NAR Connections: Connecting the Dots
For forty years, Menno Zweers lived inside a movement he could not name. He was born into it, raised in it, and formed by its theology without ever being given the tools to evaluate what he was receiving. When God finally opened his eyes through the faithful ministry of biblical discernment teachers, the question that followed was urgent: how deep does this go, and how many others are still inside without knowing it?
The answer took years of documented research to compile. NAR Connections: Connecting the Dots is that research in book form, a comprehensive, evidence-based investigation into the relational networks, institutional alliances, apostolic designations, conference co-appearances, social media endorsements, organizational interlocks, and publishing relationships that bind the New Apostolic Reformation together and that have carried its theology deep into the heart of mainstream evangelical Christianity.
This book names names. It traces connections. It documents what the participants deny.
From C. Peter Wagner, who coined the term New Apostolic Reformation and declared himself Presiding Apostle of a global network, to Bill Hamon, who became a Latter Rain participant at seventeen years old in 1951 and has spent seventy years institutionalizing those condemned doctrines at global scale. From Bill Johnson and Bethel Church, where students once lay on the graves of deceased Christian leaders to absorb their anointing, to Ch Ahn, who has publicly designated Chris Hodges, Robert Morris, and Larry Stockstill as apostles with governmental authority over the church. From Brian Simmons, whose Passion Translation claims a personal commissioning from Jesus Christ but whose academic credential comes from an unaccredited NAR institution, to Brian Houston, whose Hillsong empire was built on Latter Rain foundations laid by a father later confirmed as a serial abuser of children. From the worship music pipeline delivering NAR theology into congregations that would never invite a NAR apostle to preach, to the accredited Christian universities lending institutional credibility to a movement their own doctrinal statements would formally reject.
Every connection named in this book is sourced, documented, and publicly verifiable. Every claim has a source. Nothing here requires inference or speculation, only the willingness to look at what the evidence plainly shows.
NAR Connections is written not as a theological treatise but as a flowing, readable investigation, the kind of book a confused believer can hand to their elder, a discerning pastor can give to a questioning congregant, and a researcher can use as a documented reference. It covers the movement's historical roots from the condemned Latter Rain Movement of 1948 through the Kansas City Prophets and the Toronto Blessing to the present day. It examines the institutional hubs, ICAL, Empowered21, Wagner University, ARC Churches, the Revival Alliance. It traces the celebrity pastor web and the worship music pipeline. And it makes the biblical and logical case for why endorsement is participation, why association at this level is not incidental, and why the stakes for the church are as high as stakes ever get.
For the confused believer who senses something is wrong in their church but cannot name it. For the elder trying to trace where the strange theology is coming from. For the pastor who has been told he is being divisive for asking questions. And for every Christian who suspects that the shared stages, the mutual endorsements, and the worship songs are not theologically neutral, and who finally needs someone to prove it.
Know who is leading you.
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