Charles Peter Wagner is famous for leading what is known as the New Apostolic Reformation.
Wagner was one of the most influential heretical figures last century in evangelicalism, encouraging Christians to convert to his NAR movement. In other words, he has been leading people away from the Christian faith into his ways of doing what he thinks is biblical Christianity.
However, in his attempt to invent his own NAR theology, Wagner has been proven to fail spectacularly. Not just once. Not just twice. Not even three times. We are talking about a man who has proven again and again why we as Christians should stick to the bible and not our own silly novelties. Whatever he touches or praises does not turn to gold but turns to shame, irony and embarrassment. Sometimes what he praises or endorses evolves into a scandal, cover-up or illegal activity.
We will be producing a number articles on the antics of Wagner in a comical series, highlighting never to be a Wagner or a ‘Wagnerite’, nor to imitate this Don Quixote of Evangelicalism.
THE PROPHETIC KNIGHTING OF C. PETER WAGNER TO HIS APOSTOLIC ROUNDTABLE
One day, Charles Peter Wagner no longer wanted to be a nobody in the body of Christ. His research on the New Apostolic Reformation was getting old and he wanted to leave his mark on his nation. Even more so, the world. Maybe he can be the hero who can change the world.
Maybe he can change the world. If only he could find a prophet in the New Apostolic Reformation that could make him an Apostle. A Pioneer. A General in this end-time army.
Then in 1995,
Wagner documents how these NAR intercessors prophesied over him,
Where Do I Fit?
It is one thing to recognize that apostles are actually functioning in our churches today, but is is another thing to come to terms with how someone like me fits in. When these ideas began to congeal in my mind in 1993, my basic self-image was that of a teacher and a scholar. As I write this, however, my self-image has evolved. First I began to suspect that I might, indeed, have a gift and calling of an apostle. When I had come to terms with this, I referred to myself as a teacher-apostle. Now it has morphed to apostle-teacher. I am still a teacher, but my primary assignment from God is to serve as an apostle.
How did this change come about?
As I explained in chapter 8, by 1993, I had completed my transition out of cessationism by starting to believe in prophecy, the phenomenon that God reveals information directly to individuals. Some of this information is specifically for certain people, which could be labeled “personal prophecy.” In 1989, Doris and I decided to begin a prophetic journal in which we would transcribe and preserve some of the personal prophecies we began receiving from time to time. By this writing, we have a total of 159 pages of single-spaced material. Looking back through the journal it is interesting to see how some prophets had been hearing from God about my role as an apostle.
Three Prophetic Words
The first word was from Cindy Jacobs, an I-2 intercessor, during a conference she was holding in 1995, while she was living in Colorado Springs: The lord would say today, “My son, Peter, I put the anointing of apostle of prayer upon you. I put the mantle upon you of an Abraham, a patriarch, and I’m calling you forth into the land of promise.”
A couple of months later, I received a letter from one of our I-3 intercessors who lived in Dallas, Margaret Moberly, who was not in the habit of writing us personally at all: An apostolic door has been sovereignly opened for you by the Lord Himself. Neither man nor demon will be able to shut it!
I knew enough to take these words seriously, but as time moved on, I gradually dismissed them from my mind. I, apparently, wasn’t ready to be “Apostle Peter”!
A couple of years went by, and in 1998, we were holding one of our GHM conferences, “Building Foundations for Revival,” in Dallas, using the facility at Covenant Church. When I run conferences, I invariably keep them under strict control time-wise, but this somehow got out of order, especially with unplanned prophecies springing up and even messages in tongues, which I had prohibited up to then. I was sitting in the front row, struggling to plan how I could get things back under control, when somehow or other I found myself kneeling on the platform with Jim Stevens of Christian International getting ready to prophesy over me publicly. How I get there I still don’t know! I glance up and there was Charles Doolittle, one of our recognized intercessors, standing over me. Charles was a six-foot-four muscular African-American police officer on the Glendale, California, police force, with an aggressive look on his face and holding a huge three-foot sword over my head! I quickly decided that I’d better behave myself and listen carefully! Here is what Jim Stevens said:
Even from this day forward, even from this national conference, there shall be a release on your spirit. Whether you want to say “apostle” or not is of no effect, says God. The title shall rest, the anointing shall rest, and men will give it to you. It is not something you have sought for your own; men will place it on your back and upon your spirit and they will draw the apostolic from you!
I have since considered that time to be my prophetic ordination as an apostle. From then on I knew that God had called me to be an apostle, but I still bring myself to talk about it outwardly because I didn’t know what kind of apostle I was. By then I had met and interacted with many recognized apostles, and I knew I wasn’t like any of them. They were all leaders of apostolic networks and they had numbers of churches and ministries, which they oversaw. I did not have a network, nor did I have a desire for one.
It was then that a friend from England suggested to me that there might be a difference between “vertical” apostolic networks and “horizontal”apostolic networks. Vertical networks would be the kind I just described; the kind, for example, that the apostle Paul led. Horizontal networks, on the other hand, would involve bringing together leaders from different streams for certain purposes. The apostle James would have done this in the Council of Jerusalem. Eureka! That is exactly what I to do! Organizing the international prayer movement would be a good example. That is probably why the first prophetic word I received from Cindy Jacobs mentioned “apostle of prayer.”
The New Apostolic Roundtable
From then on, I outwardly began to recognize that I was, indeed, an apostle, and I actually tried functioning as one. Among other things, in 1999, I organized and led a group of around 20 vertical apostles, calling it the New Apostolic Roundtable (NAR)…
Source: C. Peter Wagner, Wrestling with Alligators, Prophets, and Theologians: Lessons from a Lifetime in the Church- A Memoir, Publisher: Baker Books (2011),
NOTE: It appears ‘Let Us Reason‘ records Cindy Jacobs first prophecy in it’s entirety. It also appears she prophesied over him more than once. According to God, Peter wasn’t just an Apostle, he was going to be an Apostle that would change the face of Christianity. (Funny how none of Jesus’ 12 Apostles were specially commissioned to change the face of Christianity…)
“As far as I can find back in the prophetic journal the first prophecy I ever had that used the word apostle came from Cindy Jacobs.” In July in 1995, at a meeting in Colorado springs, at a voice of God conference “Cindy said “The lord would say today my son Peter I put the anointing of apostle of prayer upon you, I put the mantle of an Abraham, a patriarch, and I’m calling you forth into the land of promise. And I call you Doris, Sarah, says the Lord, and calling you forth to give you many, many spiritual children.” So that’s the first time I can recall or look up that somebody using the word apostle when they prophesied over me… A few months later in September one of our three intercessors name Margaret Mobely from the Dallas area she wrote the letter and she said an apostolic door has been sovereignly opened for you by the Lord Himself neither man nor demon will be able shut it.”
Source: C.P. Wagner, National School of the Prophets, http://www.letusreason.org/latrain21.htm, 11/05/2000. (Accessed 31/04/2017.) [Cached]
“Mike and I were sitting at a restaurant with Peter Wagner, and the Lord gave me a word for him, that God was going to use him to do something that would change the face of Christianity. And he said, “Well, I’ll probably never tell anybody that.” Oh, yeah, right, Then, well, right. That’s the second part. I was gonna say that. In fact, the Lord, the Lord, and the word of the Lord said, “It will be, it will be like unto what Martin Luther did.”
Source: Cindy Jacobs, National School of the Prophets: Mobilizing the Prophetic Office, http://www.letusreason.org/latrain21.htm, 11/05/2000. (Accessed 31/04/2017.) [Cached]
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Categories: New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)