The Third Wave, the Vineyard and the Kansas City Prophets

Affiliation

Healing evangelist in the 1950s revival, associated with William Branham and the Latter Rain; one of the Kansas City Prophets

Appears in

The Third Wave, the Vineyard and the Kansas City Prophets, The healing revival, 1947-58, and after

Profile

Link to this profile

Life

A child of promise

Paul Cain was born in 1929 in Garland, Texas. According to his own account, his mother was dying of cancer and other illnesses while pregnant with him, and was healed when an angel promised that the child would be a prophet. He said that at the age of eight an angel appeared to him and that from then on he received visions and knowledge about strangers. These stories come from Cain himself and his supporters; there is no contemporary record of them. One claim, that he foresaw the exact time of his mother's death, is contradicted by her death certificate.^†

The healing revival

He began preaching in his teens and by the late 1940s was a healing evangelist in his own right, with a tent and a radio programme. He joined the circle of evangelists around Gordon Lindsay's Voice of Healing and was closely associated with William Branham, whom he regarded as the greatest prophet of the age and in whose campaigns he took part. Cain was engaged to be married in the 1950s but broke off the engagement, saying God had forbidden him to marry; he remained single.

Withdrawal

Around 1958, disillusioned with the commercialism and showmanship of the healing revival, he withdrew from public ministry. For about twenty-five years he lived quietly, pastoring small congregations and travelling occasionally.

The Kansas City Prophets

In the late 1980s he came into contact with a fellowship in Kansas City whose leaders were promoting a new prophetic movement, and he became the most celebrated of the "Kansas City Prophets". In 1989 John Wimber, leader of the Vineyard, embraced him, convinced by a series of what he took to be accurate prophetic words, including a prediction of an earthquake in southern California on the day Cain met him. Cain spoke at Vineyard conferences in America and Britain and taught that God was raising up a "new breed" of believers - an end-time army, drawing on Joel 2 - who would demonstrate greater power than the apostles.

He prophesied that a great revival would begin in London in October 1990, at conferences Wimber held there. The revival did not occur. Wimber later acknowledged that the prophecy had been mistaken and distanced the Vineyard from the prophets. Cain continued to travel and minister independently through the 1990s.

Exposure and confession

In October 2004 three leaders who had worked with him made public that they had confronted him over a homosexual relationship and alcoholism, which he had admitted but, they said, had not addressed. In February 2005 Cain posted a letter in which he confessed to homosexual behaviour and alcoholism over many years. He later said he had been restored; the leaders who had confronted him disputed this. One of them later stated that Cain had admitted to him that some of his celebrated revelations had been obtained by natural means.^†

Key dates

• 1929 - Born in Garland, Texas
• 1940s - Healing evangelist; associated with The Voice of Healing
• 1950s - Works with William Branham
• c. 1958 - Withdraws from public ministry
• 1987-89 - Joins the Kansas City Prophets; embraced by John Wimber
• October 1990 - Prophesied London revival fails
• October 2004 - Three leaders make public their confrontation with him
• February 2005 - Publishes a confession
• 12 February 2019 - Dies, aged 89

Teachings and claims

The prophetic gift

Cain claimed to receive detailed revelation - names, addresses, illnesses and secrets - about strangers, as Branham had done. He taught that such gifts were being restored to the Church on a scale not seen since the apostles.

Branham as prophet

He regarded Branham as a true prophet whose ministry had been marred by his doctrinal errors and by the people around him, and he presented his own ministry as a continuation of what had begun in the healing revival.

The new breed

Drawing on Latter Rain teaching, he spoke of an end-time generation of believers - "the new breed", "Joel's army" - who would be filled with the Spirit and display supernatural power in the last days.

Documented controversies

Failed prophecy

The London prophecy of 1990 failed publicly, and Wimber acknowledged it.

Retrospective fulfilments

Critics, including Hank Hanegraaff and some former associates, documented that several prophecies reported as fulfilled were described only after the events, and that some biographical claims did not match the records.

Hidden sin

His confession of 2005 revealed that, during the very years he was celebrated as a prophet, he had been living in practices he publicly condemned. His claim to have been restored was contested by those who confronted him.

Death

He died on 12 February 2019, aged 89.^†

Legacy

Cain is a direct link between Branham's healing revival of the 1950s and the prophetic movement of the 1980s and after, and he carried Latter Rain ideas into the Vineyard and the wider charismatic world. His story is also among the most frequently cited cautionary cases in that world: a prophet admired for apparent accuracy whose private life and failed predictions undermined his claims.

Measured against the creeds

The historic churches confess that the revelation of God is complete in Christ and handed down in Scripture and the apostolic tradition (Hebrews 1:1-2; Jude 3). They have always tested those who claim to prophesy by their doctrine, by their life and by whether their words come to pass (Matthew 7:15-20; Deuteronomy 18:22; 1 John 4:1). By each of these tests Cain's ministry fails: he honoured Branham as a true prophet despite Branham's denial of the Trinity; his best-known prophecy failed; and his life contradicted his message for decades.

The "new breed" teaching, like the Latter Rain movement from which it came, also suggests an elite of end-time believers surpassing the apostles - an idea foreign to the creeds, which confess "one holy catholic and apostolic Church" built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20).

His confession of sin was right and necessary; the Church's teaching on repentance and forgiveness applies to him as to everyone. But restoration to forgiveness is not automatically restoration to ministry, and the historic churches have always made the second a matter for the Church's judgement rather than the minister's own.

Affiliation

Missionary in Bolivia (1956-71); professor of church growth, Fuller Theological Seminary (1971-2001); presiding apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles (1999-2009)

Appears in

The New Apostolic Reformation and the "five-fold ministry", The Third Wave, the Vineyard and the Kansas City Prophets, The Seven Mountains Mandate and dominionism, Church growth, seeker churches and the megachurch

Profile

Link to this profile

Life

New York and conversion

Charles Peter Wagner was born on 15 August 1930 in New York City and grew up in the city and in upstate New York, in a family with no active faith. He studied agriculture at Rutgers University, intending to become a dairy farmer. In 1950 he was converted, largely through the influence of the young woman he married that year, who made his commitment to Christ a condition of marriage; together they resolved to become missionaries.

Bolivia

After studying at Fuller Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary, he and his wife went to Bolivia in 1956 with the South America Mission and the Andes Evangelical Mission, where he taught at a Bible institute and seminary in Cochabamba and worked in mission administration. He was, by his own account, a convinced cessationist and a critic of Pentecostalism in these years. He observed, however, that the Pentecostal churches of Latin America were growing much faster than those of his own missions, and in Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming (1973) he sought to explain why.

Fuller and church growth

In 1971 he joined the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller, under Donald McGavran, and for thirty years was its best-known professor of church growth. He wrote prolifically on the subject: Your Church Can Grow (1976), Our Kind of People (1979, a defence of the homogeneous unit principle, based on his doctoral work at the University of Southern California), and Leading Your Church to Growth (1984). He founded the Fuller Evangelistic Association's church growth department in 1975 and recruited John Wimber to lead it.

Signs and wonders

Through Wimber he came to accept healing and the gifts of the Spirit. He co-taught the course MC510, "Signs, Wonders and Church Growth", with Wimber at Fuller from 1982, and in 1983 coined the term "Third Wave" for evangelicals who embraced the gifts without becoming Pentecostals. He said that he had himself been healed of high blood pressure through prayer.

Spiritual warfare

From the late 1980s he became the leading promoter of "strategic-level spiritual warfare". He coordinated the United Prayer Track of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement and founded Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs in 1991. He taught that demonic "territorial spirits" rule cities and nations, that they can be identified through "spiritual mapping" and research, and that they must be bound through targeted prayer before evangelism can succeed. He organised prayer journeys to sites believed to be strongholds of such spirits.

The New Apostolic Reformation

In the mid-1990s he began to describe the growth of independent charismatic networks under "apostolic" leaders as the "New Apostolic Reformation", the most significant change in the way of doing church since the Reformation. He founded the Wagner Leadership Institute in 1998 to train leaders in the new paradigm and in 1999-2000 became the "presiding apostle" of the International Coalition of Apostles. He declared that the "Second Apostolic Age" had begun in 2001. He retired from Fuller in 2001.

Dominion

In his later writings, especially Dominion! (2008), he taught that the Church is called to take dominion over the "seven mountains" of society - religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. He identified himself with what he called "dominion theology", while distinguishing it from Christian Reconstructionism.

Key dates

• 15 August 1930 - Born in New York City
• 1950 - Converted; marries
• 1956-71 - Missionary in Bolivia
• 1971 - Joins the School of World Mission at Fuller
• 1975 - Recruits John Wimber
• 1982-85 - Co-teaches MC510 with Wimber
• 1983 - Coins the "Third Wave"
• 1991 - Founds Global Harvest Ministries
• 1994-96 - Begins to speak of the "New Apostolic Reformation"
• 1998 - Founds the Wagner Leadership Institute; Confronting the Queen of Heaven
• 1999-2000 - Presiding apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles
• 2001 - Retires from Fuller; declares the "Second Apostolic Age"
• 2008 - Dominion!
• 21 October 2016 - Dies, aged 86

Teachings and claims

Church growth

Wagner held that the growth of the Church is a measurable fruit of faithfulness and that churches should study the factors that produce growth. He taught McGavran's homogeneous unit principle and its pastoral application to North American churches.

Modern apostles and prophets

He taught that God is restoring to the Church the offices of apostle and prophet (Ephesians 4:11), which he held had been neglected since the early centuries. Apostles are leaders with extraordinary authority over networks of churches or spheres of society; prophets bring direct revelation for the Church's strategy.

Territorial spirits

He taught that Daniel 10 and other texts show that demonic princes rule territories, and that strategic intercession must identify and bind them by name. He developed the practices of spiritual mapping and "identificational repentance" - repenting on behalf of a city or nation for historic sins.

Dominion

He taught that the Great Commission includes the transformation of society by believers taking leadership in its spheres, and that the kingdom advances as the Church gains influence.

Documented controversies

The Queen of Heaven

In Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998) he identified a demonic principality, the "Queen of Heaven", behind Marian devotion, the cult of Diana of Ephesus and other religions, and described prayer journeys to bind it. Catholic and many Protestant readers regarded the book as offensive and without biblical basis.

Spiritual mapping

Evangelical missiologists and theologians, including participants in a Lausanne consultation on spiritual warfare in 2000, criticised the theology of territorial spirits as speculative, and spiritual mapping as resembling animistic rather than biblical thought.^†

Apostolic authority

Critics across evangelical and charismatic circles argued that the NAR's apostles claim authority without accountability or confession, and that Wagner's description of the movement placed new revelation above the historic faith. Wagner himself denied that apostles add to Scripture.

Failed declarations

Some of the prayer campaigns he promoted were accompanied by announcements of the defeat of particular spirits or of coming breakthroughs that critics noted did not occur.^†

Death

He died on 21 October 2016, aged 86, after a period of illness.

Legacy

Wagner was the intellectual architect of three movements: church growth in its North American form, the "Third Wave", and the New Apostolic Reformation. His books, more than seventy in number, gave each a vocabulary and a rationale. The apostolic networks he described are now among the largest and fastest-growing forms of Christianity in the world, and the dominion teaching he promoted has entered political as well as religious life.

Measured against the creeds

The creeds confess "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". In the historic understanding, the Church is apostolic because it continues in the apostles' teaching and is built on their foundation, which is laid once (Ephesians 2:20; Acts 2:42); the apostles' authority is handed on through the Scriptures they wrote and the ordered ministry of the Church, not through new apostles with fresh revelation. Wagner's "Second Apostolic Age" is a claim the creeds do not allow for.

The doctrine of territorial spirits rests on a few texts (Daniel 10; Ephesians 6:12) that do not prescribe the methods he taught; the historic churches confess that Christ has "disarmed the principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:15) and that the Church resists the devil by faith, the word and prayer, not by research into the names of spirits. His treatment of Marian devotion as demonic was a grave misrepresentation of the faith of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Finally, the identification of the kingdom's advance with the Church's gaining dominion over society is foreign to the theology of the cross. The Lord taught that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36) and that it comes as a mustard seed and leaven, hidden and small (Matthew 13:31-33).

Major writings

• Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming (1973)
• Your Church Can Grow (1976)
• Our Kind of People (1979)
• The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit (1988)
• Warfare Prayer (1992)
• Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998)
• The New Apostolic Churches (1998)
• Apostles Today (2006)
• Dominion! (2008)
• Wrestling with Alligators, Prophets, and Theologians (2010) - memoir

Affiliation

Professional musician; Quaker pastor; church growth consultant at Fuller; leader of the Association of Vineyard Churches (1982-97)

Appears in

The Third Wave, the Vineyard and the Kansas City Prophets

Profile

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Life

Musician

John Richard Wimber was born on 25 February 1934 in Kirksville, Missouri, and grew up in Peoria, Illinois. His father left the family when he was a baby. He had no religious upbringing. A gifted musician, he played and arranged professionally from his teens; in the early 1960s he was a member of the Paramours, a group from which the Righteous Brothers emerged, and he later described himself as having been successful in the music business while his personal life was in chaos. He married Carol Kenney in 1955; the marriage almost ended in the early 1960s.

Conversion and the Friends

In 1963, attending a Bible study led by a Quaker layman in Yorba Linda, California, in an attempt to save their marriage, John and Carol Wimber were converted. He threw himself into evangelism and by his own account led hundreds of people to faith over the next years. He studied at Azusa Pacific College and in 1970 became co-pastor of the Yorba Linda Friends Church. He later said that he had been taught that the miraculous gifts had ceased with the apostles, and that he had once asked, after reading the Gospels, "When do we get to do the stuff?"

Church growth consultant

In 1975 C. Peter Wagner invited him to become the founding director of the Department of Church Growth at the Fuller Evangelistic Association. For three years he travelled the country as a consultant, observing thousands of churches. He became convinced that churches growing fastest in the developing world were those that expected healing, deliverance and prophecy.

The Vineyard

In 1977 a prayer group in his wife's home grew into a congregation, first affiliated with Calvary Chapel. Wimber began to preach through Luke and to pray for the sick, for months without visible result, and then, he said, with healings. On Mother's Day 1980 the young evangelist Lonnie Frisbee invited the Holy Spirit to come on the congregation, and many fell, shook and spoke in tongues. The phenomena caused tension with Calvary Chapel, and in 1982 Wimber's congregation joined a small network of churches called the Vineyard. Wimber soon became its leader, and the Anaheim Vineyard grew to several thousand members. The Association of Vineyard Churches grew rapidly in America and abroad.

Signs and wonders at Fuller

From 1982 to 1985 Wimber taught a course at Fuller Theological Seminary, MC510 "Signs, Wonders and Church Growth", with C. Peter Wagner, which included practical sessions in which students prayed for the sick. It became the most popular course in the seminary's history and also its most controversial; in 1985 the faculty suspended it, and a faculty study published in 1987 set out the seminary's reservations.^†

Britain

From 1981 Wimber travelled to Britain, at first through the Anglican evangelist David Watson, and his conferences at Westminster Central Hall and elsewhere from 1984 drew thousands of Anglicans, Baptists and others. His influence on the charismatic wing of the Church of England was considerable.

The prophets and Toronto

In 1988-89 Wimber embraced the Kansas City Prophets, including Paul Cain, and their predictions of a coming revival. When Cain's prophecy of a revival in London in October 1990 failed, Wimber publicly acknowledged the error and in time placed the prophets under Vineyard oversight before distancing himself from them. In 1994 the "Toronto Blessing", marked by uncontrolled laughter, animal noises and falling, began at the Toronto Airport Vineyard; after a year of growing concern, Wimber and the Vineyard board withdrew recognition from the congregation in December 1995.

Illness

Wimber was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1993 and suffered a stroke in 1995. He continued to lead the Vineyard until shortly before his death.

Key dates

• 25 February 1934 - Born in Kirksville, Missouri
• 1955 - Marries Carol Kenney
• 1963 - Converted in a Quaker Bible study
• 1970 - Co-pastor of Yorba Linda Friends Church
• 1975-78 - Church growth consultant with C. Peter Wagner
• 1977 - Home group becomes a congregation
• May 1980 - Mother's Day meeting
• 1982 - Joins the Vineyard; MC510 begins at Fuller
• 1984 - First large British conferences
• 1985 - Fuller suspends MC510
• 1986 - Power Evangelism
• 1988-90 - Association with the Kansas City Prophets
• October 1990 - Failed London prophecy
• December 1995 - Toronto Airport Vineyard removed from the Vineyard
• 17 November 1997 - Dies in Santa Ana, California

Teachings and claims

The kingdom now and not yet

Following George Eldon Ladd, Wimber taught that the kingdom of God has broken into history in Christ but awaits completion at His return. Healing, deliverance and prophecy are signs of the present kingdom; continued sickness and death show that it is not yet complete. This framework allowed him to pray for healing without promising it.

Power evangelism

He taught that the gospel is most effectively received when proclamation is joined with demonstration - "power encounters" in which people experience God's power through healing or deliverance. He contrasted this with "programmatic evangelism" that relies on persuasion alone.

Doing the stuff

He taught that every believer, not only a gifted few, can pray for the sick and minister in the gifts of the Spirit, and developed a simple five-step model of healing prayer. He was known for a relaxed, unhysterical style: "Come, Holy Spirit," followed by quiet waiting.

The "Third Wave"

With Wagner, he described his ministry as a "third wave" of the Spirit after the Pentecostal and charismatic waves: evangelicals who embraced the gifts without the Pentecostal doctrine of a second baptism evidenced by tongues.

Worship

He gave great weight to intimate, extended sung worship, and Vineyard songs and style spread worldwide.

Documented controversies

Signs and wonders

Critics, among them Reformed and dispensational evangelicals and some fellow charismatics, argued that his methods produced psychological rather than spiritual effects, that reported healings were unverified, and that "power evangelism" made experience rather than the word the ground of faith. A study of a Wimber conference in Harrogate in 1986 by a sympathetic medical researcher found mixed results.^†

The prophets

His endorsement of the Kansas City Prophets is widely regarded, including by Vineyard historians, as his most serious error of judgement. He acknowledged the failure of Cain's prophecy.

Toronto

His removal of the Toronto congregation was criticised by its supporters as quenching the Spirit and by critics as coming too late.

Death

After years of cancer and a stroke, he fell at his home in Santa Ana, California, and died of a brain haemorrhage on 17 November 1997, aged 63.

Legacy

The Vineyard movement now includes many hundreds of churches worldwide, and its music has shaped contemporary worship across denominations. More broadly, Wimber made the practice of the gifts of the Spirit normal among evangelicals who did not identify as Pentecostal, and his influence among charismatic Anglicans in Britain was lasting. His collaboration with Wagner also helped give birth to the prophetic and apostolic movements that followed, some of which he himself came to distrust.

Measured against the creeds

Wimber's framework of the kingdom "now and not yet" is closer to the historic faith than the Word of Faith teaching that healing is guaranteed: the creeds confess the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come as the completion of redemption, and the Church has always prayed for the sick without promising that every prayer will be answered as asked. His humility in acknowledging the failure of the London prophecy, and in removing a congregation from his own movement, is to his credit.

The difficulties lie in his doctrine of the Church and of experience. He taught that the Spirit's power is chiefly encountered in signs and in phenomena under the invitation "Come, Holy Spirit", rather than in the means the Lord appointed - the word preached and the sacraments administered (Romans 10:17; Acts 2:38-42). "Power evangelism" risks making the sign the ground of faith, which Christ refused (Matthew 12:39; John 20:29). And the movement he led, without an ordered ministry or a confession of faith, had no settled way to test the prophets he embraced; the historic churches hold that prophecy is subject to the Church and its faith (1 Corinthians 14:29-32).

Major writings

• With Kevin Springer, Power Evangelism (1986)
• With Kevin Springer, Power Healing (1987)
• The Dynamics of Spiritual Growth (1990)
• Worship songs, including "Spirit Song" (1979)