Monday, July 10, 2006

Monday's hot topics - What is an Apostle?

I wrote a post on the forum a while back and while there have been a few comments I am like U2 and still haven't found what I'm looking for. Here is the original post:

When my wife and I first went to Greece we realized that there are some words in Greek that we have substituted and changed or anglo-ized.

The Jehovah's Witnesses in Greece are called Martyrs (witnesses) of Jehovah. Martyr = witness but over time those two have been seperated mentally by those of us who live in the west.

The other one that caught my attention was that missionaries are simply called apostles in Greek. Seeing as the Greek word "apostolos" means "sent one" it made alot of sense to me.

It made me wonder why we don't pack in our english un-scriptural word "missionary" and trade it in for a bible word - apostle

If we used the term apostle in it's true sense how would everyone feel about bringing this back?

Another question I had then was "What are the qualifications of an apostle"?
Some say that an apostle has to have seen Jesus Christ, but I don't think that's what Paul is getting at in the verse we quote. He says "am I not an apostle, haven't I seen Jesus" and goes on to sort of build his case for his own legitimacy. I'm not so sure he's builing a list of "qualifications" for apostles.

Just wondering if anyone has had similar thoughts?
So, what exactly is an Apostle? Just a select group of individuals or anyone "sent" by a church? What do you think about bringing back the Bible word "apostle" instead of "missionary"?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think the requirement about seeing Jesus also comes from the book of Acts where they were choosing another apostle.


Acts 1:21 “It is therefore necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us —
Acts 1:22 beginning with the baptism of John, until the day that He was taken up from us — one of these should become a witness with us of His resurrection.”
Acts 1:23 And they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas (who was also called Justus), and Matthias.

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