How To Recognize a New Apostolic Reformation Church | Jed Hartley

2 days ago

John and Jed discuss how people can recognize possible New Apostolic Reformation influence in churches, especially when groups identify as non-denominational or avoid clear labels. They examine concerns about authority structures, apostles and prophets, five-fold ministry language, prophetic history, spiritual covering, alignment, and the way certain churches describe mission and mandate.

The conversation also explores why not every charismatic or Pentecostal church should be treated the same, while still identifying patterns that may point to unhealthy control, isolation, loaded language, dominion-focused teaching, and network connections. John and Jed use examples from International House of Prayer, Pasadena International House of Prayer, Kansas City Fellowship, Bethel, and related movements as discussed in the episode.
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Transcript

00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of

00:45a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.

00:49Jed, this is one of those episodes that probably I should have done a long time ago.

00:53I get so many people that contact me, and they either give me one of two things.

00:57The first one is, is my church a New Apostolic Reformation church, and should I be scared?

01:03Or they'll give me feedback, our church is not an NAR church, and they're actually in

01:09one of the big ones.

01:10So it's kind of funny, there's this broad spectrum of comments that we get, but I think

01:14really it's important that we address it because people really need to understand what it is

01:19and why leadership would want to deny it.

01:21I don't know if you've seen this, but there's many NAR people who outright reject this idea

01:28that there's a New Apostolic Reformation, and yet they're in the system that's the

01:32very thing that they're saying that they're rejecting.

01:34So maybe we could talk through that today and hopefully give some people some tips on

01:39how to recognize, is this thing healthy or is this one of these extremist New Apostolic

01:46Reformation churches?

01:47I think that what you identified with people wanting to, or pastors or leaders of the church

01:55wanting to not identify with the New Apostolic Reformation, which they are clearly associated

02:00with it, I think that's what makes it so tricky is that there really is, like I didn't know

02:06that IHOP was involved with the New Apostolic Reformation until well into, you know, my 20s

02:13because obviously it wasn't a part of our conversation or vernacular, but I didn't even

02:19know what denomination we were a part of.

02:24I didn't even know we came from like a Pentecostal tradition or charismatic, I mean, there's a lot

02:31of different terms that people use and in a lot of these church communities, in these New

02:38Apostolic Reformation communities, they will be explicitly called non-denominational, which

02:45I think causes a lot of the confusion because a lot of other denominational churches want

02:53to associate with their denominations so you can know what you're getting when you join

02:58that church.

02:59If you move from, you know, Texas to Oklahoma or whatever and you're moving up and you're

03:06like, well, I want to be a part of this same sort of Baptist community, but I need to find

03:12a new church, well, it's like, okay, well, great, I just see that this one's labeled also

03:16Baptist and so I go there and, but with the New Apostolic Reformation churches, it's not

03:25as clear cut as that.

03:27So, I think that it's a very legitimate question and I get it all the time too of like, hey,

03:31is my church or is my friend's church or my loved one's church or this new church that

03:39just popped up in my small town, is it a part of the New Apostolic Reformation community?

03:45Which, because the lines aren't clearly drawn, I mean, it's kind of hard to answer that question

03:52and so I think that it's good that we have an actual podcast where we can talk about some

03:57of the red flags of whether or not a church is associated with New Apostolic Reformation

04:02because like, it just isn't clean cut.

04:05I literally, before coming on to this episode, I was thinking about it and I picked a church

04:12that I know is deeply associated with the New Apostolic Reformation and I tried to Google

04:18what other people, so I picked the Pasadena International House of Prayer, which is just down the road,

04:27from where I live in Los Angeles, and I know for a fact that it is directly a part of

04:36the

04:37New Apostolic Reformation stream and we'll talk about some of the main things that cover it,

04:42but like, it is directly from the International House of Prayer, it doesn't even try to really

04:50even hide that because it's called Pasadena International House of Prayer, so many of the

04:58people who founded it came straight from the International House of Prayer, they have prophetic

05:04conferences, there's a bunch of different things that associate it with it, but one, I looked it up

05:10to see, hey, what are the associations? And I was shocked by some of the things that I saw on,

05:17like I saw a red thread of people talking about it, and I just think that people are really ill

05:23-informed

05:24about the origins of a lot of these different things, and I can get into the specifics of

05:31Pasadena International House of Prayer in a second, but I think the larger point is that

05:37people just don't know, and the Reddit threads that were talking about it were horribly ill-informed,

05:44and the, like I looked on ChatGPT, or you know, I was like, wait, if someone just like used one

05:52of the

05:52AIs to ask, is it a part of it? And I felt the, that answer was not great as well,

06:01and so if for a

06:03organization as clearly a part of the new Apostolic Reformation stream as, you know, one of IHOP or its

06:12subsidiaries, for that not to be easily identifiable as New Apostolic Reformation, I mean, you know that

06:21you're in complicated territory when even, even the clear churches aren't getting immediate red flags.

06:31Yeah, exactly. Not every charismatic church is a New Apostolic Reformation church. They can believe in

06:37healing and prophecy and spiritual gifts, modern miracles, all of this stuff, and not be an AR church.

06:44And I know, I've read through some of the feedback. People get the sense whenever I'm talking about

06:49miracles and healing, etc., they think that I'm associating that with the extremism. It's not so

06:56much that as it is the fake miracles and the fake spiritual gifts and all of this trickery that's

07:01happening. That's, that's where this really, where I really draw a line. When I was growing up, I was a

07:07pretty easygoing kid. I liked, as you can tell, I favored music, but I would also, even though it

07:14wasn't my favorite thing, I'd go play baseball with some friends. I'd go do, you know, sport, everything

07:20from sports to music to who knows what all else, because I was easygoing and I could get along with

07:26people. But I always remember, there's always that one kid that would come in the group, and he would

07:31only do the things that he wanted to do, and he wouldn't do any of the other things. And so

07:35we're in

07:35this weird world where we're all kind of flexible, and then there's this one kid that says, no, I'm not

07:41going to do your thing. Anytime somebody says, hey, I go to a non-denominational church, would you like

07:47to come with me? I run screaming and I think of that kid, because that's really, that's exactly what

07:53it is. People say, no, I do not want to play by these rules. You go play by the rules.

07:58I'm going

07:58to go do my own thing. And what happens is they do their own thing long enough, and then they

08:03become

08:03a denomination themselves. So what you're saying when you're non-denominational is actually,

08:09we're going to try to create a new denomination, but it might fail. And we might just be this isolated

08:14group. If you're isolated, then it turns into the isolation extremism, and it is very dangerous.

08:20So for me, if you're a new non-denominational group, you've left because you're bitter. If

08:26you're a longstanding one, you've left because you're creating a new denomination, and eventually

08:30you probably will. And there are those who proudly say, we're non-denominational because we're

08:35non-denominational. But yet they've got all of the differences that they write out in sand and

08:40draw this line in the sand between them and everybody else. It's exactly like that kid.

08:46Now, I've tried out a few denominations myself, and I can say that there are some that I agree

08:52with parts of it, but not all. And there's others that I agree with less parts of it,

08:56but not all. But I'm still that easy going where I can go and I can listen to the things

09:03that I like. And as long as it's not outright heresy or dangerous, it really doesn't have

09:08any impact on me. And so I try not to be that kid that's the obnoxious one. But when you

09:14ask

09:15them, is this a new apostolic Reformation church, it's actually more like spaghetti.

09:20I have seen – I don't know if you've seen these. My kid had some of these things. But

09:24the shoelaces that look like a string of spaghetti, it was rounded. I could play a trick on my wife,

09:31and I could stick it into the pot of spaghetti as she's boiling it. And the kids might have a

09:36plate

09:37and say, is this plate shoestring? Well, no, it's not. You've got noodles, and you may have a

09:42shoestring. And you go around the table, and it's kind of the same thing. Now, if Stephen King put the

09:48shoestring in and wrote a book where it morphed into the shoestring that replicated shoestrings and

09:54took over the spaghetti and it became a shoestring monster, and you put that on the plate,

09:59that's new apostolic Reformation. That's the best way to explain it. It is something that

10:05it was a cancer that metastasized into a big problem, these big tumors of groups.

10:11And we can go through some of that, but the point I'm trying to make here is not every church

10:15who shares similarities is new apostolic Reformation. But if you get really, really down deep into it,

10:22you're probably going to find some parts of shoestrings that are left over from latter rain or

10:26any of the things that came before it. Yeah, finding the threads that are, and are there

10:31enough of those shoestrings, enough of those threads that are clearly new apostolic Reformation

10:37associated that the whole meal becomes this? I think that's a great analogy. And I think that,

10:47well, one, to just, when I am talking about new apostolic Reformation, I really,

10:53it's a common defense of people who are clearly associated with the new apostolic Reformation

10:59to be defensive and say, hey, we're not, we don't call ourselves that, or this is not,

11:07Jed doesn't get to define, John doesn't get to define us as new apostolic Reformation because we do not,

11:14you know, say that we are. And I think that part of the, what I, personally, what I think,

11:22in regards to that is that if you are non-denominational, you are choosing to exclude

11:30yourself intentionally from these sort of denominational roots for, I think that you put

11:37it very well, that you are trying to create something new and you're sort of hedging your

11:43bets. And I think that that's what we've seen a lot of these churches do, is that they're trying

11:49to have their cake and eat it too. They're trying to not be associated with this other iterations of

11:56this organization because there are really clear examples of fraud throughout it. And so, you don't

12:04want to be associated with these other failed churches or these other cults that have been easily

12:14identified as cult movements. So, you're not fully claiming, hey, we're a part of the William

12:22Branham, you know, denomination church or the Bethel denomination church or the IHOP denomination.

12:31You have these all sort of separate streams and you kind of intentionally label it ambiguously so that

12:39you can avoid scrutinization, which is 100% the tactic that people are using when they label their

12:48church non-denominational. And I know that, and you can pretty easily defend that statement,

12:54because it's not a multi-denominational church. You couldn't go there and have a teacher,

13:04a prominent teacher in the leadership who's a Methodist and one who's a Baptist and one who's,

13:11you know, a Orthodox Christian. Like, it's not this sort of, hey, we're non-denominational,

13:18so we don't have these denominational boundaries. And that's what it's billed as sometimes. I think

13:24I've talked about this before on this podcast, but it's worth re-mentioning. It's not, you know,

13:30we just love Jesus, and that's all we care about. And if you believe in this, you know,

13:36if you believe in X, Y, or Z, that's whether you believe in the Trinity or don't believe in the

13:44Trinity. Like, we are just about uniting the body of Christ, and it doesn't matter. These doctrinal

13:50differences don't matter. What matters is that we love each other and we love Jesus. And that's

13:56definitely how it's billed. But then very quickly, if you are a part of that organization, you realize,

14:04nope, that's not at all. There might be non-denominational churches that truly are like

14:10that. But when you are getting into these New Apostolic Reformation non-denominational churches,

14:18there's like very specific doctrinal allegiances. And I know that we've talked about this because

14:25we've talked about the invisible boundaries before of these churches where you don't realize that your

14:32church even believes this thing until you bounce up against it. And you start realizing, oh, we have

14:38this like eschatological framework. We believe that the world is going to end in this particular way,

14:44and not agreeing with that is going to get me sent out of church leadership. And all of a sudden,

14:50you're like, oh my goodness, we clearly have very specific doctrinal boundaries. So anyway,

14:56all of that to say is that I think that it's very fair for you and I to get on

15:02here and start

15:03identifying and labeling particular churches or particular church threads as deeply associated

15:12with the New Apostolic Reformation because it's the only way to sort of demystify some of the

15:17intentional spaghetti, some of this like intentional, let's call it, all of these different things

15:24so that we cannot be critiqued. So that people in our church don't even know some of the things that

15:33we believe until it's too late and they've already sort of ingratiated themselves within the community.

15:38And so that we can always say that there's some prophet who was very critical in our sort of

15:46formation, like Bob Jones or for instance, we can later distance ourselves from that. This is

15:54something that I think Bethel does. Bob Jones was absolutely critical in the formation of Bethel

15:59church. I doubt a bunch of people who go to Bethel and certainly a lot of people who listen to

16:06Bethel

16:06music have any idea how influential Bob Jones was on the course of that church. And they're able to do

16:14that so that when all of this information about Bob Jones comes out, Bethel can stay out of the

16:23limelight and say, oh, well, oh man, he fell and we were associated with him, but no one really knows

16:29how deeply associated they were.

16:32The discussion kind of reminds me, ironically, of the Beverly Hillbillies. I don't know if you've

16:37ever seen the show. I used to love it when I was a kid, during the times we could watch

16:41television,

16:41I should say. But there was this episode where it was a continual theme that there were people who

16:49were in the Civil War who did not know that the Civil War had ended. And they were always,

16:55it was always a comedy trying to say, no, you guys can't, you got to stop fighting us, right?

16:59And then in one of the episodes, there was a Civil War reenactment right on the front lawn and Granny

17:05comes out with a buckshot. She's got a shotgun filled with flour and she'd shoot him in the butt

17:09and they would jump and scream. But the Civil War people who are engaged in battle and they become

17:17isolated from the broader group and still think they're in the Civil War, that's specifically what

17:21I'm talking about here. Because the problem with identifying the groups involved with the New

17:29Apostolic Reformation is that we're talking about a bedrock that encompassed many different denominations,

17:36some of them Pentecostal, some of them not. And what happened was it became so popular leading up to

17:43the Assemblies of God rejecting it, that it started to enter mainstream churches. And even some of the

17:49southern states had mainstream denominations that were joining into this thing. And then they did

17:56not know that they were supposed to exit it. And that's where it gets funny. In Kentucky, for example,

18:01I've had multiple people call me who said we were in an Assemblies of God church. And yes, the assemblies,

18:08the broader assemblies rejected latter reign. We weren't part of the independent that split off.

18:13We were the main body of Assemblies of God, but we were also latter reign and we just didn't know

18:19we were supposed to reject it. So you have that scenario playing out, right? That makes it really

18:25difficult because if you connect all of the different movements that are the bedrock for this,

18:32you've got Christian fundamentalism, you've got the United Pentecostal Church are working directly with

18:37Branham for a period, or leaders of it, I should say. Assemblies of God, I mean, a wide swath of

18:43the

18:44Pentecostal movement is joining into this thing until they're supposed to reject it. And then when

18:50they're supposed to reject it, only half of them did. I actually went to a mainstream church that just

18:55purely I could tell was infected by different negative aspects of what I came out of. Was it New

19:01Apostolic Reformation? No, but it had that shoestring I'm talking about. You know,

19:06I'm not going to eat it. So that's kind of the problem here. But the way that it developed,

19:14as I mentioned, you had all of these various Pentecostal groups and then in the height of

19:19latter reign, there were statements being made by Branham and others that were saying things like,

19:24we welcome all the denominations. If your denomination draws us out of their circle,

19:29we'll draw a bigger circle and draw them in. In other words, we're supportive of denominations.

19:34But then when the denomination said, no, what you're doing is wrong. It's heretical and it's

19:39dangerous. And they started separating. Well, that's whenever they said, come out of the churches.

19:44We don't want to participate with your churches. We want to isolate ourselves. We want to create

19:49a non-denominational group. And that's what they did. They formed what would be not a denomination,

19:57but it evolved into a denomination that they called non-denominational, which is the whole

20:03thing is just so funny when you think about it. And when that happened, by that point,

20:08it had spread all throughout all of these different mainstream denominations, Pentecostal denominations,

20:15separatist groups, movements, et cetera, cults, all of these different things. And it was really hard to

20:22identify other than there are threads of doctrine that weave them together. And where they have this

20:30phrase that comes out of the Bible where two or three are gathered together in my name, they will

20:34take that phrase to mean where two or three are gathered together with the same doctrinal unity.

20:39And that's where this turned dangerous because now if your church who is not of my denomination or is

20:46independent, if you are aligned with me on the specific doctrine that the mainstream denominations

20:52reject, you're my brother and I'm going to welcome you to my church even though you're not even part of

20:57my denomination or I may not even have a denomination. So it created these bridges that existed only in the

21:07doctrinal framework that was not mainstream. And they began over time, they began to identify

21:13themselves with doctrines specifically that, yes, the mainstream churches don't believe this,

21:19we have the secret truth. And that's where it got out of control.

21:23Darrell Bock Well, so I think that a natural progression then would be for us to identify

21:29what do you think are those central doctrines that the new – so you and I, John,

21:36we go to a church here in California and we just walk down the road and we walk into the

21:42church and

21:43you and I are trying to see the spaghetti and the shoestrings and identify which doctrines might be,

21:51you know, new apostolic reformation ones. What are some of the big ones that you are looking for to begin

21:59with?

21:59John I actually take a different

22:01Darrell Bock When I'm trying to identify

22:03something that's new apostolic reformation, I don't start with doctrines because that can lead

22:08you into years of trying to untangle that mess. I instead look to see, is this a healthy church?

22:14Is this a church that takes the people in the congregation and tells them we're all equals,

22:20there is no central authority, we don't have an apostle or prophet who's dictating to you. They might

22:27even have a prophet. I'm not going to say that that they don't and that some of the healthy churches

22:32don't. Some of the healthy churches might have a prophet, but they handle it in the biblical way.

22:38There are rules given for people who prophesy in the church. You can read them in the Bible.

22:43So they may have a structure that leads towards authoritarianism. And for me, that's simply the

22:53aspects of a healthy church. If you go to a healthy church where leaders are training people to become

22:58leaders, there is a balance of power there. And that's one of the healthy aspects of a church.

23:05If they're demoting you, do not question, touch not God's anointed. If they're throwing that phrase

23:11out in every sermon, they're probably infected. They probably have a Stephen King version of the

23:18shoestring, whether it's metastasized or not. But this is one of the big things that you first do.

23:26But it goes beyond just simply identifying a new apostolic reformation church. You should ask that

23:31question before you start attending any new church. Is this healthy or is this destructive?

23:36Scott Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good point to make because not all

23:39cult churches in the umbrella of Christianity. So cult Christian churches, not all of them are going

23:49to be new apostolic reformation churches. So I think that that's a really good sort of first red flag

23:58is looking at the structure of how the authority of the church is structured and whether or not

24:07certain individuals are given ultimate authority and whether that is specifically a sign of the new

24:13apostolic reformation church or just a sign of an unhealthy church that is leaning towards similar

24:19cult-like structures, you know, that's an important red flag. Would you say though with that,

24:28I mean, what I have seen is the use of apostles and prophets has enabled that structure of authority to

24:41be corrupt. So I think of the churches, I mean, I'll stick with just the International House of Prayer

24:49because although I've been involved in a lot of different churches and seen like that's obviously

24:54where I grew up and I saw that. And I think that it is a good sort of test case

25:01because we now know

25:02a lot of how corrupt it was behind the scenes. But with the International House of Prayer,

25:10the rhetoric around prophets and apostles was so inundated into the culture. I mean,

25:20one of the things that you had at the school, which is sort of separate and sort of not separate

25:29from

25:29the International House of Prayer church. But at the school, there was a requirement and for staff

25:40members, there was a requirement to take courses in the International House of Prayer's prophetic history.

25:48That was a huge thing that Mike Bickle always emphasized. And he would explicitly say,

25:54if the prophetic history, I can't remember exactly how he phrased it, but essentially it was,

26:01if the prophetic history falls apart, so does the entire church. Like we don't have this church without

26:08the prophetic history. And I think he was right in that regard. And I think that that's,

26:17this is kind of the question that I have with some of these subsidiaries, like the Pasadena

26:22International House of Prayer. It's like, why is this still a thing? Like the prophetic history

26:26fell apart. So like, you can't, what are we doing? It's sort of like the civil war analogy that you

26:34were given. It's like, the war is over, but like this side lost. This was very clearly

26:43proven to be, have some, some rot at the root. So we gotta, we gotta get away from this. And

26:49I,

26:50and yet the, the beat will still go on for International House of Prayer and, and many of

26:55its sort of network, House of Prayer network. But anyway, all that's going back to the point that I was

27:02making was that the emphasis on the prophetic and the apostolic and basically what I saw this

27:13do was that there was then a chosen select group of individuals who basically became the mouthpiece

27:23of God within these communities. And when they became the mouthpiece of God, the doctrine might

27:29change or whatnot and whatnot, but the structure of authority within that community was always such

27:37that these individuals were going to be continuously elevated to near God-like status.

27:44Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern

27:49Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements

27:55into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's

28:02website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of

28:09John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,

28:16audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various

28:23people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support

28:29the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe

28:35to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical

28:40Research, we want to thank you for your support. I remember when we first got married, I was about 20

28:46years

28:46old. And we had these two guys from the Church of Latter-day Saints come into our house. They came

28:52knocked on the door, and most people would turn them away. I'm not the kind of guy that turns anybody

28:57away, so I let them in. And my wife was like, what are you doing? And it was kind of

29:02funny because they

29:03saw me as this 20-year-old who probably knew nothing, not knowing that I study things quite a bit.

29:09I always

29:10have. And they always come with a Jedi Master and a Padawan learner. I don't know what the terms are,

29:17but there's one guy who knows a lot and one guy who's training, usually. And I knew enough that I

29:24started toying with him. And he got out his Bible, and he was reading, and he was trying to convert

29:29me.

29:30And I said, you know, I got a Bible, too. Let me go get it. And I went and got

29:33it, and I said,

29:34turn with me to the very last chapter. And I read where whosoever adds to or takes away from this

29:41book, his part will be taken from the Book of Life. And I said, now let's go read the first

29:45page.

29:46And they turned to the first page of Genesis. No, no, no, the very first page in your Bible.

29:52And I saw the guy's eyes get this big because he knew where I was headed with this, and they

29:56had to

29:56go to the Book of Mormon. And I said, well, that's funny. That's not in my Bible. The Padawan

30:02learner's eyes got like this big. He's like, oh my gosh, we added to this book. And I probably

30:06deconverted him. But the point I'm trying to make is, when you are in a movement and not a church,

30:14there's always this history that has to exist to explain your movement's existence.

30:21And the sad understanding that people don't grasp is that Christianity was this way. For Christianity

30:28to exist and survive as a movement, we had to have the Gospels. I mean, that had to exist. So

30:35people

30:35went around and they carried the Gospels. This is our movement. We are Christian. And that separated

30:40them from the other religions. If you're in a movement that has a prophetic history or something

30:46that is required for your church to exist, you have created a separate thing that is not Christianity.

30:55I don't care how you spin it. You can say that it's built on Christianity, whatever you want to say.

30:59But for your group to exist, you have to have something separate. You are a separate thing.

31:05You're not Christian. In my opinion, and I'm saying that I said that probably wrong. There are

31:10Christian groups who have this, but their focus is not Christianity. Their focus is themselves. I think

31:15that's a better way to say it. So for that to exist, you have to have exactly what you said,

31:22people who are claiming to be apostles and prophets. Here's the problem. The word apostle

31:28simply means, and we've talked about this, it means one who is sent out. And a biblical apostle

31:33means one who is sent out with the authority of establishing the church because they had seen

31:38Jesus face to face. Whenever you have to have a prophetic history to explain that away and create a

31:46new version of an apostle so that your movement has a different apostle than the biblical apostle,

31:52what you have done is you have created the idea that the prophetic or the apostle leaders, whatever

32:00they claim to be, they can rewrite your life's direction by their prophecies. When you get into that

32:09level of complexity for your group to exist, either you're in the New Apostolic Reformation or you're

32:16in something that is very dangerous because you're going outside of the Bible to create a new movement,

32:21and you saw where Jim Jones went with his movement. It can go everywhere from we're going to go worship

32:26a flying spaghetti monster to we're all going to go drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. You just don't know where

32:32that's going to go. For me, that's dangerous. But more to the point, which is kind of circling back

32:38to answer your question, there are specific doctrines that you can identify the framework

32:44that is used to develop the New Apostolic Reformation. One of them is the five-fold ministry.

32:51If your group reads the passage from Ephesians where it talks about apostles, prophets, pastors,

32:57and teachers, but then to explain it in the way that they teach it, have to combine it with their

33:02prophetic history to make them change into something that the Bible doesn't say they are,

33:07you've created an authoritarian structure. And so regardless of whether you're in the New Apostolic

33:13Reformation or not, you are in an authoritarian church and it's not a healthy church. However,

33:19I would say a vast majority of the New Apostolic Reformation churches do believe in this five-fold

33:24ministry in the authoritarian way.

33:26Yeah, yeah. Authoritarian five-fold ministry, I think that that's, I definitely was thinking

33:33about that as one of the red flags as well, which I think goes usually hand-in-hand,

33:44at least now, with a lot of the Seven Mountain mandate stuff, because you have not only these sort of

33:51apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors. So, you have the sort of structure and authority that's

34:06established and that heavily leans on your apostles and your prophets. I wonder if this feels different

34:15in different countries, but in the United States, I think that that is now coming hand-in-hand with

34:22what the Seven Mountains mandate, where there is now all of this language about Christians taking

34:30dominion over and having sort of from the authority of the apostle flowing down, there is now, we are going

34:41to invade every sphere of society, every mountain of society, in order to gain influence over

34:50the American culture in general. Again, I think that this might feel different in different countries,

34:57and I am very familiar with the way that is manifested in sort of the specific stream of the

35:04NAR that I have seen, and I know that this is another huge thing that I am personally sort of

35:12raises a red flag for me, is that this big emphasis on dominionism, which again, it doesn't,

35:18the language of it is not always easy to identify, unless you know what you're looking for, and then

35:25it's very easy to identify, but you can have, you can go to a church, and if you haven't heard

35:31this language

35:31before, it sounds pretty benign, or it can sound very like, okay, yeah, like we want Christians in

35:39every sphere of society, we want, you know, Christians who are in education, who are in

35:45the entertainment industry, and we want to hear the voice of God in every echo in every aspect of life,

35:52and you're like, okay, great, yeah, I'm on board with that. But then when it is attached to this

36:01sort of apostolic network, you see that there's this branching authority structure that is very,

36:07like, authoritarian. It's very, like, we are trying to implement our new vision of what Christianity is

36:15supposed to even look like, and what American culture is supposed to look like, and while you,

36:23it might just be about Jesus on the sort of broader paintbrush strokes of it, that's what it's being

36:32labeled as. As you get more specific into it, it's like, there is a very specific vision of what it

36:37means

36:38to be a Christian in the entertainment industry, or to have these spheres of society influenced,

36:47like, that is a very specific thing, and the dominionist vision is one that is very specific,

36:55and I have only seen that lead to further, like, coercive, abusive, and authoritarian sort of

37:07structures be established. Well, it goes back to the Stephen King version of the spaghetti bowl.

37:13Right. And I hope the guy's listening so he can write a book on this. I would love to read

37:17it if

37:17he does. But, so, in the spaghetti bowl where the shoestring is dropped in, you just have simply that.

37:23It's a shoestring. It's, you know, it's somewhat harmless. If you bite into it, you spit it back out.

37:28But in the Stephen King version where it's metastasizing and it's taking over the other

37:33strands of spaghetti and they all become shoestrings, that's what we're talking about

37:37here. And what you're specifically talking about, because I was listening as you were talking to

37:42the keywords, what you're talking about, essentially, is there are loaded language,

37:49but there are actionable keywords in New Apostolic Reformation churches. You talked about

37:54Seven Mountains Mandate. Think of the word mandate. It means you have a mission, and that mission's not

37:59really described in the Bible. This is a new mission that we have created for our movement.

38:05You can use, there's different languages that you can use, different words you can use in

38:09the language, but think of it like this. If the word means you have an assignment, if the word means

38:16you need alignment, you need covering, what you're talking about is we're going to give you our

38:23revelation of something new that doesn't exist in the Bible. You must get it through our prophetic

38:29history, but it's going to give you your encoded message of a mission that you must be a part of.

38:36Nine times out of ten, if you're in a group that is telling you that there's the secret loaded

38:41language and you have a special mission, you're in a destructive cult and you might die. That's how

38:46bad this is. It's widespread. There are groups that aren't as destructive as Jim Jones and People's

38:53Temple, but they can get there eventually if you stay in long enough. A healthy church is going to

38:59say things like, you belong to a local body. You're one of us. A New Apostolic Reformation Church is

39:05going to say, you must be properly aligned to belong with us. You need to be under our spiritual

39:11authority. You need to be under our covering because we're going to teach you about our mandate,

39:15our mission, whatever the language is. So what they're going to do is they're going to make you conform

39:21and adopt much like the spaghetti. They're going to take the ordinary spaghetti and the shoestrings

39:26going to invade and replicate. That's what they're trying to do. And the Seven Mountains mandate is

39:32essentially that. Not only is it going to replicate in that bowl of spaghetti, we want to get every other

39:37bowl of spaghetti to conform to our mission and so they can be aligned with us. And it goes back

39:43to what

39:44I said at the very beginning. It's the kid who says, I'm not going to play your way. I'm only

39:48going to play my

39:49way. I'm not going to have this denomination participate with this denomination. And what's

39:54really weird about that, because I grew up in this environment too, we would reject another

40:01denomination's offer for fellowship because we were isolationists. And at the same time,

40:06we would listen to sermons about how they were doing that and how they did not align. And after I

40:12left, I'm shocked and amazed that I could go to one denomination church and I might meet people from

40:19another denomination because they had open fellowship. They were actually fellowshipping

40:24with one another. They disagreed on certain aspects of doctrine, but the two that I'm remembering are

40:30healthy churches where they said, you're part of the body and you other people, you're part of another

40:35body, but we're all one in Christ. We're all one in the same. Think of the difference in that in

40:40you

40:41must conform to our spiritual way. You must need our apostles' spiritual covering. Otherwise, you're destined for

40:48hell or whatever they teach. So it's always about those activation words. I hate to use this, but

40:58think of one of the guys that straps a bomb on his chest. They get activated because they have that

41:04programmed language that at a certain point in time, you have a mission, you're going to be activated,

41:09you're going to go do the thing. The Protestant Christian church has the same thing, it's just not

41:15as deadly yet. It's this mix of like activation language that is this sort of culty, okay, here's

41:22the words, and a mix of just like branding of, because you have these mega churches, and we've

41:29talked about this too, of how there's like, it's almost like franchise churches that have all of these

41:36different pop-ups that are a million different iterations of YWAM or the International House of

41:44Prayer or Bethel or something like that. And they're able to maintain that because these words

41:53work. These terminology, like they work to activate people and radicalize people, especially when it is

42:04conjoined with some of these other doctrines or these attitudes towards Christianity and towards

42:10just worldviews in general. But you can see how people get radicalized. And I think one of the

42:17things that you said that really struck me as true is when growing up at IHOP, there was always this

42:29idea that everybody else was rejecting our church, that maybe not everyone else, but that there was

42:37hostility towards the International House of Prayer from all of these different churches, like the church

42:44down the road. And I knew we were different than the church down the road. Like, if I went to

42:50the

42:50Methodist church down the road, they would not believe the things that are true. That's how I would,

42:56I interpreted it. And because we were the ones who were speaking truth, they rejected us. That's the

43:04perspective that I had. And it was this very adversarial, elitism, isolationist mentality that I

43:14didn't realize was isolationist, I thought. And the way that it was even marketed was we were the

43:22forerunner church. We were the church that was going to lead the body of Christ. And in some ways,

43:28we were going to then be separated from the rest because any good leader leads so far ahead that

43:35the rest will follow, but it takes time for them to realize that we were the pioneers. We were the

43:40ones

43:40who saw it first, and we invited everyone else to follow. But in functional reality, we were the

43:48church that was going in and taking other communities and pulling them out and sort of cannibalizing the

43:58Christian communities that were already a part of the city and then radicalizing those groups of

44:07individuals and saying, hey, if you still have allegiance to these particular beliefs that

44:13you had or to the people that you had that no longer works, you must submit to our authority.

44:18I don't think people realize how much early International House of Prayer and even pre-International

44:26House of Prayer, Mike Bickle was like a mob boss figure in Kansas City specifically.

44:35Like the Kansas City Fellowship community, most of the red flags that were raised about

44:43KCF back then and, or Southern, I'm forgetting now what the name of the church, there was many

44:51different church names. There was Metro Christian Fellowship, Kansas City Fellowship, and then

44:57Southern Kansas City something. But those different iterations of Mike Bickle churches,

45:04a lot of the 1980s, 1990s, a lot of the sort of uproar that was in Kansas City against these

45:15communities was less, some of it was doctrinal, but a lot of it was just, hey, they're stealing

45:21our congregation. Like they would come in, they would radicalize people in the congregation,

45:25and then Mike Bickle was like very mob bossy of, you cannot, you have to submit to me and to

45:32my

45:32authority and to, and he used Bob Jones as a sort of prophetic figure to gain credibility himself,

45:45Mike Bickle, and as sort of like, he used them as a tool for sure.

45:50And all of this early language surrounding Kansas City Fellowship was this just like,

45:57I don't know if you've watched Righteous Gemstones, but it was this Righteous Gemstones sort of

46:03feel where it was like, there's just this community coming in and taking over sort of power and control,

46:09and then isolating the new community members from their previous Christian communities. Because if you

46:17are still connected with your Methodist church and your Methodist pastor, then you get to question

46:23Mike Bickle at times, because there's other authority structures, but Mike Bickle only wanted

46:28a singular authority structure that led back to him, or led back to Bob Jones, who he could kind of

46:35manipulate and control. So, and I bring that up for a couple of different reasons, but one of the reasons,

46:44too, is when I was looking up and just out of curiosity being like, hey, how is Pasadena International

46:51House of Prayer talked about and its association to the International House of Prayer? So, very quickly,

47:01I want to read some excerpts from a Reddit thread that I found, because I think it gives a good

47:08representation of how you would see people talk about these things. So, the Reddit thread is just,

47:15my church has ties with the International House of Prayer in Pasadena, known as PHOP, is that a cult?

47:23And then there's more in the actual body of the post, but they're asking this question. And this is

47:31five years ago. So, this is before a lot of the information about Mike Bickle came out. So,

47:39I will say that some of these comments are naive to what was going on at IHOP, and that makes

47:46sense,

47:46because a lot of people are naive to what was going on. But the main response in there is that

47:53the International House of Prayer is not a cult, but the Kansas City prophets are no more. People sinned,

47:59and instead of it being led by the Holy Spirit, they started making it up. It goes on, but essentially,

48:05the response is like, oh, well, you know, it started out good. God's revelation was there,

48:11but then there was people who sinned, and now the Kansas City prophets are no more, and it sort of

48:18fell

48:18away. It's not a cult. This is sort of the rhetoric that surrounds it. And that's largely the rhetoric that

48:25I've seen

48:25with a lot of the criticisms towards the International House of Prayer throughout my life is that for the

48:33people who are criticizing it, it's always sort of caveated of like, well, it's not really a cult,

48:39and there was good people who had, God really was speaking to them and was really using them,

48:46and then somewhere along the way, it got messed up. That is not how it is. That just is not

48:51the truth.

48:53You were talking about something I want to circle back to because it's actually important,

48:57and it is the major point that I wanted to build up to. It's really easy to recognize a New

49:03Apostolic

49:03Reformation Church by whether they're living in reality or whether they're living in this fantasy

49:10world of spiritual warfare. And I want to clarify that because I'm not saying that spirits and demons

49:17are not in the Bible. You can read the Bible and you can find these things, right? There are passages

49:22that talk about it, but there are people who don't actually live in our world, yet they're here,

49:28and they think that everything around them is not another human, not another sickness of the body.

49:34They think, this is spiritual warfare, and I'm engaged. I am an active participant. I'm activated.

49:40That's another way to look at it. I am activated for becoming a spiritual warrior.

49:46When you do this, when you get the people to believe this mindset that the whole world around

49:53me is against me, it's all angels or demons, and we're in this battle, what happens is they start

49:59to point at the others who they've taken the people out of the churches, and they say the others are

50:05the

50:05churches that have been infected by those demons. And so the reality, it's one step away from reality

50:12because they're starting to think, okay, that's not a human that I see preaching in that church.

50:17That's a demon who is infecting other demons and those who stay in that church.

50:21You're living in a fantasy world that is, I hate to say it because people hate Harry Potter, but

50:26you're a little bit worse than Harry Potter when you're like this, right? You're living in a world

50:31where you are demonizing other humans. And go back to the church example, the healthy church example that I

50:38said were one denomination fellowships with another. They don't look at each other this way.

50:43That's not how the real world works. But once you reach that level of program, of activation,

50:50you've actually become radicalized to the point where if the leader starts to tell you to do things

50:57that aren't legal, there are people in the church that will do it. And for me, that's highly problematic.

51:03I would say, if you're looking for a sign of, is this a new apostolic reformation,

51:08just listen to the sermons. Are they talking about spiritual warfare? Run screaming if they are.

51:12I'm so glad that you made this point and it makes it feel like we intentionally were leading to this

51:18final thought because, which we were not, but the Vance Bolter, which we did a whole episode on

51:28Vance Bolter, who was the Minnesota shooter. And I won't get into too much of the details on that.

51:35But I remember, and I'm sure you remember some of this too, John, when his name came up, I didn't

51:43know

51:43anything about him. And I just on a whim knew that he had spoken at some churches in, I can't

51:55remember if it

51:56was Kenya or he had spoken to a church in Africa. And I pulled up one of his sermons just

52:04sort of on

52:05a whim because you and I at the time had been talking about Christian dominionism and violence

52:13associated with Christian dominionism. And I had no way thought that Vance Bolter was going to be

52:19connected to the New Apostolic Reformation community at all. And then when I watched his sermon,

52:28it was exactly what you were saying. It was his language about, he spoke a lot about churches being

52:36infected, other American churches being infected by demons and about the spiritual warfare between

52:46churches in the actual, it wasn't, you know, sort of the speaking about the church as a whole,

52:54it was this sort of separated thing. And he talked about some of the political reasons why that was

53:02the case and talked about homosexuality and abortion and how those were demons and infecting the church.

53:11And anyway, he just used a lot of this language that to me, someone who had grown up in the

53:18New

53:18Apostolic Reformation community, I was like, man, a lot of these, he's using a lot of these trigger

53:25words, a lot of these activation words. And I was like, man, this feels familiar in a way that wasn't,

53:31you know, I've heard charismatic Christians speak before and there's a sense of familiarity,

53:38but there was a very specific, like, man, this is, this is really close to some of the stuff that

53:45I

53:45remember having be taught to me and in how I grew up. And then, lo and behold, I go to

53:54investigate and

53:55realize that he was heavily influenced and radicalized by someone who was on the same,

54:04the same, like, oh, I can't remember what they called it, but there was, it was this Christian

54:09farm in Zimbabwe that IHOP had funded. Well, actually it was pre-IHOP, but Kansas City Fellowship

54:17had funded that my parents were on. And there was like, so there was this direct connection between

54:23Bolter and my parents. And you could see, oh, I can see how he could have been indoctrinated by

54:30some of the same rhetoric. Now, if people want to go back and watch that actual episode where we go

54:36into it in more detail and, and, um, you can see sort of the lines drawn. And then there was

54:41articles

54:42in, in papers about him that were before this, about how some of his family had, he had gotten

54:49sort of radicalized by this version of Christianity that sort of isolated him from the rest of his

54:55community. And they started talking about that. And it was this very fascinating parallel of, of

55:01what I had seen so many times happen in the very community that I was raised in, where it was

55:07this sort

55:07of activation language that separates Christians from other Christians in this radical, we are a part

55:17of the select few who are fighting the demonic, um, influence of the world, um, that is, is permeating

55:27through these other Christian churches. And we need to be set apart. We need to be different. We need

55:32to be the bride of Christ. We need to be the ones who are the forerunners for God and, and

55:38separate

55:39ourselves. And we will do so by, by using this sort of Joel's army, spiritual warfare, um, methods that

55:49can clearly blend into actual literal, um, violence at times. So, um, I, I went, I'm going on this thread

55:58that is now probably much larger, but I think the point is, is like, yeah, I, I remember having this

56:04experience where I heard someone and I was like that this is ringing bells with some of this new

56:11apostolic reformation, um, language and followed that thread to see, yep, nope, there actually was

56:18this direct connection to the new apostolic, um, world, which again, it's a, it's the spaghetti

56:25analogy. It's that where, how much it has metastasized and how it's been influenced by other

56:32things. You know, it's, it's difficult to, to identify this is a new apostolic reformation

56:39belief and this is not, but you can certainly see the sort of trends of it. And, um, you know,

56:45it's sort of the fruit of the tree situation where you can see a lot of the ways that church

56:52communities and individual people are affected by some of this belief system and, and a corrupt

56:59authority structure that is very endemic within, um, new apostolic reformation communities.

57:06I think what you're trying to say, and this is a point that really, uh, I should have made as

57:10my

57:10primary point. When I look to see as a group, a new apostolic reformation church, I immediately go

57:16to the labyrinth of networks that are connecting it. Whenever Vance Belter, all of that stuff happened,

57:22I went to the website to find any information about them and there's just nothing that you could find,

57:27news sources. So I actually started to trace his church that was in the United States. And

57:34interestingly, I think they've pulled all the sermons off, but there was a point in time that

57:37I was able to read some of the sermon transcripts and they actually mentioned Mike Bickle in those.

57:43So what I did was I tried to think the spaghetti bowl. So once it metastasizes, it takes over your

57:49spaghetti bowl. Well, next it's going to go take off, take over somebody else's spaghetti bowl.

57:53Well, you can trace that trail and see, see how is it connected. And really that's, that's the big

57:58thing. If it's trying to spread and grow like a virus, it's probably new apostolic reformation.

58:04If you combine it with all of the other things that we've said in this episode. So hopefully

58:08we've said something to help somebody identify. Thank you so much for doing this.

58:13Yeah, my pleasure.

58:14Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

58:17You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new apostolic

58:21reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon,

58:27Kindle and audible.

58:47Go, go, go, go.

How To Recognize a New Apostolic Reformation Church | Jed Hartley | Podcast Episode 665

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