Paul went to Jerusalem "in response to a revelation." This could refer to a direct communication from God that he received, whether in a vision or in some other form, or it could refer to a revelation conveyed to him through another person. If Galatians 2 corresponds to Acts 11, then Paul might be referring to the prophecy of Agabus. And if our passage corresponds to Acts 15, then he might be referring to some direct or mediated revelation that occurred amidst the controversy with the Judaizers at Antioch (v. 1-2).

Sometimes commentators assume that if an event mentioned in one place of Scripture corresponds to an event mentioned in another place, then a particular detail mentioned in the former must be referring to the same thing in the latter. But this is unwarranted. Thus, for example, even if the visit to Jerusalem in Galatians 2 corresponds to the famine relief project in Acts 11:29-30, it does not suggest that this "revelation" in Galatians 2:2 must therefore be the prophecy of Agabus. For all we know, Paul could have been confronted with two, three, or several hundred direct and mediated revelations around the same time.

So Paul could be referring to the prophecy of Agabus – that is, if the visit to Jerusalem is the famine relief visit in the first place – but again it might not. In our context, the important point is that Paul went in response to a divine instruction, and not because he was summoned by Jerusalem or because he considered it necessary to obtain approval for his message and ministry.

While in Jerusalem, he "set before them" the gospel that he preached among the Gentiles. As many commentators acknowledge, this cannot mean that Paul was seeking Jerusalem's approval, for otherwise this would undermine all that he has just said (1:11-24) and all that he will proceed to say (2:3-14), and would confirm the Judaizers' accusations and arguments against him.

But then, several commentators suggest that, although Paul was not seeking official approval for his message and ministry, he wishes to establish his solidarity with the apostles, and thereby offset the perhaps overly independent impression conveyed by the earlier verses. However, this misses Paul's emphasis in the passage, and appears to be a contrast imposed upon the text by interpreters who are accustomed to these categories because of their theological and cultural backgrounds, which are not always biblical, and who are thus suspicious of any sort of independence when it comes to ministry authority.

Prevailing theologies of ministry, calling and ordination, and church government usually fail to do justice to what Scripture really teaches about the source of a person's spiritual authority, and out of an implicit deism founded on cessationism, could not help but relegate the source and measure of spiritual authority to human institutions, such as denominations and seminaries.

All individual personalities in Scripture that seem to contradict this scheme are dismissed as exceptions, oddities belonging to a past dispensation. In many cases they have become the enemies of genuine spiritual authority, echoing the Pharisees in the days of the early church, who demanded even of Christ, "By what authority are you doing these things?…And who gave you this authority?" (Matthew 21:23).

If the condition of the post-resurrection church is fundamentally different than before, and in a way that affects this subject, there is no indication of this in Scripture. The religious authorities asked the apostles, "By what power or what name did you do this?" They answered, "It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" (Acts 4:7, 10), and not by the authority of the Jerusalem church, even though they had the church's full support. But nowadays Christians are more interested in hearing about the group to which one belongs and from which one derives his authority. They think this way not because they are upholding the biblical idea of the church, but because they are carnal and lack genuine spiritual power.

Theological reasons that have been offered for this mentality seem to suggest that after the apostles all believers have lost direct contact with Christ, and that the Catholics were correct after all. And even God is now forbidden to select individuals for special ministry apart from the usual denominational procedure. This has very little to do with guarding the sufficiency of Scripture, but it is about protecting man's traditions. And the way they think about spiritual authority would make church and ministry practically impossible in some countries. Their doctrine is based on tradition and culture. It does not respect God's sovereignty, Scripture's actual teaching, or the Spirit's freedom and power.

A corporate ministry model and a complex authority structure existed since Moses, but God sovereignly called prophets that, in many ways, operated independently of the usual authority structure. They were then accepted because of their calling, their message, their piety, and their fruit, even though they lacked the proper association with the accepted institutions. (That said, some of them they were indeed rejected during their ministries because they lacked the respected human associations and credentials.) Those who judged mainly by the latter were enemies of God's work, as represented by the Pharisees and the apostate priesthood of Jesus' time.

Again, it is argued that the coming of Christ had brought about certain changes, so that the same people who would crucify John the Baptist today as a renegade preacher would have refrained from doing so before the coming of Christ. But opponents to genuine spiritual authority used arguments very similar to what we find today against even the apostle Paul, who at times had to defend his call to the ministry, at times his position as an apostle, at times even his conversion, and that against those who claimed to be Christians.

A minister's authority is established, first, by the call of God. Since knowledge of such is sometimes private, and not subject to demonstration other than the person's own testimony concerning it, we may call this the subjective aspect or measure of the call. And second, the call is confirmed not by ecclesiastical recognition – this may or may not accompany it – but by the biblical standard concerning a minister's qualifications, which we may call the objective aspect or measure of the call. Let human credentials be damned, whether one possesses them or not. An extreme cessationism may reject any subjective sense of the call, but since such a doctrine cannot be substantiated from Scripture, and even turns Scripture against the Spirit, let it be damned as well.

Many legitimate ministers will face questions concerning their calling and authority, especially those who are commissioned to perform some unusual task or to subvert certain aspects of the established structure. May they never be swayed by human pressure to abandon their heavenly vision. Some of those who owe their structures and their traditions to someone like Martin Luther would have condemned him today by their very structures and traditions. And that is why they are not Martin Luther. Now they stand in the positions of the Pharisees and the Catholics. A danger not to be dismissed is the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

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