What Is the New Apostolic Reformation? The History Behind the NAR

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction. We've been asked many times to explain what is NAR. We use that phrase many of the co-hosts use it. I usually say NAR or New Apostolic Reformation, but I wanted to do a podcast talking about what is the New Apostolic Reformation. Because I remember whenever I came out of this movement, I came out of a mindset. And when you're in that mindset,

you try to make sense of what it is that's programmed into your head. And you start to examine all of the different things that are in the world today with regards to Christianity. And you come to realize that you don't understand it at all. That was part of the struggle that I had whenever I first began to examine all of this. And I heard the same phrase thrown around, NAR. The people in NAR are scary. Be afraid of them. And I wanted to know what it was. The problem that I had, like many of the listeners who have contacted us asking the question,

what is the New Apostolic Reformation? Is that most of the informational videos, books, etc. that are out there that are talking about the New Apostolic Reformation attack it from a doctrinal position. And that's all well and good if you're on the outside of the movement looking in because you understand some of the core concepts of sound Christian doctrine. So when you look in and you see the unsound Christian doctrine, suddenly you realize, oh my gosh, this is a mess.

How can these people believe this? Do they even believe the Bible? I've actually seen a comment something to that effect. Well, the thing of it is when you're indoctrinated with a wrong belief or a foundational set of beliefs, you don't know that it's wrong until you're able to examine that core set of beliefs. And if that core set of beliefs is part of how you determine what is the New Apostolic Reformation, the biggest question you have is, well, what's wrong with that? And I went there. I really did. And what I found and part of the reason why

my website and podcast are historical focused instead of theological focused. I found that if you understand the history behind the theology, you begin to understand what's wrong with the theology because at each iteration, each moment in time in history, whenever a doctrine was just slightly twisted out of context from the Scriptures to invent a new foundational platform of a ministry, and those platforms began to be built upon, what you ended up with was this gradual change of theology that was really more related to milestones in history.

So I wanted to do a podcast on what is the New Apostolic Reformation and attack it from a historical standpoint, and like I said, this will be quite different than some of the others that you have seen on the subject.

But from my perspective, the New Apostolic Reformation is nothing more than a convergence of many different theologies, ideologies, political platforms, ministries, many different cults, etc. And you can't really pinpoint a specific theology that determines what is the New Apostolic Reformation.

So what I would like to do in this podcast is to examine three major components that were essential to the creation of the New Apostolic Reformation. And these are not all encompassing, and like the New Apostolic Reformation, if you look through the historical timeline leading up to these streams, you're going to find even more streams of ideologies, theologies, cults, etc.

But those three are restoration and healing, laterane, and charismatic networks. These three components really are the summation of most of the research that I have on my website. And they're all linked. You can't really say that these are independent streams.

They converge many different times in many different ways. But yet at the same time, you can say that they are working together to establish the building blocks of ideologies and theologies that would eventually develop into the New Apostolic Reformation.

When I began my research, I started looking into the restoration and healing movements of the late 1800s through the 1940s. And there are some significant names that are mentioned in either the books or in the podcast talking about this.

But the biggest, most significant figure is John Alexander Dowey. Dowey is really the one who set the precedent for all of the things to come with regards to the establishment of a hierarchy of control and the integration of divine healing into salvation.

He was pushing the notion that the church world had become apostate. They had allowed medicine to come in. And so by doing this, instead of seeking help from a church... leader for their healings of their diseases, they had become apostate and they were taking the path of Satan in his realm. So he was trying to establish the notion that the church while apostate would eventually get a new leader who would come and restore the church to its original state back during the days of the Apostles. And like all other central figures of destructive groups that have done this, he obviously said that he is the chief apostle. And that set a

pattern for many, many years to come because as we watch the different groups and sects spin off of this, those who become more destructive claim that they are either the chief prophet or the chief apostle. But the thing that Dauy did that really matters as it relates to the New Apostolic Reformation is he tried to set up the office of the Apostle as a hierarchy of authoritarian control. He was the one who made all of the decisions on everything spiritual and even some things personal.

And he became notorious widespread published throughout all of the newspapers in the United States, practically all of them, that he had created an authoritarian cult. And that he had amassed in today's money, it would be half a billion dollars in 1890, I think it was. So he had established the hierarchy of control, the idea that we needed to restore the offices of the Apostles and prophets, etc. And that he was the chief among them. And that really created what would eventually develop into the structure that later reign would use as the fivefold ministry. Dauy strongly influenced

the post-World War II healing revival from the mid-40s through the 1950s. And this was a key moment in history where a leader of a sect tried to take authoritarian control of his sect and established a pattern that was different from the Bible in that he gave the Apostle far more authority than the Bible did. So he twisted the doctrine just a little bit to say that he was in control. He was essentially the Pope of the movement. But with that establishment of his Pope papacy, he was establishing the idea that this was done through the office of an Apostle.

So he is the one who set the Apostle at the very, very top of the movement. 1948 brought the new order of the latter reign. Because of the way the latter reign has been presented to all of the people who are in the Pentecostal Charismatic New Apostolic Reformation movements, they believe that this is something new that happened and that it happened approximately 1948 when the latter reign revival broke out at the Sharon Orphanage shortly after this became...

the order of the new order of the latter rain. The problem is, it wasn't really new. They did call it the new order of the latter rain because there was an old order of the latter rain.

The early Pentecostal sects had developed many of the different key components of doctrine that the latter rain would use and amplify to establish this new order. And the new order would be very extreme in its position on many of those doctrinal changes. So Dauy created the order where the apostle is the one at the top of the hierarchy. Pentecostalism started to develop their own version of some of Dauy's views because there were Pentecostals who had come out of Dauy's sect or were influenced by John Alexander Dauy's movement. His movement was widespread and it was very, very popular among many of the fundamentalists. So they were very open to the idea of the

office of an apostle. But after Dauy, after he died, what do you do with this? The chief apostle has died and his doomsday predictions did not come true. What did he get right and what did he get wrong? This is where I consider one of the most fundamental errors that has happened in the historical timeline of the New Apostolic Reformation has happened. Whenever the new order of the latter rain was established, the new order suggests that they were improving upon the old order because of this error. They were trying to say that yes, Dauy and others had established a doctrinal foundation

that we believe. And yes, we understand that they went into grave error, but we're going to pick the things that was built in the foundation by the person who went completely astray. And we're going to call it good, but we're going to amplify what was said in the foundation to make it better.

In other words, they took something that was horrifically wrong in the first place and tried to make it better by making it worse horrifically wrong. And that is a pattern that is established. In fact, if you read through books like God's Generals, it will often talk about how the so-called general came and established some doctrines, did some great things, usually miracles, and then went terribly astray. But let's listen to them as though they're not scoundrels, and let's say that they're very good people, and let's take all of their fundamental doctrines, which are in some cases anti-biblical, and let's build upon those doctrines. That is essentially what happened with

the New Order of the Laterane in 1948. Shortly after this, in 1949, the Assemblies of God realized that was an error. It was a big error. And if you read through the resolution that was passed in 1949 by the Assemblies of God, not only did they condemn the Laterane movement for exactly this, They began to condemn everything that was the premise for the creation of the movements to come, which included key parts of the charismatic movement, key parts of the New Apostolic Reformation, and many different splinter groups that evolved into their own weird sect, which is in a different category altogether.

Assemblies of God essentially said, if you do these things, you are in error. This is not scriptural what you are doing, and you are at risk, basically. So the assemblies of God put their foot down.

The problem is, as we've examined in history, it didn't really stick. During the height of the Laterane movement, the movement had become so popular that many assemblies of God leaders were bowing down to the Laterane Evangelists, and the Laterane Evangelists themselves were very difficult to identify, because for a period of time, the voice of healing evangelists merged with the Laterane Evangelists, and the movement became one, and then later split.

People like Orobert were part of the Laterane movement, yet historians would probably never call Orobert to Laterane Minister. It was because of this convergence in history where people were running with it until the assemblies of God basically denounced it and created a division, major division in Pentecostalism.

What happened after this was, after the movement began to split, the independent assemblies of God began to form, or reform, I should say, and they were accepting of the Laterane theology and doctrine. The core assemblies were denouncing it, and you had ministers who were on the fence.

In fact, Indiana became a rogue state, largely due to the fact that William Brannum, who was spearheading the Laterane post-World War II healing revivals, was from Indiana. You can find testimonies, I've got some examples online of people in the core assemblies of God who are defending Brannum when the assemblies of God are conventions.

This was a major issue, and as I said, it was a major milestone. Instead of going back and examining the foundation of error, they wanted to correct the top layer. I've used the example quite a few times now of a Jenga game.

If you pull pieces out of the top, yes, you can leave the base intact, but what if the base is wrong? The whole thing just topples. That's what we're starting to see, I believe, with some of the ministries in the New Apostolic Reformation.

People who just simply were never really suited for ministry in the first place are doing some horrific things, and the ministries begin to topple. The problem is, like the patterns in the past, where people are examining what went wrong, they usually examine at the top the superficial things.

There was maybe a scandal, maybe there was sexual sin, etc. They don't really go back down to the core root of the problem. If you're not looking at the history, the core root of the problem usually would just slip through the cracks and you'll never see it.

The third major component of the new Apostolic Reformation is the Charismatic Networks. And it is probably the most difficult to understand. With restoration and healing, you can obviously look at the key icons of the movement, Dauy, Sanford, et cetera.

With lateral range, the same thing, you can look and see Branum, you can see Gordon Lindsay. There are key faces to put into that. But the Charismatic Networks is different in that there are just simply too many faces.

You have too many icons. And some of the icons may not even be icons. They may just be some deliverance minister who's traveling from network to network. It is very, very difficult to understand how important that is, but yet at the same time, C. Peter Wagner, who is the person who coined the term new Apostolic Reformation, did recognize it.

So in Wagner's view of what is the new Apostolic Reformation, he mentions many of the things that I have just said. In his roadmap to the new Apostolic Reformation, through his books and speeches and studies on the movement itself, he maps out the restoration and divine healing, post-World War II healing revivals, the lateral range, the resolution, significant impact whenever, during the 60s after Branham died, the Charismatic Movement, the Shepherding Movement and the Restoration Networks became established.

1980s, the Kansas City Prophet, the Vineyard Movement, all of that started to build prophetic networks. And by 1996, this had become established as a pattern in so much that in 1996, Wagner held a symposium on the post-denominational systems.

And what he was trying to say is that we are past the moment of denominations. Now what we have are people who are led by God, not by theology. And that's loosely framing what he was trying to say, but essentially the Pentecostal idea that somebody can have a calling and that calling enables them to be a pastor without having any theological grounding or theological training.

That was one of the errors that happened in Pentecostalism that eventually led to this symposium. Like each of the movements before him, Wagner affirmed his belief that the denominational systems had grown cold and formal and we need to move past the denominational systems.

So in the symposium, he is pushing the idea that we move past in the ways of the predecessors. In other words, ministers who have no theological training but say that they feel a calling by God, they can be appointed to lead a church and we want to build a mega church with it.

We want to build a house where all the churches All of the people come out of their denominations into this big establishment, and by appointing a specific leader over that establishment, now we can control a larger mass of people.

This idea was strongly aligned with Wagner's position in the Church Growth Movement, and when you combine the Church Growth Movement with this Restoration idea, suddenly you get the concept that we're going to grow the Church quickly, we're going to restore the offices as we see those offices to be established, and whenever we establish those offices there will be a chief apostle among them, and that will be a leader in what Wagner was terming the new Apostolic Reformation.

So after those new Apostolic churches were established, and approximately by the year 2001, the second Apostolic age was announced. This was the time in which the apostles were now in position, the army was getting ready, and the army was about to go forward conquering, and from mid-2000s to present that's essentially what has happened.

They brought in the ideas such as the Seven Mountains mandate, all of the political themes that are in the movement, and this movement is coming in with force, and when people think of the new Apostolic Reformation, they look past most of this historical timeline, and instead look at that last element.

This is when we see them out front, this is when we see this new, weird army, and much of what they say is similar to what the Bible says, but it's not quite what the Bible says.

So how do we label this? And I think for that reason we have many people who contact us asking, what is this new Apostolic Reformation? So I want to go a little bit deeper with this, to understand what is NAR.

You first must understand how the NAR was built, and by examining each of the elements that I have just described, taking it just a step further and understanding what was established by those elements, you understand how the construction of NAR could have evolved in the way that it did.

So I mentioned the Restoration Movement in Dauy, what Dauy brought Apostolic authority, restored offices, and that he was the first restored apostle, and the idea of an independent ministry was widespread because of Dauyism.

Dauy brought the idea that the other churches are teaching the wrong thing. We need to re-establish the church in the modern Apostolic way, after Dauy came the healing revival stream, spearheaded by William Brannum, and if you understand what was being established with the post-World War II healing revival, and its revival stream, you begin to understand how platforming works in the New Apostolic Reformation.

With Brannum and the voice of healing, you had the voice of healing evangelists, and it was taught. even published into the articles that this is an inter-denominational, inter-faith, inter-doctrinal movement where established ministries could come into a church and they may not be aligned in doctrine, but they're aligned in the move of the spirit. In other words, they can perform great miracles in your church.

And because they can perform great miracles, we don't care anything about what they're saying biblically. We care more about the miracles. That is essentially what happened. And I do understand the complexities of that. It is more nuanced than just that. But that is the concept that established the platforming of ministries within New Apostolic Reformation. Merging with Branemism was this Laterane stream, which really significantly changed the structure of the hierarchy of the church. With Laterane, they introduced the idea that the fivefold ministry, the offices in the fivefold ministry, was actually a hierarchy.

The apostle was at the top, then the prophet, all the way down to the minister. And because of that establishment and the way in which it was established, it gave supreme authority to leaders in the movement. And it created the notion that these leaders were so inspired by God that they could lay hands on another person and give them the power to be a leader. In other words, you can pick and choose who you want to lead as long as you can lay hands on them and claim that the power of God flowed through you. So when you

look at the modern day apostles and how platforming works and look at figures like Todd Bentley, who now many of even within the New Apostolic Reformation, many leaders are saying this was a mistake. But that mistake was made by much the same thing. You had a group of apostles who came, laid hands on him. He suddenly gets empowered as a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation. And suddenly he takes off and goes down this path of apparent destruction. That was happening within the Laterane stream. And it was setting the precedent for years to come. Next, you have the charismatic renewal stream. John Wember and the

vineyard movement are critical to understanding how all of this that I have just talked about made its way into the New Apostolic Reformation. Wember was part of the reason why all of this did evolve into what would later become NAR. And it goes hand in hand with what I've just said about the Laterane movement. The new order of the Laterane came up with many different ideas that eventually would reappear in the New Apostolic Reformation. You had the restored apostles and prophets, the impartation of gifts through the laying on of hands, the supernatural gifts, and so forth. You had the in-time restoration,

you had the expectation of a coming supernatural army, Joel's army. But the Laterane didn't build the operating system that Nar would use, John Wimber did. Through his work with the vineyard, Wimber began to transform the supernatural ministries into something that was a reproducible program. It could be taught in classrooms, it could be demonstrated at conferences, you could practice it in your local church, you could carry this theme through your music. What Wimber created essentially was a bottled up version of the Laterane movement.

U2 can do the stuff just like the Laterane movement was saying U2 can do the stuff. He just put a little bit of packaging and branding around it and his work and partnership with C. Peter Wagner in Fuller Theological Seminary was teaching the church growth strategy, so he was helping to augment the Laterane movement's teachings by practicing it in a way that could be widespread into a church growth movement. Wimber created this bridge between Wagner's church growth strategy and the prophetic world of Paul Cain, Mike Bickel, Bob Jones, Kansas City Fellowship. He was the bridge between the two and within that bridge that charismatic stream was

the idea that we need to become bigger, better, greater and most of those themes that we see long back that had already been established were not new but they were being augmented in a way that could be more effectively reproduced in the churches. So a good way to say it is Wimber took everything that pre-existed and he packaged it up and a lot of it came in through music which is kind of in my world it's a little bit fascinating as a musician. So think of Wimber basically is the bridge between the two but Wimber's delivery system made it more appealing to the crowds. Wagner

basically took all of that and he just named it, he systematized it and he later came up with a concept of New Apostolic Reformation which Wimber probably would have rejected I think in fact maybe he did but he's part of the reason why it even came to exist in the first place. Next you have the prophetic stream. Think Mike Bickel, the Kansas City Fellowship, these people existed largely because John Wimber did build this bridge and John Wimber helped platform them. So as Wimber is working with Mike Bickel, Paul Cain, the others in the Kansas City prophets, they're establishing the

idea that if we're going to build this coming Joel's army we need prophets to tell us what God will have us to do in order to create that army and that's largely what was established in the International House of Prayer. They were taking large volumes of people as students into the ministry teaching them the fasting and prayer.

are the prophetic history, all of the things that would be packaged up as a prophetic network. And then these prophetic networks began to be established throughout the new apostolic reformations, apostolic networks. John Wimber helped build the bridge, but then Mike Bickle carried it a step further. Dickel, who was working with Paul Cain and Bob Jones, both of whom were strong advocates of brannemism or at least followers of William Brannem. Paul Cain was a follower of Brannem until his death. They were trying to resurrect Brannem's themes of a prophetic history. And Brannemism, they called it the life stories, and IHOPKC,

they called it the prophetic history. And it was the idea that integrated with your worship was history of a prophet, because prophets were coming to be established as leaders, as mouthpieces of God telling the church how to reform to eventually create this Joel's army concept. Paul Cain and others were starting to claim that they had seen a vision by God of Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City with a big banner that said Joel's army and training immediately before the coming destruction, the end of days. So Paul Cain was essentially taking Brannem's Doomsday theology, repackaging it in such a way that it fit modern times,

entered in Kansas City. And then it spread throughout the entire New Apostolic Reformation networks that Joel's army was entraining in Kansas City. And this was a key component of what would become the end of days army. And as you would expect, when you bring an end of days army theme, you're going to establish a militant church. And that's essentially what happened. This prophetic stream, bringing the end of days army visions and imagery started to accelerate the idea that this is a spiritual battle. We're in spiritual warfare.

And now we are engaging in the battle that Joel's army will come fight and win. So you have the spiritual warfare stream coming in, mapping out the cities and networks, essentially creating the concept of battlegrounds that Christians will eventually fight. And some of the leaders are already fighting. So thank Cindy Jacobs, the territorial spirits, how she teaches this. You have these prayer networks. These are, if you think, platoons.

These are all of the platoons in your network. And it's because of this idea of platoons that we see such weirdness in the church today. Think about the framework of platoons in a spiritual army. And then think of this as a military. You've got the military leaders, the apostles who are here to essentially govern all of these networks. They're the generals of the movement. You've got the prophets who are here to receive revelation for each platoon and give supernatural direction. So there the interface between the generals and the platoons. You've got the spiritual warfare, obviously, which is, you

know, the territorial spirits, dividing cities into which territorial spirit is invaded the city. You've got the discipleship or invasion of nations. This is your military objective. And in the end, what it all builds up to is this. The New Apostolic Reformation was essentially built to create the idea that we are in a war, not even a simple battle, but we're in a war, and we are going to be victorious by claiming dominion over all peoples in all nations.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute

to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

When I talk about the New Apostolic Reformation using militant language, people in the comment feeds get up in arms. It's a funny irony because if you trace the history of these movements back like I have to some of the more extreme sex that had influence over this New Apostolic Reformation and its precursors, the Pentecostal movement, the charismatic movement, militant language is a little bit scary. When you consider that William-Brannum's mentor was actually leaving a white supremacy group that he started because it was too militant and I'm talking physically, violently militant, whenever it's that kind of background that is influencing theology, people jump to the wrong

conclusions by that phrase when I talk about militant language. No, I'm not talking about people who are actually taking up arms, but if you consider what war means in this type of system, it's actually just a scary because of the outcomes that it can bring. And by this I mean to say that the spiritual warfare in the movement is literally just that, it's spiritual.

Yes, militant languages use, but they're talking about things that are battles that are being fought in the spiritual realm and there were warriors who were fighting these battles, so they're using the militant language. The alleged enemies or demons, territorial spirits, however you want to call it, principalities and powers, but the problem is this, the human institutions and the political opponents that are described as being controlled by these demons have a real human presence. So when you're using militant language to people who might not really understand that we're just talking about the spiritual realm, you have people who might go to extremes and that's really for me

where the problem lies. Once a particular person or a party or a group or institution is placed inside of this kingdom of darkness, now you have political opposition that can become spiritual obedience and people might take that next step and that's for me where militant language gets just a little bit scary and quite a bit dangerous. Whenever people are, when, to disagreements form, for example, you have disagreements over a specific policy, you watch it in the social feeds, people just get angry at each other in ways that they probably wouldn't do in person. But the people who are engaged

in that type of battle believe they're fighting a spiritual war, so they feel this righteous indignation at insulting the other people who don't believe as they do. That's where the prophets become uniquely important because they're supposed to reveal what is happening behind the scenes as they're fighting these battles with the human faces to fight the spiritual elements and the apostles become really important because they're supposed to be the authority over the entire battle.

They're the generals of this spiritual army. And yes, I'm not talking about a physical army with physical weapons, but if you look through history at how this militant language has progressed and some of the outcomes that have occurred because of it, you can see that it is clearly a dangerous thing to do. That is something that I really think that people aren't thinking through as they're trying to teach this type of doctrine, look back through some of the key figures who are teaching it, and I don't think they ever intended for it to develop into this mess that we see today,

yet the mess exists. It is my opinion that that is part of the reason why the new apostolic reformation is a movement that says it is not a movement. It's a little bit odd when you think about it because most other movements are proud of their movement, and they'll say we're part of this as a brand of might we called it the message. We would say we're a part of the message, and that was the movement. In the new apostolic reformation there is no such thing. There is no single headquarters that you can go to and find the leaders of NAR. There is no universal membership

role. So You can't go up to somebody and say, are you a member of NAR? They just simply, they don't know. Because there is no confession that they must sign to join. There is no universally recognized human leader in the movement.

And in fact, we've talked to people who have escaped different branches of NAR. And one of the things that's a little bit ironic is if a person escapes a branch that is led by a particular apostle, they'll say, this is the most influential apostle in the New Apostolic Reformation.

And yet, you have another person who has escaped another group with another apostle, unless they're apostle, is the most significant. I know as a Brannumite, when we escaped Brannumism, we would say Brannum was the most significant figure.

It is really difficult to pinpoint what it is. And so who is officially a member is really the wrong question. In fact, when C. Peter Wagner named the New Apostolic Reformation, he himself understood that it was a phenomenon that was developing not a denomination that was developing.

And he was trying to say this phenomenon is calling people out of their denominations. We are de-denominationalizing, I guess is how he would say it. And so you can't look at it like any other movement or any other group, which makes it a little bit insidious.

The big problem that really exists is that people who were never part of this system, who were on the outside looking in, tried to categorize New Apostolic Reformation churches from non-New Apostolic Reformation churches, simply based on doctrine, and it doesn't work.

For example, you could say that many people in the New Apostolic Reformation speak in tongues. And an outsider might say, well, they speak in tongues, therefore they must be narr. But that's truly not the case.

There are Pentecostal groups who never became part of this system. And they believe in speaking in tongues. You might say that believing in healing identifies a New Apostolic Reformation church because this whole thing descended from the postwar to healing revival.

The healing revival is led to this. So therefore, believing in healing is a narr church. But that isn't the case. I know Southern Baptist who believe in healing. I know Methodist who believe in healing.

In fact, most Christians, to some extent, believe that God heals today, they just don't believe it in the way that many in the New Apostolic Reformation push it because of that lineage going back to the healing revivals.

So you can't say that believing in healing constitutes a narr church. Nor can you say even that politics, though almost every, if you look at a narr church, it's usually always something that is affiliated with a political theme.

You can't say that a political church is a narr church because I know groups who are very political, especially in some of the Southern... their churches that I visited, they have political themes all throughout some of their sermons, but they're not new apostolic reformation.

There is a difference, which I'll get into in just a second. Biggest thing, if you're looking at my channel is Christian nationalism, Christian identity, you can't say that they're a new apostolic reformation church, even because they have these themes that descended directly from Christian identity.

That doesn't constitute a NAR church because there are Christian identity groups who aren't even religious at all, and you cannot brand with a big, with a big branding iron, because they believe some of the similar themes in their movements.

The church growth strategy, that's another big one. Even though church growth led to this, you can't say that church growth and contemporary worship, like John Wimber was teaching, when he built the bridge to the NAR, you can't even say that that is new apostolic reformation church.

You have to go just a little bit deeper. In my opinion, there are three concrete ways to understand the new apostolic reformation simply based on history. All of this funnels through this transitional thought, membership does not define whether or not it is part of the NAR system, but authority does.

If you look at the authority structure that was established by the movements and many of its precursors, you can simply identify the NAR church or the NAR themed church by the structure of governance.

An easy way to do this is to look at one NAR proper, as I'll call it. This is the core documented network surrounding CPter Wagner. You can easily go online, you can type in CPter Wagner, and you can see that there are organizations and coalitions that were formed, and many of these coalitions list names.

You can go through them, you can see the names, and that establishes key figures within the network. If you think of a spider web of connections, put a face to each node in the network based off of who has joined into the coalition, you can easily start to see how this begins to spread.

In those apostolic networks, would be a new apostolic reformation church. You might be some Pentecostal group that says, I am not NAR, we do not believe in NAR, and yet they're attending conferences that are led by people who are part of CPter Wagner's organizations and coalitions.

You're definitely in our church because you are being influenced by that stream of NAR from NAR proper. Participants in networks, ministries that are directly involved in those conferences, the publications, spreading the publications, the organizations, I've examined upon requests from a few people, different churches that from the surface, they look nothing like like new apostolic reformation, but then you find they're going to their conferences and they're promoting materials that is spreading the authoritarian control system that was established by new apostolic reformation.

So the number one way to understand is just look at NAR proper and look at those groups. Number two is a little bit more difficult because you have to go deeper into history. You have to actually go into the history that is the realm of the much larger world of modern apostles and prophets.

And you can easily look at it like this. If there is a movement that claims that they have an apostle, a modern apostle, and that this modern apostle has authority over doctrine and scripture and that they are being led by this apostle without doubt, without question.

This is a person who has been influenced by the new apostolic reformation or is directly involved in it. Ministries, some of these may actually predate C. Peter Wagner because remember Wagner came in and he says this thing already exists, this new apostolic reformation.

So many of these ministries predated him and those ministries splintered into new ministries. So you have groups who are sharing the restorationist practices without even joining into C. Peter Wagner's organizations, but they still have that structure of authority because if the membership doesn't define the system, then the authority does.

You have these independent charismatic networks that intersect with the new apostolic reformation. They may not even teach the same things, but they may just intersect by going to a conference, for example, and they start to pick up ideas and you have this cross-pollination of ideas where the new apostolic reformation is influencing them just through that intersection.

So looking back through history at where those intersections lie, it's a lot of work, but it is a more accurate way to understand what is new apostolic reformation than simply going through their theology and what they believe.

And the cross-pollination concept that I've been mentioning in several podcasts, this is a real thing. There are churches who are not influenced churches and you can't say that they're not a new apostolic reformation church because once you've been influenced by them and you start to define that system of authority, then you become a new church.

It would be like if I had a little droplet of poison and I put it into a birthday cake, you can't say that the cake is good except for the spot that the poison hit.

You don't want to eat any of the birthday cake. So that's the way this is. If it is not influenced, if they have been influenced by the doctrines of the new apostolic reformation that lead to the authority, then this is definitely in our church and you can easily identify them sometimes by doctrine, especially...

believe they're teaching the Seven Mountains Band-Aid, for example, we're going to go conquer these Seven Mountains. That's definitely in our church. You can also look at some of the language and determine have they been influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation?

Say they're using spiritual mapping, for example. That is a concept that comes from this militant language because usually this develops into spiritual warfare because we have the spiritual map. You might look at apostolic alignment. That is suggesting that we are submitting our authority to an apostle if we have apostolic alignment. Or if there's simply a governing apostle in this church that you're a part of that claims that it's not part of the New Apostolic Reformation and you have a governing apostle, it has been influenced by the movement because there is no provision for governance when it's talking about an apostle

in the Bible. This is a concept that came in this modern mess that we are seeing today. So to really sum it up, you have churches who are participating in the system without embracing the NAR name or New Apostolic Reformation name because they're being influenced by others in the system. So for me, the question that people ask me is this a New Apostolic Reformation church isn't really so much a doctrinal question. Yes, there are doctrines that you can look at such as the Seven Mountains Mandate, but what about the churches in NAR that do not believe

the Seven Mountains Mandate? You can't really identify them all with the same set of criteria, but if you look through history, you can easily identify the creation and establishment of a NAR church. And it's easy to ask questions to lead to that conclusion. The simple one is who possesses the final authority. Do you have one person who is the chief apostle who everybody must submit to or is the local congregation empowered to kick that leader out should something go wrong with his teaching or his doctrine? Is that person saying that he is being led by God and everything

that he says is divinely inspired and therefore you can't question it, touch not God's anointed, or is he saying, I might make a mistake and I want you people in the congregation to tell me when I make a mistake so that we can correct our process. Do you have a prophet who's claiming direct revelation from God who has appointed himself as a leader? Usually, historically, when that happens, you've got somebody who's having some mental issues or is dead set on governing the people and usually for the purposes of getting their money. Question number two, how is the leadership

established? You can look through history and you can see how the church or the movement came to be. Did it come to be because they were grounded in theology? did they have some sort of education in theology? Was there a movement that was forming for a good reason? Or was this some kind of instance where a movement just suddenly sprung up out of nowhere because some guy had an experience by God? Was there a personal prophecy? Was there an impartation by laying on of hands to start this ministry? What is the background for how the

leadership got established in the movement? Question three, what is the network? Whenever you're in the church, who's the one speaking? Do you have a single minister or are they calling in and platforming other ministers? Are they taking the church to conferences where other ministers are preaching? And what are they preaching at those conferences? Which ministries are supplying all of the training materials, for example? Who's the one providing the covering? That's always laugh when I hear the covering because anytime you hear that phrase, you're talking about somebody who's asking you to submit to their authority and

therefore is new Apostolic Reformation. Question number four, how is prophecy being tested if your group teaches in prophecy? Are the prophecies recorded? Are they explicitly written down so that whenever the prophecy or prediction happens, can you go back and see what was said exactly? And does it match exactly? Was this a true prophecy or a false prophecy? That was one of the things that was really shocking to me when I began to examine the prophecies in the Branagh movement. I could not find a single one that didn't have huge, huge issues. And then I learned IHOP KC, they have the prophetic history and parts of

it are being rewritten apparently because some of it just simply doesn't really fit with what happened in history. So by looking at the history, you can see did the prophecies happen as they are established? And the first point of all is if the movement itself is built on prophecy, it's built on something that isn't really historically sound. Yes, a person may have had prophecy, but it takes more than prophecy to start a movement that is a healthy movement.

Question number five, what does the kingdom theology mean politically? If your church is preaching kingdom theology, is it about serving neighbors and becoming servants to people as the Bible describes? Or is it about conquering whenever you establish the kingdom? Are you creating Joel's army to establish this coming kingdom? Are you wanting to control institutions or are you wanting to spread the good news that Jesus Christ came so that others may want to change their institutions? Are you, in other words, are you trying to change and enact change by governance? Or are you trying to change from the bottom up just

by being a good person? Question number six, How is criticism treated? If you have a question, what happens when you ask it? I learned the hard way that if you're in one of these churches, that is the biggest sin that you can commit is to ask a question about theology or prophecy.

So it leads to the accountability problem. If you have a history of people who have asked questions who suddenly disappeared from the movements, historically speaking, you can say, well, this is probably a not church or has been influenced at least in an unhealthy way.

Question number seven, look at the documented relationships between the different people who are part of your group and are connected to your group. Look at the publications, who are they publishing? Look at the conferences, who are you going to see?

If you're part of boards or memberships who are on those boards, look at the endorsements from other groups to your group. You can start to see how the spider web of network is operating just simply by reading some of the publications that are printed usually by the front door of the building as you walk in.

All of this to say, the new apostolic reformation is not understood as a denomination that you can join. It's more of a system of authority that is established to create ministries where modern apostles are governing networks.

Prophets are providing supernatural direction for the movement and spiritual warfare is creating opposition between your movement and those who are not in your movement. It really creates us versus them mentality. The kingdom strategies, the kingdom theology is meant to mobilize believers in the movement to transform society, but not by the way that is described in the Bible instead by control.

We need to establish a system of control that flows all the way uphill to the modern apostle. It all goes back to the system. If membership does not define the system, the authority does.

And so if your church has authority that is putting you under undue influence, you're probably in a new apostolic reformation church. So if you've enjoyed the show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org. From more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.