One of the advantages of growing old is that you can look back and see things that happened in the past that throw light on what is happening today. I have always seen unity as of great value, but unity has to be built upon the firm foundation of truth. Prophecy Today has always stood firmly upon biblical truth. If any teaching is given that is contrary to the teaching of the Bible it has to be resisted, whatever the cost.

Confronting deception

The front page of the ‘Church of England Newspaper’, dated Friday, July 27, 1990, was devoted to reporting an attack by John Wimber upon Prophecy Today, of which I was the Editor. In our editorial we had said that the prophecies of the so-called ‘Kansas City Prophets’ that a great revival would breakout in Britain later that year were utterly false and the so-called ‘prophets’ should not be trusted.

The front-page report ended, “Following the conference a statement signed by 15 church leaders (named) gave support to the ministry of the prophets. “We believe that they are true servants of God, men of sound character, humility and evident integrity. We have had time to discern and weigh their words. We have no doubt about the validity of their ministry”, they said.

In a face-to-face meeting, John Wimber told me that unless I retracted the statements made in Prophecy Today, the magazine and my ministry would be finished. The pressure upon the editorial team was immense, as our sales dropped dramatically, with many churches cancelling their orders and refusing to allow the magazine to be distributed among their members.

He was a good man with a great ministry and before he died, he publicly confessed to having been deceived and he and I were reconciled.

We held fast to our statements and the much-publicised revival meetings in the Excel Centre London in October 1990 ended like a damp squib. The Kansas City Prophets disappeared in oblivion and John Wimber contracted cancer in his throat and never spoke at another big public meeting. He was a good man with a great ministry and before he died, he publicly confessed to having been deceived and he and I were reconciled.

The Toronto Blessing & the NAR

Sadly, the false teaching upon which the KCF ‘prophets’ based their words was never eradicated from many churches, resulting in the outbreak of the Toronto Blessing just four years later. This great deception can still be seen today in many churches who have embraced ‘The New Apostolic Reformation’ (NAR).

The Toronto Blessing spread like wildfire across continents. It was a powerful spirit of deception transmitted at thousands of meetings in many countries throughout the Western world. It was a contagion with some similar characteristics to the Covid pandemic – particularly in the ways that it was passed on from one to another at countless meetings, also in the ways that the deception affected people, which has a spiritual characteristic.

It was astonishing the level of personal abuse that those who rejected the Toronto Blessing were subjected to by those who believed the Blessing to be genuine. They were so convinced that their own experience had been given to them by God that they were angry when other people did not accept it. This is a clear mark of deception, when the emotion associated with the experience overrides the rational element in our thinking, so that anger replaces careful thinking and love is driven out from our relationships.

It was astonishing the level of personal abuse that those who rejected the Toronto Blessing were subjected to by those who believed the Toronto Blessing to be genuine.

Vaccination: a personal choice

I see similar characteristics in the division that is spreading in churches across the land between Christians who have been vaccinated and those who refuse. Many of those who have been vaccinated simply accept that God is fulfilling his purposes in allowing the pandemic to shake the nations. At the same time, they recognise that, in his love and mercy, he has given the vaccines to save countless lives. Of course, these ‘emergency use’ vaccines are not perfect and there are many stories of where they have caused adverse reactions.

We each need to make our own decision on whether or not to accept vaccination. That has to be a personal decision taken when we each spread the issue before the Lord, in just the same way as Christians in the Early Church had to decide whether or not to eat meat that had been slaughtered in pagan abattoirs with priests ‘blessing’ the meat (in just the same way as British abattoirs now have ‘imams’ saying prayers to Allah over the meat that we buy in our supermarkets).

We each should respect the decisions others make, in line with Paul’s teaching in Romans 14:8: “The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To own his own master, he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”

A turning point will come

The eating of meat was a tremendously divisive issue in the Early Church, hence Paul’s clear teaching that each one of us makes our own decision before the Lord to whom we are responsible. The vaccine issue is not sufficiently important that it should divide believers! It is the enemy, the father of lies and the author of deception who is at work among us trying to divide believer from believer.

We must not allow the devil to divide us in these days of shaking, because the great shaking is going to become even more intense.

We have to resist the deceiver by all means! The only issue that really matters is our relationship with the Lord Jesus to whom each of us is responsible. We must not allow the devil to divide us in these days of shaking, because the great shaking is going to become even more intense. But as it does so, I believe the nation will reach a point of despair when no human solutions can be found to our problems.

At that stage Christians will have a great opportunity for overthrowing the work of the enemy and declaring truth to the nation – offering hope in the Name of Jesus. That is the point when there could be a great spiritual awakening and Christians could reap a harvest for the kingdom. Maybe this is the whole purpose for which God is shaking the nations!