eileen fleming

The New Apostolic Reformation/ NAR is a religious movement of elites and regular people guided by an entire genre of books, texts, videos and other media. Among NAR adherents, is Sarah Palin and the NAR just may be the largest religious movement you've never heard of. Jesus called politicians foxes and in a country where Sarah Palin is being touted as presidential material, the issue of faith in politics has never been more deadly.

To Sarah Palin and The New Apostolic Reformation

Researcher Rachel Tabachnick, reported regarding NAR videos that they “demonstrate the taking control of communities and nations through large networks of 'prayer warriors' whose spiritual warfare is used to expel and destroy the demons that cause societal ills. Once the territorial demons, witches, and generational curses are removed, the 'born-again' Christians in the videos take control of society."

“The movement's notion of "spiritual warfare" has spread from the California suburbs to an East-Coast inner city, and has impacted policy decisions in the developing world. Movement operatives are well-connected enough to have testified before Congress and to have received millions of dollars in government abstinence-only sex-education grants. Leaders in the NAR movement refer to themselves as ‘apostles.’”[1]

When Palin was 24, she joined a spiritual warfare network. Rachel Tabachnick, continues:

“These communication networks allow apostles to disseminate new prophecy to their ‘prayer warriors.’ During the presidential election this included prophecies about Palin, including one in which Glazier described a vision that Palin would take the ‘mantle’ of leadership after a period of national mourning, apparently following John McCain's demise.

“The first Transformation film so impressed pastors in Wasilla, Alaska, that they contacted some of the religious leaders featured in the movie including Thomas Muthee, who was shown driving a witch out of Kiambu, Kenya. Wasilla Assembly of God developed an ongoing relationship with Muthee and a 2005 church video shows him anointing Palin. Unfortunately the press picked up on the witch part of the story, and not the more important fact that Palin has ties to top leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation.

“I believe this movement's threat to separation of church and state is greater than some of the more overtly theocratic movements of the religious right. The inclusion of women and all races in leadership roles, and their enthusiastic sponsorship of social services conflicts with a popular notion about religious fundamentalism. Despite their radical strategies, leaders in the movement have been labeled in the press as moderate…a ‘new evangelical.’[Ibid]

Evangelical once was understood as a stand up call against slavery. The New Apostolic Reformation is a movement within Protestant Christianity that grew out of Pentecostal and Charismatic sensibilities and ascribes to an ideology that asserts God is restoring the lost offices of church governance, specifically offices of Prophet and Apostle.

They determine what being “saved” means for all and also maintain the need for submission to Church leaders. They have faith in leaders and believe that leaders are ordained by God and given power and authority by God to lead as described in the biblical letter of the apostle Paul to the Ephesians.

The grass roots of the NAR is foremost concerned with a process they refer to as the formation of Christ within its members. Apostolic churches tend to be small, consisting of dedicated believers who carry the weight of the church and are looking to do only good out of love for God.

But as Gandhi warned, "Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent."

The first and greatest heresy in the Christian faith occurred in the third century when Augustine penned the "Just War Theory" which gave the church's OK to violence perpetuated by the empire and "our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system."-Dorothy Day

Clement, Tertillian, Polycarp and every other early Church Father taught that violence was a contradiction of what Christ was about, but as Gandhi commented, "Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent."

Christians were not a part of the military until the third century, when Emperor Constantine instituted Christianity as the State's religion and required all soldiers to be baptized, but "How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shall not murder’?"– Leo Tolstoy

Bruce Wilson, Co-Founder of Talk To Action, recently reported, “At least three of four of Palin’s churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young ‘Joel’s Army’ to take dominion over the United States and the world.

“Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin’s extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate. Palin’s dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God ‘Masters Commission’ graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as ‘One Lord Sunday.’ At the latter event, Palin and Alaska LT Governor Scott Parnell were publicly blessed, onstage before an estimated crowd of 6,000, through the ‘laying on of hands’ by Wasilla Assembly of God’s Head Pastor Ed Kalnins whose sermons espouse such theological concepts as the possession of geographic territories by demonic spirits and the inter-generational transmission of family ‘curses’.

“Palin has also been blessed, or ‘anointed’, by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a ‘spirit of witchcraft.’

“The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology…The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form ‘Joel’s Army’ to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God…

“Thomas Muthee visited Wasilla Assembly of God and gave 10 consecutive sermons at the church, from October 11-16 2005. As both Palin and Wasilla AoG Head Pastor Ed Kalnins have attested, Thomas Muthee ‘prayed over’ Sarah Palin and entreated God to ‘make a way’ prior to Palin’s successful bid for the Alaska governorship. Muthee made a return visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God in late 2008.

“Thomas Muthee’s Word of Faith Church is featured in the ‘Transformations’ video which details an account on how Muthee drove ‘the spirit of witchcraft’ out of Kiambu, Kenya, liberating the town from its territorial demonic possession and enabling a miraculous societal transformation…The ‘Transformations’ video has helped spark a network of ‘Transformation’ ministries and mission organizations and ‘transformation’ has become a buzz word for change based on supernatural instead of human efforts.

“The Third Wave, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is a network of Apostles, many of them grouped around C. Peter Wagner, founder of the World Prayer Center. This center, which was built in coordination with Ted Haggard and his New Life Church in Colorado Springs, was featured in an article by Jeff Sharlet in Harpers, May 2005, ‘Soldiers of Christ.’ [2]

Charles Peter Wagner, is also a former professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission and he coined the Christian idiom Third Wave.

The first "wave" occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century with the rise of the Pentecostal movement, beginning with the Azusa Street Revival.
The second "wave" occurred during the 1960s as the Charismatic movement spread throughout some Protestant denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic Church.
The third "wave" occurred during the mid 1980s, and is identified as a resurgence of church planting and a new commitment to signs and wonders in evangelism.

Each wave identifies with different theologies regarding the Holy Spirit-but, which is universally understood as God within. Many Christians, including even some conservative Pentecostals, have rejected the "Third Wave" as being unbiblical.

One of the top reads in NAR circles is the novel, KINGDOM LOST. According to their website KINGDOM LOST is “A novel they will not want you to read.” “An enjoyable read.” “Tense story." "Ominous, I would recommend it.”

Wayne Buchanan, Radio Talk Show Host & Assemblies of God Pastor went on the record, "If there is one novel a Christian ought to read in their lifetime, it's Kingdom Lost. It'll scare the willies out of everyone else too.”

Something else that should have scared the willies out of everyone was another article by Jeff Sharlet, who wrote for HARPER'S May 2009 edition, "The Crusade for a Christian Military: Jesus Killed Mohammed" regarding the entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the USA military beginning during the Cold War that accelerated during the Vietnam era and has wrecked havoc on the soul of our nation and misery for multitudes.

Fundamentalist [referred to as evangelical by Sharlet] Chaplains began to join the military in droves as they aligned themselves with the Industrial Military Complex in opposition with Catholics and mainline moderate Protestant denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians who were of one voice speaking out against American terrorism in Vietnam and for following in the ways of the nonviolent Jesus.

“Starting in 1987, Protestant denominations were lumped together simply as “Protestant”; moreover, the Pentagon began accrediting hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal “endorsing agencies,” allowing graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges—which often train clergy to view those from other faiths as enemies of Christ—to fill up nearly the entire allotment for Protestant chaplains. Today, more than two thirds of the military’s 2,900 active-duty chaplains are affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations." [3]

"For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies—the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire…meshed neatly with ideologies [that connected] nationalism and fundamentalism…Communism…the dark alternative should we fail to unite. Fundamentalism thrived…a neat, black-and-white [theology and] a foreign policy. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new Cold War." [Ibid]

In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. penned a scalding critique of American Christianity addressed to his "Dear Fellow Clergymen"

Too long has The Peace Process been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. We must come to see that justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever and if repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the world can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

The world is pulled to change by extremism and our only dilemma is what will we be extremists for? Hate or love? God or State?

Few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. Too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

It is a lack of imagination that accepts a future of endless war. It is fear of the other that fuels fundamentalism.

Jesus said: "FEAR NOT! You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free."

Rev. King wondered if organized religion was too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world. He knew that "Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death."

While he lived the FBI placed wiretaps on Reverend King's home and office phones and bugged his hotel rooms throughout the country. By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 [a year to the day before he was murdered] King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

The last words Jesus spoke to his follower's before his martyrdom was to "put down the sword" and his first words after his resurrection was "peace be with you."

During one of my seven trips to occupied Palestine since 2005, Mohammad Alatar, film producer of “The Ironwall” addressed my group on an Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions tour through Jerusalem and to the village of Anata and the Shufat refugee camp, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news: “I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see.” [Jeremiah 6:7]

After we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family in the Arabyia Peace Center, Mohammad Alatar said, “I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it. What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues. Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address.”

Christians are called by God to prayerfully use the gift of discernment and to test all things according to the teachings of Jesus. A follower of Jesus- perhaps anyone with a good conscience- would understand that war is the ultimate form of terrorism as well as the supreme expression of the spirit of the Antichrist-meaning against what Christ taught and modeled with his life-which was to be a Peacemaker, not to bomb, torture or occupy any.

The term Christianity was not even coined until three decades after Christ walked the earth. Until the day of Paul, followers of Jesus were called members of The Way; the way being what he taught!

Christ was never a Christian, but he was a social justice, radical revolutionary NONVIOLENT Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation; and what got him crucified was for disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.

My question to my sister in Christ, is Sarah, please define just who your Jesus is and how does your theology inform your political decisions regarding what is best for America- and just what do you think that is?

To Candidate Palin, where do you stand regarding USA policy in Israel Palestine vis-à-vis the theology of Armageddon and a rapture of “saved” believers who live by the sword?

1. http://www.truthout.org/prayer-warriors-and-palin-organizing-spiritual-warfare-take-over-america57276

2. http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/sarah-palins-churches-and-the-third-wave/

3. Jeff Sharlet, HARPER'S, May 2009 pages 31-43.

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Eileen Fleming, Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org Staff Member of Salem-news.com A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" and BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 | www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine