

So the second part here is discipleship birthing turning bearing into fertile crop failures, into producers, slash distributors, and so you have a place where you need to be accountable.

This is what the tragedy of the COVID lockdowns is.

A lot of people got out of church, started watching it and there's no accountability in their lives.

There's no spiritual accountability whatsoever.

They do whatever they feel like doing.

They turn off the broadcast after the part that they you know if they hear something they like find.

If they don't, they don't even watch the whole thing anymore.

I've seen the numbers go way down.

There was times when we'd have 800, 900 views of our Sunday morning service All over the country.

People were watching.

Well, they're no longer watching and I guarantee you they're not going to church.

A lot of those churches folded up, they're on live stream only.

There's tens of thousands of churches and pastors who decided this is the best way to do church.

It's just.

I've seen articles where they make the case all live streams on the way to go.

No, you're a dead, you're dead.

You don't know the same God.

I know there's no substitute, but what we had here tonight, you can't have that on live stream.

You can have a little portion of it.

I mean, your live stream is fine.

When you just have to have it, that's great.

I'm not going to stop having it, but that can't be the primary, can't be done, all right.

Number three that son that she had a miracle baby, miracle baby.

Well, that miracle baby.

The devil attacked that miracle baby and it died.

And that beautiful song and Loretta, I'm going to have you sing it again one of these days.

You know it is well with my soul.

I mean, that woman knew.

Say, where did she get that idea?

I mean, she got discipled.

Somebody talked to her about how she could talk.

Her child died, was dead.

What happened?

What happened?

It is well, it is well.

She wouldn't say anything else, it is well.

And so she sent to the prophet and he came.

He sent Gahazai first, and then he came and raised that child from the dead.

And so you have the third in one chapter.

I mean, you talk about a chapter chock full.

This is Old Testament and I just, you know something about this.

Just, the church ought to be sparkling with the supernatural.

We have a better covenant found upon better prime.

We have more revelation now than they ever had.

We should be seeing miracles like this.

Yes, we will and we will.

So the third hallmark of the Apostolic Church is resurrection, restoration, raising up dead.

Dreams, visions, ministries, restoring marriages, relationships Amen, everybody say hallmarks of the apostolic, and that's personally and corporately.

In other words, it's for you.

You remember this church.

This is something that you can tap into.

I can't count the number of marriages that have been on the rocks, people just at odds with one another looked like they were gonna split up, and we've had a few that did.

We've had a few.

This society is fracturing our families.

Frankly, it was the Communist Party and the liberals that wanted women out of the house to get them in the workplace, and that was the beginning of the end.

I know, if you work, I'm not criticizing that you work, I'm just saying that wasn't God's original plan.

That's what I'm saying Any more.

It's become a necessity for the life to work.

But I grew up in a time when my mother did not work.

She never worked.

She was watching over me.

I tell you that I didn't get by with nothing.

Well, you know, when the mama's gone and daddy's gone and somebody else is watching mostly the school is watching you know there's just another level of dysfunction in the family and so pressures happen.

But thank God, for the Word of God and for the Holy Ghost, we can have restoration.

We can bring people back together in their marriages and their relationships.

All right, now let's skip this Skip on down.

I didn't read all these verses, but you know that'd be your homework.

Read that whole chapter.

It's chock full From it's got 44 verses of miracles.

44 verses of miracles, I mean, you know, it's just amazing chapter.

All right, let's get down to verse 38.

And in Elisha came again to Gilgal and there was a dearth in the land and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him and he said unto his servant set on the great pot and seed potage for the sons of the prophets.

And so one went out into the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of potage, for they knew them not.

So they poured out for the men to eat and it came to pass, as they were eating of the potage, that they cried out and said oh thou, man of God, there's death in the pot, poison, there's death in the pot.

And they could not eat thereof.

Ah, there's a lot of people there and they're hungry and what they're eating is poison.

But the prophet said then bring meal.

And he cast it into the pot and he said pour out for the people that they may eat.

And there was no harm.

My margin says there was no evil thing in the pot.

So what you see here is you see restoration and reclaiming stolen property or wages and supernatural protection.

If you drink any deadly thing it shall not harm you.

But I mean you know they didn't have money.

They had gathered these wild gourds.

They didn't have money to go to the store and buy food, so they went out and gathered it up and went all the labor it took to do all that, cook it all up and now it's going to just get thrown out.

Now what are they going to do?

How are they going to eat?

They might have eaten that and died.

Somebody tasted his eye.

There's evil in this pot.

There's death in the pot.

He redeemed it with meal.

The working of miracles there.

You see the so much of what Elijah did.

He did with his mouth.

I mean, he spoke with his mouth.

I mean you know, later on you read about Naaman the Lepper.

You heard about him and little maid talked about him in Syria and he come riding up to get healed and he sent Gehazi.

I said go tell him, washing the Jordan seven times.

He didn't even come out to see him.

He said just go tell him Gehazi, go tell him, he just spoke it.

Go washing in the Jordan seven times.

He'll be healed, leprosy will be gone.

He got Naaman.

You know the story.

He got so mad.

But my point is and when he finally, he had a good staff of people around Say, look, he didn't ask you to do anything hard.

We come all this way.

Why don't you just do what the guys said to do?

It's a big deal.

Thank God, he finally thought better of it.

He thought he imagined that he would honor him, come out there and wave his hand and go through a bunch of gyrate.

He didn't even come out the door.

Go, tell them to go wash in the Jordan.

There's plenty of rivers in Syria.

I've got a bond.

I've got all these rivers better rivers than this muddy thing.

They did anti-Semitic, but he did.

He finally went washed in that river.

Seven times His skin came on him.

He changed his tune and I mean he never did talk to him.

He never came out and said anything, he just spoke the miracle.

Are you with me now?

I mean that's the apostolic and the prophetic Reckoning.

Stolen property, praise God.

Stolen wages, defrauded wages.

I believe in the last days.

I'm still believing for all the defrauded wages I've been agreeing with my wages.

Every time I think about it, I just thank God.

I think about all the houses I've built for nothing.

I think about all the houses that the bank basically stole from me, and it wasn't my doing, it was just the economy and it was rigged policies and I don't know.

It's a lot of work to build a house and not get anything for it and then, on top of that, have it taken from you and then they come after you.

Are you with me now?

I think about the time the bank came all the way to Corpus and took both of my cars out from under me and left me off on the corner.

I had to walk to the dealership and lease another car.

I mean, that was the weirdest experience of my life.

I thought, dear God, you talk about a curse.

This is ridiculous.

But the borrow is serving to the lender.

That's the life I lived.

I lived a life borrowing money and making money off of borrowed money.

But that's the risk you had with borrowed money.

Well, I'm believing that there's coming a day of reckoning where that money is coming out of the treasures of darkness and coming into the kingdom of God, the frotted wages, amen, all right.

So we're down to the last one.

Let's look at verse 42.

There came a man from Baal Shalisha and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits 20 loaves of barley and full ears of corn in the huck thereof.

And he said give unto the people that they may eat.

See, evidently Lysha is responsible for a group of prophets.

Give unto the people that they may eat.

And his servitor said what should I set this before 100 men?

This is one guy's first fruits offering.

It's not designed for 100 people to eat.

This is not enough.

And he said that, as Elisha said again, give the people that they may eat, for thus saith the Lord, they shall eat and shall leave thereof".

Kind of reminds you of the loaves and fishes, doesn't it?

He spoke it, didn't he?

He just said it, said it in front of them, they're gonna eat and they're gonna leave leftovers.

And so he said it before them and they did eat and left thereof, according to the Word of the Lord, so in the apostolic.

The last one that I'll talk about is the multiplication of resources, the tithes and offerings in this church.

I remember when we were in the Seventh Day Church, things were kinda.

You know, I already told you about the money going out, but when we moved in there we lost about half of our crowd, about half our church, left us.

We were in the Baptist Church down the street Old Champion, forest Baptist and we would run oh I don't know 450 on Sunday morning, a lot more than we do now, and we had a good budget.

Money was coming in.

Of course it cost a lot to be there.

They had a big, big figure that they got from us every month for the rent.

But when we moved out of there a lot of people didn't wanna move with us and really God just made us believe that we were a regional center.

He said no, you're a regional center and this is the time that you just I'm gonna prune the ones that don't believe that.

There's people that are just, they're listening to you, they're not in agreement with your buying all this land.

92.7.

They thought that was crazy.

They thought I was nuts.

They thought we should buy that albatross down the street.

6.3 million.

In the preacher, the pastor said oh, I can make you a deal.

6 million.

I thought 6 million, I wouldn't give you three for this thing.

Air Conditioners this is old timey cooling tower.

Frank, when's the last time you saw a cooling tower air conditioner?

Do they still make those sorta Nothing but maintenance.

Had ache Gotta mess with that.

I mean, it's water's up there, you know, and it's falling down, it's evaporative cooling and all that.

That thing was always broke.

I mean, they had to have a guy there all the time just to keep the air conditioning on in our church and he was always spying on us.

He'd move in the Holy Ghost and he didn't like it.

He'd tell the pastor and they'd grit their teeth.

I know that's why they sold it out.

They sold their building, which they had, by the way, they had 15,000.

By the way, they had $15.9 million in their building and their campus and they sold it to the church that's there for $3 million.

I'm glad he didn't offer it to me for $3 million.

I might've bought it, but anyway I'd have missed God if I had, because I wasn't God.

God had a plan and he said you know so when we were in there, I mean you know, we finally started making plans to build on our property down the street we are on the 92 points where Champions Crossing is, on the other side of the brand new one over there and I told the church.

I said now, here's what God told me we're not gonna take any big, have any big pressure.

We're not gonna bring in some company to interview you and get your pledges.

God told me that if you're all tired, everybody tired, and then give offerings over and above the tithe, as he directs, just listen to the Holy Ghost and give offerings above the tithe.

He said we will build this church, we'll get this church built, and that's exactly what happened.

I mean, we just had a handful of people.

I mean, I think some Sundays we would even have 200 people in there.

I think at the finally, at the end, we might've had 210, 220 people coming every now and then, but not every Sunday.

And we built this building and we borrowed $3.7 million to do it, but God had done the land miracle by that time.

See, god provided the land miracle.

So what I'm saying is what do you have with the summer fruits?

Multiplication of resources.

What we had coming in was enough.

God multiplied it to where we could do what God told us to do build this building and do everything that we were supposed to do.

And I'll tell you, god built this building and then he did it again when we added on and did everything else.

And then, when we had all this extra land.

I mean, I didn't wanna sell it.

I didn't wanna sell it, I wanted to keep it.

I thought God had a purpose for it.

So here we were.

We were in this phase of the building, phase one.

We hadn't built phase two.

And then we were about to build phase two and God told me he said no, he said just complete the campus.

He said this is all I wanna do here.

I don't have a plan for the big building on that property.

It was big enough for 10,000 seats.

That's what I was aiming for At that time.

I was aiming for 10,000 seats.

And he said nope, just build.

Complete the campus where it's at.

And so I knew he had no use for that property.

So I don't wanna keep property if I'm not gonna build on it.

So we put it up for sale in 2013.

And it took all the way to 2018 before it sold.

Five years, and one thing after another, after another.

I mean, you talk about every kind of obstacle you could have the easements, the condemnation lawsuits from Greenwood Forest.

They wanted part of our property for theirs, their lack of planning on their subdivision, they needed more detention as their subdivision flooded.

Well, what does that have to do with us.

Why don't you tear some houses down and dig a hole in the ground?

But no, they came and sued us.

This is the kind of stupid laws that we have in this state that one entity over there a water district can sue a church and get property.

We had to defend that lawsuit and we got them to pay us for it, but it was.

It took a lot of work and a lot of time maybe, but God defended us.

I mean, when it's all said and done, we were able to build this building and get it paid for.

Now we've got almost 10 acres of ground, 50,000 square feet of building paid for and everything that we have been adding on.

We've added on a new sound system, we've got all these screens.

We're just believing for the LEDs on either side.

I mean, you know, we're just, we're just, we're just, we're just, we're just listen when you want a bit, when you want.

We don't make a big pull, but we just know that God will touch you and say, well, you know what, I've got this windfall.

I'm gonna put it in the building for them.

Well, we're gonna spend it.

We're gonna update and upgrade everything that you see, we're about to do a bunch of stuff in children's church, in other rooms.

We're about to do some stuff in the lobby.

We're gonna update and upgrade everything and God's gonna supply every dime, because this is an apostolic vine with a prophetic flow.

Amen, lift your hands and receive the hallmarks of the apostolic church.

Did you get anything out of this tonight?

Amen, I think.

More and more, as time goes on, the anointing is gonna get stronger and stronger.

We're gonna have more and more influence in our region.

Praise God.