NAR Found me

 I was in the dark regarding the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) until very recently.  I was going about my life, loving my church, loving my small group Bible study, busy with work and life.   None of those involvements introduced me to NAR.   My first encounter with NAR was when I discovered the existence of a so-called Bible translation called The Passion Translation (TPT).  At the time, I had no idea that it was a heretical work written by a NAR apostle named Brian Simmons.  A longtime friend, Jenna, was using it. Loved it.  I didn't ask questions. Jenna was a mature Bible believer whom I respected and whose discernment I trusted.  But this mature believer, a theologically reformed Christian, had been drifting for some years. Looking back, there were multiple red flags, but I had not realized the extent.  We met casually a few times a year and even though there were some troubling things regarding angels that she had mentioned, I hated to be "that person". I  certainly didn't want to be critical or offend her and trusted that it was not a huge deal.   But It was.

Since then, I have discovered that my friend had started following an "apostle" on social media for a while. He is part of the International House of Prayer (IHOP)  apostles/prophets, a scandal ridden NAR group out of Kansas City.  He not only uses the Passion Translation, he is one of the celebrity endorsers on the TPT website.  Lou Engle, of The Call ministry, endorses the Passion because the Passion endorses modern apostles and prophets.  And Brian Simmons does not have the translation background he claims. 

Lou Writes: “Forged many years ago while translating the Scriptures among South American tribes, and hammered out on the anvil of decades of personal devotion and apostolic experience, my dear friend Brian Simmons brings to the earth a powerful and refreshing translation of the Scriptures that is fueling and inflaming the hearts of tens of thousands worldwide. Like the Living Bible that sprung forth in the days of the Jesus movement, this translation bursts forth from the womb of this present revival. Read it and get caught up in a God-swirl of spiritual understanding and revelation.”

Lou Engle
The Call   Endorsements – The Passion Translation

Jenna had also befriended a charismatic believer and teacher years earlier.  As a result, Jenna had become more and more open to new thought and extra-biblical thought. And as a compassionate individual, Jenna had become trained, much to my surprise, as a deliverance minister. If you aren't familiar, deliverance ministries deal with identifying and casting out demonic entities that may bother or indwell believers.  Make no mistake, the Bible does teach that there are demons and that they have possessed people. But NAR teachings are very different from the straightforward biblical description and remedy. Does the Bible teach that born again believers, sealed by the Holy Spirit of God can be possessed by a demon?  No.  Does the Bible teach a process of identifying demons, the origin of demonic possession in a believer, the inheritance of demons, the transference of demons from one sexual partner to another like an STD, identifying the ranks in the demonic hierarchy and casting them out with special procedures, special methodology?    No.

Just no.   So where did deliverance ministers get their instructions, revelations and ideology?  

Early in 2023, I met up with another friend, Ethan.  He and his wife had started going to my church a few years ago & I happened to casually ask why they stopped going to Church of the Highlands.  After all, Highlands  was so much more conveniently located than the 45 minute drive to our church and extremely popular if 60,000 members are to be believed.  His answer was three words. "The Passion Translation".  It was pre-pandemic era and Hodges and his associates were using this new translation during sermons.  Ethan and his wife recognized the Bible version notations on the big church auditorium screen; NIV,  The Message, The Living Bible, but TPT was something new.  So Ethan's wife decided to Google "TPT Bible" one Sunday afternoon.  The more she read, the more she became alarmed.  She landed on Mike Winger's excellent research and discovered how dreadfully corrupt The Passion Translation is from an academic perspective. Still more alarming was Brian Simmons and his outrageous claims.  By the way, Passion, according to Simmons is the name of an angel who revealed himself - and so much - more to Simmons.   On his Facebook page, Winger compiled a brief list of some of the things that apostle Brian Simmons claimed:

Mike Winger 

June 24, 2023  · 

Wild stuff Brian Simmons, author of The Passion Translation of the Bible, has claimed… (I have video footage of all of these claims)

1. He went to heaven, grabbed two books from “the library of heaven” and brought them back to earth.

2. Billy Graham visited him in a dream.

3. God gave him secrets of Hebrew and Greek that he has used to make his new translation of the Bible.

4. His wife has levitated off the ground twice and has seven dreams from God every night.

5. The great last days harvest will begin in 2013 when every stadium in New York will be filled with evangelistic activities, and continue through 2020 when it will really ramp up. (Imagine someone prophesying that 2020 will be a great year of public outreach events). 30 million Americans will get saved during this time.

6. Between 2015 and 2016, 20% of Californians will get saved.

7. He went on a long ride, on a fiery chariot, through the northeast area of the U.S. and watched the sunrise with “a prophet whose name you would know.”

8. God touched his head and supernaturally “expanded the capacity” of his brain. Brian says he confirmed this with a “top brain mapping scientist.”

9. One day in the future God will give him a book that has all the unwritten works of Jesus. This will spark a massive new revival around the world.

10. Brian will one day have so much glory on him that people within a 50 mile radius will feel it.

11. One day soon (as of several years ago) God would literally put supernatural pillars of fire over church buildings so that people won’t have to ask where the church is. They will see it.

12. Brian understands the book of Revelation better than other people because God gave him the “spirit of revelation.”

13. Adam teleported around the garden of Eden.

14. In order for him to translate the Bible he says “it was like I received a chip” in his head and that “immediately, downloads came.”

15. Many of his supernatural revelations and new understandings of the Bible are not only included in his Passion Translation of the Bible but are also included in the footnotes.

16. Fire once shot out of his head and caught a church on fire. They had to call the fire department and replace the sound system.

17. He once went to the store to get milk and the glory of God was so powerfully on him that everyone he passed by just fell over. He first thought they were all having heart attacks but then realized it was the glory.

18. He doesn’t understand why more people won’t call the Holy Spirit “her.”

Some of these claims can be tested and some can not. The ones that can be tested (such as prophecy about stadiums and specific numbers of people getting saved) are demonstrably false. What does that tell you about the ones that can’t be tested?

Friends, I have video footage of every one of these things. Eventually I’ll share it all in a long video. Until then, know that Brian Simmons is not to be believed. Mike Winger - Wild stuff Brian Simmons, author of The... | Facebook

So you have to assume, any Biblically sound pastor who found out about this sort of thing, would immediately cease use of The Passion Translation, right?  Maybe apologize to the congregation and explain what had been discovered about this heretical translation?   But Hodges and company kept on using it. And kept refusing to respond to phone calls and emails from my friends regarding the issue.  Other church staff seemed to just shrug it off.  After many more months of prayer and realization that scripture was being used out of context in "sermons", they left.  They wrote a letter explaining why.   They loved the people at Church of the Highlands and they agonized over the decision to leave, but after realizing that much of what they had been taught was suspect, they exited.

It was soon afterward that I would discover that Chris Hodges is New Apostolic Reformation.

And incidentally, Hodges did stop use of  TPT after people left. Church of the Highlands is a "seeker sensitive" church and losing followers for something easily preventable is usually avoided.  But my friends never heard a peep from Hodges.  In fact, The Prayer Force Manual is going to warn Highlands about people like my friends.

     Occasionally you may encounter “super-spiritual” people who will come with persuasive words designed to draw us away from the purity and simplicity of our devotion to the Lord, our pastor, and each other.  They may seem very religious, but will not depend on the Holy Spirit or submit to our pastor and other leaders.  Church of the Highlands Prayer Force Manual (P.81)

Getting ahead of myself here.  The Prayer Force Manual is covered by the Wartburg Watch blog. I highly recommend checking out all the years of research and reporting Dee and the fine folks there have provided on Chris Hodges, Church of the Highlands (COTH), the Association of Related Churches (ARC) and COTH Overseer - Robert Morris and Gateway Mega-Church.  The ARC’s Church of the Highlands Prayer Force Leader’s Guide and Analysis | The Wartburg Watch 2024