The New Order of the Latter Rain, 1948

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In February 1948, at a small Bible school and orphanage in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, a revival broke out that its participants called the Latter Rain - after Joel's promise of "the former rain and the latter rain" (Joel 2:23). Its leaders, George Hawtin, his brother Ernest Hawtin and Percy Hunt, had recently left the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. They had been stirred by William Branham's meetings in Vancouver and by Franklin Hall's book on fasting.

The movement introduced teachings that classical Pentecostalism had never held:

• Gifts imparted by the laying on of hands. Spiritual gifts, they taught, could be given to believers by a "presbytery" of recognised ministers laying hands on them and prophesying over them.
• Restored apostles and prophets. The fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4:11 was being restored, with living apostles and prophets governing the Church.
• Personal prophecy. Prophets would declare individuals' gifts and callings, and even direct their decisions.
• The Manifest Sons of God. Some taught that a company of overcoming believers would come to full maturity before Christ's return, manifest as "sons of God" (Romans 8:19), and some that they would receive immortal bodies before the general resurrection.

The Assemblies of God formally condemned the "New Order of the Latter Rain" in 1949, and other Pentecostal bodies followed. The movement fragmented. But its ideas did not disappear: they flowed into the charismatic movement of the 1960s, the "shepherding" and house-church movements, the Kansas City Prophets and, above all, the New Apostolic Reformation, which has made restored apostles and prophets mainstream.

The historic Church has seen this before. In the second century the Montanists claimed a new outpouring of the Spirit through their prophets, superseding the apostles' age. In the twelfth century Joachim of Fiore predicted a coming "Age of the Spirit" that would surpass the Church of his day. Both were rejected.

Verdict: the Latter Rain's teaching that gifts are imparted by prophetic presbyteries, that new apostles govern the Church, and that a company of perfected sons will appear before the resurrection has no basis in the creeds or the Church's history.

What is believed

A Latter Rain teacher would put it like this:

• The early rain fell at Pentecost. The Church then lost its power in the long dry season of the Middle Ages. Since the Reformation God has been restoring truths one by one: justification (Luther), holiness (Wesley), healing (the healing movement), Spirit baptism (Pentecost, 1901). Now comes the latter rain - the full restoration before Christ's return.
• God is restoring the fivefold ministry - apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers - and the Church will not reach maturity until all five operate (Ephesians 4:11-13).
• Gifts of the Spirit can be imparted by the laying on of hands with prophecy, as Paul gave Timothy a gift "by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery" (1 Timothy 4:14).
• Prophets will speak personal prophecies that reveal callings and give direction.
• The Church will become a mature, overcoming company - the manifest sons of God - who will demonstrate Christ's victory on earth before His return.

Where it came from

North Battleford

Sharon Orphanage and Schools at North Battleford had been set up in 1947 by Herrick Holt, a minister of the Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Canada. George Hawtin and Percy Hunt, who had resigned from the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada's Bethel Bible Institute in Saskatoon after a dispute, joined him, with Ernest Hawtin.

In the autumn of 1947 they attended William Branham's healing meetings in Vancouver and were deeply impressed by his gifts of healing and discernment. They also read Franklin Hall's Atomic Power with God through Fasting and Prayer and began a period of fasting.

On 12 February 1948, according to participants' accounts, prophecy began to flow in the school's chapel, directing that gifts would be given by the laying on of hands of the presbytery. Students and staff were prayed over and prophesied over; many reported receiving gifts. Over the following months, meetings at North Battleford drew visitors from across Canada and the United States. The leaders published The Sharon Star, and camp meetings in the summer of 1948 spread the teaching rapidly.

Spread

The movement spread through independent Pentecostal churches in North America. Among its most prominent supporters were Myrtle D. Beall of Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit, which became a major centre; Reg Layzell in Vancouver; and the Elim Bible Institute in New York. Its characteristic practices included "spiritual singing" (a congregation singing spontaneously in tongues and melody together), prophetic presbyteries ordaining and commissioning believers, and personal prophecy.

The Pentecostal response

The established Pentecostal denominations, which had their own memory of fanaticism, reacted sharply. In 1949 the General Council of the Assemblies of God, meeting in Seattle, adopted a resolution disapproving the "New Order of the Latter Rain". It rejected, among other things:

• the overemphasis on imparting, identifying, bestowing or confirming gifts by the laying on of hands and prophecy;
• the teaching that the Church is built on present-day apostles and prophets;
• the practice of confessing sins publicly to "presbyteries" and of personal prophecy giving direction;
• distortions of Scripture used to support these teachings.

^† The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada took similar action. Many ministers left, and many churches split.

The Manifest Sons of God

A more radical strand, developed in the early 1950s, taught that the "feast of Tabernacles" - the last of Israel's three great feasts - would be fulfilled in a company of overcomers who would come to perfection before Christ's return, become the "manifest sons of God" for whom "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth" (Romans 8:19), and in some versions receive immortal bodies before the general resurrection and judge or rule the world. Some groups formed closed communities around this hope.^†

George Hawtin himself drew back from some of the movement's excesses in later years and spent his life in a small independent ministry. He died in 1994.

Where it went

The Latter Rain did not survive as a movement, but its teachings found new homes:

• In the charismatic renewal of the 1960s, where laying on of hands for gifts and personal prophecy became common.
• In the shepherding and British "Restoration" house-church movements of the 1970s, with their apostolic teams.
• In the Kansas City Prophets of the 1980s, where Paul Cain - who had worked with Branham and had Latter Rain connections - became prominent.
• In the New Apostolic Reformation from the 1990s, which made restored apostles and prophets, apostolic networks and prophetic decrees central (see the New Apostolic Reformation).

Historians of the movement, including the sympathetic Richard Riss, trace these lines directly.

What the historic Church taught

On the laying on of hands. The Church has always laid hands on the baptised to pray for the Spirit (confirmation or chrismation) and on those ordained to ministry. The "presbytery" of 1 Timothy 4:14 is the body of elders who ordained Timothy to his office, and 2 Timothy 1:6 says the gift came "by the putting on of my hands" - Paul's apostolic ordination. The Church has always read these as ordination, given by those who were themselves ordained, not as a means by which any group of believers may distribute spiritual gifts.

On apostles and prophets. See Edward Irving and the New Apostolic Reformation: the apostles were the Church's foundation, laid once (Ephesians 2:20), and their successors are the bishops, not new apostles.

On new outpourings that supersede the Church. In the second century Montanus and the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla claimed that the Paraclete promised by Christ now spoke through them, with new revelations and rigorous new disciplines, and that the New Jerusalem would descend at Pepuza in Phrygia. The bishops of Asia Minor examined them and excommunicated them; Eusebius preserves the record (Church History 5.16-18). In the twelfth century Joachim of Fiore divided history into an age of the Father (the Old Testament), an age of the Son (the Church), and a coming age of the Spirit, which would surpass the Church's sacraments and hierarchy. His followers fixed it for 1260. The Church rejected these ideas, notably at the Council of Arles (1263).^† The Latter Rain's scheme of a final age of restored power is the same pattern again.

On perfection before the resurrection. The Church has always confessed "the resurrection of the body" as the one hope of all the faithful at Christ's coming, and taught that no one is made perfect in this life (see Revivalism).

The verdict

The Latter Rain represents a decisive step in the second of this section's threads: authority moving from creeds and ordained ministry to self-appointed apostles and prophets. Its characteristic practices - gifts distributed by prophetic presbyteries, personal prophecy directing lives, restored apostles - have no precedent in the Church before 1948, and closely resemble the Montanist "New Prophecy" that the Church rejected in the second century. Its Manifest Sons doctrine misreads Romans 8 and contradicts the creeds' confession of one resurrection at the end.

Its own Pentecostal brethren saw the danger within a year and condemned it. Its later influence, through the charismatic movement and the New Apostolic Reformation, has been far greater than its size in 1948 would suggest.

How the four traditionsthe Catholic Churchthe Orthodox Churchthe Lutheran Churchthe Anglican Communion responded

Key personalities

Answering a modern Christian

"God is restoring apostles and prophets in these last days." This exact claim was made at North Battleford in 1948 and condemned by the Assemblies of God in 1949 - by Pentecostals, not by sceptics. It was made before that by the Catholic Apostolic Church in the 1830s, whose apostles all died expecting Christ's return, and by John Alexander Dowie in

1. Before any of them, the Montanists claimed a new age of prophecy in the second century. The

claim has a long history, and none of it is encouraging.

"I received a gift when the prophets laid hands on me and prophesied over me." The four traditions do not doubt that God answers prayer, and that prayer with laying on of hands is biblical. They do doubt that a group of ministers can identify and impart particular gifts at will. In the New Testament, the laying on of hands with the presbytery was Timothy's ordination. Personal prophecies that direct a person's life should be tested against Scripture and the counsel of the Church, and not obeyed simply because they were spoken with confidence.

"We are the generation that will see the manifest sons of God." Paul says the manifestation of the sons of God is "the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23) - the resurrection at Christ's coming, given to all God's children together. Every generation since Montanus has had a group who believed they were the final, perfected company. The Church's confession is simpler and humbler: "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."