Prophecy Made Me Despise The New Apostolic Reformation

This was an exclusive, invitation-only event, organized by a group of Christians associated with what is now called “The New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR). I had been asked to give a short devotional sermon before we got into prayer, and I gathered myself at the lectern to speak.

The man who had been leading the music part of our meeting interrupted me before I could even start.

“Give me your Bible” he demanded. I knew him well and trusted him, so I gave him my well-worn leather bible. It was a hefty bible—I bought it with wide margins to put notes in it. This comes into play with what happened next.

“Now turn around” he said.

So I did.

And he took my bible and hit me so hard with it across the shoulders that I was knocked onto my face. I was stunned as I lay there in pain. But then I remembered something that had happened that morning, and I struggled back to my feet.

“Hit me again” I groaned.

So he did.

This time, I was in pain. But I felt like I was supposed to ask him to hit me one more time. I directed him to hit me again.

I couldn’t have done it a fourth time. He hit me so hard, the binding on the Bible broke, and the pages were barely clinging together.

Then he spoke as he stood over me: “This is the voice of the Lord. Just as you have been willing to endure this pain from being hit by a bible, I will now impact your life every time you read it. You will go out with my authority, and you will hit people’s hearts with the same intensity you have been struck today. If you had allowed only one strike, your impact on this world would have been small. But you have allowed yourself to be struck three times, and thus I will give you a worldwide voice.”

That incident happened in 1998. At the time, I had been a pastor for 18 years. I had also been a counselor for 15 of those years. For the most part, I had been pulling away slowly from Christianity. Many of the doctrines of the Faith were untenable to me. I was looking for a way out. That’s not easy for a pastor to do.

However, in 1995, a spiritual movement within evangelicalism brought a new religious fervor into my life. At first, I felt renewed in my faith in god. But as time went on, the beliefs of this movement became even more bizarre than the ones I had been struggling with before 1995.

This movement was known then as the Renewal movement. These days it is referred to as the New Apostolic Reformation.

In this article and the ones that follow, I will chronicle my experiences with this group. At one time, I spent considerable energy promoting its objectives. Over time, I saw the toxic elements of the movement.

By 1999, I left it behind.

Here is my story.

The NAR and Prophecy

One key belief of the NAR is that the Church is called by God to dominate and control 7 key features of our world culture.

These seven mountains of culture, as described in Walnau’s book “Invading Babylon and the Seven Mountains Mandate” (co-written with Bethel Church pastor Bill Johnson), represent key spheres of influence in society where Christians are encouraged to bring Kingdom principles. These are:

1. Religion: Spiritual and faith-based institutions that shape moral and ethical values.
2. Family: The foundation of society, focusing on marriage, parenting, and relational dynamics.
3. Education: Schools and systems that shape the beliefs and worldview of future generations.
4. Government: Political structures and policies that influence justice, law, and order.
5. Media: News outlets and platforms that shape public opinion and disseminate information.
6. Arts and Entertainment: Creative industries, including film, music, and sports, that impact cultural trends and values.
7. Business: The marketplace and economy, driving innovation, wealth distribution, and employment.

The mandate encourages believers to bring Christ-centered values into these areas, to transform culture and reflect God’s Kingdom on earth.

To complete the mandate of “conquering” these Seven Mountains, many of the movement’s leaders (including Johnson, Walnau, Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, and Dutch Sheets) emphasize that the Gift of Prophecy will be paramount. They teach that every believer in god can hear his voice, and what they hear becomes marching orders for this battle against ungodly culture.

Note: In a later article, I will address their belief that the people of god are daily engaged in spiritual “warfare” with the forces of darkness. Though they admit these are actually malevolent spiritual entities and not humans, they treat unbelievers as the enemy.

Though they emphasize hearing god is for evangelism and world domination, it is too often used to control others within the movement. I experienced this over and over.

Jim was an itinerate evangelist. He was popular in the Pentecostal/Charismatic circles that were foundational to the teachings of the NAR. I just finished up a counseling session when my secretary informed me he wanted to talk to me on the phone.

“Mike, this is Jim… (last name redacted). I don’t know if you know me.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of you, Jim. How can I help you?”
“I’m in town on a prayer journey, and I’d like to meet you.”

I agreed and we met for lunch. He didn’t order any food: He was fasting on his prayer journey.

“God has given me a message for you Mike, he started” Then, he ‘prophesied’ about a future ministry in which god had shown him I would be a leader. He emphasized details of another decision my wife and I were wrestling with. I assume he did this to convince me his prophetic gift was accurate.

No one but my wife, myself, and two other people knew of this decision. One of those two people had prayed over me several weeks before and received a “prophetic message” from god about it.

The prophecy Jim spoke was almost identical to what my friend had prophesied.
I was convinced from that point on he was a Prophet. He told me he would be back in town several months later. I invited him to speak at our church. He assured me all he wanted was a “love offering”.

(For those unfamiliar, a love offering is a financial collection given to a speaker in lieu of a speaker’s fee.)

I agreed to have him come and speak and prophesy in our church.
This was a BAD decision

Jim came to our church a few months later. During the week, he spoke out ‘prophetic messages’ concerning many people in our services. These prophecies predicted variations of how great their lives would become with god’s help.

I was not aware that he used the contacts made in the meeting to arrange to get together with those people during that week of meetings. He asked these people to help financially support his “ministry”.

Several nights during the week, he also made appeals from the pulpit for money to do god’s work. I had explicitly asked him not to do this, but he persisted. As a result, I had to end the meetings and required him to leave. In the months following, the board of the church realized he had probably collected a small fortune from people in the congregation.

10 years later, he visited me in California after I left that old church and started again with my life. He wanted to apologize to me. He admitted he was a charlatan.

He revealed his prophetic message to me was a con. He had heard about our decision from one of the people who knew. They were some of his financial supporters. He then crafted this into a faux prophetic message for me. It was all designed to hoodwink me, so I would invite him to speak at our church.

He admitted to having misrepresented his ministry to many of the church’s wealthier members. He spent that money on drugs and gambling.

He had been caught in one of his shady deals and had to spend time in jail. His visit was part of his rehabilitation program, where he made amends to those whom he had misrepresented himself.

There is a lot of this abusive use of Prophecy in the NAR and other groups that use it. Primarily, this involves people speaking out their own personal agendas to others and calling it the voice of god.

Hilary McBride refers to this as one example of spiritual abuse. She says, “Spiritual abuse is handing a person an Inner Critic and calling it the voice of God.”

I also experienced many people using these prophecies to promote political agendas. Though this has become very public in the era of Donald Trump and the evangelical world’s support of him, this is nothing new.

I can’t count how many prayer meetings, rallies, and “prophetic sermons” I heard where a list of evil groups was attacked. Frequent targets included Democrats, socialists, homosexuals, sex perverts (meaning anyone having sex outside of marriage), drug addicts, atheists, abortionists, pro-vaxxers, people against guns, etc.

A pro forma prophecy would always sound like this:
“God is showing me that he will bring judgment on the abortionists in this town. But I see God raising up an army of women, children, and political leaders in our state who will throw off the blinders and see how these innocent babies are being slaughtered. God is sending champions out of this very room to be the point of the spear in this attack against the ungodly forces arrayed against the babies.”
Formula:

1. Invoke God’s authority (God says…)
2. Invoke your authority (I heard…)
3. It’s a battle we’re going to win (bring judgment, win victory…)
4. Save the children. When the political issue is not clear, prophecy will always focus on safety, children, or god’s honor.
5. God will raise up people in this room. Again, prophecy is used to control the actions and decisions of others. Often, prophecy is used to pander to the dreams and wishes of the ones receiving it.
6. Attack the ungodly. All who are not for our cause are ungodly.

There is an infamous story about two witches who attended Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry. This school is a leader in the Prophecy movement. These witches were prophesied over, and the prophets kept telling them they were on the right track. They also were encouraged they would do great things for god. (See article here).

A close friend of mine was a public speaker and quite handsome. Furthermore, He was single because when he started to get involved in the Renewal movement, his wife left him. She saw the writing on the wall.

But the prophetic tendency to control others can even backfire on those who rely upon it. This friend spent many hours prophesying over other people. I never got the sense he was seeking control over others. But people in the movement didn’t always treat him the same way.

Regularly, women would approach him and tell him God wanted him to marry them. One woman stalked him for months, claiming to have this prophetic word from God. He literally moved out of that town to escape her.

He has now left that movement and agrees with me that the NAR reliance on prophecy is the source of much abuse.

This is time for my full disclosure. From 1994 until 2010, I taught over 160 times on the subject of “Hearing God’s Voice”. I taught in christian colleges, churches, retreats, prayer rallies, and missionary organizations. Some of these were aligned with the New Apostolic Reformation, but some were not. Regardless, I studied the Bible carefully for these teachings. And the bible does indeed claim that god speaks to people.

I found the Bible treats prophecy as a real thing. Every person who wrote the books we call the Bible used “hearing god” as the basis for their message. Today’s NAR focus is consistent with Christianity’s belief system.

I have had to come to terms with the role I played in perpetuating this teaching. I can honestly say I was being as faithful as I could with what the bible blatantly says. So even though I don’t believe the bible as authoritative any more, I do accept that it contains teachings about prophecy.

Here is my conclusion. This focus on prophecy is not a bug in the Christian system. It’s a feature. Christianity is built upon a foundational concept that their god speaks to humans. They have many opinions on how that will happen, to whom, and for what reasons. Some believe it was only happening in the days of the Bible. Some like the NAR believe it still happens today.

But, irrespective of whether this teaching is in the bible, the idea that someone has an authoritative message from god will always be dangerous. And it will always lend itself to control and manipulation if someone chooses to use it that way.

The NAR leaders all do!

Historically, when Prophecy shows up as a practice in Christianity, it usually buttresses political movements. It has been the driving force of the expansion of the religion to various parts of the world. Prophecy lends credence to the exploitation and colonization of other religious groups, subsuming them into Christianity by force and coercion.

The details that emerged last year concerning the document named “Project 2025”, (which terrifies many people), are products of this belief that the Christian god speaks to people today and gives them authority to politically control the actions of others.

As long as christians become involved in politics, prophecy will be a foundation of their goals.

From my perspective, prophecy is based in wish fulfillment and the desire to control others. 

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, I occasionally looked into the daily posts that Dutch Sheets put on his website. Each day, he doubled down on the fallacy that Trump actually won the election. He would quote contemporary prophets who claimed that all would be restored before January 20, 2021. Every day, prophetic messages were reported, and it was all encased in the metaphor of warfare.

When the January 6 insurrection happened, rather than denounce its violence, Sheets and his favorite prophets announced that this was the beginning of the transfer of power back to “God’s Man” Donald J. Trump.

Each day this didn’t happen, they kept giving new deadlines for when god said it would happen.

For months, these words from god poured forth. March, April, and May came and went and none of the prophecies came true. Not one.

So in June, Sheets stopped quoting these prophecies and came up with new ones from god about warfare and conquering.

The abuse of prophecy within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) presents significant dangers, both for individuals and society at large.

Prophecy in this movement is often wielded as a tool of control, allowing self-proclaimed prophets to manipulate followers, justify personal agendas, and promote political ideologies under the guise of divine authority. This practice can lead to spiritual abuse, as individuals are coerced into decisions or beliefs they might not otherwise accept, all in the name of “hearing God’s voice.”

The emphasis on prophecy within the NAR also creates fertile ground for financial exploitation, as seen in stories of financial manipulation and false promises. Moreover, the intertwining of prophetic declarations with political objectives—such as the dominionist goals of conquering the Seven Mountains of culture—turns religious belief into a weaponized ideology. This fusion of prophecy and politics fuels division and can even incite violence, as evidenced by the movement’s rhetoric surrounding events like the January 6 insurrection.

Ultimately, the misuse of prophecy amplifies wish fulfillment and the human desire for power, leaving a trail of broken trust. While the NAR claims to bring God’s Kingdom to earth, its reliance on prophecy as a cornerstone of control and domination reveals the movement’s deeper dangers to individual autonomy, societal peace, and the integrity of spiritual practice.

In the next article, I want to lay out the meaning behind this warfare theme. It is also a foundational belief in all NAR actions.