The Rise of a New Apostlic Gift by Garris Elkins

The terrorist attacks in Paris have given us a glimpse into a new and unfamiliar future. As our collective head turns looking for direction many solutions are being offered. Much of what is coming forth are solutions sourced in historic remedies that were used in the past, but will not be able to stem the tide of the much larger hydra-headed issues facing our world.

In the last several decades, many in the Church have turned to cultural anthropologists and historians for direction.  While their insight is interesting, they can only offer insight from history – from the known data of the past.  They offer a way forward based only on the predictable and limited database of history.

Historic data has a problem – it lacks the prophetic insight of fresh revelation. Prophecy by its very nature reveals what is not yet known. We are in one of those moments where we need revelation. We are engaging battles without traditional frontiers. Terrorists are not fighting from recognized battlefronts that line the physical geography of a nation.  They can kill in a café or a concert hall. Hunger is no longer “over there”, but down the street behind the façade of what appears to be Middle America. Lives are being sexually trafficked beyond the glitz of Vegas in the small towns once poetically painted by the brush of Norman Rockwell.

In this confusing landscape of a rapidly changing and frontier-less world culture, a new apostolic gift is rising.  This gift will not seek solutions by first going to the records of history or to available research data to find its answer.  These new apostles will first listen to what the Spirit is saying. This will be their first action step. From a place of revelation they will craft a way forward.

What is happening is part of a much larger reformation taking within the Church.  This reformation will require a departure from our dependence on the predictable patterns of history to find a way forward. As this takes place, these new apostles will be revealed to us when they approach what appears to be an impenetrable cultural frontier and are able to step through its restrictive barrier into a previously undiscovered future our known history was not able to predict.