Book Review: Counterfeit Kingdom
Book Review: Counterfeit Kingdom
This book reminded me so much of Hank Hanegraaff's Christianity in Crisis. It reads like an expose… of the New Apostolic Reformation.
The authors particularly take Bethel Church to task. They document the extraordinary craziness and extra-biblical excess of Bethel Church and IHOPKC and other NAR churches.It is a helpful book for those who have not read about the harm of this extreme fringe of the charismatic movement.
Their chapter on NAR music was good, but they didn't offer alternative sources of solid, biblical worship music. They were eager to name names of the offenders, but they didn't name names of those doing excellent work.
In 2005, Tim Charlie's wrote a review of Hanegraaff's "Counterfeit Revival." In it, he said,
Long on symptoms, short on diagnosis and shorter still on cure, I still found this a helpful and interesting book. I trust that it will help many from being led astray into the rottenness that is found at the fringes of the charismatic movement.
I think the same could be said of this book. While it offers helps at the end, it doesn't really offer practical helps. They're more like platitudes than helps.
One final bummer: when they offered books for more reading about the NAR movement, the authors offered.. their own books... more books that they'd written about the movement. Granted their extensive endnotes have other sources, but it’s disappointing that they recommend themselves for further reading.
I agree with their assessment that NAR teaching/churches are heretical and divisive. It would have been more helpful to offer more practical guidelines for countering false teaching.
What is the New Apostolic Reformation? ~ GotQuestions.org
I was surprised that they didn’t recommend Costi Hinn’s (son of Benny, who the authors call out a few times in CK) book Defining Deception as a recommended source. Costi has an insider perspective on the abuse of the NAR movement and writes well about it.
Thank you for the review. I wouldn’t use the phrase “fringes of the charismatic movement” because the movement as a whole is rotten at its core. I appreciate MacArthur’s Strange Fire as it does an excellent job addressing the birth of the movement and its ties to satanic practices, though I do not agree with his characterization that those in the pews of that movement are necessarily unsaved (topic for another day - would recommend A Defense of Free Grace Theology by Fred Chay, et al.)
You make a great point in saying that these types of books, with good biblical information and warnings lack help by way of practical guidance. So a disease has been discovered, and I appreciate you telling me what the disease is and how it affects me. What do I do now, and how do I prevent from future exposure? What does healthy look like? How do I share this information with others I love?