What about the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God movement?

Question 60072.

The Latter Rain movement began in a small Canadian town in 1948 and has shaped far more of modern charismatic Christianity than most of its heirs realise. Its ideas are still with us, usually without the label attached.

I write as a continuationist. I believe the gifts of the Spirit remain, and I have no interest in dismissing everything that happens outside my own tradition. But this particular stream carried teachings that Scripture will not support, and the fruit has been consistently bad.

Where the Latter Rain began

The starting point was North Battleford in Saskatchewan, at a Bible school run by the Sharon brethren, in February 1948. Reports of healings, prophecies given by the laying on of hands, and a sense that a new era had begun spread rapidly.

The name came from a reading of Joel 2, which speaks of the former rain and the latter rain. Applied to church history, the former rain became Pentecost and the Latter Rain became a final outpouring immediately before the end.

The Assemblies of God formally rejected the teaching in 1949, which is worth remembering. This was not a case of dead denominations resisting revival. Pentecostals themselves examined it and said no.

What the Latter Rain taught

Several distinctive doctrines travelled together. The restoration of the offices of apostle and prophet as governing offices in the church. The impartation of spiritual gifts through the laying on of hands by those apostles. Personal prophecy directing the details of a believer’s life.

There was also the doctrine of the immortalisation of the overcomers, the idea that a company of believers would attain a deathless state before the return of Jesus. And the unity of the faith, understood as a coming super-church that would transcend denominational boundaries.

Layered on top was a triumphalist eschatology. The Latter Rain church would subdue the earth, take dominion, and present the kingdom to Jesus rather than receive it from Him at His coming.

The Manifest Sons of God

The most extreme development was the Manifest Sons of God teaching, drawn from a misreading of Romans 8:19 and its revealing of the sons of God.

In Paul’s argument that verse looks forward to the resurrection and glorification of believers at the return of Jesus. The whole passage is about creation waiting for the redemption of our bodies, a future and bodily hope.

The Manifest Sons teaching relocated it to the present. A company of believers would attain sinless perfection, immortality, and the full manifestation of divine nature in this life, becoming in effect an incarnation of Christ on the earth.

That is not an exaggeration of what was taught. Some writers in this stream said plainly that these sons would be as Jesus was, with the same authority and the same nature.

Why the exegesis fails

Take Joel 2 first. The former and latter rain in that passage are the autumn and spring rains of the agricultural year in the land of Israel, and the promise is agricultural restoration to a nation that had suffered locusts.

Peter tells us how to read the outpouring language when he applies Joel to the day of Pentecost. Nothing in Joel or in Acts suggests a two-stage scheme with a superior second instalment for the last generation.

Then Romans 8. The revealing of the sons of God is defined in the surrounding verses as the redemption of our bodies. Paul could hardly be clearer that this is bodily resurrection, not a present spiritual attainment.

So the two pillars of Latter Rain theology, Joel 2 and Romans 8:19, both collapse when read in context.

The deeper problem of a perfected church

Underneath the proof texts lies a view of the church that Scripture will not sustain. The New Testament nowhere teaches that the church grows steadily more powerful and pure until it takes over the world.

Paul told Timothy that in the last days there would come times of difficulty, and that evil people and impostors would go on from bad to worse. Jesus asked whether the Son of Man would find faith on the earth when He comes.

The hope held out to us is not a perfected church on earth but a returning Lord. waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and that is a rescue rather than a graduation.

I hold to a pretribulational and imminent removal of the church precisely because the New Testament expects believers to be looking for a person, not for a programme.

How Latter Rain ideas survived

The movement was formally rejected but the teachings dispersed and reappeared. Shepherding and discipleship movements in the seventies carried the authority structures. Kingdom Now and dominion theology carried the eschatology.

The Kansas City prophets in the eighties carried the personal prophecy and the elite company language. Toronto in the nineties carried the impartation. And the New Apostolic Reformation gathered most of it together and gave it an organisational form.

So when I write about the Latter Rain I am not conducting an archaeological survey. I am describing the source of ideas that are being taught in churches this Sunday. See also the New Apostolic Reformation.

What was genuine, and what to keep

I want to be fair. People at North Battleford were hungry for God, and hunger for God is not a fault. Some who were touched by that stream went on to serve faithfully for decades.

The desire for the gifts to be operative, for prayer to be expectant, for worship to be more than a routine, all of that is right and I share it. Paul tells us to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, and he means it.

The error was not in wanting more of God. It was in the framework built to explain what was happening, and in the refusal to let Scripture correct the experience. That is the lesson worth carrying away from the Latter Rain.

Testing a movement rather than a personality

When something like this comes to your town, the questions are not complicated. Does the teaching match the text when the text is read whole? Are leaders accountable to anyone who can remove them? Is anyone permitted to disagree?

Watch particularly for elite language. Wherever a movement teaches that there is an inner company with a higher calling, a special anointing, or a destiny the ordinary believer does not share, you are hearing an old error in fresh clothes.

The New Testament knows nothing of a superior class of Christian. There is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and no first-class carriage. See also honouring the Spirit while avoiding excess.

The Latter Rain and the language of restoration

One reason these ideas keep returning is that the word restoration sounds unarguably good, and few people stop to ask what is being restored and on whose authority.

Peter speaks in Acts 3 of the times of restoration of all things, and it is worth noticing what he says about the timing. Heaven must receive Jesus until then. The restoration happens when He comes back, not before.

That single verse dismantles the whole structure. If the restoration of all things waits for the return of Jesus, then no movement in church history can claim to be delivering it in advance.

So when a teacher announces that God is restoring the office of apostle, or restoring the church to her original power, ask where Scripture promises that restoration before the Lord’s return. The Latter Rain never had an answer to that question and neither do its successors.

Personal prophecy and the damage it does

I want to say something pastoral about one particular practice, because I have picked up the pieces from it more than once.

Directive personal prophecy, where a man lays hands on you and tells you whom to marry, where to move, or what ministry you are called to, has ruined lives. People have emigrated, left jobs, ended engagements and given away savings on the strength of a word delivered with confidence in a meeting.

The New Testament pattern is quite different. Prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 is for upbuilding and encouragement and consolation, and it is to be weighed by others rather than obeyed on the spot.

Agabus tells Paul what awaits him in Jerusalem and Paul goes anyway, which is instructive. Even genuine prophecy did not override the man’s own responsibility before God.

So, now what?

If you are in a church where Latter Rain ideas are circulating, and they often arrive without the label, ask for the passages. Ask someone to show you the perfected end-time company in Scripture, read in context, and see what happens.

If you have been told you are part of an elect generation with a destiny beyond that of ordinary believers, I would gently suggest that flattery is a poor foundation for a Christian life. The New Testament calls you a servant and a child, and both of those are better than special.

And if all this has left you wary of the Holy Spirit altogether, do not overcorrect. The answer to counterfeit currency has never been to stop using money. Ask instead what you are actually hoping for. Is it a movement, or is it Him?

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

1 John 4:1, ESV