What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So your church has a new leader there. He seems like a good guy, but he’s extremely charismatic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some people have that kind of personality. The pastor you’ve always had sure seems to listen to him a lot.
This guy also has a fascination with miracles. It looks like for him, we’re on the edge of a great precipice. We’re at an age where something great is going to happen and it’s going to depend on us. We need to be doing the work of the Spirit here displayed in miracles. This is a miracle age.
And his word seems to be taken extremely seriously. Everything that he says is taken as gospel. He doesn’t really like to be questioned. Not only that, he’s not just at your church. He’s at several churches around you. It’s like he has this power over all of them.
He tells people how to spend their finances and what to do with education and what to do about marriage. Maybe in that last area, there could even be hints of impropriety. Ever since this guy came to your church, it looks like your church is about something else instead of preaching the gospel of Christ.
What’s going on?
It could be that your church has fallen victim to the New Apostolic Reformation. (NAR) This is a group of people insisting that they are apostles and that apostles are for today and your church cannot be in the fullness of faith without an apostle. There will also likely be prophets coming along for the ride as well encouraging the people in what they ought to do and not do.
Unfortunately, this is not harmless. There are plenty of people that have had their lives wrecked because they sat under the guidance of these people and their voice was treated as the voice of God. Fortunately, two people have done the work of equipping us to deal with them. They are Holly Pivec and Douglas Geivett. I don’t have the information for Geivett yet, but I can tell you about Pivec.
According to her bio:
Holly Pivec is co-author with Doug Geivett of two books on the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR, for short. She operates a popular blog on NAR, called Spirit of Error (www.spiritoferror.org). She’s a sought-after expert on NAR and has been interviewed by many high-profile media sources, including Religion News Association and the Washington Post. She has a master’s degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University.
We’ll be talking about this movement that has affected so many churches in America and around the world and what can be done about it. How do you know if your church has been affected by it and if so, what can you do about it? I hope you’ll be listening to the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast on this topic. As always, please go on iTunes also and leave a positive review for the Deeper Waters Podcast.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
