In the Charismatic Churches, Dominionistic New Apostolic “apostles and prophets” are rising up and declaring that they’re going to lead the church into perfection. Like the Emergents, they also are calling for a paradigm shift, and a new “reformation” in Christianity. Their views are extreme. One of their main beliefs is that when the bride of Christ “realizes” who she is in Christ, she is going to be transformed. There is something to be said about acknowledging the facts regarding our position in Christ as it relates to our approach to God. However, in their view, there is a “realization” or an “inward knowing” that can be achieved that will bring the “reality” of our position into “manifestation.” This is basically Gnosticism – where inward knowledge leads to salvation as an attainment. When this occurs, they believe they will manifest powers greater than anything see on earth before, including the miracles of Moses. They’re even going so far as to say that they will be a transformed “army”, manifested as the Sons of God on earth, walking amongst us as glorified immortals and leading the Church. They believe this group will call down the judgements in the tribulation, executing the judgement of God and ultimately establishing of the kingdom of God on earth. In the NAR, practices forbidden in the Bible, such as witchcraft, divination, dealing with familiar spirits and even in some cases necromancy are being brought in and given Biblical sounding justifications and cloaked in Christian sounding terminology. They bring new revelations to the table delivered to them supposedly by Angels and visitations with Christ Himself. These also show much interest in the Mystical practices of the hermit fathers of the 2nd and 3rd century.
As “out there” as this sounds, this has been mainstreamed in the Charismatic church. The Assemblies of God condemned the “manifested sons of God” theology as aberrant many years ago. Each time it has been rejected, it’s been renamed and brought back in, sometimes as the Latter Rain, other times as the “Third Wave” or Joel’s Army or Bridal Theology, or a number of other names. The theology surrounding it has become more sophisticated and more systematic as the years have gone one. It’s prophets have been the chief vehicles through which a series of well known “revivals” happened in the Charismatic Churches, such as Toronto, Brownsville and Lakeland. These spiritual moves were characterized by strange supernatural manifestations, very similar to the kundalini manifestations seen in East. In this movement these manifestations have continued and gotten even stranger. It is common in some settings to have manifestations of gold dust, oil appearing on people’s skin, and strangely, feathers materializing. These are all manifestations in line with what the Gurus such as Sai Baba were able to produce for their followers in India. They have nothing to do with the Gospel or anything remotely Biblical, but they are accepted by many Charismatics as the Holy Spirit. These “Prophets” speak forth the boldeset and most outlandish things in Christ’s name. They encourage interaction with Angels, and use a lot of terminology that is found in the New Age and the occult. They speak of “portals” in the heavens, regions having spiritual properties, receiving anointings from dead people, and many other occultic concepts. They use allegorized Old Testament passages to dress these things up in a “Biblical” veneer.
Peter Wagner,The lead “apostle” of this movement, who coined the term “new apostolic reformation” was also one of the founding thinkers of the purpose driven movement. I’ll say this a few times throughout these sections – when the connections are explored it becomes clear that there is a network among these leaders and although they seem to be going in very different directions, they’re really just seeming to go in these directions to cast a wider net. All of them have global ambitions regarding the transformation of the church.
In both of the above movements (Emergent and NAR) it can be demonstrated that networks of people posing as “ministers of righteousness” are deliberately bringing the esoteric mysteries of the Satanic Babylonian (“New Age”) spirituality into the church, dressed in the guise of Christian terminology. We will discuss this a little more in a couple of chapters.
These are major trends in protestant Christianity today. In fact, as you dig into them you will discover that they are the major trends. They seem to be very different on the surface. However, it can be demonstrated that they are led by a network of people ware in league and in deliberate coordination with each other. Space does not allow for it here.
If you do not believe that decades of this influx has had a difference on the Evangelical church, consider George Barna’s report. He is probably the most respected statistician who records trends in Christianity. He says that only 17% of Christians have a Biblical worldview, and at least 30% of those who call themselves Christians believe that anyone who prays is praying to the same God, regardless what name they call upon! In this kind of environment, someone passionate for biblical truth is eventually most unwelcome.