Question:

Dear Moriel.org

I have much appreciation and thanks for the service your site provides to the Church at large.
I think your article opposing cessationist doctrine entitled "When That Which is Perfect has Come"  is excellent. In your archives you also have a repost of a Sandy Simpson article regarding NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) entitled "A Case of Piocchio's Nose". While I am not a NAR adherent and believe the article to be sound, there's one scripture passage not mentioned in the article that I am hoping you are willing to address. You may refer to it in other articles, but it would be helpful if Moriel and/or Sandy Simpson would speak to the following:

Ephesians 4:11
New King James Version (NKJV)
11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,

If not clear, here's my reason for referring to the two articles. In the article opposing Cessationist doctrine, the case is made (quite well) opposing their position of the ceasing of spiritual gifts. On the same site (in this case, Moriel.org) is a case against the NAR movement, a movement, which by all accounts, would side with your position against Cessationist doctrine. Therefore, how should one view the Ephesians passage referenced above? Are some given apostles, prophets, etc., to this very day, just as the gifts are given to this day (as the Spirit wills)? Or is there a good explanation for why we would still have evangelists, pastors, and teachers, but not apostles and prophets?

I hope my tone is take is inquisitive, not hostile. Again, I appreciate the site and the great Biblical truths espoused within its pages. I hope it's not too much for me to request this clarification.

Answer:

Thank you for your question. The answer however, while in one sense straightforward once we properly comprehend all of the ingredients in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), is complex in properly configuring those ingredients. It takes a fairly competent chemist to identify an intricate compound by an analysis of its structural formula, its ionic bonding, and how and why its elemental atoms join and molecularly configurate losing bi products in the reactions.   Breaking down NAR, which is a complicated amalgamation of its various comprising errors, why differing false doctrines and their proponents bond etc., is the theological  equivalent   Hexachloraphene is a basic household chemical used in pesticides and as antiseptics and is easily understood. How other elements combine to form it   however is not so simple.

Thirty years ago hexachloraphene was commonly looked on as harmless to humans in diluted amounts and was advertised as a good ingredient in health care and pharmaceutical products containing it. We now know it is a more serious toxin that can even kill and can be particularly lethal to children.   The NAR is the same. It seems to have good effects initially in the estimation of some people. But its long term effects are adversely negative and potentially lethal. But it too is complex to understand.

Hexachlorophene

The New Apostolic Reformation

An in depth explanation of NAR would not be expedient by e mail.   We would advise you to obtain the Moriel recorded teaching "Kingdom Now & The Restoration Movement".

The NAR is essentially a USA based reinvention of the British Restoration Movement with its "apostles & prophets" restoration combined with its elements of Dominion (Kingdom Now) theology. This "Restorationism" with its replacementist ecclesiology and over realized eschatology were partially influenced by George Eldon Ladd and Austin Sparks; or some would say distortions extrapolated from Sparks and Ladd by taking their ideas to their natural conclusions beyond what Ladd and Sparks actually advocated themselves. They were also taken in by lunatic fringe theology from the Haughton Brothers, George Warnock, and people influenced by William Branham. All restoratioinists embraced the counterfeit revivals from Toronto and most to some degree found alliances with Word-Faith money preachers influenced by E W Kenyon.

Using essentially hyper charismatic prophetic claims of supposed revelation and gnostic hermeneutics, former Plymouth Brethren figures who became extreme charismatics such as Gerald Coates, Roger Forster, Bryn Jones, Terry Virgo, Barney Coombes in the UK and Hudson Salisbury in New Zealand and other seriously false teachers and false prophets became the cultic "apostles and prophets" of the Restoration Movement. In the would be theology of restoration, not only did the church supercede Israel to the negation of any prophetic purpose for Israel, but the statements of Acts 1 asking when the Kingdom would be restored to Israel was taken as meaning the kingdom would be restored to the church.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic at Fuller Seminary in California, the late deceiver John Wimber and C. Peter Wagner were pioneering unscriptural strategies for church growth based on programmatic formulas. Wimber pushed ''signs & wonders' while Wagner, corrupting the original views of Donald McGavern, had the notion that by going to countries where there was explosive Evangelical church growth in Latin America and transplanting the model, other countries could get the same result, paying no heed to the fact that revival was a sovereign outpouring of God's Spirit. These ideas soon morphed under the incipient influences of Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, and Rick Warren into   formulas for church growth based on marketing and psychology borrowed from unsaved marketing guru Peter Drucker and various New Age influenced motivational speakers such as Ken Blanchard. This of course was a natural bed fellow for "word faith" claiming of growth by Branhamite money preachers such as Kenneth Hagin, and the Korean Yongee Cho (now under indictment in Korea for fraud) and the the visualization techniques he claimed to receive from mystical Buddhists and Hindus at the behest of Jesus where growth could be visualized and claimed by faith. At the same time, Wimber propounded experiential theology and found partners in this in the pseudo charismatic mysticism of Mike Bickel (a theological gnostic in his mishandling of scripture) and The Kansas City false prophets, including womanizer Bob Jones and the homosexual alcoholic Branhamite Paul Cain who is in some sense the ghost of a twisted earlier figure called AA Allan. Another figure who came into play in this circle at the time was proven false prophet Rick Joyner (essentially the American equivalent of Britain's Gerald Coates). Others such as Che Ahn, Bill Johnson, and Francis Chan arrived later.

Although not actually in NAR, those who are once again find common ground with figures sharing some of their unscriptural ideas such as Emergent church leaders Brian Maclaren and Dan Kimbell and Rick Warren's followers such as Mark Driscoll, the Calvinist John Piper, Rob Bell   and others which is why we so often see them sharing conference platforms in a kind of "convergence".

C. Peter Wagner became pivital, despite the fact his ideas by the very church growth evaluation standards seeking to statistically quantify such growth developed at Fuller by Wagner's predecessor Donald Mac Gavern, simply do not work. The result of marketing based growth formulas, attempts to transplant revival etc. are statistically shown  to be programs that only result in fizzled fads proven to be counterfeit revivals such as in Toronto, Pensacola, and Lakeland (usually ending in financial and/or moral scandal), and transfer growth of people leaving one church for another to see the latest show in town.   More ludicrous still was that the groweth of Evangelicalism in Latin America was people leaving Roman Catholicism as a false religion and converting to Pentecostalism, while Wagner is staunchly ecumenical; he did not even copy what he claimed to copy.

In any event, British Restorationism and American Church Growth met to form what we now call NAR in August of 1990 when Wimber came to London with Bickel and the Kansas City false prophets aligning with the British restorationist apostles and prophets and ecumenical figures such as Nicky Gumbel, David Pytches, Mark Stibbe, Colin Dye, and Sandy Miller. They made huge failed prophetic predictions to take place in October of that year that never transpired along the lines Joyner was doing in the USA and Gerald Coates had done in the UK and in New Zealand (we document this in my first book; "The Final Words of Jesus"). The three things they tried to restore that never existed were:

• An unscriptural version of apostolic authority that was essentially autocratic leadership that led to a cultic variation of heavy shepherding. Biblical apostolic authority was not that, and was among other things plural (sent out in pairs and accountable) with a distinction between the apostles who were trained by Jesus personally (such as the 12 and Paul) to define Christian doctrine and inspired by the Holy Spirit to author the New Testament and ordinary apostles (sent out ones) who were also accountable, sent out in pairs, and were merely church planting missionaries.  
• Prophetic authority where religious deceivers with lying spirits such as Rick Joyner, Paul Cain, Mike Bickel, Gerald Coates etc. could predict things that failed to happen and still be called prophets who were allowed to prophesy further.
• Dominion theology / Kingdom Now - the bogus view drawing on a combination of post millennialism, extreme preterism, replacement theology, charismania, and ultra Calvinist reconstructionism of false teachers such as Rousses Rushdooney, Gary North, David Chilton, Greg Bahnson and others. This is why we see certain Reformed Calvinists subscribing to dominionism embraced by domionist charismatics such as the financial scandal ridden anti Israel preacher Rick Godwin. These views unite the crazy old Manifest Sons/ Manchild idiocy rejected as heretical by early Pentecostalism (but later defended by theologian Jack Deere on behalf of Bickel when Deere gnostic hermeneutics in order to do so) with Dominionism. ultra preterism, and hyper charismatic extremism and experience based theology (called "Neo Montasnism")   .

None of these things emerged from a vacuum. NAR is the result of a convoluted and diverse series of 20 years of evolved cross fertilizations from both the USA & Canada and the UK containing elements from New Age and Eastern mysticism, pop psychology, secular marketing programmatics, ecumenism and inter faith eclecticism,   post modernism, and revived ancient heresies that plagued the early church.

There were pharmaceutical research chemists and specialist consultant physicians expert in toxicology who blew the whistle on hexachloraphene. The average user did not understand it as bad because it seemed to 'kill germs'. The NAR is much the same. The average Christian just does not have the means to understand it. It seems good.

Some people who were in it such as Andrew Strom at least partially saw through it. Others such as Warren Smith, Ray Yungen and Roger Oakland grasped how it was strongly seasoned by New Age thought and a resulting spiritual seduction. Other like Philip Powell understood how it was the second attempt by Branhamite lunacy to take over Pentecostalism after Satan's first attempt failed in the nineteen forties and fifties. Others like the late Dave Hunt and John Mac Arthur have perceived it as

" New Thought" paradigm shift theology. Certain academics theologians such as DA Carson have dissected some of its doctrinal origins while Christians commonly called "researchers" such   as Sandy Simpson, Mike Oppenheimer, Jackie Alnor, Sarah Leslie, Carol Matriciano, and Jewel Grewe have embarked on the impossible task of documenting its genesis. The first to attempt to chronicle its history as it was developing was the late David Forbes and Dr. Clifford Hill in Great Britain. All of these believers  correctly viewed NAR from different aspects and perspectives and have tried to warn the church. This has been a formidible challenge indeed. Satan is building what the New Testament calls 'Babylon The Great' and the multi legged centipede we call the NAR is its presently its pseudo Evangelical component; how be it - not the only one.

Hexachloraphene is not an innocuous compound that achieves good as many thought. It is a dangerous one that only appears to achieve good at the expense of very serious harm. Its bio chemical impact is physiologically noxious and hazardous to the young especially. The NAR is exactly the same. Its is spiritually and theologically noxious and its consequences are particularly detrimental to the young believers whom wolves like Wagner, Bill Johnson, Bickel, and Joyner like to target. As with Hillsong in Australia, it is the young people who get hurt first and worst. When the leading NAR leaders Rick Joyner, Peter Wagner, Che Ahn, and Bill Johnson with the televised support of Wendy and Rory Alec predictively made false prophecies over Todd Bentley, Bentley immediately abandoned his handicapped wife and his three children and married the adultress he was involved with who is now "prophesying with him" having been "restored" to ministry by NAR leader Rick Joyner as his abandoned children are left fatherless. Mark Stibbe, pastor at St. Andrews Chrorleywood in England who embraced this in this UK (as he and St. Andrews have embraced every other deception), Stibbe left the church to head a ministry to 'fatherless children' but almost immediately, following his hero Todd Bentley, abandoned his own wife and his own children.

There is question about it: Hexachloraphene is very harmful to young people.So is the NAR:

NAR = HEXACHLOROPHENE

J. Jacob Prasch/Moriel