Some questions:
1) Was T. L. Lowery a later day apostle? Is Steve Lowery an apostle now?
2) If so was he an apostle by the prophecy and laying on of hands of Kenneth Copeland?
3) Can the executive leadership of the CoG lay hands on someone pronouncing them apostle?
4) Will the T. L. Lowery Global Ministries continue on in Cleveland?
I don’t know the inner workings of the COG. I heard about this prophecy. I was just a little surprised to hear that a COG preacher would invite Copeland to speak at anything.
Steve Lowery told me he showed up uninvited and did the re-mantling on his own. I have a hard time believing that.
I tend to think of the apostolic role as closely associated with church planting and ground-breaking evangelistic ministry. Also, important to being an apostle is being sent. The Lord chooses His apostles.
In Matthew 9, Jesus says to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest. Then He prays all night, and in chapter 10, he chooses 12, designates them as ‘apostles’ and sends them out. (Apostle means sent one.) He tells them to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out devil, and to preach, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at had.’
In another gospel, those sent on this journey are first referred to as ‘apostles’ after they returned.
Acts does not refer to Paul as an apostle until he was sent out by the Spirit. In Acts 13, we read that the Spirit spoke to prophets and teachers in Antioch to separate Barnabas and Saul to the work to which he had called them. They laid hands on them, and fasted and prayed, and sent them out. Then, Acts 14 refers to these two men as ‘apostles’.
Notice the similarity. Both were sent out on preaching journeys. In Paul and Barnabas’ case, their preaching resulted in church planting. I Thessalonians 1:1 and 2:6-7 indicate that Silas and Timothy were ‘apostles of Christ’.
Paul and Barnabas, and Timothy as well, appointed elders/bishops from among the saints in local congregations.
“Apostle’ is also used to refer to Apollos, who taught and evangelized in Corinth after Paul had laid the foundation of Christ, encouraging the believers, and resulting in an increase as Apollos watered the work Paul had planted.
Another outlier would be James. We don’t know much about His calling except that the Lord had appeared to him. He was involved in the leadership of the Jerusalem church, but he apparently traveled to different places based on Paul’s comments about the Lord’s brethren in I Corinthians 9.
The word ‘apostle’ is used in reference to Epaphras, who apparently introduced the gospel to the Colossians, also.
Certain brethren who delivered money were apostles of the Corinthian church. The term is used to refer to them as well. I consider this a looser use of the word apostle, apostles sent from the church.
So I would expect that apostles of Christ would generally be involved in either church planting or evangelistic work, often in unreached areas, Some of them may teach and evangelize new congregations as well.
I do NOT see the role of apostle as coming in and taking over well-established existing congregations, being consultants for these pastors, and collecting 10% of their tithe.
If there were any apostles they would be very very unsettled in America and be very vocal everywhere they were and probably end up being killed for “the faith.”
AMEN