Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Thamo Naidoo/Sam Soleyn Thamo Naidoo - Legally, governmentally, influentially in the world and from this venue we believe that certain declarations must be made. I’ve written a few things that I would like to, for the sake of time, read to you. I think firstly, we from the rest of the world have come to thank God for the United States of America and for Europe because many of us have inherited much spiritual treasure from them. We want to say to the church and to the nations represented in Europe and the United States of America, “thank you”. We’ve inherited so much from the reformation, from Pentecostalism and in the days of the innocency and purity of the charismatic season and for that many of us have not only been evangelized and missionized but we have been indelibly marked by the inheritances that we have received. As we all would agree, no man is an island and all of our lives are definitely connected to the past, in that way we become heirs of the past, custodians of the present but I also believe that we should learn how to become architects of the future. We have also come to call the church, at least in the United States of America and in Europe, to return to biblical ways. The church has been ensnared by the demonic ideology of post modernism, an ideology that has systematically removed the ancient boundaries for righteous living. By a return to the royal law which we refer to as a return to apostolicity or authentic christianity, we believe that the ills and the pandemics of our present society will be healed again, we believe God can bring back governmental order. We’ve also come not to protest but to declare the sovereignty of Christ and His purposes over illegal decisions that are being made from influential centers like this. In the reformation of Martin Luther he penned his thoughts, he penned his thoughts and then pinned it to the wall, to the gate of the wall, and people refer to that as the Protestant reformation, his thoughts that was used as the germinal seed to create such a transformation of the landscape of Christianity in those days. But when you really look at the word “protest”, it was not protest; the original intention was to release certain declarations and to share ones heart with the leadership of the church so that order can come back to the church. And I’d like to think that while we are here to release certain statements through sermons that will be shared that it will not be viewed as an act of protest or protestation of the present status quo but it will be the release of declarations that will pierce darkness and release the light again. Not just in governmental circles but in popular Christian circles, especially the church that has been kidnapped by post modern forms of the celebration of our faith in the form of seeker friendly congregations, the “felt need” center churches which are mushrooming up and collecting and gathering hundreds and thousands of people but are not feeding them with the true word of God. So my hope is that that will happen. Further, we believe that a new epoch has dawned upon the church of Jesus Christ in the earth, this epoch is accompanied by a geo-spiritual shift. It’s not for me personally and that’s my most recent position. It’s not a geo-spiritual shift in the context of geographical locations but it is a geo-spiritual shift of people groups that once were recipients of the grace from the more advanced and developed church and these peoples today are now not only the beneficiaries of that grace but they are now advocating for a new expression of God’s glory that is presiding in His word that emanates from His word. So I believe that there is a geo-spiritual shift of a people that once were no people, that had no reputation that were considered to be part of the world that was extremely poor and disadvantaged. We believe that such a people is emerging from the different nations in the world and these people are scattered all over the earth. I do not think that boundaries are being redefined presently and what we see in the natural, the migration of people from certain parts of Asia to other parts of Asia, or from Africa to Europe, or from Europe Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �1 and Africa and Asia to the United States of America. I believe that what we are seeing in the natural is only what is about to take place in the spiritual. God has placed people strategically who were of no reputation for a time such as this. There is a fresh sound, a very clear blasting of the trumpet emerging from a people that were once not heard nor recognized, they are what I refer to as the “seven thousand and one company”, located in the earth they come from places like Africa, Austro-Asia, Asia, also Europe, the islands, the Americas, from the ends of the earth. God is raising up the indigenous nations, tribal peoples, the people that were marginalized and disenfranchised and colonized; God is raising them up for this season. We believe that God can raise a people of no reputation to antagonize those hegemonic nations who have become comfortable with being leaders in the purposes of God. We believe also that these “no reputation nations”, people groups, will provoke the dominate nations into a new form of spiritual jealousy and I think that Paul speaks about jealousy in that context where the Gentiles will be raised up to provoke the Jews to jealousy. We believe that the sound that will be released from environments like this will pierce the earth and confront illegal and illicit positions in the earth. Further, we in Africa have chosen to host this conference as a declaration of our intent that a new church is arising from the echelons of poverty to finance the purposes of God in the earth. That is why we have come here not to place emphasis on offerings and the budget of this conference is in excess in a hundred thousand dollars but we believe that Africa can finance it. We are not coming here with a beggars bowl, we are coming here like Egypt financed the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness, we also believe that the church in Africa can arise to finance God’s purposes in the earth. The poor church is now functioning in the abundance of joy, thereby generating the spirit which we refer to as the riches of liberality. So this summit is a declaration of this intent, countries like Africa and other poor nations will arise to come to a place of equalization in financing or putting finance at the feet of apostolic ministry so that God’s eternal purposes, His sovereign glory can be established all over the earth. With that I want to declare this apostolic leadership summit in Washington DC and the greater areas of this region, the United States of America, has officially opened. Will you stand with me as we bless the Lord and lift your hands and let’s bless Him. Won’t you declare that this conference is going to do things that brings glory to the Lord. The church is emerging from the place of desolation to restore order to the earth again and to Him be the praise, the glory and honor and all of creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Thank you please take your seats. Ten years ago we met in the same auditorium, a conference hosted by Eugene and Patrice Shepard, the Living Word Church and because they wanted to seek to bring in others and they conferred and dialoged with a friend of theirs called John Metcalf, who is not with us any longer, he has gone on to be with the Lord and John said, “Well I’ve heard Thamo and I’ve heard your apostle share the word but you haven’t heard my apostle and we can partner.” And that’s when Sam Soleyn was introduced to us and through the Shepard’s who are sitting here we had our first meeting ten years ago.So Sam, we know each other forever but exactly ten years. (laughter) But you know, when divine connections take place then you don’t measure that engagement by time, it seems like you then know each other for an eternity and that’s the only way I can describe my getting to know Dr. Sam Soleyn. And that was ten years ago where God joined our hearts, subsequently much has unfolded and it’s added value to our lives, I think he can reciprocate. It’s joined continents, it’s connected families which has been about two years ago formalized covenantally at a table over three days of dialogue and fellowship and that sealed the connectivity. And we respect Dr. Sam Soleyn as one Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �2 who is sent from God. While I know that he is a naturalized American and he is a resident of the United States of America but he does emanate from the islands, the Caribbean. And I’m of the personal opinion that in this season God has strategically positioned people in the different nations of the earth and arguably this the United States of America is the most influential of all nations, at least in the world that most of us live in. And I believe that a person like Dr. Sam Soleyn has been kept hidden from the rest of the world even though he is relatively well known amongst us here, been kept hidden for a time such as this and I believe that the veil of obscurity is being removed for a time like this so that his voice could be beamed by the Spirit to the ends of the earth. And we also recognize him as the medium through which we come to officially host conferences of this level and so we always look for a man of peace, who is a son of peace and who lives in a house of peace. And so people like Dr. Sagie, Rachel, myself and Mirolyn and those who are with us, we come to work with you and through you establish whatever God wants to do. We believe that there is protocol in the Spirit and that protocol also demands tonight that you officially share the first message. It’s our joy to receive you not as one, not from the United States of America but one sent from God to share the word of the Lord with us. Would you put your hands together for Dr. Sam. Sam Soleyn - I am a firm believer in the cycles of God and to me it is absolutely not a coincidence that here we are again and Thamo was sitting about where he was, I remember Marcel from Cape Town introduced him, and he was sitting about where he was. I went home after that meeting and I told my wife, I said, “I’ve met another of our kind in the earth.” Because there was a time when we wondered if we were the only of the kind in the earth. And I had received numerous invitations to come to the continent of Africa but never felt the lawful right to go except through the man of peace who came from Africa. This nation has a tremendous history with Africa and I believe God is unpacking that history now. We first saw natural indications of that, now we’re seeing the real intent of God and that is to combine the great strengths of diverse peoples into one spiritual house. We have one sound and it’s the same sound in the whole earth because it’s the frequency of heaven that is being reflected through the vessels that have been shaped and prepared for such a time as this and in this place ten years ago I heard that sound and it comforted me in a most profound way. And so I went to Africa to find out what were the origins of this sound, “what meaneth this?” And the rest has been a fatal attraction and in fact there’s more to that than meets the eye because recently I found out that running with the likes of Thamo and Sagie and I refer to them by first names but I have the greatest respect for these men, know who they are in the Spirit. But I found out that running with Thamo and Sagie can get you killed (laughter) because there was a plot in the city of Durbin undertaken by some ten leaders to murder Sagie and Thamo. Now Thamo was telling me about the plot to murder Sagie, he didn’t tell me about the plot to murder him and Sagie, that subsequently arose. You know he ignores, or conveniently forgets things like that in the same way that I conveniently forget to tell my wife the time when the engine blew up on a plane. But apparently four of the ten died on the way, well they were on the way to commit this crime, commit the murder of my friends and the car broke down and subsequently four died and the fifth came and confessed, public confession. And that’s how it came to be known. So I have this fatal attraction that might well get me killed accidentally, I’ve made a point to avoid Durbin. (laughter) Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �3 God is clearly convening a gathering in the earth today and the sound of it is distinctly different and the ones who are carrying the sound are also distinctly different. When have you heard from Africans that we’ve come to bring a message to the foremost nation on the face of the earth and we’ve come prepared to pay for it? Isn’t that a different sound? But I’m here to say that we’ve joined this sound and we’ll bear the burden with you, we’ll bear the burden of all the components of it, we’ll bear it along with you and this conference will not operate at a deficit. And we will not beg, we will give people the opportunity to bless the Lord by receiving the word and making the way of those who come to give it. Peaceful, you will not see the pulling and the tugging that have characterized meetings of this sort; these are not fund raising efforts nor are they meant to put on display personalities. A different spirit is in the earth and it’s resident within the house of God and those that God has placed under my oversight I speak to you now, not by command but by exhortation: join me in making sure that this conference will not operate at a deficit. We’ve already made that determination, I’m saying to the extent that you’re moved upon generously support the conference so we can dispense with that aspect of things going forward. The sound that is in the earth today is a reflection of the original intention of God for the creation of man. I observed and heard and received the greeting of our brother, the Mayor’s representative and heard in it a call from the political world for the church to be restored to her rightful place, to accuracy in representing the Lord in the earth. I take it: here is the central city of a nation that is the primary nation in the world and I hear a representative of this city say, “I wish that God would bless us by restoring the order of His house so that we have light to walk by in a nation and in the world.” And Thamo has already laid out that prophetic template, we intend to respond not just because we are charitably inclined but this is the time and this is the season in which God intends to bring forth the healing of the nations from a river of life. We are, the House of God, we are that life. The life that was in Christ is our life and that life is the light of men. Men walk in darkness and when it comes to the matter of sin, they acquiesce to sin because the darkness is already in them because the standard has been removed. But a people are coming forward to take up again the commission, “As the Father has sent Me so I send you” and the first thing they’re empowered to do, being sent as replacement of the Son, the Corporate Son replacing the singular Son or living the life of the singular Son, the first thing they do is they forgive sins. So instead of acquiescing to the sin because we’re helpless in the face of it, we’ll have the remedy which is to forgive the sin and bring back life because the wages of sin is death and any nation that is overcome by sin loses its way. It’s righteousness - accuracy of alignment with God - it is righteousness that exalts a nation and sin that causes the mightiest of nations to fall into the abyss. This is a time of restoration, this is a season of grace, God is raising up His house, He’s raising up His people and giving them again into the world as light. By definition, the thing that God is doing now will contrast with the thing that has represented God but fallen in decline. So we’re about to see comparisons whether or not we intend to compare. So to lay out the first of these messages tonight, I want to speak more prophetically more than I would as a teaching message, the casting of a vision. In the book of Ezekiel chapter 1 and going on through to chapter 3 there is a reference to four creatures. Four is the number of the corporate man, four men carried the ark of the covenant on their shoulders; God always intended a corpus, not just an individual but a corpus to carry the presence of God in the earth. So four whose appearance was that of a man but indeed they were spirits, they were spirits appearing in men, so it’s a type of mankind. Four faces, meaning four particularities to their spirit; the face of an eagle, which would suggest the prophetic, the ability to soar in the heavens Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �4 and to apprehend the sound of the heavens. The face of a lion which is the ability to rule in the realms that are given to you. The face of an ox, which speaks of persistence, unwavering, undeterred persistence. And they’re all packaged in a body that has the face of a man. Now in these creatures, in whom heaven and earth dwell, were followed by wheels and the wheels behaved in a manner consistent with the activities of the personages themselves, which is to say that inasmuch as wheels represent cycles, the beginnings and closings of epochs. God has entrusted the influencing of epochs into the hands of those who are His Corporate Son. Now there are great eternal things to be pursued and prosecuted in time but they are meant to be subject to the eternities of God which are placed in turn in the being of the Corporate Son. We are in the conclusion of one cycle and the beginning of another cycle. Wheels within wheels indicate that there are broader purposes in the outer permitters that are reflected within the inner perimeters, so our personal lives are connected to eternal cycles if we understand that within the same being is both heaven and earth; if we understand that within the one being is spirit and flesh. So tonight I want to step back from the administration and speak about the intent, the intent of the eternal cycles and I’ll start with when God said, “Let us make man in Our image, after Our own likeness.” Now God knows the end of every matter from the beginning so when God declares a thing it is the beginning of a cycle in time to initiate into time the thing that is already concluded in God. So time does not determine what God intends to do, time hosts the intentions of God. So the cycles, the wheels within the wheels, within the cycles of our existence we are privileged to entertain eternal purposes and once we see what the eternal purposes are then we shall not be moved, we shall be as a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season and it doesn’t matter what is going on in the dry places, we’ve reached the River of Life in the substrates of our existence. It’s time for the church to have once again an eternal perspective. So when God said, “Let us make man…” our common perspective on that is, and it goes on to say, “So God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” and out of the man He brought the woman and the two were one flesh. Our common perspective is, that was the image and likeness of God as God intended. No, no, no, see that was the seed by which then the cycles of time would produce the thing that God had before Him when He said, “Let Us make man,” because He knows the end from the beginning. So when God said, “Let Us make man in Our image and in Our likeness,” what was in His understanding? What was before Him that He was now going to initiate into the earth to produce in the concluding cycles of mankind the thing in the earth that was before Him in heaven? Clearly it was not a natural man because God is a Spirit. In seeing the image and likeness of God, from God’s viewpoint God initiated a process the conclusion of which was that when God looked in the earth He would see the reflection of Himself. When God started it He saw Himself in the earth. How otherwise is the thing the image and likeness? If you were to see your image and your likeness, what would it be? It would be as if you held up a mirror and looked at your reflection in the mirror. The earth is the mirror and God intended to hold it up…in the beginning God held it up and saw His image and His reflection and it was not of a man, it was of a spirit man, for God is Spirit. God saw in the earth before He initiated the creation of man, God saw an exact representation of Himself in the earth. And with that in mind He said, “Let Us initiate this thing that in the cycles of time will come back to this point.” Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �5 You say, “I knew we were going to hear strange things but I expected to wait until Sagie spoke.” (Laughter) But as Thamo has said, we are one; we’re not unified, we’re one. Now listen to this from the book of Ephesians. I’m going to Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians 1 Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus and he says, “For you were created in Christ Jesus before the foundations of the world to the praise of His glorious grace.” So before the earth was created, before God said, “Let Us make man,” and formed earth together, there was already existent in the mind of God the reality of Christ. Christ is a spirit, it’s the spirit that was in the man Jesus. Everyone of us has a spirit, it’s an endowment that comes out of the person of God. That endowment when it comes, comes when God elects to invest a thing and that thing becomes resident within us, that becomes our endowment, that becomes our investment; God divests and it comes to rest in us as an investment. If you like, as an investiture and it’s an investiture of total being. Because God gave man a spirit out of the person of God man had a resultant being, man “became” because God “gave”. The thing God gives, when it comes to rest in a being, is the totality of a persons being and it’s their spiritual identity. You were given a gift out of God because God intended to exist in the earth and show His glory in a particular form and He clothed you with a spirit which came out of His person and the nature of that investment is a reflection of the very person of God himself. That’s why you are the way that you are, that’s why you are inclined the way that you are. Now when your soul rules then you reject that and you proceed in what seems right to you but if you return then God has a place that He inhabits, it’s called your person and the entirety of your being serves that investment of God by putting who God is on display in that particular fashion. The gathering together of all these components is what the Body of Christ is meant to be corporately, it is meant to show the glory of God as God foreordained and as God predetermined. It is why in the end God having seen from the beginning, God having understood that He would have in the earth His image and His likeness carried in the Corporate Man. When God invested the being of Jesus with a Spirit it was unlike any other investment God ever released out of His person. Each of us has been given such an investment and it’s unique but the investment given into the person of Jesus was designed to reconcile all mankind to God to be the collection point, the ordering point, the assembling point of all of the interests of God in the earth. And that Spirit has a name, it’s called Christ because God determined that that Spirit would carry the fullness and the exclusivity of His joy and His glory. That’s why Jesus would pray, “Father glorify Me with the glory that I had with You before the foundations of the world.” And it’s why Jesus lived in the trajectory that His life took, as deliberately and as intentionally as He did, He understood that He had come to do the will of God. He understood that His purpose for being was to show the Father, He understood that He was the host so that He was the exact, complete expression of all that is in God. So the Scriptures say, “The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in bodily form.” And just as the first Adam entertained the fullness of the human form to produce humanity, so the fullness of the Godhead in spiritual reality existed in the person of Jesus Christ to produce reconciliation of the sons of God to the Father. And in the completeness of all of that, and obviously we’re not just speaking of an assembling, we’re also speaking of a functioning. The functioning of the Corporate Man putting the glory of God on display because that’s what God intends to put on display and He created for Himself the form by which this display would be exhibited in the earth and He ordained the times and the seasons. And so here we are, here we are in this epoch of time. Now this epoch has represented a long decline, there is no need for reconciliation if there’s no departure, reconciliation by its own intent speaks of two things; one is an accounting term which means to Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �6 come back to the measures and the standards and the other suggests a preexisting reality to which then the conformity is an accurate realignment. When a people has lost their way, what is necessary is that the standard be brought back. You cannot simply find in the collective wisdom of mankind the way back to God, all you do in the collective wisdom of the fallen is to create greater confusion as to what the way is and that frankly is quite descriptive of what we now have. By Twitter and Facebook we’re seeking to establish consensuses, so if you have thirteen million Twitter followers you can swing naked on a wrecking ball if you want to and you have immunity. (laughter) You know I go to South Africa to find things out from Sagie whats happening here in America. I tell you this, Thamo, many of you already know him, this is Sagie’s first time in America, you are in for a treat. But watch it, he’s a surgeon, he has an amazing ability with the knife. (laughter) So while you’re enjoying yourselves say, “I’m under anesthesia, this is laughing gas, (laughter) he is about to cut me.” (laughter) But laugh anyway. So we have formed standards that give us immunity. The collective wisdom of the fallen is not ever light to those who are in darkness. We must be brought back to the standard Who is the light of the world. The obvious seems to evade us anymore and that I think would clinically qualify for being neurotic. When you can’t see the obvious then you’re mentally deficient but the soul has no way of morphing and coming up to the levels of the spirit, there has to be a changed mindset and more particularly there has to be a reengaging of the mind that was in Christ. This spirit who was hosted in the person of the Lord Jesus, so much so that we call Him “The Christ” is the same spirit to which we have been joined and as a consequence we have the same mind, or at least we have access to the same mind. Now what that grants to us is not a mind of self preservation and it’s not even the mind of how we get along in the world; it gives us the mind of a son because the Spirit of Christ was released out of God to exist in the form of a son. While God who is capable of any manifestation that He chooses continued to view Himself as Father. Now to step back just a bit from that but not too far from it and not to go into it very deeply, all of the things about God that we might know, the thing that pleases God the most that we would know about Him is His love. Even the power of God serves the imperatives of His love because before He was known as the Son, He was known as the Word by whom the worlds were framed who made everything and without whom was not anything made that was made, who spoke and it was so, before He came as the Son He was that. But He came as the Son to submit to the Father who positioned Him as a Son that He might show who the Father is. So the Son would say, “I’ve come to show you the Father.” When we think of church today, we typically think of all we could do for God, or we think of how we could by gathering together exert influence over the cycles of men. These mistaken directions have to be retaken, we are here to show the Father but here is the thing, anyone who has the character of the Father needs but one commandment: to love the other as the Father has shown His love for you. Now in that is all law codified. When we understand that but that’s not the function purely of intelligence, it is that but way beyond that it is descriptive of the nature of being. If a person is this, what law is required for his living? What will he do who is like this? Who loves another (this is the standard) and it’s evinced by what happened at the cross where God loved the other (that would be us) more than He loved Himself (that would be Christ, who is God) while the other hated Him to the point of executing Him as an innocent. The point being that the love of God is not dependent on gratuitous behavior by anybody else, it eminates from the very nature of being. Keep in mind I’m saying to you when God said, “Let Us make man,” He intended to see this reflection in the earth, in a corporate people, that’s what will happen at the Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �7 conclusion of the cycle of mankind, God will see Himself in the Corporate Man perfectly reflected. So to initiate this thing in the earth, first He made Adam through whom He would have the material with which to work; the human being, a combination of heaven and earth, spirit and soul within a body in the earth. He understood that this would depart from Him so He made plans for the restoration, the Lamb was slain from the foundations of the earth because the purpose of seeing Himself reflected in creation was greater than the cost to Him of redeeming him. So He planned his redemption in order to salvage the purpose. Simple risk management, your purpose is greater so you pay the cost to insure the risk. He didn’t make man so He could save man, He made man knowing He had to save him but the purpose for which He made him is that transcendent purpose, “Let Us make him so that We will see the perfect reflection,” God is saying, “Who I am I will see in him.” Because the intent of God is to put on display in creation His love, that’s the intent of God. The set piece between which love flows, love is a state of being, it’s a completeness of being, it’s who God is. But love is an untested hypothesis unless it is actualized, like faith and hope, how do you know it exists? It becomes subject to display, you show your faith by your works, you show your love by your relationship. So out of this Spirit known as God He issued those particulars of being that allowed us to see, to touch, to feel and to apprehend the nature of love. While He retained the position of the Father, He issued a spirit who would come into the earth in the form of a person known as the Lord Jesus. That spirit would be called Christ, Messiach, Anointed One because He would come to reconcile all of the sons of God who would return to Him to Himself through this One. Now this One came as redeemer so part of what was required of Him was to suffer, to pay the price of those He would redeem; this preserves righteousness while satisfying the requirements of reconciliation. So the role of the son is to be obedient, obedience is not perfected in tranquility, it’s not perfected in predicability, it’s not furthered in environments of symmetry; obedience is always perfected through suffering, through asymmetry, what we call loosely “trials”. The nature of a trial is that it will bring out the worst that’s hidden in you because we don’t know it’s there otherwise, “after you’ve suffered a little while,” but suffered none the less. He learned obedience by the things He suffered. But while you respond properly in suffering you will grow in favor with God and man. A friend of mine used to say, “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t walk with a limp,” because he’s wrestled with God. And there’s no way for you to avoid this, you can’t see it coming. It’s not particularly profitable for you afterward to say, “I just don’t know why I didn’t see that coming.” (laughter) You know why? It wouldn’t have been suffering. Suffering is designed to increase your usage of the mind of Christ, we love the notion of being partakers of a divine nature but we quickly forget that part of the divine nature is in a mind, a mind that is intent on obedience to the Father because the Corporate Son…here’s the wonderful thing, we’re not inventing the genre you know. Who the Son was, who the Son is has been established for us two thousand years ago, you’re just being joined to that which is already existent and you are now the members of His Body to carry out what was incomplete in the sufferings of the One who came. That’s why the Scriptures say, Paul speaking, he was meant to fill up the measure of the sufferings of what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Don’t hear that as a comparison between the sufferings of Paul and the sufferings of Jesus, each one fills up the full measure but He left some for us (laughter) because in order to be conformed to Him we must also learn to adopt His mind. And in the mind of Christ, the imperative within the mind Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �8 of the spirit known as Christ, which is the spirit of a son, the intent is to reveal the Father, to reveal the Father. That’s the intent that was in His mind, it’s the intent that was in the mind of Paul, it’s the intent that’s in the mind of the Corporate Son in the earth and whoever is joined to the Corporate Son is going to in fact inherit the right to suffer. But our suffering is not pointless, our suffering is not meant to be just the reflections of God’s displeasure with us, it is meant to bring the soul back under the rule of the spirit so that the son may obey the Father with implicit trust at the same time the existing social culture all over the earth would be the culture of the fatherless. Do you see any connection between the two? When God sees the perfect reflection of Himself in the earth in a Corporate Son, that Corporate Son will inhabit an earth in which the dominant social culture will be that of orphans, fatherless. The offering of this Son to the world is a one-to-one relationship between the need and the solution. That is why the Corporate Son, raised up in His time, will be the light of the world. It’s in the Corporate Son who has the mind of the Father that mankind will beat their swords into plowshares. No other configuration of humankind could ever result in peace because it lacks the mind of God and when it does the result in the human is always the culture of the orphan and the standard within the orphan is “me first” and that inherently destroys any notion of being able to trust another and all of human effort falls down at that threshold. But whoever will love another more than he loves himself while the other hates him is the light of the world and when a people arise who can model this behavior, not just individually but corporately, then the nations of the earth will see in the polity of a Holy Nation what wherein lies their hope for mankind. We’re gathered here tonight from all of the continents of the world, we’re a diverse people, a seedling if I may say so, a plant that has the promise of producing a Holy Nation. This is our moment. Eugene and Patrice started this ten years ago in this very place, they agreed with, coalesced with John Metcalf, the late John Metcalf and as a result of their collaboration mighty things pushed into motion in the earth. And from that effort joining us together a people, you are in a sense I believe this is a first fruits company. We’re not here to contend with the nation, we’re not here to rail against policy, we’re not here to turn back the clock with regrets and wishful thinking. We embrace the hope of heaven and we embrace it in our hearts as a seed given by God based upon the promise that when God considered what He was going to do in the earth He already knew the end of that from the beginning. And what He saw was a people coming out of the peoples of the earth to come together, being assembled not because they intend to have good feelings and think good thoughts about one another but because they were one having been made so by an assembly to the spirit of the Son. And in that moment when such a thing appeared on the earth it would simultaneously be light to the nations, hope arising. It is mankind as trees of the field clapping their hands when they see the oak of righteousness arising. It’s destined to occur, it’s subject to the cycles of wheels within wheels, it is the inevitability, it was known from the beginning and in the end it shall be so. We will see what God has always known, our eyes will behold the glory of the coming of the Lord, for the Lord whom we seek will come to His dwelling place. It is in this time, it is in this season that we have come. This is a vision here at the beginning of this time together, here at the beginning of this apostolic school, it is a vision to be received, to be nurtured, to be lived within. It is a description of an ambit or an ark that will mark out our individual lives and we will coordinate the revolutions of our daily activities to be in harmony with Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �9 the eternal revolutions of God that bring about the end from the beginning within the framework of human time. The promise of this thing in the earth is almost more glorious than our eyes can behold, it’s almost more glorious than our minds could conceive. Jesus walked this reality while He was here on the earth. He trusted the Father, He subjected Himself to the obedience of the Father, He suffered as He did and He was brought to maturity. And when He was brought to maturity, in that fateful day when John baptized Him, baptism itself being an act that simulates death and resurrection. The tenure of the Son of Man had come to its conclusion and He was buried, the Son of God was elevated as it were out of the grave because heaven responded by saying, “This is My Son,” so He was no longer Mary’s son, Mary would now have to be subject to her son; the Son of Man had become the Son of God. And for three years He revealed the Father, He revealed the intentions of the Father who loves us to the point where He would require that perfect Son to lay down His life that we also might be reconciled. And the reason Jesus did not reject the cross was because in Him was the spirit of sonship, He knew the intention of His Father, so He embraced the cross though He despised the shame of it, trusting that God would raise Him up from the dead and indeed God did. Because when a thing is raised up, when a thing becomes resurrected it exponentializes, a seed becomes a tree. The thing that contains the potential becomes the reality but there’s a growing season before the fruit becomes evident and testifies as to the nature of the tree. So we are now coming up and we may be a seedling, a sapling of a company but we hold the potential of all that was in the person of Jesus Christ to be displayed in an age. The fruit of our corporate lives will display the glory of God to an age, an age in which it is absolutely necessary. Now the first time that Jesus handed off the responsibility for this to a company was in John 20:21, there He came to the disciples in the evening of His resurrection. This is the Great Commission as spoken to in John, in the evening of the resurrection Jesus came to them and He breathed on the them and among the things He said was, “Now as the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.” Thamo has used a word that we in America, especially in the American west, do not think of it quite in the terms in which he uses them but it’s an absolutely accurate way of describing it. He uses the word “deputy” or deputize. In the west we think of a deputy as more of a cowboy who goes running after the bad guys, Gunsmoke and things like that, but the accurate usage of the word is what he says, it’s a deputy, it’s one who functions as the other; one who functions by the authority, one who functions for the purpose of, one who is the presentation of the absent one. So the first time Jesus deputized a company it was when He deputized the twelve and He said, “As the Father has sent Me, so now I am sending you.” In short, “You are My current iteration.” In other words, “It’s not even there’s you and Me, there’s now Me appearing as you, I am appearing as you.” So don’t shoot the deputy, (laughter) or should I say from the islands, “So don’t shoot the deputy man.” (laughter) That doesn’t mean it’s ok to shoot the sheriff (laughter). We’re the deputies. Now note what He said after that and this is what you would say to a deputy, this is what you would say to a shalia, this is what you would say to the one who comes in your name. “In your name” means “by your authority”, to do what you yourself would do had you elected to come as yourself, “Whosever sins you forgive, will be forgiven; and whosever sins you retain, will be retained.” Now the reason I go to that is not to stir controversy but to point out a fact; when you do not know the difference between sin and righteousness you can’t judge anything, so you say, “Who am I to judge?” because you’re overwhelmed by the condition in the face of which you are powerless. When you come in your own name you’re always powerless and you can only find a way to accommodate yourself in the other. When you come in your own name you can only find your reflection in the other and whatever authority you have Apostolic Leadership Summit - session 1 - Sam Soleyn �10