The New Apostolic Reformation - NAR - is not a church that you become a member of that is known by a certain name. Many times when I say to people a certain person is part of the NAR movement, they will deny it because they cannot identify it with a specific name or a church. The NAR movement is a global unstructured network of teachings and practices advocated by so-called "prophets" and "apostles." These people claim to be appointed by God as prophets and apostles to lead the church back to God. Part of their teachings is to establish a kingdom of dominion here on earth. They also claim to be appointed by God to restore the office of apostle and prophet back to the church. Their teachings and practices are based on extra-biblical experiences and revelations. They claim to receive new revelations directly from God additional to the Bible. They do not reject the Bible. It is a "Bible +" and not a "Scripture alone" movement. Very subtly they say we need more. They do not believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. They claim to get voices and messages directly from God like the prophets of old. Furthermore, they claim the church has lost the Holy Spirit and need a new baptism of the Holy Spirit. They also claim since the 70-80's we have moved into the final stage before Christ return and therefore God wants to anoint His church and restore new apostles and prophets to the church. They also moved on from the typical drunk and slain in the spirit because they realize many people have been warned against it. But, these are still part of their practices. Sometimes it is phased in slowly. Their experiences and practices have become more "modern" and "revamped." They address people's need for an experiential religion because many churches have become dry and dead. People are looking for something real but in the wrong places. Christ is real, but we find Him revealed in Scripture alone through the work of the Spirit. God fills believers through His Word by the Holy Spirit, not through extra-biblical revelations and experiences. The Holy Spirit brings the Word to our hearts and that way we see Christ and are filled. This movement is more focused on extra-biblical experiences in the form of dreams, visions and sensory type experiences like ecstatic emotions, feelings, heat over your body, or feeling wind and air flowing over you. Typical new age transcendental meditation type experiences - ecstatic emotional experiences. This is called contemplative or centering prayer. These big names simply mean you pray and concentrate on some verses, slogans, Jesus' name or some Christian object of any kind until you start seeing, feeling and experiencing something. Long prayer and worship sessions are sometimes used to bring these experiences on. Now you can understand why music, and long prayer and worship sessions play a central role in leading people into these emotional experiences. It is so easy to take people to a "high" who are standing eyes closed, focusing on something and playing the right melodramatic music with the right lyrics to them. This is usually also used during altar calls. Quiet atmosphere, eyes closed, soft music and a preacher softly motivating people to come forward and receive Jesus. That is why music bands like Jesus Culture and Hillsong plays such an important role in this movement among young people and the church. Another mark of this movement is a drive for revival. There is an unhealthy obsession with revival. They always speak about fire from heaven. All of us want revival, but what revival and by whom? People are so easy misled by this because of the spiritual need in our time. The problem is what kind of revival are they talking about. Is it a revival from God? I do not think so. It is a revival of so-called Holy Spirit baptism connected with various emotional ecstatic and transcendental experiences like I explained above. In closing, this movement has infiltrated the church in South Africa in a big way. Most churches have some form of these influences in their congregations. This movement is very deceptive because of the noble cause they use for their deception - revival and spiritual restoration. These good things are used by Satan to mislead the sheep. He uses people's real needs to present a false solution to them like in the garden of Eden. He misled Adam and Eve with a good thing - to be like God. But he twisted it in such a way to challenge the authority that belongs to God alone. Every one of us desires for more of God. We must be careful where we try to find it.
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