What about the New Apostolic Reformation and its leading ministries?

Question 60074.

The New Apostolic Reformation is the most influential movement in global charismatic Christianity that most churchgoers have never heard named. Its songs are sung in congregations that would be alarmed by its doctrine, and its assumptions have travelled far further than its label.

I write as a continuationist who believes the gifts of the Spirit remain operative. That is why I want to be careful here. My objection is not that these churches expect God to act. It is that a structure of authority and a theology of the kingdom have been built which Scripture does not support, and the consequences have been serious.

What the New Apostolic Reformation is

The term was coined by C. Peter Wagner, a missiologist at Fuller, in the nineteen nineties. He was describing what he saw as a new wave in church history, comparable in his view to the Reformation itself.

The defining conviction is that God is restoring the offices of apostle and prophet as governing offices in the church today, with genuine authority over networks of congregations and over geographical regions.

It is not a denomination and there is no membership list, which is why leaders often deny belonging to it. The New Apostolic Reformation functions as a web of relationships, conferences, networks and shared assumptions rather than as an institution.

The doctrine of restored apostles

Everything else follows from this. If apostles govern today, then their words carry weight comparable to Scripture, and to resist them is to resist God.

But the New Testament sets out qualifications for the apostolic office that cannot be met now. An apostle had to have seen the risen Lord, and Paul describes himself as the last of them, as to one untimely born. The church is described as built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and a foundation is laid once.

There is a lower-case use of the word, apostolos meaning one sent, applied to Epaphroditus and others, and I have no quarrel with using it of a church planter or missionary in that sense.

What the New Apostolic Reformation claims is not that. It claims governing authority, and it uses that claim to place leaders beyond correction.

Dominion and the seven mountains

The second pillar is the eschatology. The seven mountain mandate teaches that the church must take control of seven spheres of culture, government, education, media, arts, business, family and religion, and so establish the kingdom on earth before Jesus returns.

This is a form of dominion theology, and it inverts the New Testament’s expectation. Scripture describes a church that suffers, endures and waits for her Lord, in a world growing darker rather than steadily more Christian.

Jesus told Pilate plainly that my kingdom is not of this world, and He refused the crowd who wanted to make Him king by force.

I hold to a pretribulational and premillennial reading, which means the kingdom arrives when the King does. The New Apostolic Reformation effectively asks the church to build what only Jesus can bring, and disappointment is built into the project.

Prophecy without accountability

The third feature is a practice of prophecy that has abandoned the biblical tests. Deuteronomy 18 sets a standard that is uncomfortable but clear. If the word does not come to pass, the prophet has not spoken from the Lord.

In practice, failed prophecies within these networks are reinterpreted, postponed, or blamed on the insufficient faith of the hearers. Public accountability is rare and repentance rarer.

The predictions surrounding the 2020 American election are the best documented case. A great many prophetic voices in these networks declared a specific outcome with confidence. When it did not happen, a handful apologised and most did not.

A movement that claims the prophetic office while refusing the prophetic test has taken the authority and declined the accountability, and that combination is dangerous wherever it appears.

The leading ministries and their teaching

Two names recur in any discussion. Che Ahn leads Harvest International Ministry, a large apostolic network, and Bill Johnson leads Bethel Church in Redding, California.

I have no interest in the character of either man and I am not in a position to comment on it. What I can assess is what is publicly taught, and it is on that basis alone that I write.

Bethel’s teaching that Jesus performed miracles as a man dependent on the Spirit rather than in His own divine power is a serious christological problem, whatever its intention. Scripture presents the incarnate Son as fully God throughout, and the miracles as evidence of who He is.

The associated teaching that healing is guaranteed in the atonement for every believer now, and that failure to receive it reflects a deficiency in the person praying, has caused deep pastoral harm. Paul left Trophimus ill at Miletus and Timothy had a recurring stomach complaint.

These are teachings, publicly stated and widely distributed, and testing teaching is what Scripture requires of us.

Impartation, atmospheres and the missing text

A cluster of practices travels with the New Apostolic Reformation. Impartation of anointing by touch. Grave soaking, in which people lie on the graves of dead revivalists to receive their mantle. Fire tunnels. Gold dust and angel feathers in meetings.

For most of these there is no text at all, and where a text is offered it is doing something quite different. Elisha received a double portion after asking Elijah, in a unique prophetic succession that Scripture presents as exactly that, unique.

Simon Magus in Acts 8 wanted to buy the ability to impart the Spirit by laying on hands, and Peter’s answer to him is one of the harshest in the New Testament.

When a practice has no scriptural warrant and its defenders appeal to experience instead, we are no longer in the realm of disputed interpretation.

Why the music matters

Many British congregations that would reject all of this sing the songs every Sunday. Bethel Music, Jesus Culture and related labels produce material of real craft, and much of it is theologically unobjectionable line by line.

I do not think singing a song makes a church heretical, and I am wary of the purity spiral that says otherwise. But two things follow that leaders should weigh.

Money flows back to the ministry, and platform follows music. Young people who love a song look up the church that wrote it, then the conference, then the teaching, and the pipeline is real.

So I would ask leaders to know what they are singing and where it comes from, and to teach their congregations rather than simply banning a list. See also music from Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong.

What the New Apostolic Reformation gets right

Fairness demands this section. These churches expect God to act, and a great many British congregations do not.

They take the supernatural seriously, they pray with expectation, they send young people out, and they are willing to be foolish for the sake of the gospel. I would rather pastor a church with too much zeal than one with none.

The failure of much of British evangelicalism to teach a healthy doctrine of the Holy Spirit created the vacuum that this movement filled. If we had done our work properly, the appeal would have been smaller.

So the answer is not to retreat into a cautious cessationism that Scripture does not teach. It is to be biblically expectant and doctrinally careful at the same time, which is harder work than either extreme.

The pattern of unaccountable authority

The structural problem underneath the doctrinal ones deserves naming. Where a man holds an office that cannot be questioned, and where questioning him is framed as rebellion or as touching the Lord’s anointed, the conditions for abuse are complete.

The New Testament’s pattern is plurality. Elders in the plural in every church, mutual submission, public rebuke for a leader who persists in sin, and congregations commended for testing what they were told.

Peter, who if anyone could have claimed apostolic authority over others could have, writes to elders as a fellow elder and tells them not to domineer over those in their charge. That is the tone of New Testament leadership.

Wherever the New Apostolic Reformation model has been adopted, that plurality has tended to give way to a single figure with a network. See also the pattern of concealment in the charismatic movement.

How to test a church for these ideas

You will rarely see a sign on the door. The questions to ask are practical.

Who can correct the leader, and has anyone ever done it? What happened when a prophecy failed? Is Scripture ever used to challenge what a visiting speaker said? Where does the money go and who sees the accounts?

Ask also what the church expects the future to hold. If the answer is that the church will progressively take over the culture and hand a conquered world to Jesus, you are hearing dominion theology whatever it is called.

And listen for the vocabulary of the New Apostolic Reformation. Apostolic covering, spiritual fathers, atmospheres, mantles, territorial breakthrough. The words carry the theology with them.

Where the New Apostolic Reformation came from

The roots run back further than the nineteen nineties, and knowing the history helps enormously.

The Latter Rain movement of 1948 supplied the doctrine of restored apostles and prophets, the impartation of gifts by laying on of hands, and the vision of an end-time company of overcomers. The Assemblies of God rejected it the following year and the ideas dispersed rather than died.

The shepherding movement of the nineteen seventies supplied the authority structures, with every believer submitted to a personal shepherd and a chain of covering running upward. Its own leaders later apologised publicly for the damage it caused, which is more than most movements manage.

The Kansas City prophets of the eighties supplied the model of a prophetic elite, and the revival networks of the nineties supplied the conference circuit and the international relationships.

Wagner did not invent the New Apostolic Reformation. He named and organised something that had been assembling for fifty years. See also the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God movement.

Spiritual warfare and the territorial spirits idea

One further teaching deserves attention because it drives so much of the practice. Wagner popularised strategic level spiritual warfare, the idea that named demonic principalities rule geographical territories and must be identified and bound before a region can be evangelised.

From this come prayer walks to map a city’s spiritual strongholds, identificational repentance for the historic sins of a place, and the language of taking cities.

The scriptural basis is thin. Daniel 10 mentions the prince of Persia, and it is the archangel Michael who deals with him, not Daniel, who is simply told to keep praying. Ephesians 6 describes a real conflict and issues no instructions about naming or binding regional powers.

The apostles evangelised the Roman world without once doing any of this. They preached, they suffered, they planted churches, and the word of the Lord spread. The New Apostolic Reformation has added a technique the New Testament never mentions and made it central.

Money, platform and the conference economy

It is not unspiritual to follow the money, and Paul thought accounting mattered enough to arrange independent oversight of the collection so that no one could blame him about it.

The economics here are worth understanding. Conferences, schools of supernatural ministry, worship albums, book deals and network membership fees form a substantial commercial ecosystem, and apostolic networks sit at the top of it.

That does not make anyone insincere. It does mean there are strong financial incentives against admitting that a prophecy failed or that a claimed healing did not last.

When a doctrine of authority and a revenue stream point in the same direction, a church needs unusually strong accountability, and the New Apostolic Reformation model provides unusually weak accountability. That is the combination that worries me most.

A closer look at the apostolic claim

Since everything rests on the claim to apostolic office, it is worth testing it against the New Testament in a little more detail.

The Greek word apostolos means one sent, and Scripture uses it in two ways. There is the office held by the Twelve and by Paul, and there is the general sense applied to messengers of the churches such as Epaphroditus.

The office carried marks that are not repeatable. Direct commissioning by the risen Jesus. Eyewitness testimony to the resurrection. Authority to write Scripture. Signs performed as credentials, which Paul calls the signs of a true apostle.

Revelation warns the church at Ephesus about those who call themselves apostles and are not, and commends the congregation for testing them and finding them false. The New Testament expected the claim to be made and expected churches to refuse it.

So when the New Apostolic Reformation asserts a restored governing office, the burden of proof lies entirely with the claimant, and Ephesus shows us what a healthy church does with such a claim.

A summary of the case

Let me gather the argument before the application, since I have covered a good deal of ground.

The New Apostolic Reformation rests on a governing apostolic office the New Testament does not continue, a dominion eschatology the New Testament does not teach, and a prophetic practice that has abandoned the test Scripture provides.

Around those three it has gathered practices with no textual warrant and a structure of authority that removes the accountability the New Testament requires of every elder.

None of that follows from believing that the Spirit still gives gifts, and I want to keep saying so, because the reflex answer to the New Apostolic Reformation in this country has too often been a cessationism that Scripture does not teach either.

So, now what?

If you are in a church touched by this, do not storm out on Sunday. Go to your leaders privately with the passages, ask honest questions, and see how they respond. The response will tell you a great deal.

If you have been hurt by a prophecy that failed or a healing that never came and were told it was your fault, hear this plainly. That was not your fault, and the God of the Bible has never operated a system where His kindness depends on your performance.

And if all this has made you nervous of the Holy Spirit, please do not settle there. He is not the property of the movement that misuses His name, and a church can be both careful and expectant.

What would it look like this year for your congregation to pray with more expectation and test with more care at the same time?

Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.

1 Thessalonians 5:20 to 21, ESV

For Further Study

Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology gives a clear treatment of the apostolic office and of the kingdom, and his Dispensationalism explains why dominion schemes sit so badly with a literal reading of prophecy. J. Dwight Pentecost’s Things to Come sets out the case that the kingdom arrives with the King rather than being built by the church. John Walvoord wrote helpfully on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in a way that avoids both cessationism and excess. Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology handles the question of continuing revelation and the closure of the canon with care. Arnold Fruchtenbaum is worth reading on the relationship between Israel, the church and the kingdom, which is the point at which dominion theology most clearly departs from a consistent literal hermeneutic. Lewis Sperry Chafer remains valuable on the finished work of Jesus and on the danger of grounding assurance in experience.