I have followed Chris Rosebrough over the years at Pirate Christian but that does not mean I have agreed lock step with everything the man has uttered. I am sure he may not agree with everything I have written. The standard Brown is insisting on can never be met. Pirate Christian's six points are apostles, kingdom, glory, revival, unity, and the denial of the sufficiency of scripture. Now, I do not know which two Brown thinks are not defined correctly but these six points are presented as their summation of the NAR. Apostles is there and we previously spoke about the founding of NAR. Kingdom refers to the primary driver today, which is dominionism. Glory refers to the Charismatic obsession with the Holy Spirit at the expense of doctrine and the word. I personally would have lumped in the focus on a revival with the dominionism and the doubting of the sufficiency of scripture in with glory because that is what they are directly related to. Unity to me is a more global trait of all false denominations as we head toward the biblically prophesied one world religion. The point is that because I would present Pirate Christian's six hallmarks as a consolidated three, doesn't mean we need to throw both out. Brown's argument is so specious. I might add here that he always says he repudiates this and that but he never actually repudiates the specific people associated with those things he repudiates. He never concludes that the person themselves is false, only the individual teachings, which is why he keeps trying to parse everything out. He is correct that Doug and Holly said he was not NAR, which I have written was a mistake. I think Brown is again being deceitful. Dr. Michael Brown rarely directly espouses NAR teaching. He does occasionally say he disagrees with some of them. The problem is that he directly supports, platforms and defends all of them. I have always referred to him a gatekeeper for the NAR. Now maybe he just views himself as protecting Charismatics. It matters not. We already saw that Charismania is one of the NAR traits. Lastly here, while Brown does not usually openly profess NAR teachings the one area that is not true is dominionism. He has been a shill for the Republican Party as it relates to Christianity since I have followed him and is even more brazenly partisan today. Not cray-cray like Mario Murillo or Greg Locke but remember, Brown would vociferously defend both.
"If you believe that apostles and prophets exist today - is that NAR? Or certain types of apostle and prophets? How do we work these things out and define them? Just do a search, thirty seconds. You'll find endless videos, articles, websites (screen shot of mine was shown, 828 Ministries) dedicated to quote, "exposing NAR." Many of them completely contradict each other and list hundreds of leaders who Doug and Holly wouldn't put on their list so, who do we believe." - Dr. Michael Brown
Yes, reasonable people can disagree reasonably. I have heard some posit that Joel Osteen is NAR but I would probably not characterize him that way. That does not make us all wrong somehow and that the definition then needs to be discarded. Now, I do not know why Brown flashed a screen shot of my ministry website while saying that some websites say they are dedicated to exposing NAR. My website says nothing of the kind. A fair portion of my work does focus on NAR because so many in the apostate church are NAR. That is hardly the only thing I write about. Just this week for example I have written about false prophets Jenny Weaver and Jennifer LeClaire and their grifting of the sheep. My website also has a section for some Christian poetry and some old videos when I used to be invited to preach. Brown is trying to make it seem like some crazy Internet people have all banded together to go NAR hunting because the more unhinged he can make it sound, the easier he thinks he can dismiss it. Very few ministries or websites I have seen focus solely on NAR. There is a myriad of false teaching right now, as the bible forewarns us. NAR is certainly part of it but not all of it as Brown pretends.
"I can point to the work of research scholar Matthew Taylor. He has been granted complete access to the archives of Dr. Peter Wagner. He is one of the strongest critics of the real NAR today, meaning the movement spearheaded by Dr. Wagner. He said Doug and Holly have some nuggets in their research but they fundamentally misunderstand NAR so do we trust Dr. Taylor or do we trust Doug and Holly?" - Dr. Michael Brown
I had not heard of Dr. Taylor and I am not sure why Brown referenced him here as support. A quick review of just one podcast reveals that he firmly believes what I seem to believe. That the NAR started with Wagner and has now grown through the likes of Che Ahn, Lance Wallnau, Cindy Jacobs, Dutch Sheets Sean Feucht, General Michael Flynn, and others. He further speaks about how these leaders have inspired the rise of Christian nationalism that resulted in the attack on our democracy on January 6th, something Brown has downplayed. He also addressed the fact that they call themselves apostles and that they coordinated with the Trump White House before January 6th. Now, I cannot speak for how he views the work of Holly and Doug but overall, Taylor does not seem like he is in agreement with Dr. Brown about anything. Dr. Taylor clearly believes as we do that the NAR exists as we define it, although he focuses more on dominionism, which I said is the primary driver of NAR theology today.
"So, let me summarize. Yes, there is a real NAR, spearheaded by Dr. Wagner, with which I have had serious disagreement for years. Then there is the imaginary NAR of the critics which groups together an unrelated collection of Charismatic leaders and movements as if it was one entity, as if this entity shared common strategies and goals and then takes the most extreme elements, taught by specific leaders as if these were the beliefs and practices of the whole." - Dr. Michael Brown
What Brown is not saying is that he pretended for years there was no such thing as the NAR but now he has no choice but to acknowledge that he was lying all those years. So instead, he moves the goalposts into this bifurcated notion of NAR so he can dismiss the one that tries to hold him accountable. Sorry Doc, not going to happen. Let us not lose sight that while he pretends to repudiate positions and arguments, he never attaches those to the people who make them. He wrote an entire book on greasy grace but calls Joseph Prince a good brother in the Lord. That hypocrisy is the issue. Repudiation is useless if you are not going to warn the sheep who are teaching them the things you pretend to repudiate.
Now let us deal with this other red herring Brown always tries to argue when discussing NAR. The NAR is not an entity. It is not a denomination. People do not sign up for it. They do not hold meetings. The NAR is a collection of beliefs, shared by many people in similar settings. So, someone like Mario Murillo and Greg Locke may teach the exact same thing but never know each other. They do not view these teachings as NAR either and they do not have to in order for NAR to be real. Those very same teachings might be shared across this entire country with other churches that never interact or know each other. This is not true just for NAR. Churches across this country might share in word faith beliefs. They do not consider themselves as word faith churches. They just teach those things. The term word faith is used by people evaluating those teachings. I believe that NAR dominionism has shared goals and strategies but they all take their marching orders from the Republican Party, whether they are aware or not. That is their master, even if they cannot see it. They do not however have Zoom meetings and plan anything together. Just go on Charisma News and you will see ten different leaders who may have never met, espousing the exact same talking points. That is not an accident. Lastly here, Brown always tries to make it seem like we are just talking about extremes but that is another red herring. The extremes are the leadership. Everyone listed in this one small devotional are people Brown has vociferously defended, so spare me that it is just some outliers. The disagreement is we know these are wolves and he defends them as brothers and sisters. Mercifully, Brown concludes:
