Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 Johannesburg, South Africa Sam Soleyn March 09, 2016 Thamo Naidoo - Introduction It’s a great privilege for me this morning to extend to each one of you a very special, a very warm welcome to this Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 hosted here at the Sandton Convention Center. This is our third Apostolic Leadership Summit, it’s not the first but it’s the first time we are having it in this venue, it is such a joy to welcome all of you who have made such an effort to be with us, we have thirty four countries represented here. We have all of the six continents of the world represented. In South Africa alone I think we have over sixty eight cities that we know of that are represented and we have over four hundred delegates from different parts of the world that have come to be with us, what a joy to have you all. Put your hands together and just thank God for the privilege we have of just coming to sit in His presence. Making this decision to host this summit here at the Sandton Convention Center was definitely governed and dictated by the Lord. Four years ago my wife and I were asked to leave the city of Pietermaritzburg in Kwazulu Natal to come to Sandton to present on a public and very strategic platform a message that is still relatively unknown to the church in the world. Much of that church is very familiar with Evangelical/Pentecostal/Charismatic paradigms of worship and of expression but a large percentage of the church in the world is not even aware of the fact that a season has been birthed at least in the South African context - twenty one years ago and has been formed on the backside of the wilderness, the baby was born in an unassuming place like a manger in a cattle stall. And this season has been going through various processes of formation, of adjustment and so forth but everything that is birthed and kept in a place of relative obscurity must eventually come to be presented publicly so that the world can behold it and we’re now of the personal conviction that we’re now at that point where God wants to make public that which He has been forming in secret. And so when we came here four years ago He said, “Take a public platform in Sandton city,” Sandton is the economic hub not only of South Africa but of Africa. While God is sovereign and while He’s working sovereignly over the nations of the earth one of the places where there is a definitive, formative, demonstrative expression of this season that we referred to as the apostolic season, one of the places where God is definitely revealing Himself is South Africa and there are many streams of the apostolic in South Africa and each one of them are legitimately communicating perspectives of the apostolic so that the voice of God can be found in the sound of many waters. So we are so privileged today to have those that we have selected to share the word, men of God who passionately love God and will not bow their knee to the present popular culture of postmodernism, of entertainment, of self seeking, of ambition and so forth that is so common to the contemporary culture of church that we see in the world today and it is my prayer in that you coming here you will hear not the voice of men coming to us in the accents of their nations but you will hear the voice of God in the voice and accent of men. And my prayer is that you will not see men but you will see God. I’ve asked God a thousand times leading up to this conference, “Is this ambition? Is it austeniaious a presentation? Is it that we want to do something on this platform and this venue for the sake of just putting on a show?” God has assured me repeatedly that this is what He has chosen and whether there’s five people that come or five thousand is irrelevant as long as He has got a place from which He could release His message into the nations of the earth. And I’d like to think that our corporate gathering here will express that in the way that God can only choose to do it. So I want to Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �1 welcome you to what I call a summit where we climb a mountain to get to at least get a preview of what God is saying, to capture the heart of God, to study the movement of the heavens so that we can go back into the valley of life and build a tabernacle of God so that God can tabernacle with men. That’s my prayer. I’m excited but very intimated, full of faith but fearful as a man, just simply passionate that God will show up so that we have a glorious time. And we want to welcome you and you have not come to anything else but to a family that wants to show you love and all our staff that is here, that’s all they will do and try to be as gracious, as kind and as helpful to you so that we can just feel at home in enjoying the presence of God. Amen? Well it is our custom to do a couple of things which is integral to the culture of the apostolic season which seeks to go back to the formative days, the recipient days of the church. Part of the culture is that we must do the public reading of Scripture and we must break bread whenever we come together, things that have been lost to the church today and much of it has been replaced by good music and lots of other stuff that is peripheral to the way the early church did things. So I want you to please stand with me as we read the Scriptures before we prepare to break bread. Now those of you that do not have one of these cups would you raise your hand high so that our ushers can get you one, this is a communion cup. Has everybody got it? If you don’t have one just ask the ushers to get you one, and you don’t need two, one is enough. (laughter) The Scripture that I’ve chosen to read to you today is not one that I would have chosen personally but God asked me to read it and it’s a little long but I’m just being obedient to what He wants. It’s found in Isaiah chapter 28 and I think that in a very powerfully prophetic way captures the heart of God concerning the contemporary culture of the church today and how He’s raising up a people to address the deficiencies that is in that popular culture. Isaiah 28:1, “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower which is at the head of the verdant valleys, to those who are overcome with wine! Behold, the Lord has a mighty and strong one, like a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, like a flood of mighty waters overflowing, who will bring them down to the earth with His hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, will be trampled underfoot; and the glorious beauty is a fading flower which is at the head of the verdant valley, like the first fruit before the summer, which an observer sees; He eats it up while it is still in his hand. In that day the Lord of hosts will be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of His people, for a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, and for strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. But they have erred through wine, and through intoxicating drink are out of the way; the priests and the prophets have erred through intoxicating drink, they are swallowed up by wine, they are out of the way through intoxicating drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgement. For all tables are full of vomit and filth;” the word should be “human excrament”, “no place is clean. Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will He make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, to whom He said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,’ And, ‘This is the refreshing,’ but they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was to them, ‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,’ that they might go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and caught. Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �2 falsehood we have hidden ourselves.’ Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will not act hastily. Also I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plummet; the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place. Your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it. As often as it goes out it will take you; for morning by morning it will pass over, and by the day and by night; it will be a terror just to understand the report. For the bed is too short to stretch out on, and the covering so narrow that one cannot wrap himself in it. For the Lord will rise up at Mount Perazim, He will be angry as in the Valley of Gibeon - that He may do His work, His awesome work, and bring to pass His act, His unusual act. Now therefore, do not be mockers, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts, a destruction determined even upon the whole earth. Give ear to my voice, listen and hear my speech. Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow? Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods. When he has level its surface, does he not sow the black cumin and scatter the cumin, plant the wheat in rows, the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in its place? For He instructs him in right judgement, His God teaches him. For the black cumin is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cumin; but the black cumin is beaten out with a stick, and the cumin with a rod. Bread flour must be ground; therefore he does not thresh it forever, break it with his cartwheel, or crush it with his horsemen. This also comes from the Lord of hosts, Who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.” It is not my practice to unpack or to interpret this portion of Scripture for you but if you do read it judgment is coming upon a church who has lived in extravagant prosperity and in the verdant valley of flowing anointings, of flowing olive oil. The tables of the church for large periods of time in our most recent and past histories have become tables of vomit and human exccrament. Now only have we expelled things from our mouths but also from our backs, that’s a better word. Our tables have been contaminated and desecrated and God is now raising up a plum line by which the church will be judged. It’s a plum line of justice and it is of righteousness. God is raising up a remnant, a people in the earth that will go back to the heart of God. I’m hoping that the table here this week will be a table centered on only one Person and His name is Christ, it is a table that is represented by His body which is His grace and by His blood which is His life. I’m hoping that when we come here we will eat grace and drink life, I’m hoping that there will be no filth or vomit that comes on our tables but it will be a holy table. That our gathering will not be a common gathering but it will be consecrated, it will not just be communion but it will be a common union, it will be that we enjoy the presence of the Living God. So today I want us to dedicate this time, the Lord has prepared for us a table in the midst of our enemies; this is not a summit, it’s not a conference, it’s the table of the Lord. The Bible says in Exodus that the nation of Israel in the absence of legitimate leadership forced Aaron to use their jewelry to produce a golden calf and they worshipped it, eating and drinking but I know today that apostolic fathers, true generals in the spirit, partriachal leaders are emerging to lead us not into idolatry but back to the table of the Living God, back to the banqueting table, back to the feast of the Living God. So today when we eat and drink it is not just a little juice in a cup or a little piece of wafer, we are here to eat and drink Christ, we are here to fellowship with the Holy Ghost as He brings the Father and the Son to us. So let’s open this and you need the wisdom of Bezazel to do it. (laughter) The first one is for the wafer, it’s a little thin film of plastic, will you do that? And the second one is for the juice. Lift it to the Lord, declare that our gathering is the table of the Most High God, it’s a table of poiniea, of fellowship, of share holding, of spiritual engagement, of Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �3 interaction, it is where heaven will come not through eating and drinking but via the processes of eating and drinking so that righteousness, peace and joy will be experienced in the Holy Ghost. Lift it up to the Lord. Father, we present ourselves to You, we are here to eat, we are here to drink so that righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost would come, we are here to eat and drink not only wine that intoxicates, that inebriates, that causes us to behave like fools but we are here to eatof the vine, of the true grain, of Him who is the revelation and the logos from the heavens. We are here to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, we are not a drunken people, we are a people filled with the Holy Ghost and so today Lord as we eat, as we drink, as we partake I am declaring on behalf of all of us this is the table of the Lord! This is a holy table! This is how the Kingdom will come! This is where fellowship will happen! This is the Hebron of God! This is the Zion of God! This is the place where heaven and earth will meet and to that end we dedicate ourselves and we eat knowing that hearings, deliverances, breakthroughs, baptisms, revelations, installations of grace will become a reality here. We are believing for the supernatural, in Jesus name. Everybody said, Amen Well please take your seats. This Apostolic Leadership Summit is really focused around the word and ask our worship team to keep it on the low key because we want the word to come back to its rightful place in our corporate gatherings so we will be doing fifteen sessions in this entire conference and all our speakers will have time to share with you that which is in their hearts. And it’s my privilege today to welcome to this podium someone who is no stranger to many of us within the apostolic circles and as we come an integral part of our family here in South Africa. It’s my privilege to welcome to this platform Dr. Sam Soleyn from Albuquerque, New Mexico in the United States of America, he hails from the Caribbean Islands but he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By profession he has a PhD in jurisprudence, in law, but God has called him at a very young part of his life to give himself completely to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Recently I was interviewed on a platform, an internet radio platform that goes through the whole world, it’s a very secular platform and they asked me, “Who are the speakers?” They gave me an hour to speak and they said, “Who are the speakers?” And I said, “Well amongst our speakers we have a man with a legal background and a medical background and they’ve given themselves completely to traveling the earth sharing a gospel, calling the church to the place of reformation.” And these interviewers could not believe that people could give up their secular professions of great promise to come and give themselves totally to the word of God, to the preaching of the gospel. Well I told them in response that we are very serious about seeing the church reformed so that the world could be transformed and so it’s a great privilege to receive not a person with a PhD in law but one who comes on behalf of Christ to bring Christ and the grace that is deposited in him for us and as he administrates that through the preaching of the gospel I pray to God that each one of us here would be the recipients of that grace. So would you please put your hands together as we receive Dr. Sam Soleyn. (applause) Sam Soleyn - Good morning. It’s a pleasure to see all of you gathered here. I echo the words that our host apostle Thamo Naidoo has spoken, we’re here to seek the mind of the Lord as a people are being brought back to the original intentions of God for mankind and in all that we do and all that we say our goal is simple: to restore the church to the divine mandate so that it will be on the earth as it is in heaven, that what God envisioned and foreknew when He considered the making of man would become the reality in time and space. For indeed, there could have been no other purpose for putting man on the earth but that what God foreknew in doing so would become the actualized reality. If we were there already then there would be no need to restore but all of us collectively bear testimony that we are far from where we ought to be, in fact so far Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �4 that it is necessary even to begin the process of redefining what was the original intent and then to look to see what has happened by way of the departure from the original intent and then to see how God intends, incrementally, to get us back on tract and then how He intends to perfect the result that He foreknew. I would like for us to begin by remembering something that God once said at the very inception of the making of man. In the book of Genesis, as the Lord declared His intentions this is what He said, “Let Us make man in Our own image, after Our own likeness.” So God made man pursuant to the intent of establishing in the earth something that was reflective of His image and likeness. Now when God speaks His environment is one of timelessness, so in the speakings of God there emerged the things from long ages past with the present and with what it shall be in the coming ages. So any statement of God is about the time when God means to execute a particular aspect of the timeless plan of God in a moment in time and space. So when God said, “Let Us make man in Our own image, after Our own likeness,” it is proper to assume that God had hidden this concept of making a being in His own image and likeness, had hidden that concept in Himself for long ages past. It is also proper to assume that the fullness of that expression was not the thing that He was about to do but what He already knew the thing He was about to do would become eventually. So in that moment and because God executes through the declared word He was about to execute something that had a past in God and that would have a future in the earth coming back to God to fulfill that which God foreknew originally. That is abundantly apparent because the Lamb of God was slain from the foundations of the world which is to say that before God made man, before God executed the thing He was about to do in time and space He had already taken in mind to redeem the thing to Himself before He called the earth out of nothing. So in the long ages past the intent of God was to create with Himself a covenantal relationship, an unbreachable declaration by God so that when the matter was complete that the man that He had made who would have departed from God would be provided for for reconciliation back to God and all of that before He said, “Let Us make man,” Man is not an accident, man is not God’s thought on an afternoon, man is what God foreknew as the carrier of His presence in the world that He was about to create, for all the reasons that He intended that. And pursuant to that idea and for long ages past, according to Ephesians the third chapter, the intent of God was to covenant with Himself for the rescue of man so that He might bring him back into that purpose for which He was making him. So man was created against a background of a pre-existing covenant of which He himself was not a party; God was the party of the first part and God was the party of the second part and man therefore was the intended beneficiary before man was created. But God created us understanding - according to Ephesians 1 - God created us in Christ Jesus having predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son before the foundations of the world. So at the same time that He was planning for the redemption of man through this pre-existing covenant He was also planning how man would be seen in the coming ages as he matriculated through the process of the earth, God saw him in Christ before the foundations of the world and God saw him not only in Christ but God saw him conformed to the standard of Christ, conformed to the standard of the Holy One, before, from the foundations of the world, before He created man and this is what is called to the praise of His glorious grace. So when God said in that moment in time, “Let Us make man,” He was not seeing merely formed earth into which He would breathe, He was seeing the Man complete in Christ and as such and with that in mind He executed in the earth the seed out of which this reality, matriculating through time, would finally return to God in the form of Christ and when God beheld it before the foundations of the earth, the finished work, He looked upon it and He said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �5 pleased,” He initiated it into the earth in a form of spirit contained in flesh and when He initiated it He designated it with the term “son”. So Adam which simultaneously means “the man Adam” and “adam” which also means “man”, man was created as the son of God. Now he was put in the earth to represent his Father, the most abiding and ancient concept associated with the creation of man is that of a son which implies the reality of a father and if Adam is the son of God then God is the Father of Adam. Now this is the mystery, that spirit was contained in flesh, when this mystery was fully revealed spirit came out of flesh in the form of the second of the two adams which in Scripture is not referred to as the “second adam” but the “Last Adam” which is to say the complete man. The complete man was always intended to be the image and likeness of God, not merely a spirit contained in flesh and it is in this image and likeness of God that God then is able to display the invisible nature of God. The intent of God was that the invisible would become visible, in the earth, observable in the form and frame of a human being but that human being, that observable form would accurately and consistently in the course of a lifetime on the earth show and disclose the nature of the invisible God. God would not commit such a representation to angels because angels are a different type of spirit, the spirit that is in man originated out of the very person of God and therefore is of the same kind and nature as God, it is the natural order of the human spirit to be able to hear God, it is natural for the human to be able to interact with God and that created order, in the earth, was designed to present God as God is. This is the character and nature of “son”, this is what is hoped for in an offspring and this actually is what existed for some time before man was approached by the enemy of God and man and in that approach the enemy attempted to - and succeeded - in persuading man that his existence might be more fully experienced on his own, apart from God. And so man fell from a relationship with his Father to being on his own, if you are on your own in that capacity it is not simply that you have sinned but what has occurred is that you have changed the very nature of your understanding of being in the earth and with it you have changed your entire culture. For although God put man in the earth to represent God when he departed from his Father that perspective was lost so that now the only thing man could do, the only way man could see himself was as part of the created world with no purpose greater than to simply survive. Now the enemy that persuaded him to that course of thought and resulting action also had for him and had in mind to perfect a system that would ensure that he would remain in opposition to God. So when we speak of sin we’re not merely speaking of personal, moral failures we’re speaking about a cultural norm that has been devised intentionally to keep man separated from God. Now that cultural norm is invisible and so when we think of sin we hardly ever think of the structural norms that entrap the soul and keep the soul in a condition of blindness so that it cannot naturally move back to God. That condition of entrapment in the Scripture is referred to as “the world”, now the word “world” is simply a reference to a domain and there are multiple usages of the term “domain” or “world” but there is one of these references, one of five types of references, concerning which if you love it, which is to say if you embrace it as the foundation of your culture and thought you cannot also love God. The Scriptures speak of it in this regard, I John 2:14 says, “Do not love the world, for if you love the world the love of the Father is not in you,” there is a domain that you’re not supposed to love which if you do you cannot simultaneously love God because that domain is so all embracing, so all encompassing that to love it in the fashion of depending on it, if you love it, if you depend on it you cannot be freed enough, there’s not enough left over capacity, it so wars against the knowledge of God that it is impossible for you to simultaneously love the world and to love God. Now there’s been some levels of confusion around the notion of “world” because the same John also said in John 3:16, Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �6 “For God so loved the world,” and it uses the exact word, “kosmos”, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” if we do not understand that He’s speaking of different domains then it’s a contradiction that would come out something like this, “For God so loved the world…but if you love the world the love of the Father is not in you.” -Pause for Microphone changeover- So we’re talking about the two meanings of “world” by the same John who said, “God loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” who also said, “If you love the world the love of the Father is not in you,” clearly he’s speaking about two different renditions of the term “world” or “domain”. So there is a domain that was created that if you depend on it you cannot also depend on God, now that domain was not created by God but it has its own creator, that domain has a god known as the “kosmokrator” who is the god of this world. If you love this world you’ve come to depend upon the kosmokrator and in doing so you have come to embrace a cultural norm in which the elements of that culture are setup to make sure that you cannot simultaneously love God. So one might ask then, “What are these cultural norms?” Well John describes them in the following fashion, in I John 2:15-18 there are certain things in the world and he considers these things in the following terms, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life,” and he says, “These things come not from the Father, not from God, but they come from the world” they’re designed to appeal to us in the prurient interest and in the prurient nature of our souls. There are three things: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, these things are of this world. In short, when the soul of man began to dictate the being of man in the present world, the enemy created a system of entrapment that is a one- to-one correlation between the desire of the soul to be and to survive and to live apart from God with the systems of the kosmos. The soul of the man desired independence from God and the enemy offered him a way of becoming independent of God through these systems. So the trap of the enemy and the formation of what is called the kosmos were designed to make sure that as long as man trusted in these systems that he could not find his way back to God. If he cannot find his way back to God then the original mandate for the image and likeness of God to be put on display in the form of a man and ultimately for God himself to appear in the Corporate Man in the earth, that would be frustrated. So the fall was not merely that man disobeyed God, the fall was that when he did his spirit abandoned the fellowship of his Father in the place of and in favor of his soul and his soul then was entrapped by the creation of a world designed to make him believe, on every level, that he is in charge. This is more pernicious than such sins as adultery and fornication and lying and deceiving because this system is cultural, it becomes the default setting of man, culture is the paradigm by which we evaluate reality in the absence of the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. We naturally think of things and conclude about those things on the basis of our culture, your worldview - to some considerable degree - is framed by the fact of where you were born and what you learned growing up. What I’m here to tell you today is that there is a structure in place called the kosmos that is so calibrated to capture you in the coils of its labyrinth that unless the Spirit of God rescues you from it it becomes your default setting and it’s far greater than individual sins. So one might ask the question, “What are some of these systems?” What are some of the things that the enemy actually introduced that in the aggregate of them they form a complete alternative to the Kingdom of God and they not only do not support the Kingdom, they actively war against the Kingdom. The world wars against God in our members because they are designed to appeal to the flesh which is a metaphor in the Scripture for the activities of the soul in the aggregate. So what are they? Well the one with which I’m most familiar is the legal system and I’ll use that for Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �7 just a moment to frame what the kosmos looks like but it’s not in any way approaching an exhaustive discussion of the kosmos. Every time you put people together if there are more than just two people, any time there are a minimum of two [people] there will be disputes, so to have disputes is not something that uncommon to mankind but the adjudication of disputes requires some form of process in order to resolve the issues otherwise society will be permanently in turmoil and chaos. The methodology for the adjudication of disputes in both the Kingdom and in the world requires some form of arbitrary decision making, decision making that takes the matter out of the hands of the disputants and decides it according to certain standards. In the world, in the system of the kosmos, that legal system is one that establishes value in the thing, so when people are in conflict the whole idea is “who gets the thing” and this particular system requires you not only to show proof that you own the thing but it also requires you to deny the claim of the other that they own the thing. So it inherently produces conflict of an adversarial nature between the people engaged in any dispute and therefore it is called an Adversarial System. Now guess who that benefits? Your enemy. The Kingdom also has a means for the adjudication of disputes but it begins by recognizing value not in the object over which there is a dispute but instead it recognizes and places value on the relationships of the people. So if your brother sins against you the language of gain is associated with how you approach your brother. The whole purpose of the adjudication of disputes in the Kingdom is to gain your brother and the methodology requires that you go to your brother and you might say, “Well if he comes to me then perhaps I’ll make things up with him but I shouldn’t have to go to him,” but the Scriptures indicate that when we were at odds with God He came to us. So there is this whole matter of how the systems of the Kingdom are not compatible with the systems of the kosmos, they are distinctly different things because one was created to oppose God among the people of God and to frustrate any attempt that people who are alienated from God would make to come back to God, it has its own creator called the kosmokrator and it functions to entrap the soul in the darkness of its lusts. It is based upon and foundationed upon the anticipation that the souls lusts will be the most pulling and demanding of his impulses. So it’s to my mind, if we think that God is going to send us into the world - in the understanding of what the world is, which is a compendium of systems - to rescue those systems, we’re off on the wrong foot. God would never send us to rescue systems that He did not create and that were created to entrap the soul (applause) in a position of opposition to God. It’s illusory to think that we who come in the name of the Lord may inhabit tabernacles of filth and somehow purge them and offer them back to God, no, we’re supposed to perfect the systems that reconcile men to God and present those as the alternatives to men but that’s not where I want to go. Where I want to go - and of course in this overarch I’m sketching something and I hope that it’s a sufficient sketch that the ones who come after me can work within the framework. So what I want to say first is what was the original intent? The original intent was that the image and likeness of God would be presented in the earth to mankind through the Corporate Man known as Christ, that was the reason God created man but He planned to redeem man because He foreknew that man would fall into the entrapment of his soul, being led to it by the enemy and he knew that this entrapment would be perfected by systems created by the kosmokrator and He knew He would have to rescue the individual man out of these systems and He knew He would have to rescue the Corporate Man out of these systems but having rescued him he is not home free, He would have to restore him and that restoration is through the re-enactment, the recreation of a corporate process based in the model of a father and a son because the model itself must be a one-to-one correlation between the intent of God and the way the intent of God Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �8 is being perfected in the earth. So the model of the father and the son beginning with being restored to the house of God, being brought back into a relationship with God as a Father and a son and walking in the earth in a relationship between a father and a son so that on the earth there is a model of that which is in heaven and coming ultimately then to maturity in that walk because when you’re brought back to God the initial salvation is to rescue you from these domains and to bring you back to engage the process by which you will become, in your own measure, part of the mature Son, the Corporate Son who in its maturity carries the image and likeness of God in the earth and puts that display for the whole earth to see and in that then God has the witness of His presence in the earth. So what I want to do in the time remaining - that’s the overarch - in the time remaining I want to speak to the unique methodology of God for beginning the process of separating you from the world and specifically in how in all of the stages of your becoming mature because when you’re born again you’re born as an infant, it’s classical to being born to end up in the state of infancy, in fact it is an unimaginable presumption that one would be born into adulthood. You’re born as a child and it’s perfectly ok to be a child when you are a child but it is not ok to be a child when you should be mature. The thing that we’re all reaching for now in our churches, in our societies and in the general environment, we’re reaching for something like maturity, most of you are here today because you know that there is more and you know that working harder in your present way of doing things is not going to produce the result. So you are looking for a sound and indeed there is coming now a sound from heaven to light the way back to the Father and light the way back to the corporate reality that we were designed by God to be part of, that corporate reality has been described variously in the Scriptures as - and the particular example that speaks to me - is as a body, many members, one Body. So the intent of God is to bring us home to a oneness, each part being fully capable of functioning in maturity within that oneness but we’re born again as children, as infants and we grow from infancy to maturity and we are tended in the process by fathers because no child is supposed to raise himself because you don’t know what the standard is and every child who raises himself will default to his flesh and remain entrapped while having the illusion that he’s progressing. So the preferred methodology of God, let me say the exclusive methodology of God for beginning the process and continuing to perfection the process of rescuing you from the kingdom of darkness which is a synonym for the world which is a cultural domain comprised of these systems designed to induce you to rely on them, the standard methodology of God is suffering, is suffering. But in our Pentecostal/Charismatic backgrounds we have thought of suffering very differently than what suffering is, we have thought of suffering as - number one - as the displeasure of God with us and so at the times when we are most vulnerable and need one another, people avoid us because if God is dealing with us and that’s why we’re suffering some of that might slop over onto us if we’re standing near enough. And so we move from engagement - if you buy that view, that suffering is as a result of the displeasure of God or that suffering is the result of some hidden thing in you that however hard you try to understand what it might be it alludes you and yet you continue to experience the negative consequences that flow from it. Somehow that doesn’t seem particularly just but these twin things have determined how we view suffering historically in the Charismatic/Pentecostal/Evangelical circles, that either God is upset at you or that you’ve done something wrong, there’s hidden things in you that God is dealing with. Sometimes there are hidden things God is dealing with, yes but let me show you something that Paul said about his own suffering, this is from II Corinthians 1:8, “For we do not want you to be ignorant brethren of our troubles which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even for life.” Now what Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �9 exactly was it that Paul was doing that caused him to be quote “burdened beyond measure, above strength.” In short, his sufferings were beyond measure and beyond his own personal strength to respond. So if our view is that we suffer because there’s something hidden in us and that God wants a response out of us that shows repentance, then when the suffering is beyond measure and above strength which means it is no longer within the reserves of your strength to come up with the response that is desired, how then do you define the purpose of God in suffering? Yes, there are times when people suffer as murderers and thieves and so on and Peter says “Don’t suffer like that,” that’s self induced turmoil and it has no particular redemptive value but the sufferings of Christ, the sufferings of Paul all tell us that in your journey with God He is going to cause you to suffer beyond measure and above strength so that you don’t have a response that you can reach into the bag and pull out and you didn’t do anything wrong to suffer in that way. In fact you may be following the Lord and He brings you to the occasion of the cross or He brings you in Asia to where everyone is opposed to you, to where you are unjustly arrested as Paul was, put in stocks in a prison, in the inner prison all because you cast out a demon out of a woman. The only way for God to cause the native attachment of our souls to the systems of the kosmos is not only to light a fire under us but to turn it up to the point where all of the dross, the filth that we bring to the table of the Lord, all of the dross floats free from the metal. And in this hour many of us are experiencing this level of fire because it is beyond our ability to respond, God takes us over the edge so thoroughly in what He requires of us that we have no reserve, either within our own possessions or within the possessions of others and if God does not show up then we’re undone. Now when you reach this place God is treating you as mature. So what does He expect when He brings us to this place? He expects that we come to an understanding that we are weak, that we don’t have what it takes, that our souls are exceedingly sorrowful even unto death, that we do not have within us the capability of responding in the fashion in which He’s demanding that we respond. Paul speaks to this in the book of II Corinthians chapter 12, there he said, “I knew a man fourteen years ago, whether I was in the body or out of the body I do not know but I met a man fourteen years ago who was caught up into the third heavens and he saw things to wonderful to comprehend.” And he said, “because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation that was given to me there was also given to me a thorn in my flesh, a minister of Satan to keep me from being puffed up and I besought the Lord three times that this thorn be removed and His answer to me was, ‘My grace is sufficient for you for My strength is perfected in your weakness.’” This great apostle said, “So I learned to glory in my weakness for when I am weak then I am strong because I have finally made my way back out of the labyrinth of the kosmos, I have been refined by the fires of purgation, what residue of the thoughts that remain in me of how I might get along in the world while reserving to myself the right to deliver myself at any time. Now God has taken that from me so all that I have left is Him in me as it was in the beginning before the fall.” It is a certainty, it is an absolute certainty that as you mature in Christ to come and take back that place that was originally designed for you, that place called maturity, it is an absolute certainty that your trials, your testings will be characterized as beyond measure and above strength. And the intent of God is to so completely disabuse you of your dependence upon the systems of the kosmos, those systems include financial systems which by the way just as a point of interest are based in usury, as opposed to the systems of the Kingdom in which we have all things is common. “Usury” is the recognition that something you have is yours and you may profit from it at the expense of your brother but having all things in common means that when the Lord haith need of anything that it will be released out of you to supply the need, freely Apostolic Leadership Summit 2016 - Session 1 - Sam Soleyn �10