On Jan. 6, 2021, six permissions for demonstrations were issued in Washington, D.C., four of which were to Christian groups. We all know now that these demonstrators launched an attack on the Capitol to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Although the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have received most of the publicity, the presence of so many groups claiming Christian connections invites comment, as faith-based communities are not usually associated with such violence. What follows is a discussion of how these groups ignore both Christian history and traditional Christian theology, whether Protestant or Catholic.
These Christian groups owe their existence to the work of the late C. Peter Wagner, longtime professor of Missiology and Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary. He helped create the New Apostolic Reformation, a combination of Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, and the Seven Mountain Mandate. In 2001, Wagner declared the start of the second Apostolic Age and the restoration of the lost offices of apostle and prophet. To facilitate this movement, he created the International Coalition of Apostles, where for a price one could purchase the title of Apostle.
In this so-called “third wave of the Holy Spirit,” spiritual warfare is to be waged by the American Christian right to dominate every aspect of society, identified as the Seven Mountains of government, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, family, and religion. The hope is to weaken or end the separation of state and religion in America, while simultaneously deeming opponents to be demon-possessed, none more so than Democrats. Trump is thought to have been called by God to be the U. S. President, with textual
support for the New Apostolic Reformation found in Brian Simmons’ biblical version, The Passion Translation.
Followers of the New Apostolic Reformation movement find their leadership from people who can claim instruction from an appearance to them by the Risen Christ. Perhaps this, as much as anything, illustrates the group’s rejection of Christian history and traditional theology, given its dismissal of the historical understanding of Jesus’ Ascension. This doctrine is based on the New Testament Book of Acts 1:9, “Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.” [NKJV] This followed the risen Jesus’ promise that in a few days they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit and preceded their election of a twelfth apostle to replace the deceased traitor, Judas Iscariot.
An important aspect of what became the orthodox Christian understanding of the Ascension includes the conviction that the next appearance of Jesus will be His second coming in glory. The continuing presence of God with His people would not be lost however, as the Holy Spirit would replace the risen Jesus as God with His people. Thus, the Spirit’s descent upon the gathered believers at Pentecost, some forty days after Easter, became the celebrated birthday of the Church. The Spirit then became the medium of spiritual experiences and the effective means by which converts were introduced to the words and power of the ascended Jesus, understood as ruling at the right hand of God. Personal encounters with the risen Jesus were not at issue.
The unanimity of the biblical writers on this position may be seen in the experience of the Apostle Paul, whose Damascus Road conversion in Acts 9:1-20 is one of the New Testament’s best-known accounts. He was regularly forced to defend his apostolicity, and in his First Letter to the Corinthians he describes his dramatic contact with the Risen Jesus being “as to one untimely born.” [I Cor. 15:8, NKJV] Because he had neither been a follower of the earthly Jesus nor had he experienced any of His pre-ascension appearances, Paul clearly knew questions about his apostolic call would be advanced.
This theological position can be seen as playing itself out in the historical relationship between the Christian movement in Egypt and that in the Mediterranean world of the New Testament. Based on the contents of the New Testament alone, one would never know there was even a Christian community in Egypt during the Apostolic Era. Yet today we know and have in our possession an extensive library documenting a thriving gnostic community whose leaders based their authority on recurring experiences they claimed to have had with the Risen Jesus.
Although what was being taught in the gnostic world of Egypt differs considerably from that of our contemporary New Apostolic Reformation, the basis of authority in both is diametrically opposed by the New Testament rejection of recurrent appearances of the Risen Christ to believers. The New Testament Apostles could verify one another’s experiences of the Risen Jesus, while no verification existed for those in Egypt, or for those today, whose claims of experiences with the Risen Jesus were, and are, private. Consequently, no authority was accorded by New Testament leaders to those Egyp-tian spokesmen and women, although their form of Christianity continued for decades. The gnostic community’s library was buried a few years after Constantine made Christianity the Roman Empire’s official religion and the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 defined the orthodox Christian faith. This library was not discovered until the 20th century, while Gnosticism itself was declared illegal and disappeared for good as an organized movement in the fourth century.
The current attraction by the NAR to so many followers can be explained in part by the general inattention paid to the Ascension by most mainline American Protestant churches. For decades, if acknowledged at all, it has been treated like a way station between Easter and Pentecost, although even the latter is ignored by many congregations. As a result, most members would have no theological reason either to question a purported believer claiming to have experienced the Risen Jesus or to repudiate the claimed teaching thereby received.
In addition to ignoring the Ascension in general, mainline American Protestantism has also been careless in its use of language to describe spiritual experiences. While acknowledging the presence of the Holy Spirit, more often than not members will describe experiencing the spirit of Jesus, or even more likely Jesus Himself, instead of the Holy Spirit. Preachers often urge congregants to “meet Jesus,” thereby using language that clearly implies to members the desirability of an experience with the Risen Jesus. When the Spirit then leads such a member into the truth of Jesus, the language used to describe the experience is often abbreviated to just “hearing” or “meeting Jesus.” Consequently, many members of mainline American Protestant churches are ill-prepared to question apostolic claims based on so-called “experiences with the Risen Christ.”
These same members are thus equally unprepared to question the New Apostolic Reformation rationale for supporting Donald Trump. In this case, appeal is made to the appearance of the ancient Persian Emperor Cyrus, who destroyed the Babylonian Empire and, in 538 B.C., allowed the captive Jewish population to return home to Jerusalem and Judaea. In Isaiah 45:1, we read, “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, …” where Cyrus is equated with the Messiah, becoming the only non-Israelite so described in the Old Testament. The NAR argues that Trump is a type of Cyrus, a copy who will free Christians to rule the Seven Mountains and thus reform the United States as the separation of church and state is eliminated.
The use of Cyrus to justify support for Trump, however, reveals a woeful lack of awareness of modern history, in addition to the already described ignorance of ancient history. One need look no farther than the late Rev. Dr. Martin Niemoller, who, in 1933, was among those Christian leaders who supported Adolph Hitler, believing his election would rescue Germany from the social turmoil it was suffering and reinvigorate the life of the Church. Instead, he ended up being sent to a concentration camp during World War Two, but survived and later penned his famous poem, “First They Came”:
“First, they came for the Communists,
But I did not speak out, for I was not a Communist.
Then, they came for the trade unionists,
But I did not speak out, for I was not a trade unionist.
Then, they came for the Jews,
But I did not speak out, for I was not a Jew.
Then, they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak for me. “
The Christian life and political power occupy different domains: the rule of God and the rule of man. The attempt to depend upon political power to support the spiritual life of Christianity betrays the faith, misleads believers, and risks concluding with the persecution of the faithful.
In all of this, however, one of the most perplexing issues involves the appeal in the name of Jesus to political power as the solution to the human predicament, especially as we have the words of Jesus Himself repudiating this temptation. As can be read in Matthew 4:8-10, “Again, the Devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ “ [NKJV // Luke 4:5-9] To claim to follow Jesus while advocating actions specifically rejected by him reveals remarkable selective discipleship that must be challenged.
The New Apostolic Reformation distorts both Christian theology and Christian history. Although for the most part ignored by the mainline American Protestant churches, the time has come for it to be addressed. What to do, however, is debatable. The traditional approach would be a charge of heresy, a concept that has almost disappeared with the last century’s long overdue emphasis upon ecumenism and the welcome creation of the World Council of Churches with the necessary inclusivity thereby embraced. To take such an
action would require the respective mainline Protestant churches to meet in solemn assembly, declare the New Apostolic Reformation to be heresy, and designate its teachings anathema. Whether members even have the language to take such action is questionable.
Nevertheless, however it is done, the time has come to call out the delusion of the New Apostolic Reformation for its corruption of the Christian faith, together with its theological travesty of identifying Trump, the former U.S. President, with Cyrus, the Persian Emperor.
Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Laurinburg Exchange.
Malcolm C. Doubles is an ordained Presbyterian clergyman, spent five-and-a-half years as a home missionary in an Appalachian Mountain county, holds a Ph.D. in biblical criticism from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and served 12 years on the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature. He is the Coker University Provost Emeritus.