Posted by Kathi on November 29, 2009
A recent commenter raised the issue of the “evils” of the “manifest sons of God” doctrine, so I thought I’d post on the subject and open it up to discussion [warning: this is not by any means a short post].
The short version of it all is, “Most of what’s said by the heresy hunters is either outright fabrication, deliberate twisting of facts, or the obfuscation of Biblical truth. Their goal seems to be to subvert the church and turn Her from Her destiny and purpose in the Lord.”
I’m often accused of being “latter rain”, “river”, “manifest sons of God”, “IHOP” (that’s prayer, not pancakes), “NAR” (New Apostolic Reformation), “WOF” (Word of Faith) and even just plain weird (I prefer “peculiar” 
) I tend to resemble those remarks… but I’m not sure I can be neatly defined as any one of those things (nor can what I believe be defined by a denomination).
Perhaps one day the heresy hunters will write about me. 
We all have goals, right?
Most of these descriptive terms were in vogue log before I even got saved (and some came into fashion before I was even born). They seem to be fairly interchangeable and there’s considerable overlap between them. I have read a number of heresy-hunter websites and even a few reasoned and reasonable critiques of these supposed doctrines and I end up rather confused.
Reading over what the HH’s say on their sites, it’s easy to conclude that at least some of what they are discussing is “bad doctrine”. Some.
But here’s the confusion with the “some” part of it: It doesn’t really seem to exist in the wild (or if it does, it must be quite rare). I’ve spent considerable amounts of time in churches and ministries and around people who fit the HH’s criteria as MSoG. In fact, I know a few of them personally. I’ve never heard much of what the heresy hunters rail against from any of these teachers… or if I do, it’s in a context that has led me to conclude that heresy hunters twist and outright fabricate things. (Big Surprise to everyone… right?) Some of these fabrications are about things that I witnessed personally – it’s kind of hard to convince an eyewitness otherwise 
There are a few pockets of church-folk in extreme error. For example, a handful of Branham’s followers concluded that he’s the messiah and will return. The fact that the vast majority of people do not believe this really doesn’t deflate the heresy hunters allegations… “because a few do, all must” is their motto.
It’s very, very rare that I read a critique of these doctrines that is truthful, honest, and biblical. I don’t mind those and I think they are necessary in the Body of Christ. Our doctrines should be able to stand the test of reasoned criticism. Even when agreement does not result, all are edified and the Church is able to move forward in unity. That’s not the tactic of heresy hunters. Their modus operandi is to cause division. Most make wild accusations, show edited clips on youtube, draw broad conclusions, and attempt to deceive the masses into being twice as much a son of hell as they are.
It’s true that the HH’s make points which are truthful (for example, prophecy and angelic visitations are really common amongst this crowd, and the HH’s like to complain about these things). But really – their truthful points all seem to boil down to the fact that they are jealous because they don’t hear from God and operate in His miracles. They want the church to become excellent pew-sitters; nice and tightly controlled. (sorry, y’all…)
So the alleged problems with Manifest Sons of God (MSoG) that the commenter alluded to… WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Kathi on May 16, 2009
This post continues the series on end-times revivals (Be sure to also read Part 1) – and I’ll begin it in the same way as I did Part 1:
It’s no secret – I’ll even shout it from the rooftops – I believe there will be great end-times revival. My beliefs on the matter are a bit different from others in that I think there will be more than one stream of revival – imagine, if you can, Toronto, Brownsville, and Lakeland happening all at once in their respective cities – and this magnified worldwide! People won’t have to travel far to “go to the revival” because it will be happening in their own cities and in their own hearts. Glory to God!
The summary of this entire document is this: God loves us. He wants us saved and He wants us to worship Him and he wants us to live according to His word. He’s going to bring that about!!
Definition of Revival
Let me start by defining revival. Most people define revival as something new and extraordinary, with unusual manifestations and God doing lots of stuff. Revival is all of those things, but really, it shouldn’t be. We should be LIVING biblically – which means an incredible relationship with the Lord, winning souls, and signs, wonders, and miracles. Now. Every day. The entire church.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Kathi on May 11, 2009
http://www.grmi.org/~bdonison/christian/revivalkit.html
Uncle Google just directed me to the above site, which references some historical revival materials – manifestations are nothing new. Fascinating stuff!
Posted by Kathi on May 9, 2009
It’s no secret – I’ll even shout it from the rooftops – I believe there will be great end-times revival. My beliefs on the matter are a bit different from others in that I think there will be more than one stream of revival – imagine, if you can, Toronto, Brownsville, and Lakeland happening all at once in their respective cities – and this magnified worldwide! People won’t have to travel far to “go to the revival” because it will be happening in their own cities and in their own hearts. Glory to God!
It’s oft-argued by heresy hunters and critics of revival that the Bible does not speak of a great end-times revival. Instead, it speaks of the apostasy of the church and the great “falling away”.
I maintain that God speaks of both.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Kathi on April 27, 2009
I haven’t said a lot here; more on Twitter… we have had to change churches. Our new pastor understands why.
| Important: see the 5/11/09 addition at the end of this post! |
So – WOWOWOWOWOWOW is all I can really say.
I think we found a new church right off the bat.
Plan A had been to try out half a dozen or so different churches and see where we “fit”. We’d even decided on the one I found Saturday with the Really Great Website 
(and we heard later in the day that they’re a really great church but probably not what we were hoping for)
I woke up like a shot a few min before the alarm went off, because God told me, “Kathi, today is a new day.”
So at 8:30 or so yesterday morning, our old friend Tommy called us. We went to Calvary together, and after left, they did too for different reasons. Tommy had told us about their new church before and we thought it sounded great – but it wasn’t the right time to even visit. Well, we shifted gears and drove to High Point yesterday morning. Even tho it’s a couple towns away, it’s still under 15 minutes to get there.
The church is in a storefront building in The Worst part of town. Intentionally. Because they like to minister to street people. However, once you walk in the front door, it’s drop-dead gorgeous. God’s gifted Pastor Debbie and some of the women with the ability to transform with paint and accessories – WOW. I should’ve made pictures; I will next week – it’s that pretty!
As we walked across the parking lot, Ken commented that he felt really good about the place. I did too! I looked up and the name of the church is “New Day” (which is what God woke me up with yesterday morning! 
)
So, breakfast first – coffee and snackies – and meet & greet. We knew some of the people from Calvary and had met others at Tommy’s birthday party last summer. Many of us have a love of prophecy and revival in common. 
So, church starts and we’re warned two things by new friends – #1, people tend to get VERY active (flags, tambourines, dancing, somersaults, and falling down…often with no catcher and no injury ) and #2, nobody’s in a hurry.
That translated to about 2 and a half hours of worship! During which I got to dance, and I got to be on my face before God, and I got to dance again in a group – something I’ve never done and the ladies just welcomed me into! – and I got two extremely accurate words of knowlege given to me – one by the worship leader and one by someone on the prophetic team. Neither had ever seen me before… and I mean extremely accurate. And Pastor Mike spoke at length about people having dug wells in various places in the past and those wells came up dry, and it was necessary to dig again, not to give up… Ken and I were both crying…
There was, for some reason we never learned, a Messianic Jewish group there – three men and a woman. Pastor Mike called them up to the front and they prayed and prophesied over them, and then one of the men sang prophetically… O WOW. That was the sort of thing like hearing a shofar – everyone stops silent and then cheers!
The message, when we got to it (no one was in a hurry!) was very good. Pastor’s been preaching about the anointing, what it is, the concept of a transferable anointing and what it is (and isn’t)… it was meaty stuff.
After the service ended, we were offered private prophetic ministry. I’ve never done anything like that before so I had NO idea what to expect. People desiring this ministry were brought to small rooms on either side of the sanctuary. We were brought in one by one, with a team of 3 people, who prayed, and then offered prophecy, and then prayed a blessing. The prophecy given by each in turn was spot-on and things that couldn’t be guessed. VERY cool. I’ve never seen it done like that before.
Afterwards we hung out a while and caught up with some old friends, and the lady who’d invited me to dance came and hugged my neck and invited me to be on the dance team! Me! With three left feet and a very ungraceful body! I’m SO excited!
Ken got to sit with Pastor Mike for a while and he shared “The Short Version” of how we ended up at his church. He was astonished that anyone would be asked to leave a church under the circumstances we were asked to leave under. We like that Pastor Mike and his team are all about raising people up to do the work of the ministry (like the Bible says to do!) So he’s going to call us during the week and touch base with us about it all.
So… I don’t know if we’ve found our new church, but we’re asking God, “Please, please, let us stay…”
| 05/06/09 and 05/11/09 update: I got an email on 5/6 from our former pastor. He has a radically different perspective on the events resulting in our departure. At first, I simply added a disclaimer here stating that – but yesterday the Lord showed me that I really don’t need to do that. God owns my reputation, and He owns our former pastors’ reputations, and He *will* be dealing with all things. Not my place, not my problem; my only obligation in this is to adhere to Matthew 5:44,45. Therefore, I’ve done a bit of editing in this post. |
