History of the New Apostolic Reformation, part 1: Revival

(en español / Spanish version)

Within the Protestant Evangelical world in the United States, there is a high level of awareness of something called the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR). Books, articles, websites and videos analyze its teaching, identify its errors, and warn Christians not to get involved in it or let it infiltrate their churches. Until quite recently, Catholic clergy and leading Catholic theologians have appeared to be completely unaware that the NAR even exists. When they hear about this movement with its emphasis on signs and wonders, “supernatural healing,” “dominion” theology, “prophecy,” “impartation,” and the like, they assume that they are dealing with non-Catholics. This is no longer a safe assumption. NAR teachings and practices are rapidly spreading within the Catholic church. They are being taught and promoted by some of the fastest-growing new institutions within the Catholic Church in North America and around the world. Thanks to the concerted efforts of these groups, the non-Catholic theology of the NAR is gaining ground within the Catholic Church, and is being inculcated in Catholics who attend schools, camps, and retreats, listen to podcasts and radio shows, read new books by NAR-Catholic authors, and watch online videos.

In this post I begin a brief history of the NAR. In tracing its development in a chronological fashion, while attempting to sketch its intellectual genealogy, we may identify two main threads that will eventually become interwoven. These threads are Revival and the Word of Faith movement. Today, I’ll focus on

Revival

The Azusa Street Revival (1906-1909) in Los Angeles, while not the earliest manifestation of the Pentecostal movement, was the place where it took off and came to public notice. It also gave birth to two major Pentecostal denominations, one of which would play a large part in the history of the NAR: the Assemblies of God. In Azusa Street, speaking in tongues as evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit signaled the restoration of spiritual gifts long lost to the Church. The ministry of Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson (1890-1944) helped to promote Pentecostalism, while her emphasis on faith healing brought that practice to the attention of the general public. John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), another forerunner of Pentecostalism, believed that the apostolic offices and spiritual gifts that characterized the primitive church, including the gift of healing, were being restored in his day. The British evangelist Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947), another pioneer of pentecostalism, made a lasting contribution to the theological foundations of the NAR with his teaching on manifesting the power of God. The work is still in print; the publisher of the current edition calls the book, “your invitation into a lifestyle of supernatural power.”

Immediately following the Second World War, and contemporaneously with the rise of Billy Graham’s ministry, leading figures appeared who would pave the way for the NAR, including the healing revivalists Oral Roberts and William Branham. In 1947-48, there took place what may be called the foundational moment of the NAR: the Latter Rain Revival. This event involved leaders and students at a small institution, the Pentecostal Sharon Orphanage and Schools in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Its founders, who had met with and been influenced by Branham, had previously been affiliated with a Bible College under the oversight of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Canada, but the leaders of that denomination disapproved of the emphasis placed by some faculty members on spiritual gifts. The disaffected faculty and about 70 students moved to North Battleford and there began a period of fasting and prayer, asking for outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Some prophesied that a great revival was about to begin, leading the participants into gifts and ministries. One day in February 1948, many students began to have spiritual experiences described as "the rain pouring down.” One of the participants prophesied that the gifts of the Spirit would be restored to the Church by the laying on of hands, leading to reports of healings, and of spiritual gifts being “imparted” from one person to another. These activities were directed by “vocal prophetic utterances.”

The so-called “Latter Rain” movement quickly attracted much attention and experienced growth in Canada and the USA; it also met with opposition. In 1949, the General Council of the Assemblies of God USA condemned Latter Rain teachings and practices, including an “overemphasis relative to imparting, identifying, bestowing or confirming of gifts by the laying on of hands and prophecy,” the “erroneous teaching that the Church is built on the foundation of present-day apostles and prophets,” erroneous teaching about the gift of tongues, and the “extreme and unscriptural practice of imparting or imposing personal leadings by the means of gifts of utterance.”

By 1952, the Latter Rain, as an organized movement, had begun to fade from public view. But it did not die; it was only sleeping. Its ideas were kept alive by preachers like William Branham, and authors like George Warnock, whose 1951 work The Feast of Tabernacles summarized Branham’s manifested sons of God doctrine and other key elements of the Latter Rain revival. Branham’s teaching on the “manifested sons of God” would influence Jim Jones, a participant in the Latter Rain revival in the 1950s, who would go down in history as the leader of the People’s Temple who orchestrated the mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 909 children and adults in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.

The Feast of Tabernacles begins with this scripture verse: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." (John 14:12) This verse is frequently quoted today by NAR proponents. The same book passes on the Latter Rain teaching about the restoration to the church of the fivefold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (chapter 7). Belief that the fivefold ministry is being restored to the church after a long period of suppression or lack of these ministries remains a key tenet of NAR communities.

Today, one supporter of the Latter Rain movement states that it “contributed greatly to the upcoming 1960 Charismatic Movement, 1967 Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the 1967 Jesus Movement.” Without attempting to evaluate these claims, we can affirm that the Latter Rain made lasting contributions to today’s Pentecostal movements, and to the NAR in particular.

In The New Charismatics (Zondervan, 1992), Michael G. Moriarty identifies the following seven points as the Latter Rain movement’s “doctrinal contributions to neo-Pentecostalism”:

1. Restorationism — The belief that God has progressively restored truths to the church since the Reformation, including justification by faith, water baptism by immersion, holiness, divine healing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

2. Fivefold ministry — The view that “the church cannot be fully effective without all five offices… functioning in the body of Christ.”

3. Spiritual disciplines — Including deliverance, fasting, and the laying on of hands.

4. Prophecy — “Prophecy would no longer be restricted to general words of exhortation, but would include personal detailed revelations for guidance and instruction.”

5. Recovery of true worship — “The belief that God’s manifested presence is dependent upon a certain order of worship involving singing in tongues, clapping, shouting, singing prophecies, and a new order of praise dancing.”

6. Immortalization of the saints — “The belief that only those believers moving in the truth of the Latter Rain restoration, not necessarily all in the church, will attain an immortal state before Christ returns.”

7. Unity of the faith — “The doctrine that the church will attain unity of the faith before Christ returns.”

In future posts, I will show how at least six of these seven tenets are held today by Catholics who have adopted NAR teachings and practices. But first, the history of the NAR will continue with the next post: The Word of Faith.