Jesus fathered the originating apostles to restart the fathering spirit. He was resetting His kingdom on Earth, so He restored kingdom fathering in His own unique form of discipling.
The kingdom represents the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The leaders within the kingdom of God on Earth represents the King in leading the kingdom, while the kingdom culture represents His right behaviors in individual citizens.
The kingdom is the strategy of God to dominate His Creation. God wishes to take over the world, but He created Man to represent Him in this intention.
Kingdom begins within. The King wishes to dominate each human being with spiritual influence through Holy Spirit. The King wants to dominate cultures on Earth through spiritual influence as the spiritual influence of dominion-living kingdom citizens forms a legislative, judicial, and administrative building, body, and bride governed by kingdom leaders.
The King does not govern the kingdom on Earth directly. He gave these originating representatives the kingdom keys.
We would have asked Jesus to keep the keys since no one would be better at direct rule than Jesus! But, Jesus represents the Father, not Himself. Now, the kingdom leaders represent Jesus, not themselves, to bring the kingdom into apostolic order by establishing the kingdom culture.
The Great Commission is not a church-growth motto. It is a cultural discipling model with specific instructions for individual life change marked and communicated by the prophetic action of water baptism: old life dies, new lifestyle begins. It is a cultural mandate to “train” those with internal change and new lifestyle “to obey all I have commanded you (the apostles).”
The dominion discipling of the originating apostles was the fathering preparation for the apostolic Didache. This body of work from Jesus is not a doctrinal statement or even a mission statement, strictly speaking, it is an apostolic order based upon a cultural mandate. Jesus defines “disciple cultures” with individual lifestyle change and corporate behavior training. This is apostolic preaching, communicating the apostolic Didache within the kingdom.
The kingdom culture becomes the foundation of spiritual influence in any existing culture where the apostolic discipling goes.
“Wherever you go, disciple cultures.” How? Individual lifestyle change prophesied by water baptism and corporate behavior change through discipling the kingdom culture.
Wherever you see this model in the New Testament, you see a form of Ecclesia so foreign to modern church-growthism that discussion of the words of Jesus sounds like some “nice ideas from an earlier church-growth conference starring Jesus Christ” instead of governmental order of Heaven’s kingdom on Earth.
Discussion of the Great Commission in a kingdom context will be dismissed as “that will never work or happen in modern times” because the Bible is secondary or even in third or fourth place for discussion of “How to Do Church-anity.”
The moment you make the decision to remove kingdom from church and church from kingdom, the King becomes irrelevant in all but occasional kind words, thrown His way in the form of “worship.” Sweet poetry about “king someday but not now” courtesy is not worship of the King of kings. It is a way of telling Him to stay out of things while we define His role in His own realm.
Jesus fathered fathers who father fathers. The issue of the apostolic is never succession. It is always inheritance. A fathering leader does not replace his figurehead with another ministry figurehead. (Sigh.) He matures fathers who expand the estate or assignment in the next spiritual generation.
If we do this consistently, kingdom come, and kingdom culture become kingdom conquest.
At the present moment, the enemy is coming into nations like a flood while we are retreating from our cultural influence because we are not kingdom representatives but church-growth gurus. We hire event planners and program facilitators. We do not father fathers who can do what we do and greater.
Our figurehead apostles work things around to have a successor to show they are a success when they are called to father fathers. The fathering spirit of kingdom discipling is the essence of the demonstration of the Spirit’s power.
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This questionable and gratuitous checklist of “apostle is” involving anointing and gift capacities is a ridiculous circus show of the irrelevant when compared with the heartthrob of Jesus for His kingdom.
A demonstration of the Spirit’s power is immediately followed with the real aim: an impartation of strategic wisdom to the mature. That is, the demonstration is not about ability to do miracles, signs, and wonders – and those verses that speak of the signs of an apostle are misunderstood and misapplied – the demonstration of the Spirit’s power is the convincing that produces a kingdom culture and deals with the breaches of that culture with apostolic order, resulting in a maturing Ecclesia that receives an impartation of Divine strategic wisdom.
The new supernatural schools miss the entire point of kingdom discipling. “Doing the stuff” while remaining as immature as a suckling lamb or living like a pagan while speaking in tongues and filming hit and run evangelism is not the mark of the apostolic.
The mark of the demonstration of apostolic order is the kingdom culture and its influence upon the existing culture wherever matured leaders receive God’s strategic wisdom to dominate that region spiritually. Part of that will undoubtedly be spiritual power over demons, disease, and cosmic dominators, but the measurement of success isn’t your FB live circus show of unconfirmed prophecies and healings.
The immature kingdom brats who cannot follow simple instructions from within the apostolic order work against the goals of God by misrepresenting the King whose Name they use to prove they are “doing the stuff.”
Miracles without a strong marriage is a complete farce foreign to the kingdom. Signs without surrender to the kingdom culture lifestyle diminishes spiritual influence where Jesus wants it most.
Fathers who father fathers is the keystone of kingdom conquest, not sons of Sceva type “we can do the stuff” sideshows. Getting better at prophecy than fortune tellers and palm readers is not the goal of God in prophetic leadership. Singing as well as the world’s musical heroes is not “taking the entertainment mountain.”
If you cannot father fathers, train kingdom citizens to obey all Jesus commanded, and expand the estate of your metron with inheritors, consider turning in your “apostle am I” badge.
