I think Christianity in general has added more hierarchical position to the term “apostle” than was originally intended. In the Greek it simply means “one who is sent away" or “an emissary” – probably more along the lines of our word “missionary”. Jesus had his twelve disciples that he later sent out as apostles that were foundational to the church. This foundational role is further highlighted in Revelation 21:14 where they are called the twelve apostles of the Lamb. A startling omission in the foundational twelve mentioned in Revelations is the Apostle Paul - who much of Christianity has assigned more weight to his teaching than to Jesus or his twelve apostles. An equally startling inclusion in the list of apostles is Junias in Romans 16:7 – a woman, God forbid. The latter has created all sorts of trouble for translators trying to maintain male supremacy in the church, insisting the apostle is the top of the hierarchy and women are second class citizens – something Jesus never taught.
As has been mentioned numerous times on this site, Jesus completely reversed the human concept of hierarchy and taught that if you want to be the greatest in the Kingdom, be the servant of all. In contrast, you have the Nicolatians mentioned in Revelation whose name can be translated to mean “to rule over the laity”. (See [
www.lightsource.com] for a further discussion.) The Nicolatians liked to dabble in the occult and change Jesus’ teachings so that God judged His people for their disobedience. Like Balaam knew, God’s people have an immunity, unless you can get them to disobey God, and then God will deal with them.
Much of what we called spiritual warfare in TLWF was nothing more than the consequences of dabbling in the occult and calling it the School of the Prophets, praying for others death or cursing them and having it circle back around – there’s a spiritual law behind loving your enemies, or advocating divorce as a pathway to the Kingdom and trashing lives, especially of the kids involved. The fruit has been horrendous – unless you bury your head in the sand and choose only to look at those who are still under the spell with you. After all, everyone else is evil and are only getting what they deserve for not submitting to Christ in the flesh. Loving your enemies is no longer valid if they leave your group and it will necessitate getting into small groups and screaming for their destruction - even if it doesn't work. :)