January/February 1996

‘From North Battleford to

Toronto’

David Forbes examines the Influence of the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God Movements on the Charismatic Renewal Movement

Over the past two years, having failed to find an acceptable biblical foundation for what has been called the Toronto Blessing, a defence for its bizarre phenomena has been sought in the pages of church history. In particular much has been taken from the writings of Jonathan Edwards who chronicled the events and effects of the revival called the Great Awakening in which he was deeply involved in New England between the years 1734 to 1742.

Today’s Toronto apologists have sought to prove that what is happening is nothing more or less than a direct parallel to the events of the Great Awakening.

Edwards was an inspired preacher of the Gospel who described in graphic terms God’s anger against sin and the terrors of hell for those who refused to accept forgive­ness and eternal life through repentance and belief in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Such was the fire and intensity of his preaching that he aroused in his hearers strong emotional reactions as they became convicted by the Holy Spirit of their sinfulness.

The physical phenomena of swooning, dying and roaring which affected many as they contemplated the awfulness of an eternity without God and the subsequent laughing which accompanied the knowledge of salvation have been much used by the Toronto Blessing exponents, such as Guy Chevreau in his book Catch the Fire, as direct parallels to the phenomena which have taken place during ‘ministry times’ in their meetings. Furthermore they have told us that these are the direct evidences of the work of the Holy Spirit just as recorded by Jonathan Edwards.

However, considerable disservice has been done to the remarkable accounts that Edwards has left us. He did not believe that the phenomena which accompanied the preaching of the Gospel were any indication per se of a work of the Holy Spirit. In addition Edwards was a ‘cessationist’ who believed that the supernatural gifts and mani­festations of the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the church at the end of the Apostolic Age. He did not consider that the Holy Spirit worked directly in this manner and if he had been alive today would doubtless be very concerned that his writings were being used to justify the ‘current move of God’.

In making an appeal to history, however, there are events which have occurred much nearer home in terms of time which need to be seriously considered as having a greater bearing on what we are now seeing happening in the Charismatic Movement.

In the autumn of 1949 at their 23rd General Council Meeting held in Seattle, Washington the Assemblies of God in the USA passed a resolution by an overwhelm­ing majority to declare what they described as their ‘Official Disapproval’ of the Latter Rain movement. This had happened in February 1948 at North Battleford in Saskatchewan, Canada, at the Sharon Bible School run by a group of ex-Pentecostal ministers. It had quickly spread amongst Pentecostal people both in Canada and the United States and had caused considerable division.

The ‘movement’ was seen by its supporters as a ‘revival’ or ‘final move of God’ in the end times, marked by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a new release of the charismatic manifestations or ‘gifts’. Over forty years earlier the Pentecostal movement had begun with the Azusa Street revival in San Francisco, but since that time much of its denominational life had become quite ritual. It had lost its spontaneity and much of the use of the manifestations or gifts of the Holy Spirit in regular church life had become merely theoretical. Since the mid-1930s there had existed a deep spiritual hunger in many Pentecostals for some kind of revival of the spiritual energy and enthusiasm, with signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence, that had characterised their beginnings. Thus in many ways believers in the various streams of Pentecostal assemblies were ready to ‘receive’ the ‘outpouring of the Latter Rain’.

However many were also unhappy about what they saw as the unbiblical doctrines and practices that attended the Latter Rain revival movement. First, they were concerned that these new Pentecostal blessings could only be obtained by ‘impartation’ through the laying on of hands by the leaders or ‘presbytery’ of the Sharon group in North Battleford and, secondly, they were unhappy about the spiritual context and influence under which the revival’ had begun.

The Sharon group leaders had been particularly influenced by two men, Franklin Hall and William Branham. Hall was an ex-Methodist who had embarked on an independent travelling evangelistic and healing ministry and started what he called ‘a major fasting and prayer daily revival center’ in San Diego, California in the autumn of 1946. The purpose of this centre was to promote Hall’s particular ideas about revival. He was convinced that the world was on the brink of a great world-wide revival which would in turn produce a victo­rious and perfected church containing the ‘overcomers’ who would attain immortality here on earth. He preached that the means of revival and restoration for the church was long and extensive fasting, since God always responded to fasting, and that without it prayer was totally ineffectual.

Not only was this an unbiblical and works-orientated methodology, but Hall also veered into occultism by adding that all prayer if accompanied by fasting was effective irrespective of to whom it was made. He put these ideas into a book published in 1946 entitled Atomic Power with God through Fasting and Prayer.

This book brought Hall some fame in Pentecostal circles with a number of the healing evangelists of that time, including Gordon Lindsay, Oral Roberts and William Branham, claiming that they had been much helped and influenced in their ministry by its teachings. Certainly, the Sharon leadership spoke of its influence in glowing terms and a considerable number of long fasts were undertaken by members of the Sharon group in the months leading up to the ‘revival’. Hall, however, also espoused quite a number of other unbiblical, and perhaps even occult teachings and practices which appear just to have been overlooked by them.

William Branham, who started a ‘healing revival’ ministry in June 1946, was, and still is, considered by some to have been God’s greatest apostle and prophet for the ‘final age’ of the church. Paul Cain, who claims to have had a close association with him at that time, describes Branham as ‘the greatest prophet of the twentieth century’. Voice magazine, the official organ of the FGBMI, went further and recorded that Branham had a greater prophetic ministry than anyone mentioned in the Bible. He was known for his remarkable powers of knowledge in discerning people’s illnesses and diseases as well as their secret thoughts and even sins. He attributed this to the presence of an ‘angel’ whom he had encoun­tered in a secret cave in Indiana on 7th May 1946 and who directed the course of his ministry.

Branham brought to the healing ministry in that day the new methodology of the laying on of hands. He believed that all sickness was the result of demonic posses­sion and that healing was achieved by exorcism. He had a number of other aberrant beliefs, including something akin to Arianism, and was eventually rejected by the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada as well as by other mainline denominations. However, as with Franklin Hall, there were many who overlooked his unbiblical beliefs and teaching for the sake of the signs and wonders of his ministry.

Amongst these were the Sharon leadership who attended one of Branham’s healing campaigns in Vancouver some three weeks before their own ‘revival’ began. They were greatly impressed by what they heard and saw and it is believed that some of them had Branham lay hands on them for the impartation of spiritual power.

The Latter Rain revival at North Battleford was marked by what was described as ‘a restoration of the gifts of the Holy Spirit’. There was considerable emphasis placed on the revelatory gifts of prophecy and words of knowledge. For example, the ‘revival’ was preceded by a prophecy indicating what was about to happen and that ‘I shall indicate from time to time those who are to receive the gifts of my Spirit. They shall be received by prophecy and the laying on of hands of the presbytery’.

This last quoted sentence of the prophecy, which had come through one of the leaders of the group, was interpreted as meaning that they were God’s newly anointed apostles and prophets, appointed to bring ‘end-times’ revival and restoration to the church, with the result that hundreds of people from all over Canada and the United States (there were also some from England) flocked to North Battleford to receive spiritual power and gifting by the laying on of hands of this ‘presbytery’. However, this very quickly resulted in a form of elitism and authoritarianism within the Sharon leadership which saw them interfering in the life of other fellowships in Canada through directive prophecy. When they were invited to take meetings outside North Battleford they insisted that only they, and not the local leadership, could minister through the laying on of hands and when they found that they could not cope with all the ministry invitations they received they ‘ordained’ seven men to exercise an ‘apostolic ministry’ on their behalf. As quickly, however, there developed considerable controversy over their autocratic and manipulative ways of operating which brought a growing estrangement from the main Pentecostal denominations and led to the AoG Council resolution of 1949.

However as the influence of the Sharon group began to wane due to the increasing criticism of their methods and practices, others who had attended the North Battleford meetings took the Latter Rain message to many North American cities in 1948/49 with many Pentecostal pastors leaving their denominations as a result, and independent Latter Rain churches began to spring up across the continent. In October 1950, at a Convention held in Toronto, leaders were encouraged to take the message abroad with the result that Latter Rain touched, in varying degrees, believers in India, East Africa, Ethiopia, Japan, New Zealand and various countries in Europe, including England.

As the 1950s progressed, however, the Latter Rain movement for a number of reasons, not least of which was the growth of its more excessive spiritual child, the Manifest Sons of God movement, began to lose its high profile, although undoubtedly many continued to follow its various beliefs and practices in hundreds of independent churches.

The Manifest Sons of God movement arose primarily from the teaching of George Warnock who had spent some time at North Battleford during the early days of the Latter Rain revival in 1948. As a result of what he heard at one of the teaching sessions, he developed his doctrine of the ‘feast of Tabernacles’ and in 1951 published a book of that name which became the major handbook of the Latter Rain movement. His particular teaching was based on typifying the three great annual feasts of Israel i.e. Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, with the history and progress of the church. He argued that if Passover heralded the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, then Tabernacles was analogous to ‘the manifestation of the sons of God’ (Romans 8) and the displaying of God’s power and glory. From this he taught that the end-times restoration of the church would come about through God’s newly appointed apostles and prophets, who would bring the church into perfection and earthly immortality when Christ would come, not as a person, but as one who would ‘indwell’ his body on earth. Warnock’s doctrines were carried to even greater excess by others such as Bill Britton who promised people a church on earth where they ‘cannot die, cannot age and against whom no disease can have effect’. From his headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, Britton influenced many Pentecostal and Charismatic believers, for over thirty years with his promises that they could be part of a victorious perfect church on earth.

By the time the 1950s ended and the 1960s began the Manifest Sons of God movement, which had taken in hundreds of churches and thousands of Christians, in America particularly, was overtaken by a number of scandals, the result of which was that many of its adherents stopped actively teaching and promoting their beliefs and went underground. They did not forsake their beliefs however and many of them surfaced again in the Charismatic Renewal movement bringing their aberrant theology with them lock, stock and barrel. Thus the Charismatic movement was infected from early on with variations of the doctrines and practices of the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God movements. In retrospect we have seen them introduced slowly over the last twenty five years. Experience-orientated theology based upon half-truths and false interpretations of Scripture: an over-emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially prophecy and ‘words of knowledge’ used in directive and manipulative ways in the lives of churches and individuals; authoritarianism, a ‘signs and wonders’ based Gospel; over-realised eschatology; an elevation of particular leaders, i.e. apostles and prophets into positions of great power and influence among God’s people; and division and schism in the mainline denominations and sects leading to the setting up of indepen­dent churches.

The most blatant attempt to introduce full-blown Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God doctrine and practice into the Charismatic wing of the church was made in the early 1990s by Paul Cain and the ‘prophets’ from the Kansas City Fellowship in the United States. Under the aegis of John Wimber, their ministry caused confusion and distress amongst hundreds of believers throughout the world, especially in this country where they made great prophetic promises of revival. In addition, the lives of many Christians have suffered from the strain of seeking to bring to fruition the prophecies given to them by these ‘prophets’, often in public settings.

They all in one way or another taught forms of Latter Rain or Manifest Sons theology. Paul Cain taught in true Manifest Sons style that ‘if you have intimacy with God they can’t kill you…the life sap from the Son of the living God keeps you from cancer, keeps you from dying, keeps you from death...’ Speaking of the Latter Rain ‘Joel’s Army’, which he and his fellow prophets were calling out from the church under the apostleship of John Wimber, he said, ‘They will have the kind of imperishable bodies that are talked about in the 15th chapter of Corinthians…This army is invin­cible’. Similar teaching about this elite Joel’s Army was propounded by Jack Deere and John Wimber on behalf of the Vineyard Churches.

Bob Jones, the leading Kansas City prophet, was even more extreme. Through his thousands of visions and other spiritual encounters, including out-of-body experiences, he taught of an ‘elected seed generation’ of super-spiritual beings who would ‘possess the Spirit without measure’ and of an ‘end-time Omega generation church’ which would do ‘10,000 times the miracles in the book of Acts’. He promised by prophetic revelation the creation of 300,000 ‘last day’s apostles’ to lead the church to perfection within our life-time.

When these prophets were brought to Britain in 1990 hundreds of church leaders fell under the spell of their prophetic promises and a number of leading figures in the Charismatic movement went so far as to produce a signed statement authenticating their ministry as truly God-given. When, however, their prophecies proved empty and their prophetic promises of revival and power came to naught, sadly for the Charismatic church in this country there was no public statement that they had been deceived.

To make matters worse, we are seeing a more subtle attempt to resurrect forms of the same unbiblical doctrines and practices through the latest ‘move of God’ popularly described as the Toronto Blessing. According to Randy Clark, one of the leaders in the Toronto Blessing movement, the ‘prophetic foundation’ for what is happening had been clearly prophesied over ten years ago by Paul Cain and the Kansas City prophets. Rodney Howard-Browne, another of the leading exponents of the ‘blessing’ has given Latter Rain style prophecies and Mark Dupont, who has a prophetic ministry in the Toronto Vineyard church, has written that ‘this move of the Spirit in 1994 is not just a charismatic and Pentecostal experience, concerning power or gifting. It is one thing to be clothed with power; it is another to be indwelt with the person of God’.

Much more could be said on this subject which did not just originate in the late 1940s. The history of the church has been littered with attempts to seduce the people of God with promises of power and special status through extra-biblical prophetic revelation. Writing in 1651 of the many strange religious doctrines that arose in England following the execution of Charles I and the inauguration of Cromwell’s Protectorate, a pamphleteer noted, ‘It is no new work of Satan to sow Heresies and breede Heretickes, but they never came up as thick as in these latter times; they were wont to peep up one by one. But now they sprout out by huddles and clusters (like locusts out of the bottomlesse pit). They now come thronging upon us in swarmes, as the caterpillers of Aegypt’. The Charismatic Renewal movement might do well to pay heed.

This article has been adapted by the author from his chapter in ‘Blessing the Church?’ which was published by Eagle in November 1995.