Texas Gov. Rick Perry prays at The Response, his call to prayer for a nation in crisis, on Aug. 6 in Houston. The event was organized, in part, by members of the New Apostolic Reformation
A Leading Figure In The New Apostolic Reformation
October 3, 2011
Listen to
C. Peter Wagner
Interview Highlights
On the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan being connected to the emperor of Japan having sex with the sun goddess
"That happened many, many years ago, and that created a spiritual atmosphere over Japan which was an atmosphere ruled by the powers of darkness. The sun goddess is not a very nice lady. The sun goddess is a power of darkness, which is headed up by the kingdom of Satan. And so the sun goddess wants natural disasters to come to Japan. Sometimes the hand of God, which is more powerful, will prevent them. And when he decides to prevent them and when he doesn't is far beyond anything that we can predict."
"But in this case, God could have prevented that tsunami and the destruction, but he didn't. He just took his hand off and allowed these natural forces to work. And one of the background pieces of information is Japan is under control of the sun goddess."
On Alice Patterson, a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation and one of the leadership team members at Rick Perry's prayer rally, saying on stage at the rally that the Democratic Party is a demon structure
"I personally would not endorse each one of her statements and especially the statement about the Democratic Party being demonized, any more than the Republican Party is. I mean, I believe there's a lot of demonic control over Congress in general that needs to be dispersed."
On demons
"As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. ... This is a society of a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She's written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons. And I don't do that much. Once in a while when I get in a corner, I might. But that's — that's been her ministry. And so I've been very, very close to that for years. We've been married for 60 years."
On people in American politics being possessed by demons
"We don't like to use the word possessed because that means they don't have any power of their own. We like to use the word afflicted or, technical term, demonized. But there are people who — yes, who are — who are directly affected by demons, not only in politics, but also in the arts, in the media and religion in the Christian church."
On demon identification
"Sometimes they know. Sometimes the demon has identified itself to the person. Sometimes you can tell by manifestations of superhuman, unhuman behavior. Sometimes you can tell by skilled deliverance ministers. My wife has a five-page questionnaire that she has people fill out before she ministers to them. So she asks the kind of questions that a medical doctor would ask to find out, to diagnose an illness. So she actually does diagnostic work on people to discover not only if they have demons, but what those demons might be."
On homosexuality
"I do not think homosexuality is the will of God. I don't think it's God's plan A."
On whether other religions and nonbelieving Christians are demonic
"Well, it means they're not part of the kingdom of heaven. It means they're part of the kingdom of darkness. An apostle, a friend of mine in Nepal, once told me that every Christian believer in Nepal that he knows of has been delivered from demons. That their former Hindu religion had implanted, or the demons had gained access, and that in order to become Christian believers, the demons had to be cast out. Of course, we have many examples in the Bible of the same thing."
On Islam
"I wouldn't want to give the impression that the NAR denies the plurality of religion. We honor each religion in a society like our American society. However, we feel that — believe in Jesus, and Jesus has told us to go and preach the kingdom of God, and part of that is the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. And people who do not believe in Jesus Christ are not candidates for the kingdom of heaven. So our desire is that everybody be a candidate. So therefore, we would like Muslims to become Christians, but in the meantime, if they're here in America, we don't — we don't oppose them. And I'm sorry that some radicals speak up strongly against having a mosque in their neighborhood, and I don't think that's patriotism. I think America needs to make room for liberty."
On what it means to be an apostle
"In terms of the role of the apostle, one of the biggest changes from traditional churches to the New Apostolic Reformation is the amount of spiritual authority delegated by the Holy Spirit to individuals. And the two key words are authority and individuals — and individuals as contrasted to groups. So now, apostles have been raised up by God who has a tremendous authority in the churches of the New Apostolic Reformation."
On the role of the prophet
"God has chosen certain people from the church to have the gift of prophecy. And it says in the Old Testament in the Book of Amos that God does nothing unless he first reveals his secrets to his servants the prophets. So that's a very key role. It hasn't been recognized by the church very much up until the New Apostolic Reformation, but we recognize the role of prophet."
On what he means when he describes the NAR's mission as taking dominion over business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion
"In terms of taking dominion, we don't — we wouldn't want to — we use the word dominion, but we wouldn't want to say that we have dominion as if we're the owners or we're the rulers of, let's say, the arts and entertainment mountain. What we strive to do and our goal is to have people in the arts and entertainment mountain who are committed to the kingdom of God, so therefore, we use the adjective there — kingdom-minded believers — and our goal is to try to have as many kingdom-minded believers in positions of influence in the arts and entertainment mountain as possible. And the reason for that is, to help bring the blessings of heaven to all those in the arts and entertainment mountain."
On dominionism and acquiring leadership positions in government
"We believe in working with any — with whatever political system there is. In America, it's democracy and working with the administrative, judicial and legislative branches of the government, the way they are, but to have as many kingdom-minded people in influence in each one of these branches of government as possible so that the blessings of the kingdom will come."
On finding out that Ted Haggard, his World Prayer Center co-founder, had used drugs and had sex with men
"I don't think I've still recovered. Just by a matter of history, a few years before that happened, my wife, Doris, and I left the World Prayer Center, turned it back to Ted and went on a different route here in Colorado Springs, so we were not closely associated. But when his homosexuality was revealed, it was a devastating blow to me because not only was he pastor of this influential church, he was president of the National Association of Evangelicals. And he was a representative of all of us, and we all had a great deal of confidence in him. ... [I was] betrayed by somebody who was close to me, and not only close to me, but an influential figure in the whole Evangelical movement. I mean, if he was exposed for adultery in heterosexuality, I would have had the same feeling."
On 40 Days of Light Over D.C., a prayer rally being organized by John Benefiel, the head of the Heartland Apostolic Reformation Network, and Cindy Jacobs, a prophet and the president of the missionary training group Generals International, using a picture of the Capitol with an illuminated cross on it
"I must say that both John Benefiel and Cindy Jacobs are very close to me. They're both aligned apostolically with me, so I am part of what they do and they're part of what I do. I have not been part of the development of these 40 Days Over D.C., but because I'm so close to Cindy and John, I have given my tacit affirmation to what they're doing, and I still do that. I happen to know the artist who drew that picture and I'm not sure that that might not be interpreted as a theocracy. ... I think that was probably a mistake. I think that the message that the artist intended to convey was that the kingdom-minded people would have a lot of influence in the Capitol, but I don't believe our Capitol ever wants a cross on top of it, because that would be a sign of a theocracy."
On spiritual mapping to cast demons out of cities
"When you talk about demons over cities, we're talking about what — sometimes what we refer to as territorial spirits, and they're more high-ranking spirits in the hierarchy of darkness and they're more powerful and they require different approaches, and it's not as easy as commanding them to leave in the name of Jesus. So sometimes there has to be repentance, sometimes there has to be — there has been bloodshed in that city that needs to be repented of, there has been idolatry in the city that has ruined the land. There's been immorality that needs to be repented of, and there are several social things that people really need to acknowledge that they're bad and repent of them and ask forgiveness. ... There are certain individuals in our whole movement that have special gifts for doing that, and they're helping lead the way in weakening the power of the spirits. We don't believe we can kill demons and sometimes we don't believe we can completely get 'em out, get 'em away from a city, but we can reduce their power. We can bind them, and then we can move strongly with the kingdom of God into the city."
On Thomas Muthee praying over Sarah Palin at the Wasilla Assembly of God, and asking for Jesus to protect her from the spirit of witchcraft
"What Thomas was probably doing, and he and I are friends also, what he was probably doing was speculating that there would be some people who practiced witchcraft and other forms of the occult who would try and take Sarah Palin down through certain rituals or curses or other techniques that witches have and try to destroy her through those things. And I think Thomas was praying a shield of protection around Sarah so that she would not be affected by them."
On the role of Israel and Jews in preparing for the second coming
"We take literally what the Bible says. We believe that Israel composes the people of God and that they have fallen away at the moment, but that God has grafted the gentiles into the same roots. So that's why we're very strong support of Israel, because we feel that Israel is the root of our faith. And so we support Israel strongly. We know that there is a — there's not really good religious freedom in Israel. We're very sorry about that. But the Bible says that someday, and don't ask me how this is going to happen because it seems impossible, that all of Israel will be saved. That they'll all believe in Jesus. And so we just take that by faith, and none of our activities are geared toward that or anything else, but we just believe that that's going to happen. So before Jesus returns, Israel, as a social group, will acknowledge Jesus Christ as their messiah."
On evangelizing
"Well, we respect all religions, but we also respect the freedom of exercising our religion. And part of our religion is called evangelization. It's called presenting Jesus Christ to others and persuading them to become followers of Jesus Christ and walk into the kingdom of God. So we'd like to maintain our right in religious pluralism of exercising our privilege of winning other people to Christianity."
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/03/140946482/apostolic-leader-weighs-religions-role-in-politics#
AMERICAN THEOCRACY AND THE NEXT DECADE IN THE WHITE HOUSE
In American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006) Kevin Phillips writes that the excesses of fundamentalism, in turn, are American and Israeli, as well as the all-too-obvious depredations of radical Islam. The Rapture, end-times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank with any Shiite ayatollah, and the last two presidential elections mark the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in U.S. history.
This book’s title, American Theocracy, sums up a potent change in this country’s domestic and foreign policy making—religion’s new political prowess and its role in projection of military power in the Middle Eastern Bible lands—that most people are just beginning to understand. We have had theocracies in North America before—in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah—but except in their earliest beginnings, they lacked the intensity of those in Europe, such as John Calvin’s Geneva or the Catholic Spain of the Inquisition.
Phillips posits that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has taken up the war whoops of militant Protestantism, the evangelical Christian missionary hopes and demands, the heady talk about bringing liberty and freedom to new shores, the tingle of the old Christian-Muslim blood feud, the biblical preoccupation with Israel, and the scenarios of the end times and Armageddon—the whole entrapping drama that played in British political theater a century ago.
American evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches, in turn, have become the new flag bearers of crusades against Islam’s “evil ones.” According to national public-opinion polls, evangelicals and their leaders far exceed other Americans in their disapproval of Islam. Two-thirds of these leaders consider Islam to be dedicated to “world domination” and a “religion of violence.” The anti-Muslim comments of prominent leaders of the Christian Right confirmed evangelical leader Richard Cizik’s contention about antagonism to Islam replacing hatred of the Soviet Union. (259)
Future shock in the next decade
George Friedman in The Next Decade: Where We’ve Been . . . and Where We’re Going (2011) writes that what help lead the U.S. into the present financial morass it that the Bush administration didn’t want to raise taxes to pay for the war on terror, and the Fed cooperated by financing the war by, essentially, lending money to the government. The result was that no one felt the war’s economic impact—at least, not right away.
Bush’s reasons were derived both from geopolitics and from partisan domestic politics. He was at war with the jihadists, and he did not want to raise taxes to pay for his military interventions. Instead, he wanted the total revenue from taxes to rise by way of a stimulated economy. The theory was that the combination of military spending, tax cuts, and low interest rates would allow the economy to surge, increasing tax revenues enough to pay for the war. If this supply-side gambit didn’t work, Bush reasoned, he would still have the benefit of not undermining political support through tax hikes before the 2004 elections. He also assumed that he could deal with the economic imbalances after the election, as the war wound down.
His problem was that the war didn’t wind down, and he grossly underestimated how long and intense it would become. As a result, he and the Fed never got around to cooling off the economy, and the war and this economic policy continue to define his presidency. (42)
Neoconservative Overreach
Martin Jacques in When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (2009) writes that the meltdown of some Wall Street’s largest financial institutions in September 2008 underlined the shift in economic power from the West, with some of the fallen giants seeking support from sovereign wealth funds and the US government stepping in to save the mortgage titans Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae partly in order to reassure countries like China, which invested huge sums of money in them: if they had withdrawn these, it would almost certainly have precipitated a collapse in the value of the dollar. The financial crisis has graphically illustrated the disparity between an East Asia cash-rich from decades of surpluses and a United States cash-poor following many years of deficits.
Following 9/11, the US not only saw itself as the sole superpower but attempted to establish a new global role which reflected that pre-eminence. The neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC), established in 1997 by, amongst others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, adopted a statement of principles which articulated the new doctrine and helped prepare the grounds for the Invasion of Iraq.
The new doctrine placed a premium on the importance of the United States maintaining a huge military lead over other countries in order to deter potential rivals, and on the US perusing its own interest rather than being constrained either by its allies or international agreements. In the post-Cold War era, US military expenditure was almost as great as that of all the other nations of the world combined: never in the history of the human race has the military inequality between one nation and all other been so great.
However, the exercise of overwhelming military power proved of little effect in Iraq but served to squander the reserves of soft power—in Joseph S. Nye’s words, ‘the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies—that the United States had accumulated since 1945. Failing to comprehend the significance of deeper economic trends, as well as misreading the situation in Iraq, the Bush administration overestimated American power and thereby overplayed its hand, with the consequence that its policies had exactly the opposite effect to that which had been intended: instead of enhancing the US’s position in the world, Bush’s foreign policy seriously weakened it. The neoconservative position represented a catastrophic misreading of history.
Jacques declares that military and political power rest on economic strength. As Paul Kennedy argues in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, the ability of nations to exercise and sustain global hegemony had ultimately depended on their productive capacity.
Holy Warriors
James Moore and Wayne Slater in The Architect: The Master Plan for Absolute Power (2006) write that George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Chaney took daily briefings, analysis, and advice from senior staffers and think-tank analysts whose perspective had long been influenced by assumptions about Israel’s importance. Many of these administration counselors had been involved in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a proposal drafted by neoconservatives who’d been arguing for more than a decade for a US military presence in the Middle East and an invasion of Iraq. The White House sought little input from those articulating the Arab point of view. The vice president’s office acquired even less.
The default position for all of President Bush’s Middle East decisions was always to favor Israel because Jewish money and organization had helped him into office. (61)
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