Not An Ambassador

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     During the past several years it has been my privilege to associate directly with several groups of young people affiliated with the "Jesus Folk." This is a loose categorization because they come in a lot of varieties like lettuce seed. I have visited their communes, lived with them for brief periods of time and shared with them their interest in my best friend, "the man from Galilee." In every instance I have been received with respect and politeness and the hours we have spent together have enriched my life.

     Many of these young people are from homes where their parents had no commitment to Christ. Some of them, sensing their rejection, developed hostilities and went the whole route of the "Beat" generation. Many of them know the agonizing and frightful battle against drug addiction, having been hooked for

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long months. Some are young Jews, and a few of these I have helped to lead to Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who can put it all together.

     It has been an interesting thing to me to listen to these eager young people who know that Jesus is real, and who accept the Bible as the word of God. They do not question the origin of the scriptures nor doubt the validity of what they teach. But with no previous discipline of study they are likely to think that Ezekiel was writing directly to the people in Saint Louis or San Francisco, and this results in some bizarre interpretations and applications.

     Since they are correct in assuming that God has lost none of His power and the infinite time-clock is not about to run down, they sometimes conclude that He sends direct messages or "prophecies" today. I have been in a lot of groups where an earnest, soft-spoken young man, with long hair and a bearded face, stood up in faded jeans, while reading a "prophecy" he had "received from God." Invariably these are quaint and generally couched in the 1611 language of the translators of King James.

     I never raise a question about the origin of such a message before the group where love for one another prevails with such intensity and there is an eagerness to know the will of God for life which previously was so raw and frightening. Instead, I seek out the young "prophet" and sit down with him to quietly talk over the nature of God's revelation.

     It comes as a surprise to many of my youthful friends who have rejected the symbols of an affluent, but morally-degenerating society, that I hold that God's revelation was completed some nineteen centuries ago. I do not believe there has been an additional revelation since John wiped the ink from the point of the calamus and laid it aside after penning "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Our knowledge of God's will for our lives is by deeper insight into revealed truth, and not by additional revelation.

     When Jesus came in the flesh, he embodied all the traits and characteristics of Godhood in the flesh. And while he was here he called, qualified and commissioned certain men to be his ambassadors. He designed to give unto them and their contemporary assistants, the prophets, a knowledge of the mystery which had never before been divulged, that the Gentiles were to be incorporated into one body with the Jews, and made partakers of the glorious promises. Paul said, "By revelation he made known to me the mystery...which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit" (Ephesians 3:3,5).

     This revelation was given to them to make all men see the mystery of the fellowship. The revelation was not given to all men, but to the apostles and prophets. Through their proclamation all men will be led to see God's purpose. The household of God, the saintly citizens, are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). God is not still laying the foundation. He is building upon it. We no more need additional apostles and prophets than we need another Christ.

     There are no ambassadors for Christ alive today. An ambassador is a minister of state with special powers, given the authority to act in behalf of and instead of a sovereign who has sent him forth, in making treaties and formulating covenants. It is improper to sing of ourselves implying we are ambassadors. The apostles were ambassadors of the King. They were empowered to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes. Paul declared, "Now then we (that is, the apostles) are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled unto God."

     I have no ambassadorial power. All I can do is to repeat to men the terms of amnesty which the ambassadors revealed. The apostles and prophets had

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no successors to office because they fulfilled the purpose of the office for all time. They did not abdicate their office, they retained it. They are in the foundation as much as they ever were and they exercise authority through their revelation. I am built upon that foundation. I am one of the living stones growing together with others into a holy temple in the Lord.

     But I am not a prophet or revelator. If I received a revelation from God as did the apostles it should be incorporated in the holy scriptures. If the Spirit gave me a message for a congregation in Buffalo there should be an addition to the sacred canon, starting out, "Carl called to be an apostle, to the saints in Buffalo." But I assure you there will be no First and Second Carl to augment First and Second Peter, nor will there be a First and Second Buffalo to update the letters to Corinth. I am still digging into the apostolic revelation and coming up with ideas to revolutionize my feeble intellect and bring me closer to "the man from outside."

     Modern "prophecies" and "messages from God" are generally the fruit of a meditative and contemplative heart, suddenly rescued from despair and depression and brought back from the brink of death. When one goes through a crisis experience of deep despondency and finds help from an unseen hand reaching down to snatch him back from a world of scrambled brains and confused minds he is eager to praise and magnify his deliverer and he ought to be. As thoughts of purity and thanksgiving begin to seep back into a heart which was empty and void, he is liable to mistake them for a revelation from God. In a sense they are, of course, a revelation to him, uncovering what previously was a mystery and foreign to his heart. Too, it seems a natural tendency of those who have been saved to think of themselves as the saviour of others.

     I like to sit and explain this to my young friends to whom Jesus is so new and His word so fresh. Maybe we are in the student lounge or it might be we sit down on the library steps outside. Most of them listen respectfully because they know I love them very deeply. And a lot of them concur in my explanation of revelation. Many of them exhibit more enthusiasm about what I say than those who sit in the pews and sometimes nap through the class on Sunday morning. As one kid put it recently, "Wow! Like that's great! To think that God exploded that artesian well nineteen-hundred years ago, and I've been running around with my tongue hanging out and dried up like a piece of leather from thirst and didn't know where to go and get a drink. Man, that's cool. It comes on heavy!"

     When I got back to my car in the university public parking lot, I buckled the seat belt in order to silence the buzzer, and leaned back and said "Wow!" An old duffer like me! But then I am not used to that kind of enthusiasm about the word of God. Some folks my age don't intend to get used to it.