Tag: Bill Johnson

Pastored by 'apostle' Bill Johnson, Bethel Church in Redding, California is an influential church in the so-called New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

The NAR is a heterodox movement in Protestant Christianity in which people follow present-day apostles and prophets who claim to govern the church and give new divine revelation that is needed to set up God's kingdom on earth.

Bethel's teachings and practices also identify the church as part of the equally problematic Word-Faith Movement.

» Update: A Biblical Response to Bethel Church's Attempts to Raise a Two-Year-Old Child, Olive, From the Dead.

The leaders of the Latter Rain Revival movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s taught the restoration of the offices of apostle and prophet. Their 'reivival' died out soon after the General Council of the Assemblies of God in the United States -- the largest Pentecostal denomination -- passed a resolution that denounced Latter Rain teachings as unscriptural.

Nevertheless, Latter Rain teachings never completely disappeared and later resurfaced under a new name -- that is, the New Apostolic Reformation.

Holly Pivec discusses the movement's size and influence, its teachings, and the Scriptures the movement misuses in support of those teachings.