You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 179, What is the New Apostolic Reformation with Holly Pivick. I'm the layman, Trace Tricklin, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Well, Mike, I guess we're still here. We're way after second and third. So we are unfortunately still here, but happily still here, I guess. Yeah, I mean, think about that. You know, we must be prophets. We must be prophets. We are prophets. I don't know if that kind of goes hand in hand with what the topic of today's episode is, but I'm going to go ahead and claim that me and you might be some prophets. Hey, you know, we and we can even bolster that claim because now the new date for the world ending is, I think, October 19th. So we get to do this all over again and again, validate our prophetic credentials. Boy, we are so smart. You want to talk fantasy football or you want to get right into this? Again, I am winless or another loss, so we can just get right into this. So no need to talk about right. See, that's no need to remind the audience that the pugnacious pugs are now three and oh, and at the top, at the top of the league, you are dominating, you are crushing it. So had off to you, but that'll change once me and you meet several weeks from now. So Maury and I have a pre pre lineup meeting and, you know, I'm just taking direction. He's probably setting your lineups. That's why you're doing so good.  Yeah, that's true. That's true. We have something really interesting to get into today. Yeah, I'm very interested in this because it's fascinating. It's going on. And so I'm interested to learn more about it. Well, we are very happy, very thrilled, actually, to have Holly Pick on the podcast with us today. Holly's work is something I have followed, I guess, fairly closely. I, you know, came across her blog and a few things about her online wound up getting the book that she co-authored on the new Apostolic Reformation. And that's going to be obviously our topic for today. And so I want to start out by Holly, why don't you introduce yourself, give us a little bit of your background and how in the world you got drawn into this particular subject. You know, what oriented you to say to yourself, Hey, I really need to devote my ministry life or a good part of it to alerting people to the new Apostolic Reformation. How did that happen? Yes, well, I worked at Biola University for about 10 years. I was the managing editor of Biola's magazine and I was the university editor there. And in that capacity, I received correspondence from readers and one day a reader from Colorado Springs contacted me and she asked me if I knew of a professor at Biola who could write some type of book in response to this movement. She told me about called the new Apostolic Reformation. She said it was taking over churches in her city and she was very concerned about it. And that piqued my curiosity because I liked research colts and aberrant groups and I had never heard of this movement. And so I started digging a little bit around online and realized that this movement was extremely large, extremely influential. I was shocked. I'd never heard of it before. And on top of that, I started putting pieces together and realizing I had friends who were involved in this movement and I didn't know it because I had no framework for interpreting it until I began digging and researching its teachings and practices. And I kept thinking someone will write a book. Someone will surely write a book about this movement and time kept passing, time kept passing and very little had been written in response to this movement and taking its teachings and, you know, holding them up to scripture and seeing how they stand up. And so a few years ago, I contacted Doug Gaivitt, who's a philosophy professor at Biola University and asked him if he would be willing to co-write a book with me and he agreed. And so we ended up writing two books about this movement. One is called a New Apostolic Reformation, a biblical response to a worldwide movement. And that is a larger book. It's much more thorough, heavily documented. And the smaller book is called God's Super Apostles. And that book was intended to be kind of a quick read, a quick introduction to the movement, and it has a lot of more practical advice for people who've been caught up in this movement or know someone who's caught up in this movement. So more of a lay person's book. Right. I did the same thing with Unseen Realm as my academic book on, you know, the unseen world. Then we did a companion to it for basically just what you described. So that's a good strategy. You know, that's good for our listeners to know that both of those exist. Now, you had been into apologetics, though, just generally, correct? I mean, you have a degree from Biola in that. Right. That's correct. I have a master's degree in Christian apologetics from Biola. And I've also been running my blog, Spirit of Error, you know, for a number of years about this movement. Yeah, we will. We're going to be obviously putting links to your site on the episode page and a link for the book, both of them in conjunction with this. Just real quickly, did Doug, had he heard of this when you approached him about the book? Yes. The reason I approached him initially is I had seen that he had been interviewed for a newspaper article about Todd Bentley in the Lakeland revival that was going on about that time. And so I thought, huh, you know, Doug seems to share some concerns about this movement. And so that's one of the things that prompted me to contact him. And I had known him for my time working at Biola as well. Yeah. OK. Well, that's that's interesting.  My superpower is apathy. And what I mean by that is I just don't pay any attention to pop Christianity and its movements and the movers and shakers. I honestly just don't care. You know, I'm a text guy. That's where I'm oriented.  I don't really pay attention to anything else. And I'm sort of in this, you know, little bubble, even though I try to produce a lot of content for free for the average person. But I'm just not. I don't have my head in any of this. And I are exposure as as a podcast and as a listener, so to anything that sort of remotely touches on this has been through ministries of some people we support to minister to dissociative disorder, you know, ritual trauma survivors, they all come out of deliverance ministry. So they're they're very suspicious of deliverance ministry. And through them, I've I've heard about the NAR and they are. And that drew me into a little bit. I started looking at some things. That's when I found your website in the book and so on and so forth. So I I on one hand, I have this peripheral attachment to the issue, but it's through those same people who first sort of put this on my radar. They have told me that they have heard or read people in the NAR or or people they think might be in the NAR. And that's one of the questions I have for you. There's this sort of nebulous kind of aspect to all this.  So that that's my academic focus.  And I haven't seen much of that directly, although I've gotten a few website links and I've had email conversations with a few people that I don't know, maybe they are in this or not. But again, I've tended to sort of just, you know, not really pay too much attention to it in terms of like involvement or addressing it. But when I do run into it, it's really disturbing. I mean, it's disturbing stuff. And I don't know. We've had brushes in our family with, again, that the term that other people would use is Charismania with this kind of thing. And it it has, I'll just put it this way, without getting into too many specifics. It's it can really be destructive. I mean, it can really be destructive on a personal spiritual level. It becomes sort of a new performance oriented experience oriented approach. I guess is maybe a kind way to put it to Christianity or to the gospel, which I don't view. I view as not really understanding what the gospel is in the first place. It doesn't mean they're not believers or anything like that. But I think, you know, our audience will get the idea. But I've just seen it really, you know, move from something that's kind of funny, like I've seen a Todd Bentley video before. OK, like that's kind of cartoonish bizarre. But then when you sort of see it affect people that you know and you get a little bit of a sense for the bigness of it, it really becomes something a lot more serious. And so that's why I wanted to have you on again, just again, for our listeners, they're going to have a little bit of context for this. But I just want I wanted to devote an episode of the podcast specifically to explaining this. And you were used to seem like the best person in the world for this. So I'm just really glad that you came on. So after the now that we've gotten to know you a little bit, what is let's just start here. What is this thing? OK, if you again, walked up to somebody, had a conversation, you know, you're at some event or whatever and you got to talking about the Lord, then that somebody brings up either the term New Apostolic Reformation or asks about it. How would you give people a basic introduction into what this is? And along with that, how would you identify it? Like, like we want a little definition. What is it? And then how do you spot it in the field? It's natural habitat. How do you do that? The thing is, first of all, most people have not heard of the term New Apostolic Reformation. And so I want to point that out right away. If you ask somebody if they were part of that movement, many people wouldn't know what you were talking about. Many leaders in this movement will even deny that they are part of this movement. So so that's really important to recognize. But the NAR is a movement of churches and organizations that are defined by their belief that their leaders are present day prophets and apostles. And that would be on the order of like the Old Testament prophets like Moses and Elijah, Christ Apostles and the New Testament.  The church needs to bring heaven to earth. There's a buzz phrase there in the movement. These are revelations that they would say they received during personal visits they've had from angels or trips to heaven. And they are usually revelations about various spiritual warfare strategies or new practices that all Christians need to adopt so they can gain supernatural powers and bring God's kingdom to earth with those powers. But the most important belief that defines this movement is the belief that these prophets and apostles must hold formal authoritative offices in governing the church. They insist on that. So these are these are offices like pastors or elders except the difference is that apostles and prophets have much greater authority than just pastors or elders because a pastor or elder typically will govern in one church, whereas a NAR apostle or prophet often governs multiple churches. So this would be this would be church with a capital C, you know, authority, authority, right? And so they wouldn't say they usually want to say, you know, an apostle has authority over the entire universal church, but one apostle, for instance, like Cheyenne, he's an apostle over a network of twenty five thousand churches and organizations and sixty five nations. So and he he'll team up with a prophet. And so you can see the type of authority these people claim to have. And in addition to that, the pastors and elders are expected to submit to them. So they're the highest offices in church governance. And often they'll claim their authority even extends outside the church, the workplaces, the cities, the nations. So that also is a is a very far reaching authority. So so the the the core here, like you said, is this authority? Would you say the authority thing is? I don't know if the right word is non-negotiable, because the these the way you articulated that, it makes me seem it makes it seem that all of these things are sort of non-negotiable. But but the authority thing you would put at the at the top. Right, the offices. So so that's what separates this apart from more traditional Pentecostals and Charismatics. They would say that there are people today with the gifts of like prophecy or the gifts of a apostleship. But these are not authoritative offices that they traditionally believe these people have held. And they in the NAR, they would say they must hold authoritative offices governing the church. And and they insist on that. So that's what sets the NAR apart from, you know, historical Pentecostal Charismatic churches. Not this may sound like a kind of obvious, maybe even a dumb question. But who grants them this authority? I mean, who grants this authority at the highest levels? Well, they would say that that they are given the gift of, you know, being a prophet or an apostle from God, of course, but that that is that must be recognized by those around them. And so often apostles and prophets will kind of formally recognize each other during a ceremony or something, something like that. That's kind of convenient. Yes. I mean, that that just I don't know what any other better way to put it. But that just sounds like a good old boy network, you know, that I got this revelation that I recognize you and you and you over there in the comfy chair. You know, I mean, it just that just doesn't sound right. Right. And other people, other Christians are expected to recognize their authority or be outside of God's will. And and that scene is kind of a dangerous place to be because you're outside of God's blessing, you're outside of his will. So so yes. So so Christians in a city are expected to recognize who the apostles are and their city and come under their authority. Right. And and OK, let's just take, you know, City X, OK, so Christians in the city are supposed to recognize the authority of the apostles. Now, are there apostles in the local bodies or when you say recognize the authority of the apostles? That's that's a level up. Is it both or which one? So about three million people in the United States attend churches that are formerly governed by apostles and prophets. And these are churches that have joined an apostolic network and therefore they're formally under the authority of these apostles and prophets. In addition to that, though, you would have you have many millions more in the U.S. who attend Pentecostal and Charismatic churches where these teachings have gained a significant foothold in varying degrees. And so within these churches, you will have often you will have pastors of Pentecostal Charismatic churches who are bringing in well known apostles like Bill Johnson, inviting them to speak at their church, they're studying their books, they're doing small group studies on their materials. And and then many people attending Pentecostal Charismatic churches or even just regular non denominational churches will will follow these apostles and prophets through their their organizations online. So that OK, that makes it sound like, OK, we have a pastor. Let's just, you know, again, city X pastor of a Pentecostal church. It's not officially affiliated with, you know, one of these networks invites this apostle in and it sounds to me like the recognition that you referred to and people need to recognize the authority of these apostles. It sounds like this is the way it happens. We invite the apostle in, you know, he's a likable guy or we are somehow either convinced he is an apostle or we we just want this guy to like us. So we're going to say he's an apostle. And then we tell our congregations as leaders, hey, look over there, that's an apostle, you know, and we need to recognize his authority and that and then it just sort of is. Is that kind of an oversimplification or no, that's true. Some churches will they formally join Apostolic Network. So it's an informal alignment under them. And and these churches will contribute a part of their church's budget, usually to that apostle. But you're right. And other churches that are part of Pentecostal denominations, like say the Ascentlies of God, the Ascentlies of God officially has published documents against NAR teachings. And they've lost many churches to this movement. But nevertheless, many pastors of Ascentlies of God churches have brought these teachings into their churches in the way you described. Again, that that is suspiciously convenient. Boy, you know, I know a little bit about the A.G. because I have friends in the A.G. and including one that was a top executive. And and again, that that person has just more or less told me, you know, the A.G. is just this hodgepodge.  It could be like a Lutheran church. You go to another and they're climbing the walls, you know. So I could see where there's so much independence there. I could see, you know, what you just said, that some would just sort of ignore, you know, what the denomination has said about this and go off on their merry way and, you know, have people in and then make these give these endorsements. Because that's just what it is.  Yeah, I hope you can tell. I just have a I have a real suspicion of high handed authority and I don't come from a charismatic background. It's just I don't know why I have that, but I just do.  By the way, in your book, I think you guys make a real effort to not be unkind to try to be fair with, you know, people, you know, in this movement. But again, I'm the I'm the outsider and it just, you know, it just doesn't look good to me. Let's go into the second thing I really want to ask you in our time and you've you've sort of alluded to this already. This is a big question I have because I know people in a number of these groups under these labels. OK, so what is the difference between Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement, the vineyard movement, the signs and wonders movement and the new apostolic reformation? I know there's some overlap somewhere with, I guess, all of these groups, but there's got to be sort of fundamental differences as well because I know people who are, you know, they would be attached to the vineyard movement and they've just told me, like, boy, you know, you know, the new apostolic reformation thing, we're just really not into that. Well, you know, we don't we have we have a pretty low view of that. And so, you know, it makes me wonder, well, how would how would I articulate a difference there? But so what's the difference here? What separates these things? OK, so first of all, Pentecostals attend churches that are part of classical Pentecostal denominations. Like I'd mentioned, the Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostal denomination. And these denominations, these churches emphasize the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, of course, like speaking in tongues and prophesying. But these are churches that are part of a denomination. Whereas in the charismatic movement, you have charismatic or people who attend non Pentecostal churches. So they may be in mainline churches, mainline denominations or in independent charismatic churches. And they also emphasize the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, but but they're not part of a denomination, a Pentecostal denomination. The vineyard move. I'll go ahead. It's going to say like I've heard, you know, like charismatic Catholic or charismatic, you know, fill in the one's the adjective, the other's the noun. So that's what you're talking about. Right, right. That's where people within those denominations or churches that are traditionally not Pentecostals, they still embrace these Pentecostal type beliefs. Charismania, you mentioned, as I understand it, that's a term that's been used by some critics of the charismatic movement to describe, you know, some of the craziness that that takes place in charismatic churches, you know, like the barking, making animal noises, you know, that rolling on the ground, that kind of stuff. The vineyard movement is a denomination. And so its beliefs are essentially charismatic, but it's a denomination. It has about 1500 churches worldwide. It was started, of course, in the late 70s, 80s, and John Wimber was a very influential early leader in that movement. And the interesting thing is John Wimber gave the NAR profits a prominent platform early on in the vineyard movement. But then he ended up parting ways with the profits. He believed they were not being provided with adequate accountability and there was a falling out. And he ended up apologizing for promoting these profits and distancing himself from them. So that's where the vineyard split ways. However, I should say that NAR beliefs and practices have entered some vineyard churches, again, in varying degrees. You can find supernatural schools of ministry, which are essentially that's an NAR practice. You can find those in some vineyard churches and just like all Pentecostal charismatic churches, pretty much NAR teachings have infiltrated pretty much all Pentecostal and charismatic churches, but in varying degrees. So, and then you have the signs and wonders movement. You mentioned that was a term that we use, especially in the 80s and 90s, to describe churches like the vineyard churches that emphasize the importance of miraculous signs and wonders for church growth and just for the Christian experience. And then to the NAR, what we've been talking about, again, the distinctive belief in NAR is that there are governing offices of prophets and apostles, these authoritative governing offices. Okay, so when you say NAR beliefs and practices are infiltrating vineyard churches, well, really, let's just say any church, you have a whole specter here, but new apostolic reformation beliefs and practices are infiltrating churches. What are those beliefs and practices? So it would be things like this apostolic authority doctrine, right? Well, specifically what I was thinking of with the vineyard churches is there's something called supernatural schools of ministry, Bethel, have you heard of Bethel Reading, Bill Johnson? I've heard of that and I've heard of his name, but I couldn't tell you what he looked like. He's the most influential apostle in this movement, currently in North America, maybe the world, he's extremely influential. Bethel music that's coming out of his church is being played in churches across America every Sunday morning, just your typical non-denominational, non-charismatic churches even, the hugely popular music coming out of there. And he has something called the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, which has something like a $7 million, you know, takes in $7 million in tuition a year, something like 1900 students, full-time students who go there to learn to work miracles. And it's a very influential school. And so other churches throughout the nation and the world even have been starting supernatural schools of ministry where they go to learn how to work miracles, like profit sign, raising the dead, healing people. And so that's a distinctive practice in this movement, the idea that you can teach people how to work miracles. And the idea is that the apostles and prophets in this movement are revealing these new practices and new truths that will enable all Christians to learn to work miracles, to bring God's kingdom to earth. And so that's one distinctive practice, these supernatural schools of ministry. You also have the 24 seven prayer rooms that have been popularized by Mike Bickle's International House of Prayer, where people will sign up for shifts and take part in non-stop around the clock prayer, seven days a week, in prayer rooms in their communities. You have healing rooms where people go to receive prayer for physical healing, that an organization under a Cal peer season apostle in this movement, he's popularized these healing rooms and communities throughout the nation. You have prayer and fasting events that are being held in large arenas in cities often organized by the prophet Lou Engel of the call. He's organizing a big event in Washington DC actually, I believe it's next month, another big prayer and fasting event and partnering with the National Day of Prayer for that in a lot of organizations. And so looking for these type of practices or something called Sozo, which is being popularized in this movement, it's a type of ministry that the movement's prophets do where they help people kind of uncover the root cause of their emotional problems or physical problems and through prophetic words and pray for that person's healing. So that's happening in these healing rooms, it's called Sozo, SOZO. Treasure hunting is another very popular practice in this movement. This is where teams of five or six people will pray and ask God to give them clues that will lead them to an individual in their community. Like they might be at a Walmart and they might pray and ask God to give them some clues about a person and they'll think God gave them a clue to look for somebody with red hair who is wearing a blue shirt and walking on crutches. And so they'll look for that person and then they'll go up to that person and ask if they can pray for them. And they use that as a form of prophetic evangelism. That's another practice that's distinctive to this movement. All right, I'm sure you get this question. It's like, okay, Holly, what's wrong with a 24 seven prayer room? What's wrong with a, at least in theory, coming up with an idea of tracking somebody down to pray over them? What's wrong with prayer and fasting events? So what do you say? Right, of course, right. Of course, nothing is wrong with, if people want, prayer is great and if people want to engage in 24 seven prayer rooms, that's a great thing. We wouldn't critique that. But what lies behind these practices is the idea that the prophets and apostles in this movement have revealed these practices as new strategies that the church worldwide means to adopt and take part in, in order to bring God's kingdom to earth. And so- All right, let's drill down there, okay? Well, Holly, wouldn't God want these events to be held? Wouldn't God be behind this? Would you deny or affirm that or how would you talk about that? Well, I would say that God would not be behind false teaching that is promoting people who claim to be apostles and prophets in the way people in this movement do. And you have to realize at these prayer and fasting events, it's not just prayer and fasting. You have all kinds of distinctive NAR practices that are taking place at these events and our leaders who are being brought in to do the teaching. And so a lot of Christians will take part in these events, not realizing that they're actually organized by NAR leaders. And- So you're saying they're basically recruitment tools as well. Is that what you're saying? Right, definitely. And in these 24 seven prayer rooms, Mike Bickel teaches that one purpose of these 24 seven prayer rooms is that in the end time, they will be Christians in these prayer rooms throughout the world will be calling down God's plagues that are described in the book of Revelation on the unbelievers all at the same time and all the prayer rooms simultaneously calling down the same plagues on non-believers. And so there's a lot more that's going on here than just this is not, and the type of prayer also is not your typical petitionary prayer. God, we ask, will you please do this? Will you please do that? It's a NAR style of prayer where people are prophetically declaring that God will do this or will do that. Do you think that these are successful because, again, I hate to put it this way, but I will normal churches aren't doing these things? I do think that it's, yes, that it can be possible that it's always possible that where churches are neglecting certain teachings that then groups that are in error will come in and capitalize on that. That seems to be standard, even with cults of Christianity, I think that they do the same thing. They'll find a teaching that's being neglected in many churches and then go, oh, look, they're not teaching that. Therefore, you should come over here and do what we're doing. And so, yeah, I think that's true. So you can have a lot of Christians out there that, boy, I don't ever remember our church asking its people to fast or we never really have prayer meetings or we never really do X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. And they're hungry for that. And so when they hear about something like this or a friend tells them they go, and again, if I'm hearing it correctly, again, more or less for the sake of our audience here, that hunger to do these things, even the idea of organizing these things isn't a bad thing, but when you go, you're gonna be exposed to ideas that really are scripturally aberrant. And that's the concern, correct? That's correct, yes. Okay, because you mentioned this International House of Prayer thing. And I've heard of that. I can't say I know really, if anybody that I know is specifically involved in that, but I could see again, where Christians want to do things to serve the Lord, they might have had these experiences or at least these disciplines, these practices, one part of their Christian life and it's been years since they saw this or that or participated in something like that. So it doesn't surprise me, there's a receptive audience. Okay, so again, using probably not the best term, but it kind of like a gateway drug, you get them in the door, you get them to the location with this and then it's not bait and switch, what they went to do there happens, but then this other stuff sort of gloms onto it. And then they, oh, this was a great idea. Who organized this? Oh, Apostle Sohn, so it was his idea. Well, boy, he must be a great guy. And then you start hearing about the apostolic authority thing. And I mean, it's not hard for me to see how this works and how legitimate things can be used as carrots, dangling the carrot before the Christian that wants that carrot. And time goes by and you get exposed to some things that really are questionable. I would say even what a lot of people don't realize is terms have been redefined. So in the NARM, when they talk about prayer, often what they're talking about, again, is not we're asking God to do this or that, it's we are declaring that God will do this or that and the words have creative power. And so it's a different thing. It's not a traditional view of prayer. How is that articulated? How does that explain? Because I'm sure NAR leadership or people who have been exposed to this for quite a long time, somebody's gonna ask them, well, why would I say declare? I mean, what is this declaring thing? Like how can I declare something that God's going to do? Like, how do they explain that? Like, what's the rationale for that? Well, Peter Wagner talks about this different type of prayer. It's called warfare prayer. It's often called warfare prayer. And it's just described that there are different types of prayer and that some prayer is petitionary, but some prayer is actually, or they call it apostolic prayers. There's other different terms, prophetic decrees, prophetic proclamations. And they will say that these are times when something more is needed, and that God has actually given believers the authority to make these type of proclamations. So every believer is a prophet in this sense? Well, no, so that... Because that would be trading their authority, or somebody's authority. I mean, if you... Right, so apostles and prophets are seeing usually as having more authority. And so that's why they will call proclamations. They make maybe apostolic prophetic proclamations. But... Like papal bulls or as opposed to some other... No, really, because there's a special label that goes on statements that are intended by the faithful to be understood as the Pope speaking ex-cathedra, as opposed to the Pope just sort of sounding off on something. Right, right. And whereas individual believers are seen as having authority to make proclamations, but those might be more proclamations like in their own life. Like I'm going to decree that my son will stop using drugs or things that pertain more to them individually. Where if it's something that would be for a city or a nation or something like that, usually that would come from an apostle or a prophet and their followers would agree and decree that with them. So what happens when failure occurs? Okay, I decree that my son or daughter is going to stop using drugs and then they don't. How is failure processed? So these things are unfalsifiable. That's it. It always comes down to... There's always some reason why it didn't work. It didn't take and... And it's never God, so it must be you. Right, so... You were the only two people involved, you know? I mean, so for instance, C. Peter Wagner, one of the influential leaders in this movement who coined the term New Apostolic Reformation, he basically, he said, well, you know, one reason why we've been issuing all these decrees and they haven't worked is because we didn't realize the importance of another type of apostle we never knew about before. This type of apostle is called a workplace apostle. And workplace apostles have authority over the sectors of society, like media, government, education. So now that we're recognizing these apostles whose fears of authority are in the workplace, now they can issue these decrees that are in their sphere of authority and now we'll finally have the transformation of our cities and nations. This is why it hasn't happened yet. So there's always a new revelation that comes along that explains why so far it hasn't been working. Yeah, so to me that, you know, we need some kind of sound effect, you know? Cause I'm rolling my eyes right now. Just, you know, that sounds to me like, well, the average person in the pew really doesn't have, you know, any connection to God. We need this network hierarchy for God to pay attention. Again, that's just me processing what you just said. You know, I just don't see how people think that that's coherent or to be more blunt put up with that. I mean, is it biblical illiteracy? Or I mean, what is it? Because if I'm jumping through all these hoops that you're telling me I need to jump through and I'm at these activities, I'm really making an effort and the effort's sincere. And then, you know, we have these things that don't happen. Well, the reason they don't happen is because we need a few more layers between you and God. That just strikes me as it should be self evidently absurd, but apparently it's not. Right, and the ironic thing is in this movement, they will say, actually, they're the only churches that truly follow the priesthood of all believers that, you know, they allow people to have this direct access with God that the other denominations and churches haven't allowed, but you're right. It really, it's the apostles and prophets who have the authority in power. And so it's kind of... The priesthood is nothing without those other people. Right, right. That's just a shame.  You mentioned you had friends. When you started getting into this, okay, you discovered you had friends that were in churches that were either part of these networks or, you know, dabbling with this or that. What did you do? I mean, what would you do today? I mean, I'm sure there's probably a difference there. What did you do then? What would you do today? That's a springboard into how, how do you gently, but honestly, talk to someone who's really hooked into this in a helpful way? Right, and I'll just mention, in our book called Super Apostles, we actually have one entire appendix that addresses that question in great length in case people want to hear more on that. But first, I would say it's really important to clarify what somebody actually believes because a lot of people might be attending these churches and not even actually know what the leaders of the churches are teaching. And they might hear them mention an apostle or a prophet and just think they're talking about this in more of a standard Pentecostal charismatic way and not know that they're actually seeing something much more than that. And so to really clarify what they believe and that they understand what the leaders of their church or organization or teaching. And then what I really did and what I think people really need to do next is to ask people who are getting caught up in this movement to support their beliefs from scripture. And because leaders of this movement will say that scripture is the highest authority that we should all appeal to. And of course, they approach scripture much differently and that's a different topic of discussion, but they will say it's our highest authority. And so to really ask someone to support their beliefs from scripture and you have to keep gently coming back to that. And what I saw with people I knew is over time if you keep challenging them with scripture gently and to support their beliefs from scripture, it may not seem like you're getting through it all but suddenly there start to be some a little bit of cracks in the worldview and they start seeing where it falls apart. And so I have seen people leave this movement and have their eyes opened, but it takes time and a lot of patience with them and a lot of prayer. And it's very important to be gentle and kind because especially because leaders in this movement will often demonize critics of this movement, literally. They will say that people who oppose this movement are under the influence of one of the highest ranking demonic principalities that they call the corporate spirit of religion.  I mean, there's just a full list of names of what they will call people who criticize their teachings. So people in this movement have been taught to anticipate that people who oppose this movement are mean people. And so it's very important if you just are gentle and kind with them, that alone might cause them to start questioning the other things their leaders have told them if you're not acting in the way that their leaders said you would act. And then that's for pastors or someone who has a platform. We really urge, Doug and I urge these people to use their platform like you are to warn people about this movement and the encroachment of our teachings in their churches. And so it's really important that church leaders learn about this movement themselves and familiarize themselves with the key in our teachings and our interpretations of scripture that are used to support those teachings. So that's something we really, because this movement is so huge, it's worldwide, it's in every city and town and it's flying under the radar. And that wouldn't be happening if more pastors and church leaders were using their platforms to warn their people. Is it intentionally politically connected? Here's why I asked this. I don't know if you've read this book but a few years ago I read Jeff Charlotte's book called The Family. Charlotte is on the political left, which I'm not a lefty, but I thought he did a... It was a good book. I mean, he put his cards on the table so you knew kind of where he was at at any given point. But this thing called The Family that really, again, was a... It's something that has grown out of evangelicalism and is really connected to what could legitimately be called the religious right as opposed to pejoratively called the religious right. So I'm wondering if Nar has some sort of political intentionality to it. Well, there is a revelation that has been given to some Nar prophets known as the Seven Mountain Mandate and this is a revelation or a strategy they believe God has rebuilt to the church in the end times and that's that apostles are supposed to take control of the seven most influential sectors of society like education, media, the arts, government and that apostles are supposed to cast out the demons that rule over these institutions and then rise up to the top and then that's how they can bring God's kingdom to earth and they believe government is like the prize because government makes the laws. So they do want to see apostles rise up to top positions in government, but the truth is that most Nar leaders are not directly involved in politics. Their real influence I think comes from their perceived spiritual authority since they're viewed as God's anointed spokespeople their followers will listen to them when they say that you should vote for this or that candidate or you should vote this or that way and some prominent Nar prophets endorsed Donald Trump for president prior to his election and so they do use their authority to influence how their followers vote and I think that's where their real political influence comes but there have been certain politicians like Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, governors who have had ties to our leaders in the past. So if I went up to somebody and asked, trying not to come across cynically but hey, why isn't the seven mountain mandate in the Great Commission? Like the Great Commission just seems so simple. You bring people to Christ and they get changed hearts and then they're supposed to repeat the process and the kingdom of God has advanced when people are redeemed and they start imaging God. They start being like Jesus in every place and circumstance where they're at to change other hearts and minds. I'm not reading the seven mountains in there. Why isn't one of the seven mountains like sacrifice or unselfishness or laying down your, I mean, the stuff the apostles did, I mean, good grief. You know, why don't we have the seven mountains be that stuff willing to suffer? Again, what would somebody say to me? I have a Jezebel spirit. Is that the quick answer? Well, the seven mountain mandate is a new, seen as a new truth that God continues to reveal new truths and these are seen as strategies. And so it's a strategy to fulfill the Great Commission. They would say it's not directly found in scripture because it's a new truth. And they would also say that one mistake we've made is we've always seen the Great Commission as a commission to make disciples of individuals. But as Peter Wagner would say, no, the mandate is to make disciples of nations. And so that involves, you know, taking social political control of entire nations. And that's the way the Great Commission is really supposed to be fulfilled. Boy, that's bad exegesis, I don't know how else to say it. But I guess that answer would make sense, you know, in their context.  Oh man. No, I think by doing this podcast, you probably already qualify. Well, I've been called a Jezebel and I'm working on becoming a member of the Illuminati so we can add this to the list. And I do wanna mention that they do say the seven mountain mandate is, they kind of compare it to Israel's mandate to conquer seven nations before it could enter the Promised Land that was found in Deuteronomy 7.1. And so they believe that prophets receive prophetic illumination into certain passages of scripture like that one and that they're able to see an understanding of a certain verse that nobody in the church has ever seen in church history. You know, the light goes on for them and then that's like a new truth that they bring to the church. So it does, they would say have biblical precedent but it's a new take on a verse that nobody's ever seen before until God has now revealed it to them. Well, you expect to run into elite knowledge at some point, because that's usually how these things work. What happens when apostles disagree? Well, the apostles, so the new Apostolic Reformation like we said, it's a movement, it's not a formal organization. And so these are all independent churches and organizations led by different apostles and prophets. They'll often network together for specific causes and events but because they are, it's not a formal denomination or organization, they're free to disagree with each other. Now, you often don't see that publicly. I do know they do privately because I've had meetings with leaders of this movement who privately have told like myself and Doug, well, I don't agree with this apostle over there about that but they don't say that publicly often. How can they honestly then validate the other person's apostolic standing then? If they're getting new revelation, new insight from God, how is that coherent? I mean, how does that work? Well, first of all, much of the teachings in this movement are not coherent and that's what we tried to show in our books. But- Pardon me for assuming coherence. It's important to understand that they believe that apostles and prophets can make mistakes and still be true. They believe a prophet can be a true prophet of God and still make mistakes when they prophesy. And that does not disqualify them from being a true prophet of God. That's a very common teaching in this movement. And if they're the same as the old prophets, you know, how does that work? Cause I don't really see those old testament prophets making mistakes a lot. This isn't it. So they'll grant that they have authority similar to like the old testament prophets, but they don't believe they're held to the same, the same standards of accuracy as the old testament prophets were. So that's how they do that. They'll point to 1st Corinthians, 1229, where Paul says, let two or three prophets speak and I'm paraphrasing something like, let the others judge what they said. And they'll say, see, that shows that prophets since the New Testament times can be mistaken because people are responsible for listening to what they say and judging it, which sounds good, but then on the, with the other hand, they'll say, yeah, but they have the same level of authority as the old testament prophets do. So they want it both ways. All right, this may seem like a real foolish question here, but what role does biblical scholarship play in any of this? And what I mean by that is, is any effort made to defend these ideas using the tools of biblical scholarship? Cause I can't believe that, I mean, Wimber, I mean, I know he was on the faculty or was it at Fuller or something or I don't know what he taught, but I've got to believe that somebody, has some kind of credentials here in some way. Is that a meaningful part of this? There are some people who have, with some academic credentials, who have tried to put forth a defense of some of these teachings like Michael Brown or John Deere, I mean, I'm sorry. John, oh, now I'm blanking. Is it Jack Deere? Jack Deere, yeah. Jack Deere out of, he came out of Delseological Seminary. And- Would he really be, I mean, would he and Michael, I mean, I know Michael Brown, he's an old testament guy. Would they really be NAR or are they defending like spiritual gifts? Cause I remember, I wasn't a Dallas when Deere was there, but he was there just before, I spent two years at Dallas before going to grad school. And I remember him, and I can't remember the other guy's name, but the focus really seemed to be trying to move away from cessationism, you know, to being open to the operation of spiritual gifts, which would, by your definition, would be a lot wider than NAR. So where's the overlap there? Jack Deere went beyond that. He, in one of his books, maybe something about the prophecy, it's escaping me the exact title now, but he goes beyond that to, to promoting like the office of profit, I believe. And one thing is both Jack, John Deere, I'm sorry, and Michael Brown have taught in the Wagner Leadership Institute, I believe both of them have, which is an institute created by C. Peter Wagner to, specifically to train up leaders for the new apostolic reformation. And so... Okay, so why, yeah, I don't want to get Wagner and Wimber crossed up here. So Wimber was, yeah, Wimber was the one that left this stuff later, you know, later distance himself from them. And Wagner's role is what? C. Peter Wagner was, it was, he was at Fuller Seminary for about 30 years. And he was, he started introducing the idea of present day apostles and prophets to the larger church. He brought a lot of church leaders to Fuller for a big symposium on this. And he really developed a lot of the theology of the movement, wrote a number of books about apostles and prophets today and really gave a lot of credibility to the movement because of his association with Fuller. And he's one of the most influential apostles in this movement. He died fairly recently, but he was a, he's one of the most recognized leaders in the movement. And so he started what was essentially a seminary. Yeah, so he started what was essentially a seminary for the NAR, although I use the term seminary very loosely because it like taught people to work miracles and things like that, not, you know, your normal biblical scholarship. But he called the Wagner Leadership Institute, which both Michael Brown and sorry, Jack Deere have both taught at that, that Institute in the past, my knowledge. How old is that Institute? So I'm, I'm losing Wagner chronologically here. He has like 80s or something. Well, it's, it's ongoing. It's, it's has a present presence today in multiple countries, the Wagner Leadership Institute, Wagner started it. And I was trying to find really quickly, there's a website. Actually, now it's titled the website. It's called Wagner University. Interestingly, you can go to the website, Wagner dot university and, and read about that there. You know, Mike seems, I don't know Jack Deere, but Mike seems, I mean, he would certainly be on the charismatic orientation, but he doesn't, again, it's not like I've read as all his books. I've been on his show a couple of times and I've, you know, chatted with him in the email. And he's never, he's never pushed any of what I would call, based on our discussion here, some of the darker elements of this. So it has me wondering where, where he's at, where like it is, and I know it's a moving target. I mean, I can already tell it's a moving target. You know, what you thought one, at one point might be different than what you think now. And, you know, right. So first of all, it looks like the Institute, the Wagner Leadership Institute started in 98, but from what I understood, what I've read recently by Michael Brown, he seems to, he defends people who I would call leaders of this movement. And he, he will kind of say it's not really a movement. It doesn't really exist. It's a figment of people's imagination. And that's kind of the approach that he's taken, that people have mischaracterized the leaders of this movement. And it's not really as bad as people are saying, people like myself, it's not what we're saying it is. And so I'm a little concerned with how, I know that Michael Brown's, you know, he has a reputation as like you say, like you just shared as, as being more charismatic and, and, but he, he has been a real defender of the leaders of this movement. And, and that's concerned me a bit because I think by saying that this is, it's not really a movement and people are just making more out of it than it is. And it's, that's really concerning to me. Do you think, okay, how would we define movement? Is, is movement a numbers question? Is it a networking question?  I mean, they've really, you know, sort of learned how to do this well. So is, is that what a movement is? Is it networking? Is it numbers? Is it both? Is it something else? I mean, what, what's the criteria? What are the criteria for movement? Certainly has the numbers, you know, millions of people worldwide. And I didn't mention this earlier, but in the global south, this movement is, according to church growth researchers at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, this movement is, is responsible for much of the explosive church growth taking place in Africa, Asia, Latin America. It's part of the fastest growing segment of non-Catholic Christianity worldwide. It's called the independent segment. It has about 369 million participants. So this is a huge movement recognized by sociologists, church growth researchers. And in our book, we, when we use movement, we use, we're defining people who share the belief in the present-day governing offices of apostle and prophet. And they certainly do network together. Many of them, you know, join in networks. But as I mentioned before, this, they're not formally connected with one another. It's kind of loose networks where they kind of team up for specific causes and purposes. I have a, okay, this question will be more or less about your impression because I don't imagine they can actually answer this with any kind of data. But, okay, explosive church growth. You know, when I hear that, I always ask myself, well, what does that mean? Are those people like genuinely being one to the Lord or is it people coming out of the woodwork going to a building or a place on a weekly or mostly weekly basis for some, you know, a sensibly positive reason.  But, you know, to put it bluntly, you just wonder if any of the people are believers. Do they really understand the gospel, you know, or is it replacing a sense of community for them? Do they like the coffee?  I mean, there could be all sorts of reasons why a church grows numerically, only one of which is actually convergent. What's your impression of what goes on, you know, in these church growth statistics? You know, that's the question.  People you know that have been in this, I mean, I imagine they're, you'd look at them and say, yep, they really understand the gospel. They're a genuine believer.  You know, I imagine a lot of it could be that, that, oh, there's something exciting going on over here in building A. My church meets at building B, and I'm gonna go over to building A because there's something going on there. Whereas they don't have the same perception. You know, there's always this perception problem involved in this. And so the one church grows, the other one dwindles. I mean, have you come across that? Like with any of the people you've met that sort of gravitate from something else to this, or was it the ones you know that their individual churches essentially were assimilated into this? Well, first I'd say, you know, I do have a question of whether some people in this movement do understand the gospel, the gospel of, you know, salvation from sin, because in this movement, that's often downplayed. And what's really emphasized is the teaching about how to gain supernatural miraculous power. You know, that's really what becomes the emphasis. And often you hear very little about the gospel of salvation from sin. And so I do have a question of first of all, if people really are understanding the gospel. And there also has been a question that people have raised of where is the church growth coming from? Are churches in this movement simply drawing people from other more conservative churches? That's probably largely the case. You know, they're coming from the Baptist churches and the more conservative churches over to the NAR churches. And that's where a lot of, I mean, you can see recently I visited the International House of Prayer in Kansas City on a Sunday morning for their church service. Meanwhile, the church down the street is completely empty just down the street. You know, so, so. What did you find when you went to the International House of Prayer for their service? It was a very dynamic service. The music was very dynamic, you know, quality music, large bookstore and resources that were being sold right there in the, you know, in the sanctuary. The teaching that day, they had a guest speaker and he was encouraging people to take part in an evangelistic kind of crusade for the city and kind of getting people excited and taking part in that. I did not hear too much explicitly, NAR teaching that morning. I heard a couple of things that only people that really know the NAR movement would have picked up on references, you know, kind of build or vague references to certain NAR prophets that most people wouldn't pick up on. So, Michael wasn't speaking that morning. Do you know anything about Calvary Chapel? You know, the Calvary Chapel. Yeah, a little bit. Because they seem like a bit of an antidote to this. You know, right, wrong.  And to me, it's just been kind of shocking that you could found a movement that would explode based upon this simple idea that I thought, like, doesn't everybody like know this? And apparently, no, there's a lot of churches, you know, that have never heard of this idea before.  So, they're open to, you know, again, the spiritual gifts and whatnot. But they really focus on the text of scripture. So, is my perception on target there?  And you'd still hear talk about, you know, well, God can do X, Y, or Z today. You know, if God wants to.  Right. Well, that's why I say it seems like an antidote or something better. Certainly better. Right. The Nara leaders, people in our churches would view people who attend Calvary Chapel churches as dead, you know, pretty much spiritually dead. I think the Calvary Chapel distanced itself earlier in its history from some Nara teachings. Finish this sentence. You're spiritually alive if and when. Go ahead.  Right in the Nara. You're spiritually alive. I can tell you're spiritually alive because. Because you are encountering God's presence and seeing miracles being performed through yourself, maybe daily. And what's a miracle? Miracles that you're praying for people, seeing them be healed. You're having dreams and visions regularly. You're receiving prophetic words from other people and giving prophetic words to other people. It's really about being spiritually alive is really about practicing the miraculous gifts and having encounters with God and angels regularly. See, when I hear this kind of thing, I've been interested in the paranormal since I was a teenager. And so I've read a lot in it. I mean, we have another podcast where we do Christian view of paranormal stuff and we focus on peer-reviewed literature there. But I've read a lot of this stuff. And when you really get into that field, you understand certain things. You understand how things can be misinterpreted, misprocessed. You learn that the power of suggestion is real. You learn how easy it is to sort of mislead people and be misled, that sort of thing. So whenever I heard you answer the question that way, I'm thinking that there's a lot of self-suggestion, self-deception might be an appropriate word. But in other words, you want this to be evident in your life so badly that you see it even when it's just not there. So I think of that. And I also can't help but not hear very, I think normative things that we read in the book of Acts, like self-sacrifice, just a selfless spirit, repentance, an emphasis on very practical help to people, the all things in common kind of thing, which of course isn't communism, it's just you beat people's needs when the means are at your disposal and you do it consistently. In other words, I don't hear that. I don't hear about God's love. If you repent, God will forgive you. I don't hear some very normative things in this that I, again, this seems kind of obvious to me. In other words, what's missing? What's missing from this picture? The emphasis is consistently on something unusual, some unusual event that happens to me or that manifests around me or in response to me. There's a lot of me going on here. And I don't hear things like being willing to suffer for the Lord.  They're dead. They're spiritually dead, really? The theology is that Christ suffered, so we don't have to. That's the theology. That's quite contrary to some pretty clear New Testament teaching. Right. You know, but that would make sense again in their context. That makes sense to say that. Holly, you've, you've, this is another fine mess. I mean, this, this really, this can get really messy. And I can, boy, I have all sorts of thoughts. None of them are terribly uplifting, but yeah, I mean, I can see why you're concerned. You know, what, do you think I'm overreacting? Do you think, what do you do to help here? I mean, honestly, what, other than to talk about it, I mean, I guess that's probably the major thing at this point.  Try to be clear and gentle, but I'm just wondering since some of this is so self-evident, why, why do you think does conversation help?  Well, there's, I have a lot of thoughts going through my head right now too. I mean, for one thing, I think the de-infidces on teaching doctrine in churches has really fostered an environment where people can be susceptible to these teachings. I, you know, if churches were, we're really teaching people theology, doctrine, they would be able to spot the error, you know, but they can't spot it. And, you know, and our leaders, I wrote a post recently on my blog about how one of the leading prophets in this movement, James Gole, grossly misinterpreted a Texas scripture, it was Luke 744 and it was unbelievable, but he's one that, he is the prophet for that network I told you about earlier that has 25,000 churches in its network and 65 nations. Now, can you imagine the influence he has and did anybody who he was teaching to that they pick up their Bible and all they would have had to do then is read it like I did and see that it was being, that he was completely misrepresenting what was there. Yeah, he got the wrong guy. Yeah, the wrong Paul or yeah, yeah, the wrong Peter. But so if people were learning to hermeneutics to read the Bible in context, if they were learning theology and doctrine in their churches more than they are, and I think maybe that's kind of an inadvertent problem that came out of the rise of non-denominational churches is these churches, which I've been a part of many non-denominational churches over the years, but they've de-emphasized doctrine because they wanna focus on what binds us all together, the core beliefs, and in doing so, I think inadvertently, people have stopped knowing doctrine and theology and thus aren't able to detect these errors. Wow, yeah, it seems like a generational. If there's a fix to this, it would be generational. There's no silver bullet. Well, and I am encouraged. You know, I just heard a leader of the Ascleanlies of God in Bolivia just contacted me to tell me that their denomination just adopted some formal documents opposing our beliefs. I've been contacted by a church that asked for help drafting a position paper because their church was destroyed, almost destroyed by this movement, and the new pastor who came in and the elder said, we need to adopt a position paper. So on my blog, I'm encouraging churches to adopt position papers. As my co-author often said, it's going to take a movement to stop a movement, and we need to think strategically. You know, and organizations, like large Christian organizations could adopt position papers, could take formal stances that would go far in, you know, stemming this movement. Do you run into, you know, when you suggest that, you know, if we went to like the Evangelical Theological Society, meaning we're in a room and you're there, and you suggest that, my gut reaction would be to think what's going through a lot of people's heads, again, because it's that particular event where you don't have a lot of charismatic, you know, representation, or you have some, but not a whole lot. I think that the dominant thought would be, that's a charismatic problem, let them handle it. Yes, and that's been a problem. And Doug and I in fact did give a paper at the Evangelical Theological Society a few years ago. It was well received, but yes, I think the problem, one reason this movement has been able to get so big is because a lot of people who aren't in the charismatic kind of costal world, they're kind of oblivious to what's going on there, and who cares? That's just what's going on in those churches, but they need to start caring because it's coming into their churches. There are young people attending Baptist churches who are traveling to International House of Prayer or Bethel Church in Reading to attend their conferences or viewing them online. People in their churches are reading books by these leaders. They just don't know it because they're oblivious to the teachings, many of them. And so, and then we found when we were seeking publishers for our books, many of the mainstream large evangelical publishers would tell us, you know, this sounds like a great book, but we can't publish it because we've never heard of this movement. If we haven't heard of this movement, there won't be a readership for it. And that's been proven wrong. There's been, our books have sold very well and there's been a large market for these books, but the publishers themselves, the editors at large publishing houses were, because they aren't in Pentecostal charismatic circles, didn't know this movement existed. And that's a shame because, you know, it's been able to grow and grow and grow.  If you suspect, you know, your friend or your church, or somebody you know is being unduly influenced or drawn into this, give me one or two questions you would ask to sort of expose that that is happening or not happening. How would you reduce it to just one or two, again, kind of, you know, kind of like got your questions, but in other words, the answer would give you clarity on, you know, what they're really thinking. What would, you know, what would some questions be? Well, often I listen for references to organizations and leaders of this movement. And that will tell me, you know, they're planning on attending Bethel School Supernatural Ministry, or they're reading Bill Johnson's books, or, you know, that, if they use certain buzzwords like five-fold ministry that comes from Ephesians 411, and they base that term on Ephesians 411 that God has given, Christ has given the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers to govern the church. That's their core verse they use to support this movement and it's being used inappropriately. But so the term five-fold ministry, if they use terms like apostolic or prophetic, refer to church leaders as apostles or prophets, like I say, use this kind of bringing heaven to earth phraseology. I mean, you don't know for sure, but these are all clues that will make me think, okay, they've come under the influence of our teachings. And then it kind of helps me know how to kind of, to begin approaching them and talking with them. Wow, well, this has been good. I think it'll be helpful. I'm sure it'll get a wide listenership for our audience. Again, for me, peripherally, it comes up, you know, my, I guess this wasn't my, that wasn't my last question. Just what I'm looking for here is how Holly would handle this, okay? So have you ever been asked to go to, you know, speak at one of these NAR conferences or events or whatever or a show, radio, TV, whatever? How would you handle that? Would you go? I mean, me personally, my rule of thumb, you know, for a lot of things, not just this and I, nobody's beaten their way here from the NAR, you know, to specifically ask me this stuff. But I do get enough threads that I'm figuring, you know, someday this is gonna happen and what should I do? My rule of thumb has been, I'll go anywhere if I can be useful. And be useful means, I'm not there to endorse anything. If something comes up, I'm gonna just tell you what I think. If it's uncomfortable for you, well, that's kind of too bad. But that's what I think. This is the way I would approach this. I'm essentially free to criticize as well as, you know, do what you've asked me to do. How would you handle, you know, something like that?  I mean, how would you do that? If they invited me to come speak about the NAR, I would go for sure. But they would not do that. They stifle criticism of the movement and so that would never happen. But if I was being invited to speak about something else, no, I mean, I don't think I would go. And here's the thing, there have been some leaders, evangelical leaders like Francis Chan, Ronnie Floyd of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dallas Willard, some different people who have gone into like the International House of Prayer and spoken at their conferences, been on the platform there. And the problem is, this has brought credibility to this movement because then they turn and say, well, we can't, we're not bad. If they'll come speak here, they think we're fine. And that's been, and it's made up my job, Doug's work a lot harder. And because people don't wanna listen to you when you say, wait, this movement is way off. It's dangerous. How can it be when these guys are speaking there? And you know, and so I've been very concerned about the credibility that people have been brought to this movement and I think it's important to avoid lending any credibility there. All right, well, thanks for spending, guess a little over an hour with us. Again, like I said, I think that this will be useful, it'll be helpful, maybe it'll be a little controversial, but that's fine, we're used to that here. So thanks for, you know, taking the time out and answering our questions. And Holly before- Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, Mike. And Holly, before we let you go, can you tell us your blog, an address again and your book where we created that? Yes, my blog is Spirit of Error, www.spiritoferror.org. And the books are a new Apostolic Reformation and God's Super Apostles and they can be found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. And no, I'm just very grateful to you, Mike and to you, Trey, for having me on the program and for just helping spread the word to warn people about this movement, thank you so much. You're welcome. All right, Mike, well, I've got tons of questions. I mean, my mind is just racing about the subject matter here. I mean, it's just, it's so dangerous to me, but yet, I mean, I can sympathize with these people wanting to believe in the supernatural and trying to tap into it and practice it, practicing it and believing in it, but it's such a fine line that can turn into, I don't know, I don't have the word, but it's just dangerous, it seems like to me. And it seems like a lot of people are global and falling for stuff that's just... Yeah, you know, and especially when you marry it to things that do have a scriptural attachment, praying for people, fasting, you know, some of these things we talked about that are really normal or at least should be normal and Christians want to be involved in that. Those are real hooks, you know, and again, there's nothing wrong with those things, but if they're essentially, it's kind of like the theological or the ecclesiastical version of clickbait. We get people in the room and then we expose them to some of these other things. Yeah, I mean, you could just see how this could be effectively growing like it is. Yeah, and I sympathize for these people because their intentions are good, their heart's in the right place, but how easily they are misled by these appointing apostles and I'm oblivious to it because I'm not a part of it and I can't believe it's as big as it is, but it's almost like y'all talked about, you and Holly talked about earlier, it's almost like they're feeling a need for people that's not in the church. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a vacuum there and it's being filled with this. And it's the supernatural void that we're trying to fill too. So that's interesting.  Yeah, I can sort of see that too. And some of the stuff that Holly alluded to about some of the teachings that she alluded to this one by James Gull, a particular passage that really all you gotta do is go read it and you realize that he messed it up. I've blogged about somebody, Apostle Brian Simmons claiming that Jesus visited him in person and commissioned him to make a NAR, N-A-R translation of the Bible. Like, come on, and if you look at who this person is, they don't have any credentials to really be doing this. But there you go, it's just stuff like that that you look at and you wonder like, how can these not be read flags? But they're not, they're just not. So we're probably gonna be labeled on the show here. I can only imagine if the show becomes that popular this episode, we're gonna get something. So I'm gonna go ahead and coin a turn right as a NAR. I'm just gonna call them NAR. NAR, like nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Yeah, we'll be the Jezebel podcast or something like that. Yeah, I can only see and hear that now. So it's gonna be interesting. I'm gonna keep my eye on that. All right, Mike, well, that was a great episode and next week, we're back into the book Teebers. Yes, we are, Hebrews chapter three. All right, again, we just wanna thank Holly Pivick for coming on our show and we wanna thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast, Douglas. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.drmsh.com.


When it comes to finding news, I'm very much a old school type of guy. I would probably prefer a newspaper if those things still existed, but they really don't. So when I talk old school, I'm really talking about RSS feeds, and probably the vast majority of the kids who were born in the last 15 years probably don't even know what an RSS feed is, or if they do, they've never actually used one. But back in the day, when we wanted to get a large amount of news in one place, in an application that we pretty much controlled, we switched to RSS, and it was amazing, the golden age of getting news from multiple sources all in one place. It was spectacular. Unfortunately, RSS is kind of fallen by the wayside. However, it does still exist in almost every website that you visit can be turned into an RSS feed, if one is not already provided to you. And RSS remains one of the best ways to get news in my opinion. So when I find a RSS feed reader that I've never actually tried before, well, I thought I'd take a look at it. So today I'm going to be taking a look at an application called News Flash. Now, I think I have actually heard of News Flash vaguely in the past, but I've never actually tried it. So I downloaded it, and I've been playing around with it now for a little while. And so far, my impressions are pretty good. So let me show you what News Flash actually looks like. So this is News Flash, it is a GTK for based application now. And basically what that means is that it will work really well in GNOME and it has a responsive design. So if I were to move this into floating mode here and then resize it, it would resize so that it looks more like a mobile phone application, not that big of a deal if you don't actually use Linux on mobile. But if you do, that's kind of cool, right? Outside of that, the overall look and feel of it is actually really nice. It does look like a GNOME application, but if that's okay with you, which is it is okay with me, it looks pretty nice. It has along the side all of your categories, which you can create on your own. So these are things that I've created, you can name them whatever you want. And that allows you if you have multiple sources, you can be more organized about it, you don't just put them all in one category. One of the things that I would like to see is being able to just update that one category, which doesn't appear to be possible, but that's not that big of a deal. You can honestly just click into a source, hit the refresh button, or hit the refresh shortcut key, and it will refresh for you. In addition to all of that, it does have the normal stuff you'd expect from a GUI RSS reader. So things like being able to star articles, things like being able to open an article in a browser, things like that. You can also add tags up here at the top if you want to. And one of the really neat things is that by default, it tries to get the entire article, which is something that is fairly rare when it comes to RSS feed readers, usually when you send up to an RSS feed, and you pull it down, you're only going to get the first 10 lines of some of the article or something like that, because the website actually wants you to go to their website to view the content with newsflash. There's this button up here that's automatically and it gets you the entire article, or at least it's from what I can tell, it gets you the entire article. And that includes things like embedded tweets, embedded videos. There's one down here in the on the verge here that had an embedded video. And all that stuff shows up, which is really nice. And that's not something that would happen in a normal RSS feed. Probably the whole truncating RSS feed articles is the reason why RSS isn't used all that much anymore. But for the people who still use it, we've found ways of getting around it. And this is a neat one. In terms of adding feeds, you can do so in many different ways, you can add feeds from a specific URL by hitting the plus button, or you can hit this discover feeds and it'll get bring you to this window here, where you can kind of search through the available RSS feeds that they've already curated for you. So in terms of tech, they have things like tech radar, tech crunch, tech spot, and even things from Reddit, which is kind of cool. And obviously, there are other categories other than just tech, so that they have sports media food, things like that. And there are also feature topics available in German as well. So that's the only other languages I've seen that the support. So if you're speaking something else, you're kind of out of luck in that case. One thing that is also cool about this is that it supports several RSS services. So I'm going to put up a picture of the beginning screen here. And basically, there are several RSS feed services out there that basically allow you to put all of your RSS feeds into that service. And then you can take them from device to device to different applications. And they all kind of sync up together. So you can sync through like the red and unread status and things like that. And if you use one of those services, it's nice that this application supports them in terms of preferences, there are a few. Now this is not the most well designed preferences that there's a lot of text here that I don't necessarily think is all that well designed, but it does the job. So it allows you to only show relevant items, how you sort the feed as well, you can choose how the article is portrayed. So there's a grub box version, so you can have a dark mode with grub box, which is really cool. Those are really the only five themes that it comes with. Surprisingly, only two dark themes and three light themes, which is a little weird, but whatever, you can also change the content with the line width. And whether or not it uses the system font, in terms of the application, you can choose whether to keep it running, whether it syncs on startup, whether it syncs on meter, meter connection. So like a mobile phone meter connection, something like that, you can change the update interval interval, and you can see how much data it has used. So this is very much also designed for mobile in mind. One of the things that I really like about it is that it does have key bindings.  If you want to change them, you can do so in the preferences by going to the key bindings thing, then you can change any one of these, which is actually not all that common amongst GUI feed readers. A lot of them are kind of like hard coded in terms of key bindings if they have key bindings at all. Now, obviously, if you're using a TUI or a terminal based RSS feed reader, you have a lot more control usually. So if you're using like news boat or something like that, you probably have even more control over the key bindings than what you would get here in newsflash, but it's still nice to see that here. There's also a search box here. So if you want to search through the settings, which is nice, now, I don't think that that's even really all that necessary, because there's not that much many settings, but it's nice that they thought about it. Overall, the experience is actually really good. So if you navigate around to different articles and stuff like that, you have a really good experience. It seems to function really well, it's fast. It has the different themes, it follows the system theme. So you can see here, it's actually using the dark theme, which is what I have it set for. And it's a flat pack. So because this is a flat pack, I thought that the theme just wouldn't kind of be applied automatically, but it worked really well. So that was nice. I haven't had any problems with images and stuff like that, not appearing. And the whole idea of being able to read the entire article right here inside newsflash is actually really nice. The all articles feed, which is up here just kind of combines all of your categories and sources together, which is a great way to actually go through the news. So if you have a whole bunch of sources, you can just click right through one to the other. And you can use the them keys to navigate between the different articles. Now, the one thing that I have noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get more articles, if the site itself limits the numbers of articles you can actually get to. So in the case of the verge here, it looks like we're limited to eight articles completely. And I see no way of getting more. So I'm assuming that that's based on how the RSS feed functions, and not how the application functions itself. So that's not that big of a deal. It's just something that I noticed. I don't know if that's something that is going to pervasive amongst other RSS feeds. I haven't really noticed that in other RSS apps, but then it's possible that I wouldn't because I just focused on the new articles as they come in anyways. So that is newsflash. It is a simple little application that allows you to view your articles via RSS. And it's really, really nice. I actually kind of prefer it over news about, which is what I usually use, mainly because of the ability to kind of see pictures and stuff like that. It's not something that you can really do in news about that easily. So the fact that a lot of the videos and images are stuff right embedded in the articles is actually really nice. Now I know that RSS doesn't apply or appeal to everybody. So I would actually recommend to a lot of people to give this a try because if you've never tried getting your new stuff via RSS, it's a really good experience because while a lot of times you do still end up having to go to the website to get to the full content, it's a nice way of kind of choosing what you want to read instead of having to go to one website after another and only reading like one article, you know, you get all your stuff here in your daily feed, choose what you want to read. And then if you do have to go to the website to view the article, that's not that big of a deal. You not wasted any time anyways. So I prefer RSS for most of my news reading shenanigans. So I highly recommend people give it a try. So that's newsflash. If you have comments on this, you can leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on Twitter at the Linuxcast, you can follow me on mass center. Honestly, those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast just like all these fine people. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube.  The challenges would not be anywhere near where it's at right now. So thank you so much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.