F4F | Interview with Doug Geivett and Holly Pivec

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another edition of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Today I have the unique privilege of having

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Doug Guyvet and Holly Pivick on to talk about their latest book, Counterfeit Kingdom.

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If you remember back at the end of November, early December, I did an entire video walking through the different chapters of the book because I think this is probably one of the most important books that has been published within the last year.

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And if you do not already have a copy of this book, you know, we'll put a link down below where you can attain a copy of it for yourself, worth the read.

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But let's see here. Doug Guyvet, Holly Pivick, good to have you on Fighting for the

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Faith. Thank you for coming on. Hi, Chris. Hi, Chris. All right.

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So, you saw my review of your book. I gave you a favorable glowing review and I will not back down.

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This is such an important book. And the discussion of the New Apostolic Reformation is one that is controversial because those with kind of trapped within the theology of the

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New Apostolic Reformation, there's a lot of rhetoric about folks like you and I. Now, I'm apparently like a meanie booger head because I'm a discernment guy.

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And discernment now is like a four -letter word. But I think of Daniel Kalenda.

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And Daniel Kalenda, he put out a video about seven, eight months ago where he was talking about the

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New Apostolic Reformation and he made some claims. In fact, I'd like to get you guys' feedback on these claims to see if at least they square with the truth with you guys.

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All right. So, Daniel Kalenda, this is from his video. He talks about where the concept of the New Apostolic Reformation comes from.

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So, let's listen into his explanation. So, if you listen to my previous podcast called What is the

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NAR and Am I a Part of It?, I discussed what has become known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which when you boil it all down, it basically amounts to a sort of Illuminati -type conspiracy theory that was started by the secular liberal media to demonize

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Republican candidates who were associating with Charismatic and Pentecostal ministers around the time of the 2008 presidential election in the

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U .S. And so, in order to do this, they basically drew on some terminology coined by a preacher named

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Peter Wagner. They conflated a number of other unrelated theological issues like post -millennialism,

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Seven Mountains teaching, and some standard Charismatic and Pentecostal theology. And then they combined all of this with what they saw as fringe political positions like those that were being represented by what was known at the time as the

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Tea Party. So, for example, some of the things that they saw as fringe political views were things like a preference for small government and opposition to abortion and traditional family values and things like that.

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And so, later on, this conspiracy theory was adopted by heresy -hunting evangelicals who then took it a step further and tried to use it to paint

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Charismatics and Pentecostals not only as heretical and unorthodox, as they'd always been doing, but now they could characterize us as dangerous and nefarious as well.

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Now, I'm not going to open up that can of worms again. All right. Now, I think you get the idea. So, Holly, let me ask you.

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I mean, you've been covering the NAR as long as I've been online doing discernment work.

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How instrumental was that liberal media conspiracy theory in your formation of your critiques against the

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New Apostolic Reformation? It wasn't at all. As you say, I was covering the

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NAR even before the liberal media started making these critiques. And he said a number of other things there.

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He said that the liberal media has taken things that are nonstandard Pentecostal Charismatic theology and lumped it together, or has said that's the

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NAR. But then he cited the Seven Mountain Mandate as an example of that. Well, the Seven Mountain Mandate isn't standard

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Pentecostal Charismatic teaching. And so, that's an example of something that has come through the

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New Apostolic Reformation. And so, that's one thing that these people like Daniel Klynda have been doing, is they've been saying that, well, this is just standard

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Charismatic teaching when the things that he and other NAR leaders are promoting are not just standard

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Pentecostal Charismatic theology. These are things about authoritative apostles and prophets and bringing the

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New Revelation, such as the Seven Mountain Mandate. And Daniel Klynda is continuing.

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We point this out in our book that what the leaders in this movement are doing, one thing they do, a tactic they do, is name -calling.

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They refer to critics as heresy hunters and give us these disparaging labels for people who are just bringing up concerns about the

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NAR and questioning and asking, do these teachings line up with Scripture? But it's a common tactic, unfortunately, that Daniel Klynda and others have been doing, where they say, well, the critics are just conspiracy theorists and they're heresy hunters, rather than dealing with the substance of our concerns.

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Yeah, I agree. And Doug, you and Holly have written several books on the

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New Apostolic Reformation, and I note that this particular book, The Counterfeit Kingdom, is a wonderful compendium to the book that you wrote on the

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New Apostolic Reformation. The New Apostolic Reformation dealt with doctrines. This really has to deal with practices.

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And so, what I find fascinating is their claim that somehow we've taken these concepts that are laid out in the doctrinal book that you guys published and have somehow conflated them, as if somehow the

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New Apostolic Reformation is this monolithic thing, kind of like a church denomination.

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Does every church that's part of the New Apostolic Reformation believe and do the same things?

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No, the simple answer to that question is that they do not. There are certain unifying trends within the

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New Apostolic Reformation, which, by the way, Holly and I have never called a conspiracy.

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We've never used that terminology. And yet, people have said about us that we are accusing parties of entering into a conspiracy here.

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Actually, there's a sense in which I think it's more nefarious even than that, because this is a spiritually significant phenomenon where there are people who are united in believing certain things, and they're teaching these things, and then communicating a counterfeit conception of the kingdom of God in the world today, and people are suffering as a result.

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Now, that doesn't mean that they are collaborating with each other, but they do network with each other. They do share a vocabulary.

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They do have many practices and specific teachings in common, and this is what makes them a social movement and a phenomenon to be reckoned with, a force to be reckoned with.

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But, of course, Daniel Kalenda has his facts wrong. His description is mistaken, and we don't call it a conspiracy.

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His timetable is off, like Holly said. We've been drawing attention to these things for quite a few years now, and that's documentable because our books have copyright dates on them.

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So you can tell that the political dimensions of the New Apostolic Reformation and the secular media concerns about those are not part of our concern, the dominant concern for us, and we haven't borrowed anything from them.

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If anything, they have come to us periodically because they know of our work and have wanted our perspective.

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Newsweek, for example, issued an article about NAR and Christian nationalism, and they asked for our comments.

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So that was last fall. So he's got that wrong, and I just wanted to comment on why this is.

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This is an attempt to reframe the narrative and to portray what is true of NAR as if it is mainstream.

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This has always been the case, and I'm not alarmed by this because my feeling is that if your listeners and others just read our books and then go back and watch the

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Kalenda video, they will see that he is not engaging the real issues.

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It is subterfuge, and it is designed to distract attention from the main issues and create a new narrative that NAR figures that we name are mainstream and part of sort of typical, traditional, charismatic teaching.

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So now to come back to your question, I do want to say, I want to emphasize that we've also acknowledged that as a movement, there are some disparities among the parties so that they don't all reason in the same way, quote the same passages, but there are certain core things that they have in common.

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And the one that we emphasize the most is their view of Apostles and Prophets. That is that Apostles and Prophets are now part of the governance of the

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Church, and they exercise extraordinary authority through their covering of congregations and individuals as apostolic figures, and through the new revelations that they receive, which are for the end times.

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And some are Restorationists. They believe that Apostles and Prophets disappeared from the scene, and now they're being restored.

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Others will say, no, the language is being recaptured, but they've always been around.

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We've had Apostles and Prophets functionally for quite some time. People who never regarded themselves as Apostles and Prophets really were apostolic and prophetic in their ministries, and so we're not restoring something.

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But this is a little bit strained as well. So even when they will deliberately claim that they do not believe something that has been attributed to them, oftentimes that depends on the sense in which you're using the language.

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And so now there's a tendency to try to get away from, some will try to get away from calling themselves

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Apostles, and they will speak of the apostolic function, as if that mitigates the problem.

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Yeah, no, actually I think that actually makes things worse. So Holly, let me ask you a question.

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In the book, you talk about this directly. Does Ephesians chapter 4, in talking about what people are calling the fivefold ministry, does it lay out the church's government?

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Is that the whole purpose of that text in Ephesians 4, where Christ has given us

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Apostles and Prophets and evangelists and teachers and things like this? Is that what that is about? No, it's not.

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And Ephesians 4 is the basically single verse that our leaders have taken and taken out of context and built their entire movement upon this verse.

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And this verse, Ephesians 4, 11, that God gave Apostles, Prophets, Christ gave Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers, says nothing about offices, governing offices.

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It's not setting up this hierarchical or this formal system of church government made up of five offices that are supposed to lead the church through all the centuries.

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And it's going way beyond what's there in the text, which says nothing at all about this notion of offices or doesn't speak to church government.

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Yeah. They take a passage out of context, distort its significance, and then they turn it into a manifesto for the church in the end times.

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Yeah, you're right. Now, let me ask you this, Doug. So, when I read scripture, I see that the

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Apostle Paul is called an Apostle. I see that Barnabas is called an Apostle.

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I see that Peter is called an Apostle. So is John. What's the difference between them?

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Because you'll note that Barnabas, his epistle didn't make the cut to be in the

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New Testament. Why is Barnabas's epistle X'd out of the scripture, whereas the

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Apostle Paul, everything that we can find that he's written is placed into the scripture?

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Well, it is true that the Apostles of Jesus, the Apostles of Christ, the Twelve, one of them being replaced,

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Judas Iscariot, by Matthias shortly after the resurrection of Jesus and before his ascension to complete the number 12.

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And then the Apostle Paul are Apostles of Christ who defend their apostleship in very striking ways.

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And Paul especially, because as he says in 1 Corinthians 15, he was one untimely born.

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He was kind of a late arrival to the scene. And three times the conversion of Paul to Jesus Christ, whom he was persecuting through his persecution of the church, was converted on his way to Damascus.

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And three times that conversion experience and reality is documented in the book of Acts by Luke, the author.

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And Paul in his epistles is very intent on defending his apostleship because of the authority that accompanies that apostleship.

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And he meets all of the same conditions for being an apostle that the original 12 did.

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And so that's how he gets access. But it's also true that the apostles themselves, the others, acknowledge

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Paul's authority and received him into the church under that authority. So he had their imprimatur as well.

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Now, there were others who are called apostles, but that's because the term apostle has a very general sense to mean someone who is sent as an emissary, an ambassador, a messenger, someone who represents someone else, another party.

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The apostles of Christ, of course, represent Jesus Christ personally as those who are commissioned to exercise that authority in the world.

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And then there are apostles of the churches who were sent out and perform various functions. And we believe that Barnabas and others who are named as apostles, not that they're the only ones, but they are explicitly mentioned by name, function in this capacity as apostles of the church and did not exercise the same authority that the 12 and Paul did.

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Now, this is important because this suggests that there are two basic kinds or two basic categories of apostle, but neither one of these is going to fit what the apostles of the

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NAR movement claim for themselves. For example, they are not free to just make declarations and write books and documents that could be incorporated into the canon of Scripture, and most of them acknowledge that they're not authorized to write

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Scripture. And they think that's pretty much the main difference between themselves and the 12 and Paul.

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But they do arrogate to themselves, notice the language I've used, because it's not found in Scripture, a kind of authority that exceeds what

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Barnabas and the others had as apostles of the churches. So they've invented another category of apostle that's supposed to be somehow very close to being what a

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New Testament apostle of Christ is, but not quite because of the revelation issue, the canon issue, but much more authoritative in their governing power and authority and in their capacity to provide revelations and activate people in the miraculous, which is different than what the other apostles of the

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New Testament did. So this is a new category that's been invented, and it's one, this is new, it's not even being restored to the church, notice.

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Even the restorationists would be wrong in calling this a restoration of a category of apostle that's in the

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Bible, since it's not. And the second is that it's not a continuation of what, you know,

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George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards or Martin Luther or Ulrich Zwingli or any of these leading figures of the church,

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Protestant and Catholic if you like, who, you know, performed apostolic functions according to NAR leaders, they would never have thought of themselves as having the kind of apostolic authority that these people presume to have themselves.

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Yeah, you're absolutely right. One of the things I notice about the Apostle Paul is that Peter himself in 2

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Peter acknowledges his epistles as scripture, and notes that people twist his words like they do the other scriptures really kind of to their own destruction.

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But the other thing that's unique about the Apostle Paul, and you can see this clearly in 1 Corinthians, is that the

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Apostle Paul speaks with such an authority that he can write something, and it must be viewed as a command of the

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Lord, he even says so. That you know, if anyone is spiritual, he needs to acknowledge that the things I'm writing to you are a command of the

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Lord, which makes him an apostle of a type that is, well, so unique, because you know, as far as I know, it's the 12 plus the

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Apostle Paul who really had that authority. They were apostles of Jesus Christ in a way that they can literally give commands with Jesus' backing, and these are commands of the

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Lord, not just the opinions of the Apostle Paul. That's a great point, Chris, and we can build on that with the following, and that is that Paul knew the difference between when he was speaking for the

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Lord, and when he was speaking his own view of things, and did not have a word from the

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Lord, and he draws explicit attention to those occasions when he knows that what he's saying is a function of his own wisdom, and he's offering it as counsel, but he is claiming that it is from himself and not from the

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Lord. Otherwise, it is. Now, this is striking to me, because two things. First, Paul knows the difference when he's speaking between whether it's a word from the

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Lord and whether it's not. This is something that new apostles and prophets seem to have some trouble with, because they acknowledge that they get things wrong at times, even with predictive prophecy, and so they say, well, you know,

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I guess I missed on that one, and it wasn't from the Lord after all. Well, Paul would never be caught dead making a statement like that.

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Now, another thing to say on this point is that they also hedge their bets.

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In their writings, they talk very authoritatively, and they posture themselves as individuals who have authority that you could not really distinguish from the kind that Paul projected, but when they actually stand in the pulpit sometimes, and they say, this is what the

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Lord has said, they will hedge it, and they will say, well, it seems to me that God is telling me that this is the case.

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Now, I think that most of the people that sit at their feet are not hearing the hedge. They just believe that it's from the

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Lord, but they built in an out, a loophole, so that if it doesn't come to pass, they can always say, well, remember

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I said, this is what I felt was the case, that this was coming from the Lord. Again, that's something that Paul and the others who exercised this kind of authority in the

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New Testament did not. Now, let me mention a third point that comes to mind in this connection, and that is that today's apostles and prophets like to say that they can err, and that this is a function of New Testament prophets and a shift from the way

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Old Testament prophets function. Well, I've just noted differences between New Testament apostles and prophets, right, in terms of the nature of their actual authority and their posturing, in comparison with these new -fangled apostles and prophets of our day.

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So they are projecting their own fallibility onto the New Testament concept of prophecy without even giving any kind of an explanation for these things, much less how this shift from Old Testament to New Testament actually transpired.

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Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. While we're on the topic, Holly, I want to talk to you about this.

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So back in the late 1980s, so it's 1988, my wife and I got swept up into the latter rain movement, and we were told at that time that God had just recently restored prophets to the church.

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That was part of the latter rain restoration. In fact, C. Peter Wagner writes about that in his book

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Apostles Today. And so the church that we were in, we had a prophetess over us.

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And what's fascinating is that I tried to explain to people that even if they claim to, somebody today claims to be a continuationist, that the people who preceded them, they were all restorationists.

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So we were told when I was in the latter rain that God had restored apostles and prophets.

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If you read Frank Bartleman, his eyewitness account of the Azusa Street revival, Frank Bartleman talks about the restoration of the gifts, not the continuation of them.

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And so when I was growing up, nobody can claim at that point that, you know, oh, yeah, we've always had prophets in the church because there weren't any when

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I was a kid. There weren't any when I was in high school. They only started showing up in my early 20s and there were no apostles.

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There was nobody claiming to be an apostle until really the early 2000s. And so when today's continuationists talk about the function of apostle, oftentimes

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I hear them making a reference to the function somehow talking about missionaries being apostles, people who are church planters or people who are pioneers of a movement.

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They consider that they're serving in an apostolic function, which basically makes me ask this question because I remember where the bodies are buried because I've been around a while.

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In Charisma magazine back in the day, C. Peter Wagner wrote this article called

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Where Are the Apostles and Prophets? And the way he's defining apostles and prophets here, he's clearly not talking about missionaries.

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And he's not talking about those who are operating in the function of an apostle.

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So are they, are the people in the NAR basically obfuscating and dealing with like two completely different definitions in order to kind of blur lines to kind of hide what the real history is here?

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What is your explanation for things like this? Yeah, it does seem that way.

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So yeah, it's very common for leaders in this movement when they're challenged, you know, on this notion of what they're promoting, these apostles and prophets, for them to say, oh, we don't mean, we're not talking about apostles in any sense different than missionaries and church planters, like you said.

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And in fact, in the recent NAR and Christian nationalism statement that was drafted by Joseph Matera and Michael Brown, that they published and that many other leaders came on and have signed, you know, when they define apostles, they say we're talking about basically like missionaries and church planners.

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And, you know, you can even not be a charismatic and be an apostle in our definition. But then what we do, we wrote a lengthy response that was published on my website to this document.

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And what we show is that many of the signatories of this document and the initial signatories and even

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Joseph Matera himself have promoted apostles and prophets in a very different way than just missionaries and church planners in their writings and their teachings and their messages.

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You can see that these are authoritative apostles and prophets and that they're bringing new revelation.

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We're not talking about just missionaries and church planners. And so it is like they're giving one definition, they're presenting apostles and prophets in their writings and their messages and their sermons as authoritative as bringing new revelation.

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But then when they're questioned or challenged on it, they go, oh, no, no, no, we're just talking about missionaries and church planners.

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And so that does definitely seem to be going on. Yeah. And let me show you one more thing,

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Holly. This is the cover of C. Peter Wagner's book, Apostles Today. The subtitle is

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Biblical Government for Biblical Power. He's not talking about missionaries in this book, is he?

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Wow. No, no, he's not. And the thing is the other

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NAR leaders are not talking about that either. And we document that in our book and in all of our books and our writings.

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We show that from their own words, you can go to their own writings and their own sermons and see what they're actually saying about apostles and prophets and see if that lines up with what they say when they're challenged.

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And I think people will see for themselves that they're clearly not just talking about missionaries and church planners.

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It is in their writings. It is in their explicit teachings. It's what they say when they're at conferences, whether they're traveling around this country or down in Brazil or someplace like that.

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And what they might say is, but they are missionaries. They are Christian statesmen and so forth.

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Well, okay, if you want to use that language, now let's talk about what you believe they're capable of doing.

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And so this may be another case where they're prepared to invest safe sounding language with dangerous new theological significance.

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And that's a very typical practice that we talk about in the book Counterfeit Kingdom. Euphemisms that they use, language that, even the way they conceive of prayer, the gospel, the nature of the kingdom, this is all familiar language.

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Why not do the same thing with the concept of missionary or church leader and just mean something different by it than what most people would associate with those terms in order to sneak under the radar?

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Yeah. When I see somebody like Apostle Guillermo Maldonado, I don't think he's using the term apostle to mean that he's a missionary.

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Yeah. The other thing we see this with is the term fivefold ministry. The whole concept of fivefold ministry, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, that the church government is to be made up of this fivefold ministry being these offices.

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It was popularized by the latter rain movement, you know, as you discuss. But now what you see in our leaders doing is they're moving away from the office language, some of them, because it's been pointed out that they're promoting these governing offices.

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And so now they're not using the term office like Doug mentioned. They're saying, no, we're just talking about functions or sometimes they'll refer to them as the ascension gifts.

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Or, you know, we're just talking about the fivefold ministry. But really, typically, what is being used when they're talking about fivefold ministry, they're talking about the governing or the authoritative apostles and prophets.

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So people need to be very careful if there are other Pentecostals and Charismatics who don't believe apostles and prophets are authoritative or that they hold offices.

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They need to be very careful when they use the term fivefold ministry. And really, we would say they probably shouldn't be using that term, because typically what people mean when they use the term fivefold ministry is they're referring to these authoritative governing roles in the

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Church. Well notice how they're playing tricks with language here. And we've now noticed two ways this is done.

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One is to take language that's familiar, with which we make certain associations that are biblical and they're fine, and they invest them with new significance, sometimes without drawing attention to what's novel and what's unique, what's different about it, so that they can fool people about what an apostle is supposed to be, or what a missionary is, or what have you.

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The other thing they do is they interject new terminology, new language, into the discussion, and it means something in particular.

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I'll give you the example in a moment that I'm most concerned about here. They'll inject new language into the discussion, and then they'll try to normalize it and mainstream it, so that they get other people to buy into the language, and thereby buy into the theology.

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And we believe that that's what's going on with this talk about fivefold ministry. They get the language of fivefold ministry from counting how many ministries and functions are listed in Ephesians 411.

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There are five. And then they've made this their manifesto, and they call it the fivefold ministry, and it's this defining feature of their church practice and their ministries.

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Now they're trying to mainstream this by getting other Charismatics and Pentecostals to adopt the same language, and I'm a little concerned that this is actually happening to some degree, where without knowing the history of the genesis of this terminology in the latter reign, and maybe some earlier antecedents or precedents for that, they are sort of unwittingly capitulating to this new description by adopting language that really should be reserved for our understanding of NAR teachers.

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And so when people who are listening to us today hear references to the fivefold ministry, we think that it would be wise to be concerned that perhaps this is an allusion to overt

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NAR teaching, and that if you slip into using that language, you're actually a party to that same deception.

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Yeah. So, Holly, a quick question for you. When I read the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2

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Timothy and Titus, I can see clearly the Holy Spirit by the

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Apostle Paul has laid out in no uncertain terms the moral and doctrinal qualifications for men who hold the pastoral office.

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And not only that, there are duties that are listed as part of their function within the

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Church. Where in the New Testament are the qualifications, moral and doctrinal, and then duties of those who hold the apostolic office after the 12 and the

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Apostle Paul, you know, in the subsequent era that's going to follow after their death, where are the apostolic credentials listed so that we can see who's qualified and what the actual duties of apostles are in Scripture?

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It's not there. And that's something that we point out in our books as a critique of NAR.

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There's no place that instructions are given for appointing new apostles after the original apostles, you know, were getting older as they knew they would be passing away.

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You know, they gave instructions for how to appoint elders in the Church. But there's no place that instructions are ever given for appointing new apostles to replace them.

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Okay. All right, Doug, the Apostles' Creed, that's not a creed that is well worn in Protestant circles, you know, unless you're like a confessional

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Lutheran or a confessional Presbyterian. But in the Apostles' Creed and in the Nicene Creed, it has language like this,

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I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. When it's talking that way, and you're going to note, these are creeds that go way back to the

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Nicene Creed to the fourth century. And then you can even trace back parts of the Nicene Creed to what was called the

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Rule of Faith. Aaronaeus writes about it in his Contra Heresies, the Rule of Faith, talking about an apostolic

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Church. How is that term being used creedally, and how has the

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Church understood that the Church is apostolic long before the NAR showed up?

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What does that mean? Well, let's take both the terms Catholic and apostolic, because there might be some questions about how these terms are used.

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This is an ancient creed, the Apostles' Creed. It begins with, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in His Son, and so on.

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And many will probably be accustomed to hearing this recited and reciting it together with the congregation in their churches, and others may have heard of it or studied it even, but are not part of a fellowship where that's a regular practice.

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And then some may be new, this may be new to them, but it's an Orthodox creed of the

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Church with ancient pedigree, and Catholic there simply means a Church that is unified around central doctrines.

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And it's the Catholic Church that is, we're confessing to the existence of a

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Church that God has established through the Holy Spirit, with the authority of Christ, to be worldwide and to be enduring.

34:35

That's the Catholic Church. We even speak of the, sometimes we call them general epistles in the

34:42

New Testament that are too, like the

34:47

Hebrews and others, that are not names of individuals or churches. And 1

34:53

John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, James, they're named after the authors, and these are sometimes called general epistles because they have general, the audience for it is the

35:05

Church at large. And these are also sometimes called Catholic epistles for the same reason.

35:12

So that's just a gloss on Catholic. Apostolic simply means that these, we're affirming the rootedness of the

35:22

Church today in the foundation of the Apostles of Christ. And as Luke spoke in the book of Acts of the early believers who were devoted to the

35:32

Apostles' teaching, so we are devoted to the same teaching, and that is what identifies us as the

35:38

Church of Jesus Christ. So apostolic there is actually tethered to the authority of the original founding

35:46

Apostles mentioned twice, in fact, in the book of Ephesians. Alright.

35:52

Holly, if I were to say I have Apostles, and I've had Apostles since I was a

35:57

Christian, let me name you some of them. The Apostle Peter, the Apostle John, the Apostle Paul, and then we can talk about James and folks like this.

36:08

Am I out of order when I say, hey, listen, those Apostles, because they wrote

36:13

Scripture with the authority of Christ by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and all

36:19

Scripture is theanoustos, it's God -breathed. Aren't the Apostles still apostoling the Church today?

36:25

Is that a way to put it? Can you make it a participle? They're still apostoling, aren't they? Yes, absolutely.

36:31

Yes, I think you can absolutely say that. If your ministry is apostolic, it is because it is grounded in the foundation of the

36:42

Apostles of the first century. That's what would make it apostolic. Yeah, so when

36:47

I get up in the pulpit and I open up a biblical text written by one of the Apostles or one of the

36:53

Old Testament Prophets, I can say that the Apostles and Prophets have spoken in my church that day, right?

36:59

And the nice thing is that you can follow along. You can fact check me and read along what

37:04

I'm preaching from because it's in a word that is sent universally to all churches everywhere.

37:12

Isn't there one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and it's the faith once for all delivered to the saints?

37:18

What I've noticed that in the NAR is that although they claim that these

37:24

Apostles and Prophets aren't giving us new doctrine, their new revelation oftentimes strays into new doctrine.

37:32

Am I wrong in saying that, Holly? No, you're absolutely correct. That was something

37:37

I was going to bring up is, yeah, it's related to the point of how they shift definitions of the word

37:44

Apostle. Well, the same thing happened with revelation. They'll say that our revelation is never about matters of doctrine.

37:53

But the truth is, and as we document in our books, much of the revelation pertains to matters of doctrine.

38:02

And there are Apostles and Prophets claiming to give revelation that is for the global church about things like the

38:10

Seven Mountain Mandate, that this is a strategy God has given for the church to take dominion of the earth. Even the revelation that God is restoring

38:19

Apostles and Prophets to the church is presented by leaders like Chris Belleton as new revelation that God has given him and other

38:26

NAR leaders as well. And so it's absolutely correct to say that much of the new revelation being given is doctrinal in nature, even though they won't admit that.

38:40

Yeah, I noticed that on the one hand, they do acknowledge the authority of Scripture, and it's always implicit.

38:49

But, and of course their preaching oftentimes is, maybe begins with the text of Scripture, and then maybe it strays in one way or another, and there are multiple ways that it can.

39:01

But ultimately, I think people are tracking with the movement largely for the novel revelations that are available to them through these

39:10

Apostles and Prophets, and not because of any special giftedness exhibited in the pulpit when they just do an exposition of the

39:20

Word of God, the revelation that even they acknowledge God has actually given us with greater authority.

39:27

So that's a striking thing, is that as a matter of practice, regardless of what they say, people are hungry for new revelation, and not as hungry for the long -standing, enduring revelation of Scripture.

39:43

Another point to make here is that the Apostles, you know, one reason why it was so important that the

39:49

Apostles of Christ had been with Jesus, that is, they had served alongside

39:55

Him during His earthly ministry, and then were eyewitnesses of His post -resurrection appearances, is that they were, the central core of their

40:04

Gospel message and their preaching throughout the book of Acts is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

40:11

And this is not the central core, this is not the core message of most preaching that we hear coming from NAR quarters.

40:22

Petey Yeah. No, I can't even begin to count how many NAR sermons

40:27

I've listened to and even reviewed when I was doing my daily podcast. That kind of stuff makes you crazy, you know?

40:33

There seems to be, Apostles are for naught, I mean, they're not even functioning as Apostles did in the book of Acts, right?

40:43

Where this was a crucial criterion for membership in that unique band of individuals because of the content of their proclamation, and the salvation of the world depended on it.

40:58

Matthew Yep. All right. So, Christian Hogwarts, Hogwarts for Christians, okay?

41:06

We cannot talk about your new book without talking about Bethel because Bethel seems to be at the center of all of this in some way or another, at least somewhere in the mass that other

41:19

NAR churches seem to be orbiting around. Number one, does

41:25

Bill Johnson, is he an Apostle and is Chris Vallotton a prophet? Are these claims that they make?

41:32

Because I've heard people say, well, I had a private conversation with Bill Johnson and he doesn't really use the term

41:40

Apostle for himself and that's just a term that those conspiracy nuts have placed on him.

41:47

What's the proof that Bill Johnson is indeed an Apostle or functioning as one or is considered one within Bethel?

41:56

Sarah They do both claim to be that. Bill claims to be an Apostle and Chris claims to be a prophet.

42:02

Now, what Bill will often say and what people often say is that Bill doesn't tell people to call him an

42:10

Apostle. Bill likes to say, just call me Bill. I don't care about titles and he'll say things like that.

42:20

But he definitely allows other people to refer to him as an Apostle and definitely takes that title.

42:30

He'll accept that description of himself. This is something we document in our books and even a forthcoming book that we have coming out where we go into this in greater depth.

42:46

There's no question that they are claiming to be an

42:52

Apostle and a prophet and that others view them as such. And yet in this cagey way of doing that by saying, well, you don't need to call me one, they seem like they've convinced themselves that they're exonerated from any responsibility of showing any evidence that they really are

43:10

Apostles. They get a pass, they win this narrative through these tactical maneuvers and so they're honored and regarded as Apostles and they're pleased to be so honored and they will operate in the apostolic accordingly.

43:31

But they don't feel any special need to give people special reasons to think that they are actually the

43:39

Apostles of Jesus Christ himself or prophets for that matter. And then they steal from the church the means of evaluating them otherwise.

43:50

So when Chris Vallotton gives predictive prophecy and gets it wrong and it's dramatically wrong and he acknowledges that it's wrong, he still says, but this does not make me a false prophet.

44:02

So he thinks he's still qualified to function as an authoritative prophet for the church even though he has made those kinds of mistakes.

44:12

And then of course there are false teachings. There are just things that they get wrong in the way that they use the

44:18

Scriptures and in the claims that they make beyond the Scriptures. And so we think that if a person, the way

44:24

I like to put it is, if a person can't read the Bible then don't trust his claim to be a prophet of God. Yeah.

44:31

Yeah, the problems there at Bethel are plenty. And so I would note that I'm a pastor and if somebody were to say to me,

44:40

Pastor Rose, bro, can I pick your brain? And I you can just call me Chris.

44:46

I'm not denying that I'm a pastor when I say that. I am instead just saying you don't have to call me by my formal title, which still applies if necessary.

44:58

So when somebody says to Bill Johnson, Apostle Johnson, he says you can just call me

45:04

Bill, he's not denying that he's an apostle by saying that. Of course not.

45:10

Okay. And they can't afford to. I mean, look, if eventually they feel like the heat is on and they have to do something dramatically differently, then they will apostatize from their apostolic claims, right?

45:24

Yeah. So there's only so much fiddling they can do at the wheel here or the knobs on the panel here before they lose their special defining hallmarks.

45:40

And so look for them to do things that are more like disguises rather than fundamental changes in their teachings about things.

45:49

Yeah. Mike Winger just recently did a video where he went through the book, The Physics of Heaven, and that video went viral.

45:58

And I thought he just did a stellar job of pointing out the not only aberrant and heterodox, but at times heretical teaching in that book.

46:10

And Michael Brown recently said, yeah, I had a conversation with him at Bethel, and they removed the book from Bethel's bookstore.

46:18

Is that a sufficient response to just, well, we recognize there's things that are problematic, so we just pulled the book from our bookstore.

46:27

Does that solve the problem, Holly? No, it doesn't. The thing is, so Bill Johnson, his wife,

46:35

Benny, who's passed away, they contributed multiple chapters to this book. Chris Vallotson, I believe, wrote the foreword.

46:41

There's a stamp on the back of the book that has a Bethel stamp of endorsement on the back cover.

46:48

It's been sold in the bookstore for many, many years. And the thing is, many, many people have been pointing out the problems with this book and just the really scary teachings and practices that are promoted in this book for years and years.

47:04

And to have it suddenly removed when Mike Winger draws attention to it, I think just speaks more to the fact that Mike Winger has a very large audience, and it kind of forced

47:16

Bethel to pull it because many, many people, including ourselves, have been speaking about this book for years, and they haven't pulled it before.

47:28

And they haven't, to our knowledge, rescinded any of the things they promoted in there or repented of it or anything like that either.

47:38

It just kind of secretly disappeared from, or not secretly, but kind of quietly disappeared from the bookstore with no explanation.

47:46

That's not adequate. Yeah, no, that's not even repentance. It's piecemeal. It's always piecemeal.

47:52

It's always responding when the heat is up. And if we were to do an expose of other books that they sell, and they were to respond in the same way, they would run out of books to sell.

48:04

Their shelves would be blank. They would be empty if they had to respond to a thoroughgoing critique of each individual item.

48:13

And so they're kind of counting on that not happening, I would say. This is typical, too, with all the revisions of the

48:19

Passion Translation, Brian Simmons' version of the Bible, where under scrutiny he's had to make changes and edits, even though the means by which he purports to have received his commissioning would suggest that he would have been protected from making those kinds of simple mistakes.

48:38

But they're very transparent, and they're only when compelled to because of the public relations problem.

48:46

And I would say that not only is, you know, Bethel's response by pulling the book from the shelf inadequate, but Michael Brown's response is inadequate when he defends them for having done so.

49:01

And this is, he is their arch defender. Michael Brown is their arch defender. And this is standard operating procedure for him, as well, is to say, well,

49:12

I had a conversation with so -and -so, and I know he doesn't mean it that way, or, you know, we draw attention to something in particular.

49:20

Well, I guess I should probably talk to that person and see if he'll make a change, and so on. And, you know, this is not adequate.

49:27

This is just papering over what is an underlying, fundamental, systemic problem within the movement.

49:36

Yeah, and we, our whole chapter, the chapter you mentioned in our book, Hogwarts for Christians, you know, we document that the

49:44

New Age and essentially occultic practices that have been promoted by Bethel over many years in other sources besides the

49:54

Physics of Heaven book. So it's not just the Physics of Heaven book. Getting rid of the Physics of Heaven book doesn't fix the problem.

50:00

These are their teachings and practices, longstanding over many years, and also promoted in other books, as well.

50:07

The only way that Michael Brown will be able to get out from under the suspicion that he is himself

50:16

NAR is if he abandons this strategy of defending them as he does. Yeah, yeah.

50:21

And I would note, in the Physics of Heaven, I mean, the book itself is very clear and overt in saying we are taking these practices from the

50:31

New Age and, you know, and reclaiming them for the Kingdom of God. That is, that was overtly said.

50:39

Now, talking about Michael Brown, you know, I'll put you guys on the spot here. Michael Brown recently did a response video to the extended premiere of the

50:51

American Gospel 3. We are, all three of us are in the American Gospel 3 docuseries, and we play pretty prominent roles, although we were never on camera together.

51:03

If this is the first time we've been recorded on camera together. But Michael Brown did something very interesting in his criticism.

51:11

And I want to get the feedback from both of you. But one of the criticisms is that the

51:18

Bethel School of Ministry, also known as Hogwarts for Christians, and there, it's at Bethel, the students at Bethel call it

51:27

Hogwarts. This is not some aspersion cast by some nefarious, you know, NAR conspiracy theorists.

51:33

But the, pointing out that they are charging money to activate people in prophetic gifts or charismatic gifts, and there's a real problem here.

51:47

But watch what Michael Brown does in defense of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, and then we can kind of interact with this.

51:55

And even the idea that you go there, you pay money to learn how to be activated in the gifts, that's a very, very misleading critique.

52:02

I might as well say you go to seminary, and in fact, at the end where I critique the trailer, I make this point.

52:08

You can go to seminary, and there at seminary, you learn how to preach, or you learn how to pastor, and you learn how to study the

52:15

Bible, and they charge you for that. So you can go to any charismatic Pentecostal church and say, could you pray for me to be filled with the spirit?

52:24

And people will pray for you. They're not going to charge you or say, well, you have to go to our school to learn that. Or, you know, anytime we want to be released and helped in various aspects of ministry, we can benefit from a training center.

52:37

But - All right. So, do you guys see the issue here?

52:43

I mean, Doug, you taught at Biola for a long time. Is it the same, you teaching apologetics at Biola, is that the same thing as, you know, and they obviously, you guys charge tuition at Biola for all the students who you trained in Christian apologetics.

53:00

Is that the same as charging money to activate people in charismatic gifts?

53:06

Well, it's not the same, and I'll come back to that in a moment after another observation. That is that Holly and I have not really made this a core complaint.

53:15

We haven't stressed this as a major objection to the

53:20

Bethel School of Supernatural Ministries. There are fundamental problems with what they're doing there.

53:26

And if anything, I would say the money part of it is that the students are being sold a bill of goods.

53:33

They're being trained, as it were, to do things that they can't do when they leave.

53:39

And they're finding this out. And you can talk to a number of their alumni today who are sharing their own experiences of this and trying for many years in ministry to emulate what they learned and saw or believe they saw at the time and have failed to be able to do it.

53:57

So I would say that the proof is in the pudding and that maybe you should keep your powder dry or at least save your money and enlist in a reputable school where you're going to learn just those skills of ministry that are needed in the church.

54:14

The second point, though, is to say that the sorts of things that we train our students in our seminaries to do are things that you can learn to do.

54:24

But the New Testament certainly gives no impression that there was any kind of need to learn how to exercise the gift of prophecy or to be prophetic or apostolic or to perform miracles.

54:38

So you have to wonder just exactly how do you learn something like that? What are they teaching them? They can't be getting the instructions from Scripture, because there are no such instructions.

54:48

And it seems to me that the people that were able to do those things were spontaneously able to do them with authority, with great power, and spontaneously.

54:58

So that's part of the problem. So it does look like they're charging money to teach them how to do something, not only that they're not able to do effectively when they actually leave, but also to do something that you shouldn't have to learn how to do in the first place.

55:15

Okay. Now, Holly, I'm going to open up my Bible real quick here, because I think that there is a difference.

55:23

There is a difference between what Doug Guyvet did at Biola and what the teachers at Hogwarts are doing.

55:32

And here's my text, and see if I haven't overstepped here. In Acts 8, it says, when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the

55:41

Word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

55:47

For he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the

55:54

Holy Spirit. Now, when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the hands of the apostles, he offered them money saying, give me this power also, so that anyone on whom

56:06

I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you, because you thought that you could obtain the gift of God with money.

56:16

Is there any degree in which, you know, Hogwarts and other schools, like I think of Jennifer LeClaire, she charges between three and $500 for a prophetic activation, and these other supernatural schools, they charge for prophetic activations and things like this.

56:32

This has been referred to historically as the Sin of Simony. Is there any credibility to the idea that these people who are offering these prophetic activations or offering these

56:46

Holy Spirit gift tutorials and stuff like this for money and things like this, that they're engaging in the

56:54

Sin of Simony? I think it's a danger. I think people who are offering these courses and threatening schools, you know, supernatural ministry and things like that, need to be really circumspect about that, because I think there is a danger.

57:09

I also have seen, and I've written articles on my blog about apostles and prophets who essentially are charging for giving prophetic words, and you know, they find ways around it.

57:21

They say, well, you can pay a monthly fee, and then we'll assign a prophetic intercessor to you, and you'll have someone kind of on tap, who can give you prophetic words if you pay this monthly fee and things like that.

57:38

That kind of stuff definitely is happening, and it's really concerning. It reminds me of Ms.

57:44

Cleo. You remember the infomercials in the middle of the night when you have insomnia, Ms. Cleo would be on, you have to call the 900 number, and she'll give you a tarot reading.

57:53

I'm dating myself. No, I'm not. I can't remember her. You know, so there's so many things that we can talk about.

58:02

In fact, I should throw this one into the mix. I was recently watching somebody who has a prominent

58:11

YouTube ministry, who's a big defender of Bill Johnson, and what was very fascinating is that he also did a reaction video to the

58:24

American Gospel Preview, and he did not understand why other

58:29

Christians would be critical of Bethel during the whole

58:35

Olive incident, where this little girl died suddenly, and for a week or more, they were decreeing and declaring that Olive would come out of her grave, and they thought, well, which

58:52

Christian wouldn't do that? What was wrong with the whole Wake Up Olive incident, and why is that more than just problematic?

59:03

Well, one thing, as you pointed out, they were decreeing and declaring. Bethel was not just asking

59:14

God to raise Olive from the dead in the sense of making petitionary petitions, you know, petitionary prayer, like you see the biblical view of prayer, that we're asking

59:23

God if He will do something, but of course, it's up to Him to decide whether to do that or not, and what

59:31

Bethel teaches and what many NAR leaders teach is the most effective form of prayer is prayer declarations.

59:39

Prayer declarations are when you speak words like, Olive come out of that grave as a declaration, and by speaking the words, that somehow creates reality, that maybe the angels carry out your prayer declarations and make it reality, or like Bill Johnson has said, when we speak, our words have the power to create much the way

01:00:02

God spoke in Genesis and created, and so it's a very different view of prayer that is promoted in the

01:00:09

NAR, and that's what they were doing with Olive, and they were urging people worldwide to join them in making these prayer declarations, and then the interesting thing is, though, they knew that what they were doing was not just promoting a biblical form of prayer, because after the fact, when after six days, the declarations didn't work, they issued a press release to the media that was covering this, and what they said was that, well, it's normal to ask

01:00:38

God, I'm summarizing, but it's normal to ask God, you know, to do something, and so what they did was they reframed what they had been doing as petitionary prayer, even though all along it had been this declaration prayer, but they wanted to make it sound like after the fact that they were just asking

01:00:55

God to raise Olive when that's not what they had been doing. And this is despite the fact that they actually teach that these are two different things, declaration prayer and petitionary prayer.

01:01:05

So they practiced it one way, and then explained it the other way.

01:01:10

Now, what do you make of that? You know, when God declared, He created order out of chaos.

01:01:18

When these guys declare, they create chaos and confusion, and you know, we don't need those kinds of declarations.

01:01:26

My feeling is that it isn't just, you know, ludicrous and embarrassing, but it's spiritually damaging too, and you know,

01:01:35

I don't know the family, the couple in question, so I don't know the ultimate effect it had on them personally, and I wouldn't presume to speak on their behalf in that regard.

01:01:44

But my feeling is that this is a case of pastoral malpractice. When you presume to declare something is going to happen, and then it doesn't.

01:01:55

First of all, you do it without authority, and then you reframe, as Holly said, what it is you've done in a way that's not entirely forthcoming, it's not totally honest about what happened.

01:02:08

And so I say that this really disqualifies this individual from being what he purports to be, an apostle.

01:02:17

This is not something you would find any of the apostles doing. They would never be, you could never fault them for anything like this ever happening, and yet they get a pass.

01:02:28

What else, you know, falsifies their claims is when they either teach something that's false, and then they purport to be prophets and apostles, or maybe they commend the teachings of others who teach false doctrines.

01:02:42

So when you have a person like Kenneth Copeland come into your pulpit, and you're praising him and calling him a brother, and you're even saying that God told me that we need to invite him in, that is a red flag, and it should tell you that this is a person who purports to be an apostle in a church where they have apostles and prophets, where that kind of claim simply cannot be trusted.

01:03:08

Yeah, yeah. No, I've never seen anything sound come out of Bethel, I mean, not even by accident.

01:03:15

You know, and so, one of the things that you guys, that make a big point of in your book, is that people who buy into this decreeing and declaring, that they functionally become prayerless.

01:03:30

Can you talk about that? You know, how does buying into decreeing and declaring make you prayerless?

01:03:37

Well, we were talking about, we were talking earlier about how they will say, well, our new revelations have no theological content.

01:03:44

Now, we've given lots of examples where they do, and this area of prayer is an example. You know, in theology, we distinguish between what we sometimes call systematic theology and practical theology, but it's theology in both cases.

01:03:58

Systematic theology concerns the basic doctrines of the church, a lot of it's the theoretical propositions that we are committed to.

01:04:06

Practical theology is concerned with our practices. You know, marrying and burying is only the thin surface of it, but it is all the things about how sanctification works, how prayer works, what worship looks like, how intimacy with God is obtained and restored or carried on over time, how we mature as believers and so forth.

01:04:30

This is all practical theology, how we do evangelism, what is the gospel and how do we preach it and so forth, how do we engage culture, apologetics, it's all practical theology.

01:04:40

And so they have all sorts of teachings about all of these things, and it is practical theology, and it's called theology because the practices are rooted in a conception of what is true about God and what he has revealed.

01:04:52

So they can't escape this claim that they are revealing novel theologies.

01:04:58

Now, when it comes to prayer, if they are teaching people to pray by means of declarations and they are diminishing the value and saying that petitionary prayer shows a lack of faith, and yet this is the dominant form of prayer requests in scripture, then it's unbiblical and it's a false conception of prayer.

01:05:23

But if it's all you do, in other words, if you follow their advice and you fall into a practice of declaration prayer which is not taught in scripture and isn't prayer in the first place, you might be thinking that you're one of the most prayerful people you know, and yet you would be living effectively a prayerless life when you compare that practice with what the scriptures teach about prayer.

01:05:46

So that's the reason why we've said that. Yep. And I think you make a valid point. All right.

01:05:51

One last topic and then I'll let you guys go, but I appreciate you taking the time to, you know, to let me grill you a little bit on the topic of the

01:06:01

NAR. So Bob Jones back in the day claimed that when the Kansas City Chiefs won the

01:06:08

Super Bowl that revival was just around the corner. Holly, is

01:06:13

Bob Jones a true prophet? And as a result of this prophecy of his, should we somehow think that the

01:06:21

Asbury revival that's currently going on, that we must automatically give it a pass and just trust that this is a true revival of God?

01:06:29

When we talk about Bob Jones in our books, but you know, he actually had admitted to abusing his prophetic office that he had had women, you know, in order to receive a prophetic word from him, had to disrobe.

01:06:47

And there was fondling involved and things like that. And he's the one though, who is, he is the one credited with giving this prophecy, right?

01:07:06

Sorry, can you, I lost my train of thought. Can you ask me a question again? So does, because Bob Jones, because he said that after the

01:07:15

Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl, revival is just around the corner, can we somehow connect the Asbury revival to this prophecy of Bob Jones?

01:07:23

Well, one interesting thing is, so when the Kansas Chiefs won the Super Bowl a few years ago, what year was that?

01:07:29

I think that was 2020, right? They were saying that was the fulfillment of the prophecy. But the interesting thing is there were a number of stadium events that NAR leaders had set up for that year, about 20 stadium events.

01:07:42

And so they thought, okay, the Kansas Chiefs, you know, won the Super Bowl. Now the great end time revival that's been prophesied by the

01:07:49

NAR leaders is about to begin this, they call it the billion soul harvest. That's a new revelation that a billion souls will convert to belief in Christ.

01:07:57

And it will be under the leadership of apostles and prophets and the church is performing all these amazing signs and wonders that's going to cause a billion people to convert.

01:08:06

And so they thought in 2020, they had all these stadium events planned, and that this was going to be the beginning of the fulfillment of that billion soul prophecy, you know, that Bob Jones and also

01:08:18

Paul Cain was giving some of these prophecies, who also is, there's problems with him too, that disqualified him as well from being a prophet.

01:08:28

But, and so then what happened though, in 2020 hit and of course COVID, these stadium events were canceled.

01:08:35

They couldn't be held. And so NAR leaders were saying, well, this is a strategy of Satan to thwart the fulfillment of this revival.

01:08:47

And so now what happened now that the Kansas City Chiefs won again, I think maybe they're seeing this as a restart or something, like another chance for this revival now.

01:09:00

And maybe they're thinking, well, it really wasn't the first time the Kansas City Chiefs won.

01:09:05

Bob Jones was talking about the second time, you know, and it happens to coincide with this Asbury revival. So it's really interesting.

01:09:14

Yeah. In our book, Counterfeit Kingdom, we have a chapter on prophecies, predicted prophecy and their failures, and we classify the different kinds of failures in different ways.

01:09:25

There are loophole prophecies and, you know, ways that they can talk themselves out of failure to fulfill.

01:09:34

And this is what Holly's talking about as an example of this sort of thing. And I was listening to Mike Bickle, who is the head pastor,

01:09:46

I guess you could say, at IHOP in Kansas City, International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

01:09:52

We've met with him and interviewed him, and I was watching him being interviewed about this prophecy, alleged prophecy from our friend, the prophet.

01:10:03

And he said that he was never privy to that. He had never heard this before, but it was fine if, you know, if it was prophesied and he was laughing.

01:10:13

But while he was doing this, he was lauding the ministry of Cain. I mean,

01:10:20

Jones, right? Was it Jones that we were talking about? Yeah, Bob Jones. So, you know, this is just not, it's not really a laughing matter.

01:10:30

It's a serious matter. And another thing that will likely happen in this case is that people will see semblances of revival or things that they consider to be actual, vibrant revival taking place right now and say, this must be the fulfillment of this prophecy.

01:10:48

And that would other, that would also not be obviously the case. And you may know, for example, of the

01:10:55

Azusa, not the Azusa, that was a few hundred, a few decades ago, right? A hundred years ago, the

01:11:02

Azusa Street Revivals. But now we've got the revival reports coming out of Wilmore, Kentucky regarding Asbury and the students there.

01:11:11

And I'm sure that people will jump on the bandwagon and say, well, here we are seeing fulfillment of the prophecy that you brought up in connection with the victory of the

01:11:20

Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Now, look, I mean, what in the world would be the connection between the victory on the part of the

01:11:32

Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl and any kind of dramatic revival?

01:11:38

Why would that even be a sign? It's just an arbitrary kind of a popular event that would bear no special connection spiritually, or certainly not metaphysically, with any revival of the school.

01:11:56

Yeah. And in talking about Bob Jones, and you mentioned Paul Cain, we can also bring into the discussion

01:12:02

Lonnie Frisbee. Each of these men, you know, claimed to be operating prophetically.

01:12:08

Each of them had spectacular moral problems, but also each of them also gave notable false prophecies, failure to fulfill prophecies.

01:12:21

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that you will know a tree by its fruit.

01:12:27

A good tree doesn't bear bad fruit. And in the context there, he's talking about false prophets. That being the case, when somebody gives prophecies that they fail to be fulfilled, and then you also learn subsequently, or along with that, that these people have engaged in egregious, like ministry disqualifying sin, like all of these men, it doesn't, isn't that fruit?

01:12:57

Isn't a false prophecy a fruit? Isn't sexual sin a fruit? Wouldn't that mean by Jesus's definition that these are bad trees?

01:13:07

But I never hear charismatics connect these two and go, you know, both morally and spiritually, these guys failed, therefore we need to avoid them.

01:13:16

Instead, they always find a way to say, well, yeah, but he repented, and so, you know, we can't throw out the things that he said and stuff like that.

01:13:24

They even did that with Todd Bentley, that, you know, claiming that he still had a genuine healing gift, despite all of the egregious sexual sins that kept coming to light, you know, three, five years apart, you know, for, you know, wave after wave of stuff.

01:13:41

Isn't that the very fruit that Jesus warns us about? Yeah, well, that's right.

01:13:46

Fruit is much broader. It's the whole package. It is the personal life, but it's also, and it's also the public life.

01:13:53

It's the failed prophecies. It's the irresponsible use of Scripture in supporting false teachings and parading yourself as a prophet and an apostle without the benefit of evidence.

01:14:07

All of this is fruit, and yes, they should be examined with respect to this fruit, and really, so much more.

01:14:15

Yeah. Yeah, Bob Jones and Paul McCain, you know, they are highly, you know, they've been,

01:14:21

Bob Jones in particular, highly revered still by the leaders of this movement, and so it's not just like they're allowing that they might be, you know, genuine prophets.

01:14:33

It's like highly revering Bob Jones and still holding up his prophecies now that he's deceased and looking for the fulfillment of the prophecies and the billions will harvest.

01:14:43

So, yeah. Yeah, and what's really - You wonder why God would select individuals like this, right?

01:14:48

To be his - Right. I listened to Bob Jones and I'm sitting there going, if that's the voice of the

01:14:54

Holy Spirit speaking, the universe is doomed. I mean, it's, the stuff he said was just loony tunes.

01:15:02

And I recently saw a thing on Remnant Radio where they were talking about the prophecies of Bob Jones, and they were,

01:15:09

I think they were interviewing a prominent leader from IHOP, and he readily admitted that Bob Jones had given a prophecy about a particular church building that he said that they were going to be in.

01:15:23

They had received confirmation, and 30 years later, they've never moved into that building.

01:15:29

And what's bizarre to me is you sit there and you go, that's a false prophecy from a man who was morally disqualified from ministry.

01:15:41

Why are you guys still sitting there going, well, maybe, well, maybe, you know, and still thinking that there's anything good that we can glean from these man's words when they recognize that he's given prophecies that were never fulfilled.

01:16:00

So, maybe I'm just preaching to the choir at this point. Again, the name of the book, if you have not, if you do not have a copy, yeah, the name of the book is

01:16:14

Counterfeit Kingdom, Counterfeit Kingdom, and it's just a fantastic read. I think that Christians need to be reading this, mandatory reading, get a copy of it for your pastor if your doesn't already have a copy of it, so that you guys can defend yourselves against this growing darkness within the visible body of Christ, because I think that's what it is.

01:16:38

Thank you guys for your time. And thank you for your work and your research and summarizing it in the books that you write.

01:16:44

Look, I'm glad to hear that there's another one in the making. I can't wait to read that one. Hopefully I'll get on your pre -publication list again too, because I really enjoyed getting the coffee and going, oh,

01:16:55

I got a coffee before everybody else. We'll put you on that list for sure.

01:17:02

Thank you, Holly. It makes me feel important when I'm not, but that's a good thing. We're so grateful for your support of our work, and thank you so much for having us on, and I've really, really enjoyed getting to talk with you.

01:17:18

I appreciate that, and I look forward to hopefully interviewing you guys in the future. So, let me sign off and then we'll chat for a second.

01:17:26

So, if you found this helpful, all the information on how you can get a copy of the book

01:17:32

Counterfeit Kingdom is down below in the description. Again, if you haven't read it, you need to read it.

01:17:38

Send copies to your pastor and other people. And of course, share this video. If you know somebody that's caught up in the

01:17:45

NAR and some of the false rhetoric about this, this video is a good resource to alert them to not only the book

01:17:52

Counterfeit Kingdom and the New Apostolic Reformation written by Doug and Holly, but also as a resource to kind of introduce them to sound biblical doctrine and the true teaching regarding apostles.

01:18:04

So, hopefully that will be, this video will be helpful along those lines. So, please feel free to share it freely.

01:18:11

And of course, if you would like to join the fight by supporting Fighting for the Faith, you can join our crew.

01:18:17

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01:18:24

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01:18:31

So, until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.