How do I know if my Church is NAR: With Holly Pivec & Douglas Geivett

hey everyone thank you so much for tuning into this episode of room knit radio i've got doug and holly pivx on the other line we're going to be discussing the new apostolic reformation i always like i say doug and holly pivx they're not it's not a thing i apologize for doing that again uh but hey this is going to be a really exciting show talking about the new apostolic reformation something that we're passionate about but if you're tuning in for the first time you don't know about roommate radio i want to let you know who we are and what we do uh roommate radio is a theology broadcast we stream every monday night at 8 30 p.m central standard time and every tuesday from four to five here the new year we might actually change up that schedule so we're doing most of our shows from the four to five time slot on different days uh but stay tuned as we're coming out with content just like this we interview anglicans presbyterians lutheran's baptist our goal is to study theology suspend our presupposition get outside of our echo chamber and learn from our christian brothers and sisters on the other side of the theological aisle if that's something you're interested in make sure to hit the subscribe button like the video michael how are you sir i am doing well very excited about this episode read doug and holly's book it was fantastic in my opinion uh we'll get to that in just a moment but i do want to let you guys know about just some of the shows we've had recently what we have coming up last week i think you if you haven't seen it yet you'll love our episode with elisa childers talking about progressive christianity that one's getting a ton of traction josh and i did an episode the next day talking about complementarianism what does male headship mean and so we talked through that uh and tomorrow we have coming up an episode with uh with a guy named tim chaffee and we're talking about the hebrew roots movement i had no idea how many people are involved in the hebrew roots movement but actually quite a bit and there's some things to be concerned about so make sure you listen to that tomorrow at 4 p.m live right here on remnant radio so without further ado why don't we jump into the episode yeah okay uh and then i'll just kind of let let you guys know holly and doug uh it sounds like one of your computers may have the speaker on uh if you have headphones that'll keep our audio from looping a little bit i can hear i can hear michael talking uh anyway uh uh holly i'll go ahead and leave with you and have you introduce yourself and your ministry and we'll try to dive in sure thanks so much first of all for having us on we're thrilled to be on your show and really i've been looking forward to this my name is holly pivick and i've co-authored two books with doug guyvit uh a new apostolic reformation a biblical response to a worldwide movement and god's super apostles encountering the worldwide uh prophets and apostles movement and i'm the former managing editor at biola university of biola magazine for about a decade there and also the university editor there that's actually when i first discovered this movement i started researching it during the time i was working there and since then i've written these books i have a blog hollypivot.com where i've been blogging for for many many years about this movement and keeping up with it and researching it and just as i said uh we're excited to talk about this topic tonight we're excited to have you awesome doug can i introduce yourself as well yeah sure let me thank you first of all for inviting us to join you uh josh and michael i've been teaching at talbot school of theology at biola university which is in los angeles county california for about 27 28 years i teach in the m.a philosophy program where we have students who train to go on and do phd research i'd say that probably the majority of our students have an interest in doing further graduate research at the phd level and we've placed over 200 of our students in phd programs around the country and internationally so that's been a big part of my work holly and i as she mentioned are co-authors of two past books that we'll be talking about to uh previously published books but we've also continued our research together and we have other things coming along down the pike eventually i write quite a bit in the area of christian apologetics in christian thought and theology uh christian philosophy but also i work quite a lot in the guild with my secular counterparts who don't do philosophy the way that we do it at talbot i travel internationally quite a bit i like to say that i've been to all continents except one and most people can guess which one that is although that's still on my bucket list and i think i've missed out on about three states i haven't uh made it to three of our united states so far so i do quite a bit of travel which i enjoy and most of that is for uh speaking lecturing um and uh i do teach some courses overseas so how does that sound for an adoption that's incredible i would like to know which states you haven't been to those which are which are the states which states are that unimportant that you're like yeah 47 is good enough you're probably not surprised you know one may be surprising i've never been to the dakotas okay either north or south dakota and i've never been to hawaii and that's despite the fact just across the the way from there in california yeah so far hawaiians need the gospel too doug yeah i guess so all right so um so we want to when i ask you guys a few questions i mean i think we're going to begin with what is the gnar but before we even ask you that i want to talk to you josh and make sure i want to just kind of invite us all make sure we're all on the same page how exactly should we be posturing ourselves as remnant radio josh how are we posturing ourselves going into this discussion sure so um you know we we personally here believe in the gifts of the spirit present right um but i do believe there are lots of people in the pentecostal charismatic movement who believe in the gifts of the spirit um and there there are specific groups of individuals who have this this teaching that would be classified as new apostolic reformation and we don't want to talk about this in a way to to shame to abuse to to ridicule to mock what we want to do is we want to say hey there are these groups of teachings amongst those of us who are pentecostal charismatic and um they are troublesome they're worrisome they're something that we want to be careful of and raise awareness of there's a lot of people who are going along with these people who've been raised in this you just don't know they're oblivious to it so this is kind of just an awareness to discuss and talk about with people that we we respect we read this book that doug and holly put together on the new apostolic reformation and and frankly um it answered a whole lot of questions it put a whole lot of pieces together for me things i've been seeing for a very long time uh and was able to put words to it so i just kind of sharing that experience with our audience uh as a way to again raise awareness not to shame not to bash but just to say hey there are some concerning things and we need to be aware of that yeah and and doug and holly i felt like you guys did a a good job in the book it at having that posture the a posture of of love and that just right at the beginning of the book i wrote this quote down you said we assume that leading gnar figures are believers and genuine disciples of jesus and their intentions to do the will of god in their lives and in this world and so i wanted to just start the episode out this way so nobody thinks we're out trying to you know cast stones or anything like that we just we just want to walk in truth and love and so uh i thought y'all did a good job of that in the book and um and holly why don't we just begin with you and and i'd just like to if you have any comments or anything we just said feel free to make comments there but i was just going to ask you what is the gnar what is the new apostolic reformation yeah so it's a fast-growing global movement of churches that believe that they must be governed by present-day apostles and prophets and the reason they must be governed by apostles and prophets is because they believe these are the two formal offices of church government that have been authorized to bring new revelation or new truths to the church and so it's kind of they use an analogy a lot of a hand with five fingers and they would say for centuries now we've only had three fingers uh we've you know we've had um evangelist pastors and teachers but we've been missing the apostles and prophets and these are the only two offices that have actually been authorized by god to bring new revelation to the church and so because of that the church has kind of been languishing it hasn't been able to complete the great commission which is has really been redefined in this movement as uh commissioned to take dominion or social political control of the nations of the earth and um so the apostles and prophets would say that they're giving new revelations that are equipping all christians to become miracle workers and to work even greater miracles and jesus worked and through these miracles uh that they're working they can actually set up god's physical kingdom on earth but the church can't do this it can't complete this commission until the apostles or prophets are restored and this is this is really a global movement as i said within the united states alone there are about 3.5 million people who attend churches that are directly governed by apostles and this is according to data from the center for the study of global christianity at gordon-conwell theological seminary uh they compile statistics on christians worldwide they're really the the place that compiles these statistics and they would say so 3.5 million people attend churches that are that are directly governed by apostles and that overtly embrace these in our teachings in addition though they would say there are many millions more that attend churches where these teachings have made in roads and varying degrees and these include pentecostal churches charismatic churches non-denominational churches increasingly even denominational churches and more traditional churches so this really is a global movement and um it's not an organization uh so what unites people in this movement is a as a the core belief that apostles and prophets must govern the church and do so so that they can bring new revelation that's critical to the church fulfilling its mission in the world and um so and it's a restoration of this movement it's the idea that teachings important teachings have been lost for centuries um and these apostles and prophets need to come back and restore these teachings um and one of those teachings is the teaching that apostles and prophets are to cover in the church sure and and we'll we'll get into some of that i think that there will be an important part of this discussion where we talk about different kinds of apostles and prophets because the way that you define apostle and prophet has a lot to do with whether you're nar or if you're anglican right so so those are those are going to be kind of different conversations that we're going to have but before we even get into that i'd like to ask doug doug do you uh are you guys using like your own categories to think up nar where did this come from and where are you getting these categories of teachings to identify people who are nar yeah well the categories come from reading their work and listening to what they say um we haven't created the categories ourselves and we do in our books make a distinction between the way that nar folk use the terms apostles and prophets um and how the bible uses those terms and we argue that there's a real difference between the two see peter wagner first used the language or the label new apostolic reformation and some within the movement do use this label for themselves still che on for example considers himself an apostle and is very explicit about that and uh referring to see peter wagner he'll say that i'm part of the new apostolic reformation or something to that effect others who are part of the movement may not identify themselves with the new apostolic reformation but that doesn't mean that they're not part of it because they're part of a movement they believe the same things they have the same practices and even if they say but i've never even heard of the new apostolic reformation it wouldn't matter because you don't have to know of it by that label you don't have to own the label or think of yourself as a part of an organization to be part of the movement and so the categories come from the way they use the terms apostle and prophet in their own publications and in their speaking and uh their teachings yeah yeah well let's let's follow up on that what is the difference between their definition of apostle and prophet and what you guys would understand is the biblical definition of apostle and prophet so one thing i want to be really clear about is is they are not talking about what many people refer to as lower case a apostles um in in the nar that's not what they're talking about so many people will say i believe that there are lowercase a apostles today referring to apostles being like missionaries or church planters um that that's not and we can talk about that i want to show you know some different quotations and things later if we have time to show that that's not what we're talking about and we're also not talking about uh profits uh in the way many pentecostals and charismatics will talk about uh people who have a present day gift of prophecy that's talked about like in first corinthians 12 we're not critiquing or disputing that at all um what we're talking about is prophets and apostles who claim to have formal governing offices and that like pastors or elders all even but even higher offices actually pastors and elders must submit to them um and they must govern so that the new revelations can be implemented in the churches and organizations they oversee and so there's a big difference between what people refer to sometimes as like little casey apostle an uppercase a apostle and and what we're trying to show today is they're not talking about little case a lowercase a apostles so there are you would say that there are those people in the conservative evangelical church um you know i'm thinking of guys like sam storms d.a carson um you know these guys would talk about apostles of the lamb like apostles of jesus christ and apostles of the church people who were sent out from the church to plant those kinds of things now you use the phrase governing a couple of times and i i'd like to have you unpack that when you say governing i do think of anglicans and you mentioned them in your book as well to say they have a form of apostleship that's very different now the apostleship that i see in the anglican church is one of governance so how how do you make a distinction between the new apostolic reformation and their and their function of governance uh versus like so like in the assemblies of god uh they would deny apostles and prophets but like in in classical pentecostal denominations that might hold a view of apostle they're like hey this is a church planter but it doesn't have authority over our movement that's organization that's structural that's elder led whatever um but how would you make a distinction between some of those pentecostal groups that have apostles as missionaries and then like uh the the classical evangel or the classical uh what's the word anglican position of apostles right i so i might let doug maybe speak to the anglican position if he knows more about that than i do but i would say though um so within the nar they would say that um you know you have this five-fold ministry and apostles are to be at the top and they're to work in tandem with prophets and they would say that every church really should be under the authority of apostles and prophets and often that will happen in an it's called an apostolic network so for example apostle oversees an apostolic network of 25 000 churches and something like 65 nations and um so he's the apostle overseeing all those churches and all those nations so it's a very wide authority um and um and so they would say that all churches need to be under the authority either part of a network um or or in order to have an apostle and and also working together with a prophet in their church leadership doug would you be able to unpack the anglican question for me yeah well let me just speak to that uh briefly i'm not an expert on the anglican communion or the church of england but uh there is a difference a real difference uh for example in the anglican church they talk about apostolic succession and so they believe that they could trace the leadership of the communion the anglican communion back to the apostolic church in somewhat the same way that the roman catholics might back to the pope but they don't believe that there's been a real interruption in the progression from the first century up until the present time that would be one real difference uh between the apostles of the nar and apostolic succession within the anglican communion because the in the nar these are new apostles and prophets in the way that that holly described and uh they're new in the sense that the church has been missing these two offices for all these many generations and now they're being restored by the holy spirit to serve certain purposes and that would bring us to the second difference or at least one other difference and that would be the role that apostles and prophets are supposed to play in a gnar kind of setting in contrast to a an anglican sort of setting so for the anglican church the source of authority of uh christian authority knowledge of christian truth is uh primarily scripture uh as interpreted by the 39 articles or understood in connection with the 39 articles somewhat like the the westminster confession of faith for the presbyterians and uh and then church tradition the tradition of the church uh with bishops and the episcopal uh tradition of the church that's something that you find missing in the new apostolic uh reformation the anglican church would not invest the apostolic uh the figures in the in the succession with the same kind of authority the same kind of power as uh you see associated with uh dnar now another difference would be uh the various roles that these individuals play and so within the apostolic succession in the in the anglican communion you won't see the emphasis on the power to perform miracles in the same way that you have in in the nar so that would be another a third difference that has to do with say practices that occur within those two traditions okay sure okay i'd like to just i want to avoid building any kind of straw man so that we can just like tear down the gnar i i want to try to present this in the most sympathetic case and and i'd like for you guys to just respond to this so i'm gonna imagine i'm in the gnar i'm not but we'll just imagine it okay we'll see and i want to to make an argument that apostles and prophets should have governance in the church even over elders in the church and um and so i'm gonna say hey when you look at the church in the book of acts there were apostles who were appointing elders and speaking into the life of churches and this group of apostles seemed to extend even beyond the original 12 whose names are on the foundation stones of the new jerusalem of course you have you have paul and then you have barnabas and barnabas was one of the ones appointing apostles and then uh and then when you go into the book of ephesians and ephesians 2 20 and you have the apostles and prophets having a prominent foundational role in the building of the temple metaphor for the church and then um and then you kind of go into ephesians i want to say it's about 3-5 or so where apostles and prophets are the ones that received this revelation the gent about gentile inclusion into the church so we need apostles and prophets to to bring in the revelation that the church needs to be able to to move into new frontiers just like pretty nerdy church and then you get to ephesians 4 11 and the fivefold ministry and you've got apostles prophets evangelists pastors and teachers and and they're the ones training the saints it seems as though they have some kind of leadership role everyone would agree apostles were leaders and that pastors and teachers were leaders uh we might by way of inference say that evangelists uh and prophets were leaders in that role as well then you get to first corinthians chapter 12 and paul begins to make a list question first you have a policy to preach someone pull the mic from the preacher what's he doing spiritual guess is my thing man i know how to talk through it so uh you've got first apostles then i think the second one is prophets and so on so i i know that these are the arguments that uh that somebody in the gnar is going to bring up and say this is why we need apostles and prophets today with governmental authority who have special revelatory insight so um i don't know which of you wants to answer that i know there's a lot you could jump in on um doug why don't we start with you good so the last little bit that you said is very important governmental authority all right despite all of the uh the things that you mentioned and the leadership role that apostles played with different forms of apostleship in the new testament as you can see in the book of acts in some of the epistles like ephesians and so forth you don't find anything like governmental authority you might see a lot of the same things that you described certainly leadership church planting on the part of apostles apostle is a term that just means one who is sent and the churches did send they would lay hands on individuals like uh paul and barnabas for example and and uh send them with their blessing on you know missionary journeys and so forth where they would establish churches they would do evangelism and establish churches and so they would represent the church with the blessing of these leaders we're talking about something very different and the people within the nar actually think of themselves in very different terms than that and it isn't just that they're providing leadership and guidance and training and education in biblical truth but or exercising a kind of authority that you don't see attributed to other apostles in the new testament other perhaps than uh the apostles of jesus christ so that would be um a real difference and and the language that you use there towards the end michael is actually a tip off that there is that real difference that's good that's good you might jump in and yeah holly what is there any part of that that you want to jump in on well just the key verses that are generally used to defend uh governing apostles today ephesians 4 11 through 13 uh first corinthians 12 28 i believe it is those two verses say nothing about governing formal offices of church government that uh are to perpetuate through all generations so it's really making those verses do a lot more uh than they actually do to to bring formal governing to see formal governing offices in those and then the ephesians 2 20 passage that's often cited is referring back to the foundation of the church it's it's referring backwards so those are those are the three main passages that are generally used to support uh the teaching that apostles and prophets are to govern the church today and i would say those three passages do not do that in addition the clear clearly is that the offices of deacon and elder are established in the new testament instructions are given for how to um the qualifications for these leaders and what their office looks like but there's never any instructions in the new testament given for appointing new apostles um so so it's really making an entire movement out of saying that apostles and prophets must govern the church it's just building an entire uh movement over a gaping hole uh they're just there aren't aren't these passages in scripture to support those teachings well i mean i would i've got another direction i would take the conversation in but i almost want to jump in on that but like with with that one i could say that like the early church fathers talked about apostles talked about bishops um and and even uh spoke about the transitions of those roles i want to say um uh discipled by peter uh ignatius um speaks of these kind of governing roles um one of the early church fathers talked about um hey these guys are calling themselves apostles are doing this but they're not they're not doing miracles so it's like there are there there are some early church stuff so i wouldn't i wouldn't say that there's no argument um there's certainly none from scripture i'll give you that but there is i would say that there is potentially a pattern um again siding with you guys as far as how this fleshes out and how this should flesh out in a local church i would still side with you guys um just i don't wanna don't wanna make an unnecessary uh strongman which i'll let you speak so i'll let you correct me if you think i'm i'm wrong there um but but uh i do i have two questions that i think are really important one do you believe that all pentecostal charismatics are nar and i'll ask that to uh to doug are all pentecostals and charismatics nar and then to holly i'll ask um you know do you believe that all new apples college reformation churches are heretics have they apostasized entirely or are they christians that have error um and how do we how do we categorize these two things so first question are all pentecostals charismatics uh nar and then second question are are all of the nar completely apostate or are they just christians with error um starting with doug yeah well thank you for that question uh josh that is a very good question and i think it would be of real interest to a lot of people who watch remnant radio we would say emphatically know that if there is a real difference between a church that endorses the new apostolic reformation and has leaders within that movement on the one hand and a church that is traditionally charismatic or classically pentecostal so we're making that we're using those two terms um in a certain way i said traditionally charismatic and classically pentecostal the new apostolic reformation is actually newer than the emergence of the pentecostal movement and so for example in the assemblies of god church which is pentecostal you don't have any official recognition of the role that the apostle or the prophet is supposed to play as we've attributed to nar in fact in some of their own white papers their own official documents they have sought to distance themselves explicitly from the nar so that people understand that even though they are pentecostal they do not endorse this conception of apostleship and what you might call prophethood so there is that real difference and in our books we emphasize that difference we note that you might well be pentecostal in the classical sense or charismatic in the traditional sense and not be part of the new apostolic reformation now of course the question does come up how would you know whether your own church which may be charismatic or it may be pentecostal or it may be something else is or is not nar okay that's good holly you want to repeat your question for holly yeah yeah i just asked um you know what level of error do you believe it's error do you believe it's heresy apostasy where would you where would you place the um the nar group right and i think it's important to realize that there are degrees of error um and so the most serious degree of error of course would be heresy and that's that's when somebody denies a doctrine that is essential to the christian faith in other words you cannot be a christian and and believe that thing or deny that doctrine so for example if someone were to deny the deity of christ or deny the doctrine of the trinity they would be a heretic by definition um and we do not use that term of the new apostle reformation of leaders or people in this movement um there's a lesser error but it's still serious error and that would be teachings and practices that are aberrant and um this error can be serious it can it can have serious consequences if someone arch is to hold to it but it does not fall to the level of heresy where to believe it necessarily put you outside of the faith and so we believe that a number of the teachings uh in practices in the nar would fall into the category of aberrant but uh would not would not put them in the category of heresy and that's really important because what i hear you saying is um the reason you're talking about this um is because it's for god's glory uh and for our benefit right so like if you follow these doctrines it's going to hurt you and it's going to shame god right it's it's not his pattern it's not going to bring him the maximum yield of glory but there is a biblical pattern um to bring god glory that's seen in scripture and there is a way for your your soul to be shepherded rightly um through the teaching and preaching of god's word in the sacraments and so forth and so on um so so what you're saying is like hey people that we're talking about that are in ar will acknowledge them as christian brothers but we're saying hey be careful because this robs god of glory and hurts the people you're leading so that's a very good motive when when i hear people on youtube i don't hear that same kind of that same kind of motive when they're talking about nar yeah for sure okay i have a question that i think is along these same lines and um the question is what are the primary dangers of the gnar like specifically to the people in the congregations and i might even ask like what's the number one like if you had wanted people to to walk away with this is the number one top danger uh that i would be concerned about and so i'd like to ask you both that and doug maybe you first and then holly you after him and if he takes your number one then go with your number two okay so doug what's the top danger okay well yeah i've never thought about just one standing out as the top danger but it will be related to what it is that is the defining feature of the movement but let's speak more generally just for a moment michael and josh about the significance of error in this case even though there's no heresy involved as far as we are concerned the kind of error that's involved is very serious as holly as holly said for one thing we're talking about error in an area that defines the movement itself so it's not a subordinate or secondary thing it is essential to the new apostolic reformation to be teaching and standing for something that is unbiblical and is in error in that sense and needs to be corrected so uh that's a pretty significant way to be an error and you know error breeds error and especially if you don't have authoritative constraints on what you will do to ensure that error is corrected we think that scripture provides us with the authoritative constraint and that's why we spend so much time in our book comparing their teachings with what the bible actually says about the nature of an apostle or a prophet now one of the great problems here is that not only does error breed error sort of theologically but it can do so at the practical level within the body of christ and so the body of christ always suffers when the dominant motif within their fellowship is something that is misleading or is unbiblical and so this suffering of the church can take place in lots of different ways people can become confused about what the bible really teaches we've heard people say that they've they've come out of the nar very confused about how the how to read the bible and study it for themselves they have no confidence on their own to be able to to do that because they haven't been taught um in in a rich and real responsible way to do that and just to interrupt you for a moment is that is that typical of a gnar church that it's maybe not expositional that it or maybe it cherry-picks verses for proof texting and or maybe they just their whole sermon is a prophecy and they just refer to the bible i mean like what is the nature of t why are people not understanding the bible in our churches uh can i if i could see one thing in response to that one of their key teachings is prophetic illumination that the apostles and prophets receive prophetic illumination and that's that they receive new insights into understanding a verse or a passage of scripture that no one in the history of the church has actually received or at least that it's an understanding that has been lost since like the early centuries and and that they're restoring and so because of that they'll often come to a passage of scripture and tell people what it means and a normal person wouldn't look at that passage of scripture a normal a person just normally reading their bible wouldn't look at the passage of scripture and read it that way in context but it takes the apostle or prophet to tell them what it means even though it really doesn't seem like it actually has anything to do with that i could give examples but um please do please do actually okay i know we'll get back to we'll get back to the dangers question but i think this is important yeah i can help if you're looking for resources holly because growing up in the movement we've actually done episodes here on episodes we call neo-gnosticism um and in that video where we talk about spiritualizing scripture texts that's a very common thing it actually happened with irenaeus when he was reading passages about the woman with the issue of blood and and uh the young girl the jairus daughter who died at the age of 12 and he says look there's she had the issue for 12 years this woman died for 12. these are these 12 these are prophetic insights 12 is government that means that that there's these these kind of governmental uh figures that god is wanting to restore and to reinstitute i've heard people in with an nar kind of thing that irenaeus was awesome no i said iron ass i'm so sorry um iron ass wrote against valentinus okay this was the one that was talking about these two uh i was like you you just broke my heart no no no i apologize yeah so i iron ass was writing against gnosticism against valentine's day using these kinds of spiritual texts and i've i've heard guys uh in the movements that i was raised and i'm saying like this older woman is the older church the older people in our church you have the old system of revival who can't birth anything new and then the young people who are coming into maturity who haven't been able to to experience revival and this is god saying to us today that he's wanting to bring a life to the old revival system and the new revival system to waken up the whole church now is it is it a theological truth that god wants us alive yes um but but can we use that text to say this is what this means that in essence it's teaching people how to read the bible the wrong way yes yeah you're teaching them to look for spiritual meaning okay yeah holly why don't you give one example of it well i had one example this this is going to get into uh naming names a little bit uh but this is the example i had so i'll read a verse to you first and just see what you would think this means right psalm 27 4 one thing i ask from the lord this only do i seek that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the lord and to seek him in his temple okay that's the verse well that verse uh is a verse that um actually mike bickle claims that the prophet bob jones gave him prophetic illumination into and it was the basis for establishing believing that he was called to establish 24 7 prayer rooms throughout throughout the world and and it was that verse and we actually had a conversation doug and i with mike bickle where we're in that conversation he conceded that you know someone wouldn't normally read that verse and and come to that understanding but but he saw in that um that that that 24 7 prayer rooms needed to be established throughout the world and that was important to uh bringing the return of christ and that that's a different subject but that's one example so and i almost want to give pushback on that too because so my question would be does bickle believe that that's what that verse says and does bickle believe that's like hey this verse is about 24-hour prayer in worship um that that when the author wrote it when the holy spirit inspired the author to write it that um that that's what that was the authorial intent or does he believe that the holy spirit spoke to him directly as he was reading that verse there's an application for him personally i would say it's not even an application what i'm thinking of is i want to say it's ezekiel who's like laying on his side and he sees something and he's like there's a pot that's tipped over and there's water coming out of it and god says hey just as this water tips out of this pot so will the north invade the whatever so like he's using a natural means to communicate a supernatural truth is it possible that he's reading a text that means one thing and god in the midst of that speaks something else i would and the reason i'm bringing this up is to say um i've held my son in my in my and my lap and he's jumping up and down and i get really excited about him you know jumping up and down doing something that that i've been able to do my entire life right um but uh but his first moments of standing i was such great joy and felt like the lord spoke to me in that moment like hey those are meaningless silly things and i have joy in you when you do meaningless you know uh uh seemingly meaningless things as well so here's a a natural object that i feel like god is speaking to me in a supernatural way i would never get up and preach that i would never share that experience because i think prophecy is is subordinate and it's not equal to scripture and it was a personal application for my life is it possible that he's looking at that as a personal application and not a revealed truth for all people everywhere because i would i would feel like that would be a strong difference is that go ahead holly oh what i was gonna say is is uh for someone who studied ihop and through its history and followed it through its history i would say that people have noted that there have been real revisions and i helped prophetic history over the years and so i would say from what i understand is initially he would have seen it more in the prophetic illumination since and and that's how he taught it um i think he has maybe softened his language and and now says something like it inspired him um but but i do believe that that initially in his teachings and practices and the way it was presented was more in a prophetic illumination sense through the prophet bob jones sure that's fair that's right well well regardless i think this would be a huge concern to me it would be if somebody thinks that anyone thinks we can get special revelation out of god's word that no one has had historically that we're understanding is somehow god's intent through that scripture was to establish this new truth and reality in churches um i think that's dangerous i'd like to put something in there on that uh if people can do that then there are no controls on who can do it or or what they can say because then scripture can say pretty much anything you want or at least you can you can apply it in any way you like and it can be quite radically different from any natural reading of the text or even responsible medics or principles with biblical interpretation now let me give you another example of a different kind where you have a teacher within the movement who's this here is exactly what this passage teaches he's not saying um a prophetic word that is somehow rooted in this passage he's saying this is what it means and it cannot possibly mean anything else and again i'll probably have to mention names but uh the passage is john 14 12 where jesus famously says the works that i do you also will do and greater works than these and uh so uh for example uh you'll hear people within the movement say well this is miracles and it has to be miracles and there's nothing else it could possibly be bill johnson at bethel church has said this from the pulpit for example and the passion translation of the bible translates this verse this way they call it a translation but that's a misnomer because the passage itself does not use the greek word for miracles it uses a word that is translated best into the english as works and so then the question is well what sorts of works could this be and it's a real question it's an open question it's something to be investigated and you can't just make an assumption and then declare as if you know better than everybody else who's ever disputed this passage uh what it actually means and on this particular uh in in this particular case i think it does not mean miracles and there are several reasons for that but i like to say that if jesus is talking to the apostles and saying you will do greater words then you look for the facts in the book of acts you go to the book of acts to see well what exactly did they accomplish in the name of christ that might have been different and greater than anything that jesus did and of course nothing that they did ever outstripped the greatest miracles uh that he performed and that would be impossible really because he raised people from the dead and in effect raped and fell from the dead so for these reasons i would say um exegetically by means of responsible interpretation it couldn't possibly mean that but even if that's what you thought it meant you shouldn't be saying this is the only way you could possibly interpret this and anybody who thinks otherwise is just wrong and then go on and never interact with the reasons people might have for thinking it would mean something different so there's an example where a person thinks that he can speak with such authority and based on personal experience um just to say exactly what the passage itself means well let me even push back on on that a little bit because every time that we get into pulpit we're going to say this is what this passage means if we believe that's what it means um so uh i think a more egregious one like an exact example i remember uh hagee um i want to say john hague specifically when talking about jesus could do few miracles there because of their lack of belief like an angel appeared to him and explained to him this is what this text means right so he he had now what would be an authoritative understanding of one given biblical text which which i would say like you can't do that when there's a debate over a text and you're like no no no i know what it means because an angel told me and it's like well that's a trump card that you can whip out whenever you want that's like really convenient um uh so so to your point i would say that you can read a text like that and go hey this is what i think it means and not be nar right like you'd say hey other people anyone who you know who reads this text and views it that way i disagree with them but just having a firm position on a given theological text wouldn't make you gnar i don't think would it no but that's not how i described the situation the way i described it the way it happened was to say that it couldn't possibly mean anything else and there was no acknowledgement that uh you know i may be mistaken here but uh based on my own study um this is what i think it does mean and others disagree that is a responsible uh i agree that's responsible yeah so i agree with mike bickle would say that the greater works actually are or include uh believers in the last days calling down the judgments of god through their declarations uh that are described in the book of revelation calling them down and destroying cities and and just wiping out entire cities and populations um and so mike bickel will say that is how could you read john 14 12 and possibly come to the greater works that jesus promised his disciples would do are the calling down the plagues in the book of revelation through their spoken words so there's another example of how's that that's done okay so there is that if you think that's what the plastic means but you acknowledge that the works that they did were not greater you know miracles of the type that jesus did then you have to ask the question well what are the works that the church or individuals can do that are greater than jesus and now you have to speculate and now you have to sort of imagine what those things might be and then look at the history of the church and ask well did any of those things occur and now what you have are present day apostles and prophets speculating my word about what the future holds uh that jesus might have been alluding to and so that's what mike bickle is doing uh when he says what what holly recounted sure okay all right so it sounds like doug if i was to summarize your primary danger it sounds like it's just playing fast and loose with the scripture it might be having a strange interpretation that no one's had historically and saying god revealed to you that's the way or maybe an angel revealed it to you or whatever but basically not having an exegetical bearing so that people coming out of it don't know how to read the bible so i'm summarizing yours doug i want to move to you holly what would you say is the primary danger a real concern i have is the the teachings make people dependent on the apostles and prophets for for a lot of things they're dependent on them for understanding scripture they're dependent on them for being sure they're inside of god's will that they're fulfilling their destiny uh to receive healing um to learn to work miracles um to cast out any demon or you know uh deal with any demons that might be afflicting them all of these things people are dependent on the apostles and the prophets to give them the revelation that they need for all of these things so over dependence or dependency on the apostles and prophets um i talk about the five d's we talk about that in our book the division so many churches that have split over these teachings families we get contacted regularly by by families who are just devastated because their kids got caught up in this movement and won't talk to them anymore and we could go into that um another d is distraction and people are being distracted um from real true biblical teachings and practices and because of that they're experiencing diminished spiritual growth um disillusionment when the uh promises by the apostles and prophets don't pan out when when they don't learn to work miracles in the way they promise that they can or when a healing doesn't occur and then also demonization i would say that there are there is a danger with some of the practices in this movement that have more in common with occult and new age practices of people actually coming under demonic influence so there are quite a few dangers yeah um we did an episode recently um i say recently the last year on the courts of heaven and i feel like this is i think when you're talking about worried about how the bible is handled i mean i i cannot i mean look no further right than courts of heaven and when we when we read through this text and we've done two videos on it that encourage our viewers to go back and watch if you haven't seen it already um but but robert henderson literally says in this book you won't so much be judged by what is written in scripture you're going to be judged by what's written about you in the books that are in heaven he talks about how you you've got to spiritually go to heaven you have to find the book that's written about you that was written by angels and god and eternity past this is god's perfect will for your life you've got to begin to to live out that will and decree that against these demonic forces that are in heaven make sure that they know that you know what's written about you in your book and um and there's different voices that are in heaven that you have to come into alignment with and if you don't do it right you'll actually be in spiritual danger so when you're talking about dependency i mean there are entire practices that have been aberrant that have been missing from the church from 2000 years and that fundamentally changed some of the core tenets of our faith like prayer like hey going to our father who's in heaven and asking our father who loves us for a good gift isn't going to give us a scorpion or a serpent according to this book it's very very connected with a new apostolic reformation yeah if you go and pray for things without the right order in certain things you're actually gonna get hurt and your family can be under a demonic attack can you can you tell us some of the spiritual practices that have been found um and i'll use the idea of in scripture but these new practices that have been discovered i know in your book you talk about spiritual mapping what are some other things that you have found in the the new apostolic reformation to say hey apostles and prophets claim to have this authority and when they actually bear this out these are the kinds of practices that start coming out of that because that's really where the rubber hits the road well one practice you just kind of mentioned is related to strategic level spiritual warfare the idea that there are these high-ranking demonic principalities that rule over geographic regions nation cities which there actually is some biblical support for but the idea is that that the gospel cannot go forth with effectiveness in a region until those high-ranking uh demonic spirits are neutralized or cast out and so it's called strategic level spiritual warfare because it's seen as more strategic than old-fashioned spiritual warfare like just casting out a demon from an individual or prayer or something like that it's strategic because they cast out the demon ruling over an entire nation and then and then they can and then the gospel only then can the gospel go forth with effectiveness in a region and can the missionaries have any success on the ground the ground troops and so related to that is spiritual mapping trying to is a practice that's you try to map out a particular city and kind of find out what are the sins that are predominant in that city um it could be uh you know it could be that they have a lot of um strip clubs or something in that city or it could be that they have casinos and there's a lot of greed in the city and and so they they map out an area and tried to figure out what what demon is exerting its influence in this city try to identify the demon often by name and then they'll engage in a prayer walking a specific type of prayer walking where groups of people will gather together and walk in that region and and specifically go against that uh demonic principality and pray against it and command it to leave um and and so so that's one example and this isn't aberrant this is like taught from the pulpit this is written in books this isn't like a couple of people who go to this church that we are not thrilled with has lots of error they're going out and doing this occasionally they're actively doing these kinds of things right and don't you have to have an apostolic status in order to go after a principality isn't there something tied to the the apostle has to have the revelation of what principality is to have the revelation and the apostle has to go in and i think they can both get the revelation right i don't know you guys know better than we do so they can both get the revelation but the prophet gets it more consistently and we were both right i was the one who is to implement it i got it okay okay thanks for coaching us only apostles only apostles are seen to have the authority to cast out these these high-ranking demonic principalities doug is there any any practices that are that are that are coming to your recollection that you would say this is what happens as as holly was speaking and uh we were talking about michael's question what is the most serious error i was thinking about what our two responses to that question have in common and what they have in common is concern about the nature of authority and health authority plays a role within the new apostolic reformation uh here we have what we believe is human authority presumed to be divine authority really i mean they purport to have a kind of divine authority that we believe they simply don't have and then if they did they'd be able to establish the plausibility of that claim from scripture which does have authority with an authority that can be tested by anyone who will come and humbly submit to the teachings of of the word and uh and and so that's a that's a basic problem when holly listed off those various practical ways in which dependence on an apostle can create uh clean in the lives of people that's a question of authority as well so it's authority with respect to revelation and biblical teaching and its authority with respect to uh guidance over the lives of people in in the church yeah now so when we talk about authority take first timothy chapter five it talks about how the elders are to direct the affairs of the church and now i know there's various manners in which churches today practice church governance and and you talk about this in your book like hey there's room for disagreement whether congregational run or whether this or that and you talk through different forms but um but you say that nar takes it to another level whenever it says that the apostles and prophets are to have authority over the elders authority over everybody who has authority over the apostles and prophets well there you have it well in their teaching god only only god does directly in their teaching um although like you know elijah stevens uh recently said on your show that um in the case of bethel church that there's their apostle is submitted to a board of elders and we can talk about that we have some things to say about that but in the teaching like as c peter wagner would teach it and and others in the nar would teach it uh the apostle submits no to no one but god alone they can choose to voluntarily submit to other apostles but but they're at the top and and this goes along with their line their teachings about spiritual covering and alignment which are really important in this movement um they teach that everybody is supposed to be under the proper spiritual covering and that means being under the authority of of the faithful ministry but especially under the authority of the apostles and prophets and if you're not under that spiritual covering then you don't have the protection and the blessings that trickle downward from being under the authority of the apostles and prophets so you need to be properly aligned with them and if you're not you're really outside of god's will and um and so so it will often be said in defense of people in this movement well they're not saying you have to submit to these apostles and prophets and they often don't say that so directly but there's a lot of teaching about the need to come on in under in alignment with the apostles and prophets and be under their spiritual covering or else uh i'll she'll miss out on the um the benefits and the blessings and and even expose yourself to spiritual danger being outside of that covering and i have a number of quotes here by prominent in inaudible covering on in alignment the bethel leaders network at bethel church and reading to be a part of their app assault network their the bethel leaders network informational packet describes what i'm talking about that one of the benefits of being part of the network is that you're under their spiritual covering of bill johnson and and prophet chris bellaton and and all that goes along with that so it's a very common teaching in this movement so i'll have you give some of those quotes um but with this is kind of the backdrop of just to say okay what about a classical pentecostal um or a traditional charismatic to use doug's words um for a person who goes hey um according to ephesians four um these gifts are for our edification and benefit according to uh first corinthians um you know 12-14 and ephesians chapter four we see that these gifts are given to the church for their edification for their building up for their exit their encouragement ephesians 4 goes on to talk about till we reach the fullness of faith and knowledge of the lord jesus it seems as if these gifts need to operate so what if someone was to say hey i really believe that these graces need to be present in our church so that we can mature the way that god wants us to mature in love the god we mature we plant churches that we're growing up the way that god has called us to grow up in the body of christ um with one of those classical pentecostals charismatic who say we need the apostolic because it looks as if they have something that edifies us that builds us up if we don't have them can we really be built up the way um that scripture would have us be built up it didn't say you know uh prophet evangelist pastor teacher it says apostle prophet evangelist pastor teacher for the quipping of the saints right so if i don't have one of those um does that mean that i will be not fully equipped um so is there a difference between what i just said there and what a person says that you have to come underneath apostolic covering to have apostolic blessing in certain areas of your life are those two things different yeah i would say it's different um i they would there's like a spiritual protection and um and maybe if i read the quotes it will come out but there's a real spiritual protection and so i'll just start here this is so chaon wrote a book called modern day apostles the four word is written by bill johnson throughout this book chan is very clear he's describing the new apostolic reformation and i really recommend everyone read this book if they have any questions about what we're saying if we're actually accurately describing this movement they need to read this book modern day apostles by chaon he's one of the leading apostles in this movement bill johnson wrote the forward as i said and it really really will show what we're saying here but um so in the foreword chaon said i encourage you to get as close as you can to the apostle with whom you are aligned what do i mean by being close it means carrying the heart of the apostle following him as he follows jesus it means submitting to his authority the closer you are with your apostle the more you will receive the blessing of the corresponding grace and favor that comes with the alignment now chris bellaton the chief prophet at bethel reading said if we don't understand how to recognize and align ourselves under true spiritual authority we may build bigger armies involve better strategies and buy more powerful weapons but we will still lose it just never occurs to us that if we support honor our leaders we will inherit their victories yet this is how leadership is designed to work in an apostleship the honor between leaders and those who follow them creates a relationship in which the leader's lane becomes the follower's floor um and in another sermon uh chris bellaton said uh there may be grace available for me that i actually don't receive because i don't understand this but and he was talking about what god says about apostles and prophets and then um as i mentioned in the bethel leaders network informational packet they they actually say experience the blessing of alignment and spiritual covering with bethel's apost apostolic five-fold ministry leaders such as bill johnson chris felton and other fathers and mothers of the bethel and blm family experience the inheritance of fathers and mothers who have forged a relationship with god and whose blessing transcends time and space um and you'll experience a blessing sounds like a great blessing to have my my blessings are all within time and space i want to know what that's like i want i want a non-temporal blessing i'm sorry i don't know i don't know like i'm picking fun but like i don't know what that means right like what does it mean to have a blessing that extends through time and space like does that mean i cannot go ahead oh no i'm sorry i'm sorry i interrupted the idea though is pastors who are out there and they want to get in on bill johnson and chris belton's blessings can do so by joining this this network is what the promise is yeah and and and that's that's just one of those things i think that you're talking about having that spiritual covering right like spiritual protection i want to say there was a couple quotes in your book where you cannot achieve the mission of god without apostles um yeah and i i would say that we um yeah that i i totally understand in in comprehending grass how you could say um a single christian believer without this kind of authority over them can't um accomplish the mission and purpose of god for their life or or um if i have faith in the lord jesus christ to protect me and to fulfill his mission and commission that's that's good placed faith but i have to look to a man to facilitate covering and power and authority um then i'm actually placing my faith um in the wrong place i'm putting my faith in some kind of ecclesiological system and not in christ um and we would say as protestants may it never be right yeah i just gotta have some wheels okay go ahead no no i'm sorry i was just going to mention they would also say that when you're when you're um in submission to apostles and prophets you also get the blessing of um of being able to see angels carry out your um decrees um and um this is a big teaching from chris from chris it was a completely unnecessary i was going to ask if the decree transcended time and space but i shouldn't well that's okay but so from the book heavy rain chris valeton said um he's talking about the the letters to the seven churches in revelation and he says what we learn from these letters is astonishing we see that true apostolic ministries have angels assigned to them these angels are commissioned to carry out the mission dictated by a particular apostles mandate and metron the word metron means the realms or boundaries of a leader's spiritual influence in this case john had authority over seven specific geographic regions so he had seven angels assigned to him it is my personal conviction that one of the essential elements that has ushered in this apostolic age is that angels no longer recognize the performance-based authority of denominationalism paul teaches us that angels recognize true spiritual authority in fact it is the angels who answer our prayers and fulfill our prophecies where have all the angels gone in the 21st century church what would the world be like if we were suddenly to employ angelic help on this planet in the same degree as they did in the first century i think that as we are reformed into this new apostolic wine skin that means as as we embrace the apostles government we are about to find out and there's a lot of teaching about when you're under the apostles um you actually they actually uh can issue decrees and things that the angels carry out and you'll become part of that wow i like angels so okay what we need we need to ask about bethel yeah because that was wrong we were gonna we're gonna ask for sure so you watched the bethel interview what were your thoughts um and i've got questions why don't you refresh our not all of our viewers have seen it elijah stevens came on the show he teaches um at apologetics at their bethel school of supernatural ministry um we submitted to him some of the uh the quotes from the book um said hey there's a couple of things that require to be nar here are some of the areas here's some of the the ticks um the office of apostle the office of a prophet governed exclusive authority over a local church um that local church has a single senior elder um such as a senior pastor who has um direct authority over his board or elders um he is the authority he is the first among the equals um not that they're they're plural but like a pope in a sense and the only person above him is the apostle um he goes well that's not us um and i'm curious you know as we as we submitted some of those quotes to him and he said no we don't do this we don't do that what were some of your thoughts on on that interview and by the way to our viewers go back and watch that uh watch that interview with elijah stevens over the new apostolic reformation in bethel uh so doug what'd you think of our bethel episode well i did get a chance to watch uh part of it i didn't see the whole episode uh myself i i think i saw about half of the episode and my impression was that elijah wasn't um very specific about the ways in which uh what we attribute to to nar people um are different than what he sees going on at bethel church and ready i don't think that he was very specific about that which means that there was room for there to be a match between what we said and what really goes on there so i thought what he said was was weak and i think that uh some of the quotations that holly has called uh from people prominent in the movement that she's got with her right now will establish that as a matter of fact uh they do they do say some of the things that elijah wanted to say uh really are not featured by by the church within the church so that was disappointing to me that he would take that approach i thought that in a way he spoke in very uh vague terms and very general terms which left uh me wondering at least what the real difference is supposed to be between what we say in our books and what he says goes on there where he is at bethel holly same question yeah um i mean i think people could have been left um thinking that um that uh based on what elijah said that bethel doesn't teach that their apostles and prophets have extraordinary authority that they don't claim to be giving you truth and that they don't teach that that churches should be under an apostles authority and um i think all those things can be demonstrated i have here in my notes and and can be demonstrated that they actually do indeed teach all of those things and um now they won't always say uh they'll say oh yeah you can have a church that's not under an apostles authority but it's not within the movement you're there's like a class christians and b-class christians and you're definitely one of the b-class christians if you're not under the authority of an apostle and again that that can be demonstrated um i think we can demonstrate but um i i do one of elisha's uh i think points main points he tried to make is that bill johnson can't have absolute authority because uh he said that bethel church um according to their bylaws has a board of elders and they can actually fire bill johnson and i don't think that diminishes anything at all that we're saying that that wasn't the criteria we we said uh that has been put before to explain you know what it is to be nar um but it doesn't all non-profit organizations are required to have by uh bylaws and they're required to have boards and those boards can fire their senior leaders uh chaon is overtly nar by in his own words he's gnar and he his organization his apostolic network harvest international ministry is a non-profit organization and so it has a board as well and so having a board does not exempt in any way bethel from being gnar and in fact um i wanted to read a quote from bill johnson he said this um during the 2019 open heavens conference at bethel they were talking about well what happens if there's differences of opinion say between chris allison and bill johnson or the other leaders of bethel church and bill johnson what happens and um what bill johnson said in response to that was i have the ability to lay down the final word so to speak if god speaks to me absolutely and i know what we're supposed to do i will listen to all input but then i'll explain if the counsel is contrary i'll say god said and he said he does that rarely but that he does withhold have that authority as an apostle at bethel church and and another really interesting thing um about the bylaws of bethel church and these bylaws are available um publicly you can request those from bethel church but they have an interesting feature in their bylaws which actually it's true that there is a board that can fire bill johnson but there's also a committee called the apostolic intervention committee and this committee is a committee of five apostles that are pre-chosen from other large organizations or other organizations in case the board does choose to fire a bill then bill can call these um these five apostles in and they actually have the authority according to the bylaws to reverse the board's decision so that is an interesting feature of the bylaws i think that actually kind of undermines the the claim that while because there's a board that you know doesn't mean bill has has all this authority wash your face it's not good because like realistically whoever's gonna be on that apostolic board people that like bill and know nothing about what's going on in the church right so again this isn't a this isn't a bill johnson you know bethel church you know destructo fest where we're going to attack these guys which y'all aren't doing but people who are watching um the pentecostal charismatic movement has been preconditioned to say any kind of criticism any kind of critique is an attack it is hate right we're we're from a position of right now saying uh we love these people um we want to see protection from these people um i have no expectation that bill is going to tomorrow start saying that jesus is the brother of satan i've got no expectation that he's going to commit like such a level of heresy to lead many into damnable heresy but um he is a man and worse things have happened you know um i think of yeah i was gonna say i think that's that's my biggest concern about all of it regardless of who we're talking about the the idea that one person has authority over church elders and lots of different churches and that one person just what they say goes that's uh that's frightening to me and uh and i i i think that's unbiblical yeah i would i would like to maybe maybe try to resolve this with a couple because we didn't even really get to say like hey how do i know if i'm going to in our church but like a couple of things i think are important to talk about i think of bethel or ihop ihop said hey we're not nar they have a thing on their website saying we're not gnar um this is you know we're not this is not who we are you said that they modernized their language and yet some people are saying no you're still gnar so so my question would be there are people out there who don't know that nara was a thing that didn't even know it existed people are telling them that they're gnar they're making public statements saying they're not gnar and yet we're still saying no you're gnar so so so how like uh i use this in the facebook post you know is there is there a possibility to be narish or gnarly you know just a little little bit of nar not a ton of nar um uh so so when we're talking about these organizations what's the what would they need to do to prove that they are not gnar right like what uh not that they have to prove anything to us not that that you have they have to submit something to to doug and holly to get put on the non and they are not the non nar certification two of you have the apostolic authority to decree people as gnar or not gnar but like what what uh what needs to happen what do they need to show what do they need to do to then show the people that they're leading uh and to protect the people they're leading from this kind of error doug what do you think well we've talked about this quite a bit holly and i have and uh there's a difference between a church that seems to check all the boxes all the main boxes and a church that will maybe um reflect some of the influence of gnar and i think what we're talking about here is a situation where it's pretty conclusive that a church has uh the view of the authority of an apostle and of a prophet and we would say that one way to be sure that in church either was not gnar or had forsaken it nar um involvement right uh affiliation whether it's or not one way to do that or the primary way to do that a necessary way to do that would be or fake their view of the authority of apostles and prophets that we've talked about so far if they were to do that and and do it decisively in ways that were demonstrable and reflected in their in their teachings their doctrines make retractions to that effect then i think that would be uh conclusive that would be convincing to me what i do i expect that to happen i have to say i don't expect it but uh that would do the trick and and i wanted to add to that that's one reason why i would say international house of prayer in kansas city ihop kc that's mike pickles organization is not off the hook uh with being gnar they do have a statement on their website that directly says we are not part of the new apostolic reformation but you can't just go by what an organization says you have to go by what they do and related to doug's point um mike bickel over many many years has taught that the govern governing office of apostle and prophet is is for today um especially in preparation for christ's return and this is something he's affirmed to us and in conversation with him that that he believes that those offices continue it's in his writings in his book growing in the prophetic he talks about this um and so it's it's their belief in the present day governing offices of apostle and prophet that make them for any of the leaders in your organization which is what they state on their website huh well we are go ahead comment made i i don't mean to talk over you josh okay no no you're fine oh i was seeing here that for example in one of the comments that dr michael brown is a is uh clear about this but he denies that there is such a thing as the new apostolic reformation and we've had a public debate with him on on one of in in a blog blogcast uh about this very thing and i think that we demonstrated here today and certainly in our books that there is a movement of this sort and that there are leaders that fit this description and that's all we're saying is that if people do fit this description then that's what we mean when we talk about the new apostolic reformation so this is a label that we're using that's convenient because we need some way of being able to talk about people who are making these same kinds of claims and so when a group like when someone like mike bickle or or ihop in kansas city denies that they're nar like holly said that's kind of irrelevant because what matters is what do they believe what do they teach and how do they function and so we try to describe that so that people know what to look for so when they're in a church and they're wondering is my church a gnar church is it gnarly then um then how do i know how would i look how would i tell whether that's the case and we've tried to outline ways that you would be able to tell or suspect now we think that that you could follow up there are things you could ask leadership at a church and then ask follow-up questions depending on what they say that would help you discern and discernment's really critical here some people think that discernment is a special gift that must be understood apart from scripture that a person has discernment if they can see something beyond what scripture teaches and my view is that the biblical concept of discernment including any kind of gift is that a person has a special capacity to understand how scripture can apply to a particular situation so that even someone like myself or holly could have the spiritual gift of discernment and yet disagree with people in the new apostolic reformation and our disagreement might grow up out of this kind of discernment because of the effort that we've made to apply scripture to this kind of situation right one question i have is if nar is this prevalent of a movement why are people able to deny it i mean when you think about the ancient uh you know call them heresies i'm not calling nara heresy but whether it be pelagianism or aryanism i mean people knew who the enemy was right and uh and when it comes to this so many people that you guys are saying are in the gnar they're saying i'm not in gnar prominent figures such as michael brown are saying no such thing as gnar exists you guys are saying this is a massive movement so why is it so easy to deny that nar exists if it exists and doesn't just exist but it's thriving to the tune of millions of people well i think and i would like to to chime in too if you'd like to but i think one thing is well first of all if not if nar is defined as you believe that there are present day governing offices of apostle and prophet that must govern the church then church growth researchers uh uh sociologists um all kinds of people have have identified this movement and and so the question for people is do you believe that do you believe there are present day governing offices of apostle and prophet that that must govern the church if you do you're not whether you know that or not but many um many people have actually grown up in our churches and we're contacted by people i was contacted by a lady the other day who was just heartbroken because she just realized that her entire life she's been raised in these teachings and she she just realized had her eyes open to the error of the teachings but people have been raised in it so if you're if it's like if you're swimming in water and all like you're a fish maybe you don't know there's water you know it's just your world you don't know you don't know that it's gnar you just know it is christianity and so that's that's one thing i would point out i i don't know if doug would like to add something well think about it this way support that you just believed certain things and you talked about your beliefs and they were different than what other people believed but then you found that a lot of other people believe the same things and you could sort of list them off but people who believe those things don't really go by any particular name there's no label for them but then somebody comes along and says well if you have these things in common why don't we talk about this in a way that's helpful to people who who believe them but also people outside the movement what's an appropriate label for doing that well new apostolic reformation is a good label just as see peter wagner believed it was because it's descriptive of the things that we've been talking about you have apostles and prophets that have newly been given back to the church so they are new apostles and prophets it's a novel movement it's discontinuous with the history of the church it's not apostolic succession and it's for a specific purpose and that is reformation of a certain sort of a certain type here at the end uh in the end a in in times so the name that we've given to it is not a name that we've given to it but whoever did come up with the name came up with a name that is descriptive it's very helpful it's convenient and so when somebody says but i don't want to call myself that you could say well fine what matters is whether you believe the same things that people who are called that and so do you have a different name that you'd like to go by would be a good question and if they want to say well we'd like a more general label like um evangelical or something like that we could say okay fine but evangelicals differ and you differ in these ways so how do we talk about those differences that you have in common and there are baptists and then there are divisions of baptist and methodists and so forth and the names of these things are given for reasons so that you can talk about the specific things that they actually believe and if a group wants to deny that a movement like see does does michael brown deny that there is an organization called the nar well that's fine we do too sure uh does it mean that there's no movement where people believe these things well if that's what he thinks then he's mistaken so when he denies that there is such a thing as the nar what exactly does that amount to is it something different than what we're talking about so what i'm saying is that it doesn't really matter what you call it you could make up a whole different name for it it's just that this particular label is very descriptive of the things that they actually believe and teach and that's why it's called the new apostolic reformation but a lot of people get hung up about that and say well there are people who who don't want to be called that and they don't think that way in those terms okay but do they believe these things and that's why if you're in a church and you begin to wonder whether your church is nar you don't want to go and ask them well are we part of the new apostolic reformation you want to say what do we believe about these things what what do we believe about x y and z and it doesn't matter what you call it yeah and when i it's an illustration i suppose when i was i was probably six or seven i'm in line at church camp we're at church camp i'm in line to go get uh like cafe style food right and uh i'm i'm in line and then one of the kids one of my buddies who's with me uh leans in and is talking to me i might have been six or seven i'm really bad with ages but i'm gonna give a generalized age and he leans in and goes hey man are you a virgin and i go no i don't think so like i don't think i'm a virgin like no clue what it was right i was like no i'm not a virgin at seven i was absolutely a virgin i just had no idea what that category meant right so i didn't identify that way i had no knowledge of what that category was but i in fact was that thing give it a little bit more of a modern and maybe more palatable understanding for some people if i use the word dispensational right i'm going into an evangelical church and most evangelical churches in the west are dispensational and that might be broad brushing but many of them are and i walked in and i asked a congregant hey are you dispensational and they go well no i don't think so the same kind of reaction i had not knowing what the category means they don't identify as that but it doesn't mean that they don't have the same the same qualifiers well dispensational do you believe there's a future plan for israel yeah i do do you believe that israel's god's chosen people absolutely uh do do you believe uh this about eschatology and the tribulation yeah i do well you're dispensational oh i had no clue right so so what happens is we're saying there's a category we're going to name it something and here are the beliefs and practices of those individuals and whether you have knowledge of it or not it's a it's a helpful category of thought so you might not be aware of it you might not have signed up under an organization and your pastor might not be aware of it but if they believe certain kinds of criteria the same the same criteria for a virgin to be considered a virgin even though you're unaware of it or a person that's dispensational not to know they're dispensational that same illustration applies because we just don't have the knowledge of the category it doesn't make the category erroneous so what you're saying is there are nars and sheep clothing there's nars in evangelical clothing i don't know what i'm saying okay uh hey we got a question from rachel ends here i thought this would be a good clarifying question she says um i don't understand what is so evil with believing that those with apostolic gifting should be leading churches apostolic gifting doesn't equal jesus disciples okay so we would we would agree right so not evil i mean speaking for me i would say no we're not we're not saying it's evil what we're saying is there's room for error and um if everything rises on fall on one person's integrity um historically speaking it's going to fall because absolute cr authority corrupts absolutely i'm curious doug and holly what how would you guys articulate an answer to someone who said hey what's what's the big deal what's so evil what's so dangerous about having a guy who says he's apostolic leading a church if he's planted churches he's influencing all these churches what's what's the harm well what we're coming against is the or what we're critiquing is is apostles who are claiming to that they must govern churches and there's two corollaries to that they're claiming to have extraordinary authority and the purpose is so that they can bring new revelation or new truth that the church must have or else it can um fulfill its mission on earth and so so we're not talking about people who just view themselves as apostles and and are have some leadership roles or missionaries or church planners or that kind of thing these are people who are claiming that they must rule churches so that they can give new doctrinal revelation and i'm talking about revelations on the par of um you know like like bill johnson's canosis teaching that jesus did all of his miracles as a man dependent on the holy spirit and did not exercise his divine power he would he presents that as a truth that has been lost through the centuries and and has been restored through present-day apostles and prophets and so we're talking about we're talking about serious doctrinal revelation or chris belton would say he's received revelation that apostles and prophets must govern the church and that uh denominationalism is needs to go um including like the assemblies of god dynamic denominations are bad uh apostles and prophets must govern the church and that's the only government or infrastructure that can hold what god wants to do on earth um and so that's a very different thing than i think what rachel was asking yeah so i've seen i've seen um like or i've seen i've actually posted them in some of our other videos on the canosa thing when elijah came on where he he goes back and says hey guys i i do believe that jesus was fully god and i think i place his his language and vocabulary in the area of um ignorant of church history you know i think he should have used more clear language in articulating that but when you say that jesus did all these miracles you know through his humanity empowered by the spirit and this was lost as a new truth that's being brought back do you have that quote and if not that's acceptable we'll just we'll just put it in the description yeah i think i think i might um i think i might have that i need to go through my pages and pages of notes here sure 20 pages of notes for this interview and i have one titled uh bill johnson's kenosis teaching but um i don't know if doug wants to chime in while i'm looking but um you can always send it to me if you can't find it on spot i don't want to put you on spot and i just put it in the description and say hey this is this is holly's quote of of bill um because i want to i want to give him credit you know credit is due i want to fairly critique him in areas um i i don't believe that he believes a heretical version of kenosis um i do think he's done he's affirmed the deity of jesus i think he's done a very poor job articulating that he said in his book uh when heaven invades earth i believe he says jesus laid aside his divinity yeah i think that's unhelpful language on clear language um we've talked about that quite extensively but he did have a facebook post where he followed up i showed a screenshot on one of our shows where he says elijah yeah jesus is fully god something like that so uh yeah doug weren't you going to follow up with go ahead doug say that uh you know some people fees upon some point when walt may read something into it that's not intended that could happen and then the other is that they may ignore the orientation that comes along later or a retraction even so if will johnson said something and then he kind of regrets putting in that you know term and said well here's what i really believe and this is what i mean then you know we want to give them credit for that we don't you know question them and we do thorough documentation i mean in our book we have extensive documentation we quote we give page numbers we do all of that and i think this is one reason why uh even though our book has been out for a few years now we haven't had any really official response to it we haven't come across anybody that said okay they get it wrong they're misunderstanding what i've seen here we've tried to be really really in in our research and it sounds like holly is climbing a mountain of paper i'm just [Laughter] um okay um he says well he is 100 god he chose to live with the same limitations that man would face once he was redeemed he made that point over and over again um it goes on jesus became the model for all who would embrace the invitation to invade the apostle in his name he performed miracles wonders and signs as a man in right relationship to god not as god if he performed miracles because he was god then they would be unattainable for us but if he did them as man i'm responsible to pursue his lifestyle recapturing the simple truth changes everything and makes possible a full restoration of the ministry of jesus in his church so it's together with recapturing the simple truth changing everything but also it makes possible a full restoration of the ministry of jesus and his church it's the idea that the ministry of jesus in the church has been has been missing all this time and needs to be restored by recapturing this truth i don't know i i i totally respect your book and i i respect the stuff you've said i think that that might be a stretch to call that quote and say that because i've heard that quote um for him to say like this is a true restoration i could i could tell a person that's roman catholic like hey you really need to believe the gospel of grace through faith and this will be a true restoration it's not to say it's never been here ever as much as is to say that if you're not living by this it needs to be restored um yeah i don't know so that's when from when heaven invades earth but it's in the context of his in the context of his teachings that the church needs to be raised up as this miracle-working army in order to to bring god's kingdom to earth to set up god's kingdom and bring it to earth i believe they teach this is a truth that needs to be recaptured or else that's not possible uh to to uh bring god's kingdom to earth through this miracle-working army that's so it's in the context of a lot of teachings about restoring these truths in order to allow the church to complete its mission well you know and and i would i would just say that like like i've got stacks and stacks of books right now on a series that we're working on about the gifts of the spirit here coming up um and quite a few of the theologians there i want to say keener is one of them who is as evangelical as they get um but he was uh i want to misquote him um because i'm reading this book called strangers to fire and there's like 50 authors so i don't it might not have been him but a couple of them have given reasons for why gifts might have tapered off during the protestant reformation because if everyone's teaching the gifts of the spirit like healings don't happen prophecy doesn't happen no one has faith for those kinds of things to happen those things generally don't happen um so again i could i could still see the case being made in particular on the gifts in particular on the life of jesus and saying hey um if you have a wrong belief system about the gifts um you're not going to see those gifts manifest um you know if if you're walking around and i would say this to people who have an over-realized divinity in christ but like a non-chalcedonian you know definition um to say hey they've overrealized divinity that every time he came into a situation he just kind of like used his god card and like you know i dream of genie blinked and it magically happened um that's not a proper understanding of jesus being um baptized in the spirit i mean we see we see uh jesus speaking in luke i want to say it's luke chapter 11 the spirit of lord is upon me has anointed me too and he mentions recovering of sight to the blind so if you're gonna say that he did that through his divinity then why did the holy spirit need to empower him um and i think theologically you would have to say i mean james white i've got a clip uh in the video that we taught white on kenosis james white and and dr brown were like i just thought that was just normal orthodoxy to say that jesus had divine authority but chose not to act on it and rather uh humbled himself in the form of a servant being empowered by the spirit performed miracles and signs and wonders um so so i don't i don't think it's unorthodox necessarily and i don't even think it's unorthodox for pendle cost or charismatic to say um you know now we're getting into the weeds now this is nothing to do with nar but i don't i'm not as confident with that quote as some of the other ones you shared that's all i don't think that's a charitable way of saying that i don't know yeah okay but what we can all if you get into i would say if you get into reading the books and really really get into reading bill johnson's books um i can see maybe as a standalone quote that wouldn't convince you sure but if you if you really read his books like all of his books you know here you would see that a common teaching of his is the need for restoration of truth and and so there's buzz words within this quote that i'm tapping into that go into his larger teachings with that's fair uh making possible a full restoration recapturing this truth it's in the context of all of his teachings about the need to restore these these lost truths and i i can give you some some good some real i quotes i think that might convince you about restoring truth i speak that way though when i preach okay i think we probably have one more question that there's this huge aspect of nar we haven't touched on okay and to do this long of an episode and not touchdown i think we got to touch on so last question and wrap it up last question then wrap it up and and just the sort of the seven mountains diminishing theology uh could you explain to us holly you were talking for a little while so maybe we'll go with doug to start us out explain to us what is dominion theology the seven mountains idea and what specifically is a gnar characteristic of it because there are those who practice uh or or who pursue something similar but it's in a different way than the gnar does so i i know that you can explain that okay so michael we should tag team on this holly and i should both speak to this issue um but the mountains themselves the the mandate is to go into the world and affect or um christianize engage the culture from a christian world view in all of the major sectors of society politically and socially and personally so it could be the government it could be in the arts and entertainment it could be in education uh it could be in all of these major sectors and so they can identify the seven sectors as uh the seven mountains that you basically have to climb and and take uh captive is what you do now uh certainly the idea of influencing the culture is is appropriate and that's the way we should conduct ourselves that's right but the question is what does it mean to do that and how are we to go about it and you brought up the the in connection with this the dominion theology and uh that's a kind of um um vague term because it can move different things historically dominionism like when i was a teenager uh people who were considered dominionists and even called themselves that adopted a kind of view of end times it was called post-millennial which means that jesus christ would come at the end of a millennial age a thousand year age when the church had established authority and control in the world okay so what was post-millennial about it was it was post 1 000 years what came after 1 000 years the return of jesus christ the second advent but not everybody in the new apocalic reformation would adopt that view in particular uh they might believe that influencing the world the way they envision um anticipates let's say even the rapture could be the rapture of the church but the point just is that now control uh the there's a capture of these seven mountains and using them as a means of influencing the world and bringing in in korea and and basically through these venues establishing this great end times army to accomplish god's purpose this is why you you oftentimes see profits will uh will endorse a particular candidate for political office uh donald trump for example was uh considered uh the likely uh sympathizer with this effort on the part of the church as they understand it to um lead in the political arena and many were making prophetic claims that donald trump would win the election and then some of those people had to retract their their claims and apologize for making a prophetic claim that turned out to be false and we can identify some of those cases and then some of those retractions have been retracted because of the ongoing litigation and questions about whether he did win or there was fraud or not so you get prophecy connected up with what's supposed to happen in these different sectors of society and there's supposed to be a control over each domain through apostles who lead the movement within that domain and you could have people like a presidential candidate who uh is viewed as a one who will especially selected by god to fulfill that role now now maybe holly could talk about uh the source of this view where why they hold this view how they interpret scripture to come up with this idea well it's seen within the movement as a new revelation these are this is one of the new truths or new strategies that god has given the apostles and prophets to bring god's kingdom to earth the apostles are to rise to the top of the seven mountains or seven um influential sectors of society so that's government i i never remember all seven never i always get like six so it's like government uh media family church business education government i said government i think i always start on there maybe science or technology that might be yeah yeah let's do it oh i think i got it wow that might be the first time ever um but the apostles are supposed to rise to the top of those institutions so they can cast out the high-ranking demons this is related to strategic level spiritual warfare we talked about earlier that are seen to be governing over those institutions and then when they cast out those demons then um then the you know the church can take over those institutions and bring god's kingdom to earth through those institutions and so so that's a new revelation now now they'll say that bill bright and lauren cunningham uh were the original source of of this notion um but uh the truth is that this is seen as a new revelation that has been given through uh also given through the apostles and prophets in this movement okay so so what's unique then because there's there's seven mountain types of ideas out there like uh cunningham and bill bright or whatever but they're they were never talking about you need an apostle to cast out a principality over arts and entertainment or anything like that is that the distinction as far as i know they were not promoting that amped up nar version um so as far as i know that was that that they did not promote that that in our version okay well yeah go ahead the one the one that was overlooked might have been uh business and the corporate world uh unless that got mentioned and that's a big one because it affects the transfer of wealth and uh into the coffers of the church because uh well i'm glad you mentioned transfer of wealth because that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about that's that's a common prophecy for 2020. and i thought you were about to mention patreon new year's eve no new year's eve we are going he put up the patreon graphic because he said the keyword no crew take it down we'll do it five later a month quick put the patreon graphic up we're talking about trends um so so here's the thing guys uh uh uh i was gonna say is new year's eve we're gonna be doing a review of prophecies given in 2020. we're gonna line up a bunch of guys we're going to listen to all of them uh and we're going to have guys come on and discern with us so we've got craig keener coming uh we've got steven bankers you've got mike winger and i've got a couple of other guys i'm trying to get confirmed to be in that lineup but we'll be doing like a six hour eight hour marathon listening to all the prophecies of 2020 alongside that doing some teachings and stuff but i want to thank doug and hawley for coming on you guys committed um and i appreciate you giving me some extra time in this broadcast because um we really we have lots of lots of clarification and there's there's questions that we sent you guys we weren't even able to touch on so i'm just super thankful and honored um can you tell people how they can find your book and your ministry one more time before we sign everything off so my my blog hollypivot.com uh that is it has tons of articles that i've written over many years and it has a good search feature on there so if you're interested in searching just a particular topic or something we talked about tonight you can put it in the search field and there's a lot there our books are both available on amazon and the other places you can order books as well but they're up on amazon that's a new apostolic reformation question mark and also the other book is called god super apostles and god super apostles is a condensed a shorter version of the book the larger book and it has a lot of real um more practical um stories of people who've been hurt by being part of nar but also it has real practical advice for people who found themselves caught up in this movement and want to know how to separate themselves or what to do next or how to heal and recover as many people say they they need to do after they leave this movement and so um if anybody watching your show has questions about you know what do i do next uh if i if i realize i'm i'm part of this movement and i'm kind of scared and i want to separate myself um god super apostles has a lot of really practical advice in in that book at the end of the book for how people can do that cool excellent doug do you have any places you would you'd have people connect with you well yes i you know holly's uh blog is where i stand people as well in fact when i was um i was in south africa last year and i was talking to a young woman who a student who was telling me that she uh just about her church experience and she didn't even know that i had worked on a book on on nar at all and and i asked her questions about her church and she said oh yeah it's just definitely uh new apostolic reformation stuff she used the language and i said well tell me about your experience and she said well i had to get out i found that i was you know i was being held back spiritually by being a part of this uh church and she said but i was really helped by holly pivx she's my hero and i said well let's get her on the phone right now and it didn't work out but this is a worldwide movement it's a global movement and i don't know of a better place to go than to to uh holly's website that she just told us about and i know that people worldwide are doing that i did want to say that i've tried hard to monitor the comments that have been coming in through the chat and i haven't been able to read all of them because they've been flowing uh hot and thick here some of them have been very um encouraging some of them are i think uh you know questioning a lot of what we're saying and we want to encourage that we want people to do that we think that that we've provided a manual for reflecting on these things in our book a new apostolic reformation and and maybe if you were to read this it might change your mind about some things it might not you might end up feeling like you're more convinced than ever that what you now believe is true and that's one of the reasons why we have dialogue it's one of the reasons why we bring our disagreements out into the open and so it's not intended to shoot down people of good will or even fellow christians and sometimes what happens is when you engage in criticism you get criticized by by people who think you shouldn't criticize that's right and so there's something um inconsistent about doing that we're trying not to do that and i'm grateful for your audience especially those who recognize that this is a valuable um kind of thing for us to do i think it's typical of your um your whole program um remnant rating yeah we we advise people um that are in the pentecostal charismatic movement read strange fire we advise people to read and i would advise that i would i would advise that i said go read it and i are different go read strange fire by johnny mac and then go read strangers to holy fire or strangers to fire um which is a more of a pentecostal critique and say okay there's really a lot of truth in strain and strange fire and that it's a strong criticism of sexual immorality of poor handling of finances of of of what happens when your doctrine can actually create new practices um horrible horrible abuses um i do think that there are some some quotes that might be taken out of context there are some some things that are that are abused and the way that for example maybe someone might cite jonathan edwards and i think strangers to fire kind of pulls that in so you need to read both of those um but but um i think that we need to be well read i think we need to be willing to criticize and to be willing to invite criticism um in our in our video that we're going to do on uh new year's me and michael are going to talk about prophetic words that we've given uh that have bombed take responsibility for them we're not going to say hey oh maybe that'll mean something to you later no we just took responsibility up i missed it sorry let's move on yeah but really i mean this touches on what what room the radio really is about we want to give you guys a chance to understand to think from lots of different streams and perspectives we don't agree with all of our guests on everything and that's all right we're christian brothers and sisters and uh and we just have important discussions and i'd go as far to say if you like the show you should pick up holly and doug's book like you should it's a good book i think you should like i don't i really enjoyed the book i thought it was highly clarifying on what the gnar is because i've just heard it talked about for years and i just couldn't peg it so i yeah it was really helpful for that so you need to pick it up i'll put the link in the description of the video holly's website is already in the link of the description uh if you guys like this video make sure to uh give on patreon we would really appreciate it as little as five bucks a month this table is the product of patreon we got a new table patreon table right here yes this is hard wood it's got iron uh buddy the gate doctor put it together mike fuller give him a shout out if you guys need a custom build table i don't know that he does that for other people he builds custom everything but yeah but he's awesome anyway uh uh give on patreon it helps us uh continue to produce this ministry michael and i just filmed uh an episode uh right before we did this on uh michael's eschatology he came out of the closet eschatologically so now we know what he is uh but only those who are on patreon um and then we've got all kinds of content up there as well with stephen van cars uh some of the ways that god has been using him in the gifts of the spirit cool stories there and other videos like discerning discernment ministries those kinds of things you can pick up there on patreon otherwise keep following the channel make sure to hit the subscribe button as we're coming out with content just like this tomorrow we've got the jewish roots a kosher response to the jewish roots uh next week we've got david in stone brewer and uh bishop clark from he's an anglican bishop is coming on talk about the history of mechanisms you don't want to miss out on coming down the pipe you'll be super super encouraged and uplifted by that uh but thank you again doug and hawley for coming on uh we really believe in what you guys are doing let us know if you've got any other books coming down the pipe we want to help promote it in any way that we can thank you so much thanks guys this was a lot of fun yeah okay guys god bless you have a great week okay thank you

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 27,838

Keywords: new apostolic reformation, holly pivec, new apostolic reformation heresy, new apostolic reformation explained, new apostolic reformation movement, What is the New Apostolic Reformation, is there really a New Apostolic Reformation, Holly Pivic NAR, NAR with Holy Pivec, The New Apostolic Reformation, the new apostolic reformation exposed, dangers of the new apostolic reformation, the new apostolic reformation influence and teachings, the new apostolic reformation movement

Id: o3Cf_7q2014

Length: 117min 20sec (7040 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020