Ephesians 4 Still Requires Apostles and Prophets — We Haven’t Gotten There Yet
Paul said the church needed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers until we “all come in the unity of the faith.” We haven’t come to unity. The offices are still required.
Ephesians 4:11–13
“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
The word “till” (&Greek; mechri) is a temporal marker. It establishes a termination condition. The offices are needed UNTIL unity of faith is achieved. Paul is not saying the offices are temporary by nature — he is saying they serve a purpose that has a completion point.
The question, then, is not whether Paul thought the offices would eventually be unnecessary. The question is: has the condition been met? Has the church come to unity of faith?
The Test
Protestantism is divided into hundreds of distinct ecclesiastical traditions and dozens of major families — Lutheran, Reformed and Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and more — each teaching different things about salvation, baptism, the nature of God, the afterlife, the authority of scripture, and the requirements of discipleship. Calvinists and Arminians. Baptists and Lutherans. Cessationists and charismatics. They cannot agree on whether infants should be baptized, whether speaking in tongues is a sign of the Spirit, or what happens to a believer who falls into persistent sin. (The figure of “40,000 denominations” sometimes cited here is a misreading: the World Christian Encyclopedia’s own mid-level taxonomy lists roughly 300 major ecclesiastical traditions, and its tens-of-thousands count is a per-country tally that lumps in Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and others — not a tally of Protestant bodies. See this analysis.)
The unity of the faith Paul described has not been achieved. Not even close.
By Paul’s own standard, the offices are still needed. A church that abolished apostles and prophets abolished them before the stated purpose was achieved. That is not obedience to Paul. That is contradiction of him.
The Protestant Answer and Why It Fails
The standard Protestant response is: “Apostles were only for the foundational period of the church. Once the canon was established, the apostolic office ceased.”
This answer has two fatal problems.
First, Ephesians 2:20 says the church is “built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets.” A foundation is not removed after construction. It is what the building stands on permanently. Paul’s metaphor argues for the permanence of the foundation, not its removal.
Second — and more importantly — if apostles were only needed for the foundation period, Paul would not have attached a temporal condition in Ephesians 4:13. He would have said “until the canon is complete” or “for the first generation of the church.” He said “till we all come in the unity of the faith.” That condition has not been met. The offices are still required by Paul’s own logic.
The Restoration Fulfills the Requirement
The Restoration did not create new offices. It restored the offices Paul described as permanently necessary. The same apostolic structure: Twelve Apostles, a First Presidency, a Quorum of Seventy. The same prophetic office. The same priesthood authority. The same pattern of direct communication from God to his servants.
Not because Joseph Smith invented it. Because Ephesians 4 requires it. Because 1 Corinthians 12 describes the body of Christ as having many members with distinct functions — and a body without structure is not a body. It is parts.
The question is not whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has apostles and prophets. It does. The question is why every other church that reads Ephesians 4 doesn’t.
Verdict
Paul’s logic is clear: the offices persist until unity of faith is achieved. We haven’t achieved it. The hundreds of divided traditions are not evidence that the offices are no longer needed — they are evidence of what happens when the offices are removed.
The Restoration restored what was required. Protestantism abolished what was required and called it progress. Paul called it something else: “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” (Ephesians 4:14)
That is a description, not a prediction. And it fits exactly.