Whom Do We Listen To? Part 13

Whom Do We Listen To? Part 13
Friday, May 8, 2026 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Apostasy / Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / Spiritual warfare / The church / Thought for Today / Truth telling

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). What do they teach about the end times? We’ve briefly looked at the NAR’s cultic tendencies, and their pronouncements of future judgment against churches and church leaders who don’t agree with them. As for the end times, their teachings differ from what most evangelicals hold.

On a technical level it is called reformed restorationist (per Bill Hamon). It is based in part on the Reformed idea that the church in essence replaces Israel as the sole people of God, with restorationist views that God will restore the earth rather than create a completely new heavens and earth.

The NAR end times scenario traces to their prophetic words, words that according to them are guaranteed true, absolute God-ordained certainties. We will look at their prophetic timeline in some detail.

In starting to go through their literature, it appears that almost any Scripture can be treated allegorically as prophecy, recast into NAR truths. Since Scripture itself—Matthew 2:15 regarding Jesus coming out of Egypt referencing Hosea 11:1—applies other Scripture prophetically, NAR prophets are free to do the same. At the center of their reinterpretations is Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, their journey to, and then conquest of the Promised Land. Those recorded experiences don’t just apply to Israel’s history, but to past and future church history as well. How is that possible?

The church started with the first apostolic age, as recorded in the book of Acts. From the rise of Constantine (313 AD) to about 500 AD, the church succumbed to the Dark Ages. According to Hamon, that loss is the great falling away, the apostacy of the church spoken of in 2 Thessalonians. Thus in essence, the church heads down into its Egyptian captivity. The Reformation in 1517, started by Martin Luther represents the deliverance of the church from its Egyptian bondage of the Dark Ages.

Do you notice a biblical problem with that interpretation? According to 2 Thessalonians, after the great falling away, the apostacy, the Antichrist will then be revealed. Some have pointed symbolically to the Pope, as many early reformers did, as the Antichrist, but a long succession of Popes hardly meshes with the biblical description of the Antichrist, singular.

In any case, after the Reformation, God brought about subsequent movements of restoration about every 100 years. One of the key ones was the Wesleyan and other Holiness movements. Through those movements the church recovered the truth that living sinlessly while on earth is indeed possible. Hamon states directly that on most days he does not sin. It is certainly true that as we Christians mature in Christ, the amount of sin in our lives should be decreasing.

Starting with the restoration of the spiritual gifts of tongues via the Azusa Street revival, the pace of God’s timeline quickened. By the 1950s God started moving about ever ten years. Among God’s restorations, one has the charismatic movement, the Shepherding movement, the Word of Faith movement of Benny Hinn and others, the restoration of prophets in the 1980s, and of apostles in the 1990s.

One might wish to ask: why is the Word of Faith movement included? If ever there was a movement that tended to turn God into a magic genie, a subservient being to our wishes, it was the Word of Faith, often called “name it, claim it,” movement.

As for the Shepherding movement of the 1970s, much of it rapidly devolved into a cult, where members had to get approval for their actions from their shepherd, the pastor they were submitted to. How are the abuses of the Shepherding movement dealt with by the NAR? In another Scripture twist, the problem was that the leaders of the shepherding movement functioned as jealous elder brothers instead of as fathers (a misapplication of the parable of the Prodigal Son).

According to C. Peter Wagner, the church entered the final second apostolic age in 2001. In a later work, Hamon states that the second apostolic age started in 2008. According to NAR prophecies, what remains to be fulfilled? We will address that question in the next post.

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