In your Wednesday night class, you are getting good class participation.

On March 18, as you talked about Christians’ giving testimonies, somebody in the class brought up the word "witness," and said he would look it up on his computer. The words can be synonyms (martureo). A witness gives testimony. Christians today are not eye-witnesses of a resurrected Christ, as were the apostles (Acts 1:8, 22; 10:41) and "more than five hundred brothers" (1 Corinthians 15:6), but, as you brought out, Christians today can give testimony of the "many things the Lord has done for" them (Mark 5:19).

About 96 A.D. Antipas, a Pergamus Christian, who likely had never seen Jesus, was a "witness" (martus, Revelation 2:13, NIV); a "martyr," KJV). On Saturday, Feb. 23, 155 A.D. (Barclay, I, 93), Polycarp, a Smyrna Christian, gave his testimony about Jesus even as flames leaped up around him: "Eighty and six years I have served him, and he has never done me wrong. How can I deny him now?"

The usual distinction between clergy and laity is not biblical. The word "clergy" (a derivative of kleros, a lot, a portion) is used in 1 Peter 5:1-3 to describe all Christians under the care of elders. The KJV has "God’s heritage," and the NASV has "those allotted to your charge." It follows then, that all Christians are God’s clergy, his lot, his portion of humanity. Your goo point that all Christians, not just preachers or elders, are to be soul-winners, is biblical: "He that wins souls is wise" (Proverbs 11:30).

However, as one holds fast to "the form of sound words" (2 Timothy 1:13), it is not biblical to that all Christians are "ambassadors" (2 Corinthians 5:20). An ambassador has authority to speak for his government, and only Jesus’ apostles had binding and loosing authority (Matthew 18:18). Now, in the period of regeneration, only the twelve "sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of [spiritual Israel" (Matthew 19:28), becoming thirteen (Romans 1:1; Galations 2:8). The Lord promised to be with the apostles, not merely until their deaths, but "to the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20).

The word presbueo, "to be an ambassador or envoy, was used especially of the emperor’s legates" (B-G-D, 699). A worried king might send an "ambassge" (Luke 14:32, KJV) to another king, seeking conditions of peace. The person of an ambassador was inviolable, but Paul was "an ambassador in chains" (Ephesians 6:20).

But the fact that no Christians today technically is an ambassador for Christ in nowise minimizes the fact that all Christians have the glorious privilege and honor to testify to anyone who will listen that Christ is "precious" (1 Peter 2:7, KJV). At one time, with no apostle in the group, as Frank Roberts pointed out, both men and women "went everywhere preaching [euangelidzo, "evangelizing] the word" (Acts 8:1-4).