Leaving the NAR Church: Rene’s story

“When I asked her why she wouldn’t be concerned that maybe this teaching is not of God, she got very upset and told me I was trying to intimidate her with the “spirit of fear.”

Rene has been trying to contend for the truth with a friend who has been posting N.A.R. theology on her social media, and she has allowed me to include her story in this series about a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR for short. In this series, I want to take readers beyond the textbook What is the New Apostolic Reformation Movement explanation, into the personal experiences from those who have been there, and what happened when God opened their eyes to the truth.

Here is Rene’s story in her own words:

I recently initiated a meeting with a friend who left the Southern Baptist church I am currently attending five years ago. I have only been able to keep up with her on Facebook because our paths don’t cross anymore. I was with her years before when she had come to faith in Jesus.

What I have been seeing on her FB page within the past 6 months or so have been very troubling – red flags up all over the place looking like N.A.R. She agreed to meet me not knowing what the meeting was about. I had just told her I had something I wanted to share with her. I had about two weeks to “study up” before the meeting took place, as I wanted to be prepared.

The meeting began just catching up on life, and soon I was able to turn the conversation to where she was attending church. She told me that she didn’t go to church for a whole year after she left my current church, and then went to a local Presbyterian Church for a short time. Now she is attending a new church in a nearby town.

Her pastor had just recently returned from an Azusa Street Revival “100 year Anniversary.” My friend seemed very excited about this and told me that “God is doing something new.” At that point my heart sank, as I knew for sure she was under teaching of the N.A.R.

I then told her that I was afraid that, from what I was seeing from her posts on FB and now what she has told me, she appears to be following the teachings of the New Apostolic Reformation – and that she could be deceived into being led away from her Christian faith.

She began to disagree with me about my conclusions. She started to tell me that her church was not like any other church she had ever been to. She described her church as being “free”(meaning it was not structured in the way she had been accustomed to in other churches). She said it was absolutely spirit-filled and spirit-led.

I asked her if she knew what the New Apostolic Reformation was. She told me she was currently reading a book on it. She was also familiar with the “Seven Mountain Mandate.” She didn’t believe me when I said that their reasoning behind this Mandate was to get all the areas of all the nations under their teaching in order to “usher in” Jesus for the Second Coming.

I shared with her what I had been studying on many of the leaders in the movement. I told her that the things I had been seeing, the strange “manifestations” of the “spirit” that anyone can see on YouTube was bizarre at best. The shaking and falling down and being “drunk in the spirit” could surely not be of God.

I had printed out one of the stories from your series, “Phil’s Story” and she allowed me to read a big portion of it to her. I told her that the Bible is all we need, that it is all-sufficient, and that the extra-biblical revelations that these prophets claim to have were not accurate. She then asked me why I thought that there were no longer Apostles and prophets in today’s church. I read from the Bible Hebrews 1:1-2.

I mentioned to her that another reason I was concerned about this movement was that it had only been around since the early 1900’s. I told her that even though it might seem like it is Christian because they use the same terminology, the way they are interpreting Scripture does not line up with the past 2000 years of Bible interpretation.

When I asked her why she wouldn’t be concerned that maybe this teaching is not of God, she got very upset and told me I was trying to intimidate her with the “spirit of fear.” I told her that this was not true, that I cared about her. She said I absolutely did not care about her, and she got up to walk out the door.

As she was leaving I told her I had some resources for her that I printed out and she could look up some of this information for herself. She said she absolutely did not want any of it. About 15 minutes later I thought to put some links up on her FB page, but she had already blocked me.

This meeting left me feeling extremely sad for my friend, but more determined than ever to continue to study this movement and speak up wherever and whenever I can to warn others about it.

Author’s Note:  You can read the entire series of NAR testimonies here.  If you would like to send me your story about your NAR church experience and what happened when your eyes were opened, you can email me here. I will be changing your first name to keep you anonymous.