The New Apostolic Reformation is kind of like the storyline of the Blues Brothers movie.

• The Blues Brothers movie starts out with Elwood Blues picking up his brother, Jake, from prison.

• They make an obligatory visit to see "The Penguin"-she's the nun who runs the Catholic school they once attended. When she tells them the school needs to raise $5,000 in a week or else it will have to close, they decide to help raise the money somehow.

• They visit a church where Jake has a mystical vision, and believes that God told him to "get the band back together" as a way to raise the money.

• Once Jake and Elwood Blues "got their vision from God" there was no stopping them-they went on a wild and ridiculous rampage in order to accomplish their mission.

• They manipulated, black-mailed and over-promised rewards in order to convince their former band mates to join them on their mission.

• Their final appeal to convince anyone to join them was: "We're on a mission from God."

The leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (the NAR) are like the Blues Brothers:

• Some of them began their "ministry" after getting out of jail. Todd Bentley served time for committing sexual assault against a young boy; he started his "ministry" about 5 years after that. Some of them practically brag about their prior lives of drug-addiction and/or crime in order to somehow validate their ministry.

• They all claim that their ministry is validated by personal, mystical messages they received directly from God. They will say anything to compel others to join them (and send money their way), because they claim it's all God's plan.

• These churches and ministries feel no compulsion to carefully submit to the authority of God's Word-the Bible. Instead, they've been on a wild and ridiculous rampage in order to accomplish their mission.

• A tremendous amount of damage has been done by these false prophets and false teachers. There is a vast number of people whose lives have been deeply troubled by their experience with these "ministries," but those stories rarely get heard. In many cases, people are too confused and/or ashamed by their weird experiences to even talk about them.

• People and God's Word are used as props. As long as gullible followers keep showing up at their never-ending conferences and buying their books, DVDs and other worthless crap, they will continue on their crazy rampage.

But here's the BIG difference between The Blues Brothers and the NAR:

• The Blues Brothers is just a silly movie (with some great music, btw), but the "New Apostolic Reformation" is REAL.

• The damage it's doing is REAL.

• The twisting of God's Word is REAL.

• The continual list of false prophecies and predictions is REAL.

• The wrecked churches, wrecked ministers and wrecked lives are REAL.

If Jake and Elwood could talk, I think they might say something like this: "Hey you guys, we are pretend characters in a movie-we can't do any harm. All those people escaping the crashing cars in a nick of time were stuntmen, nobody ever gotten hurt. But the New Apostolic Reformation is real, and it will hurt you."

For much more serious information about the NAR: The New Apostolic Reformation Cornucopia of False Doctrine, Dominionism, Charismania and Deception