THE MINISTRY OF THE APOSTLE

BY Clifford A. Rice

About The Author

In 1955 Clifford Rice was caller as God’s prophet just as Ezekiel was called in Eze. 2:1 and 3:1 - 3. The effect upon his body was identical to that of John in Rev. 10:9 - 10, and the words spoken were as in Eze. Ch. 2 and in Rev. 10:11. This supernatural visitation of the Lord eventually led Brother Rice to leave his successful career. As a heavy construction supervisor, manager and erection engineer he had traveled in many parts of the world working for large international contractors building bridges, buildings, industrial plants and dams. His walk with the Lord has placed him in virtually every phase of ministry, both as layman and pastor and he has been privileged to share the Lord and His message with persons of every kind in every corner of the world.

For eight years Brother Rice served on the board of a local Full Gospel Business Men’s chapter where he also held the office of president and vice president. Brother Rice has pioneered two churches and pastored two more and worked on staff in a large church where he was responsible for evangelistic ministries to those on the street, in jails, prisons, nursing homes and rescue missions. During this time he trained many young men and women who are in the ministry today. He sponsored numerous home bible studies both to evangelize and to build the church and wrote a booklet entitles, “Building Though Home Bible Studies.” He worked with young people as a youth pastor and youth advisor. A serious bible student who believes the full message of the Word, Brother Rice has traveled thoughout the United States, The Philippines, Mexico and India. Through teaching seminars and preaching on many subjects he has been instrumental in starting many churches and Bible Schools.

Brother Rice operates in the Gifts of the Spirit. God does confirm the word preached by healing and miracles. His ongoing ministry has born and is bearing much fruit.

Table Of Contents

	Author’s Preface
Chapter 1	The Origin, Need, First Things
Chapter 2	Jesus The Lamb Of God
Chapter 3	The Fall Of Man and The Means Of Restoring Fellowship
Chapter 4	God Restores Relationship
Chapter 5	Is There A Need Today?
Chapter 6	Should God's People Be Divided?
Chapter 7	Paul an Example
Chapter 8	The Apostle’s is not a Ruler
Chapter 9	The Apostle’s Ministry to the World
Chapter 10	Ministry of the Apostle’s
Chapter 12	The Apostle is kind and considerate of all
Chapter 13	Establish the Church - Establish your people
Chapter 14	Develop Your People
Chapter 15	Personal Message from God
Chapter 16	The Importance of the word of God
Chapter 17	Building by Home Bible Study
Chapter 18	Do The Impossible
Chapter 19	The Apostle and The Church
Chapter 20	Bring People into one accord
Chapter 21	Authority must come from God
Chapter 22	You must Hear from God
Chapter 23	Take Responsibility for your Ministry and All People
Chapter 24	Don’t Become A Jack of All Trades Minister
Chapter 25	The Apostle Trains Young Ministers
Chapter 26	True Authority Comes Only From God
Chapter 27	In All Things, Make Your Word Your Bond
Chapter 28	Cooperating, with other Ministries
Chapter 29	Ignorance of Jesus Christ is Wide Spread
Chapter 30	The Apostle is A Man in Christ
Chapter 31	I Don’t Have To Defend The Holy Ghost Or The Word
Chapter 32	Ministers Can Be Open Scoffers
Chapter 33	New Area - New Church
Chapter 34	Church Building By Evangelism
Chapter 35	True Apostles Should Decide Doctrinal Matters

The Origin

John the Revelator was the last of the original twelve apostles, and many teach that the apostle's ministry was done away with at the time of his demise. I believe there is much evidence to the contrary, and I believe that the need for the apostle today is just as great or greater than it was at that time. It is my personal conviction that the Apostle and Prophet ministries will have their finest hour at the very end of this Age. We will have a further teaching on this subject in another volume.

The Need

I think the first thing we should consider is the need. We know that from the beginning God knew that Jesus Christ would be crucified. He knew that He would offer Jesus Christ as the Lamb upon His own altar for the Sin of the world. The type in the Old Testament, of course, is Abraham and Isaac. Most Bible Teachers will agree that Abraham was a type of God, Isaac a type of Christ. When Abraham offered Isaac, Isaac was, according to the Book of Hebrews, received by Abraham again from the dead in a figure (Heb. 11:17‑19). In other words, Abraham received Isaac from the dead. In Abraham's mind, he was offering Isaac's life in obedience to God. There was a statement that Abraham had made in response to Isaac's question – "We have the wood, we have the altar, but where is the lamb?"– Abraham said to Isaac, "God will provide a lamb." God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering (Gen. 22:5‑19).

Jesus The Lamb Of God

Well, God did provide the lamb in Jesus Christ. We know that the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was perfect in all of His ways. He first of all proved His own perfection. He established His own righteousness. He established the righteousness of the Law. He established the righteousness of God before the world. He trained His messengers to spread the Word — He trained twelve and they trained many, who trained many more down through the ages as `sent ones’ fully authorized as apostles of Jesus Christ. Neither the devil, the world, nor anyone else can ever say that God did not do things in a righteous manner. So when Jesus Christ finished His ministry on the earth and went back to the Father, He was seated at the right hand of the Father and daily makes intercession for us. In other words, "daily" involves daily living through us, through the Church. The Church is in Christ, and we are either in Christ or we are in Adam. As an individual you must either be in Christ or in Adam. You cannot be both. It is either‑or, not both. We really must realize that we are in Christ or out of Christ.

Therefore, God provided reconciliation in Christ unto Himself. We find in the second book of Corinthians some very interesting scripture that tells us literally what God had in mind. There is one thing we must know if we are going to understand the Bible ‑ God NEVER changed His mind! He did not just search this way for a little while and then search another way for a little while, look this way, and then back another way, groping for a solution for problems. That is how some theologians would have us understand it; but I declare unto you that at no time was God ever in doubt as to what He was going to do. God had it figured out from the beginning. God knew that man would fall. God knew that man would use his free choice. God gave man free choice in order that he would have someone who would walk with Him willingly; not under duress, but willingly. If God has your will, He has you. That is a simplification. I once laid this on a theologian in Dallas and said, "It seems to me, brother, that there are two men, there are two ways in the Bible; and, therefore, there are two wills, and it seems that they're summed up in this manner: One man, Adam, said in the garden, "Not thy will, but mine be done." And the other Adam, the second Adam, said, "Not my will but thine be done." This man said, "Brother Rice, that is an oversimplification to the extreme, but it is right on!" I believe that to be the case.

We must realize that if we are to walk with God, we must understand His will and we understand it through the Word. Now it was the will of God, we find in the Bible, that none should perish but that all should come to repentance. The whole world fell in Adam. The whole world was reconciled in Christ. Sometimes, people want to pick and chose who would be reconciled; but that's not God's plan. God never intended there to be any picking and choosing. God gave a blanket amnesty to all the world. He established a system whereby that amnesty offer might be established in the hearts of men.

In Second Corinthians five, the seventeenth verse: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." That word "behold" means "Look there!" It really gets your attention. "BEHOLD!" We don't use that word much in today's language, but it's "Behold, look at the difference in that man! He was this, now he's this! Totally different!" "WOW! Will you look at that!!" is about the best descriptive term we can use. "WOW!" We find now, continuing in verse eighteen: "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." Do you know that for many years I preached the gospel, and I preached it hard, and I loved people; but I felt I had to enumerate their sins and uncover them before they could come to repentance. That is still the thinking of a large percentage of the evangelical world. They feel they must totally uncover a man and bring him to a very definite sin consciousness before they can get him established in the position where he can accept Jesus Christ. But the Bible says; and one day God brought this to my attention and made me really understand; "to wit, that God was in Christ." It says, "that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." "Reconciling the world unto Himself," and the reconciliation is "through Christ"; He didn't do it without Christ ‑ it was through Christ ‑ and here is the revelation: "not imputing their trespasses unto them." Hallelujah!

That is good news! When I saw that, it allowed me to remove people from my judgment and allow the grace of God to flow through me without having any concern for the depth of their sin. Their sin and degradation was not the important point now. That was not what I was ministering against. I no longer had to minister against anybody. I now could minister for the Lord unto the people. That makes a tremendous difference in any person's ministry. At that point God began to really use me in a manner that was constructive to the Kingdom of God. It opened new horizons, a new world in the area of ministry. Praise the Lord!

Verse nineteen of II Corinthians, chapter 5, says, "He hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

The Fall Of Man and The Means Of Restoring Fellowship

In the beginning, God was in one accord with man. God and Adam walked hand in hand. They walked in the garden in the evening. They enjoyed the fellowship that God intended God and man to have. They were not strangers. There was no alienation; nothing between them. When Adam fell, we know that sin entered the world and death by sin. Adam's first‑born became a murderer. Adam was driven from the garden. Thorns and thistles began to come up and he had to hoe and chop and weed. To get enough to eat, he had to work hard. Hard work is never going to go away until the Lord comes back, I believe; but it is the will of the Father that man live in harmony with each other and with God. It was always the will of the Father that there be harmony. God instituted the blood sacrifice so that sin was dealt with. In Hebrews it says, "For without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." Sin must be dealt with. Sin always had to be dealt with. God dealt with that sin in the blood sacrifice that He offered in the garden for Adam and Eve.

Some people feel that God might have created leather and used it to make garments, or He might have skinned the sheep and let them run around naked. That's not how it was. God slew the sheep and let the blood cover their sins and let the sheep skin cover their nakedness ‑ their shame.

God wants fellowship with man, and He set up a program to reestablish that fellowship, and it begins as told in Amos. Amos the prophet said in the third verse of the third chapter of the Book of Amos: "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" We also know that Jesus spoke of the power of agreement in prayer. There is no prayer like the agreement in prayer. There is no strength in prayer like the agreement in prayer. Amos is talking about agreement. We often interpret that to say, "Well, in order for you and me to be in business together, in order for you and me to walk along and be friends, we must agree." Well, that is true; but what Amos had in mind was "How can a man walk with God unless he agrees with God?" In order for man to walk with each other and in order for man to walk with God, they must agree. To walk with God, we must agree with God about God's love. We must agree with God about the indwelling presence of Christ. We must agree with God about the legal things that God did in Christ. We must understand the reconciliation that God has provided for us in Christ. The one thing that God did was to take away all the guilt complex that we might walk absolutely free and unashamed with God.

God Restores Relationship

The Word says that, "Jesus was offered for our transgressions, raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4:25), whereby we stand justified before God ‑ sin free, shameless, with no hindering factor whatsoever to keep us from coming boldly to the Throne of Grace to obtain mercy and find help in the time of need.

God wants fellowship, but He wants us to come His way. We need to agree most of all about the authority of the Word of God. This is the area wherein more people get in trouble than any other. We need to come under the authority of God. We need to be of one mind, you see, regarding the things we've just mentioned. We must personally identify with Jesus Christ

God not only did these things at the time of Christ. Here comes some of the difference in the understanding of the ministerial offices. Many people feel that all of this ended at the time of Christ. When Jesus left, the disciples somehow were left here and the Holy Spirit came into the world and somehow they then set up churches and that was the answer. That was never God's answer. I don't mean to belittle any church. Don't misunderstand me at this point. The pulpit-pew relationship, as it exists today, was not God’s ultimate solution, but God had a method that He gave to the world, and I want you to discover, with me, what that method was.

Let's turn to Ephesians, the fourth chapter. It was always God's intent to bring harmony into the world. Now our question was a moment ago, "Is the apostle's office valid in today's church?" We have to consider the teachings that are rampant in the church. Most of the church universal, if you will, the church around the world, and we use that term rather loosely; because we are talking about the real Christian, the apostate church, and every area of the church universal at this point. We must look at this thing fairly and honestly. Let us never get to the point where we become prejudiced or biased to the point that we fail to look at things objectively. God wants us in this area of all areas to have a degree of objectivity that approaches the divine. We must literally not hold people in judgment because of their past errors. Understand that. If we're going to effectively minister the Word of God around the world, we must be able to totally release men and women from their past errors. We cannot hold them for their past guilt. Otherwise, we negate the very thing that God did in Christ. "He reconciled the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them," Amen? So, no matter what a man has done in the past or his forbears have done, we cannot hold him guilty. We must absolve him of all guilt in order for us to minister Christ's love. That's exactly what we need to consider if we're going to understand the effective working of the different ministries.