RICK WARREN, LAVERNE ADAMS, AND CHUCK PIERCE'S GLOBAL SPHERES

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on Oct 28, 2010 in AM Missives, Current Issues, Features, Rick Warren

In Rick Warren, Dr. Destiny LaVerne Adams, And “Apostle” Chuck Pierce and Rick Warren, LaVerne Adams, And Cindy Trimm, here at the online apologetics and discernment Apprising Ministries, I’ve been following the aftermath of the dubious decision made by Dr. John Piper to have Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren as the keynote speaker at the recently concluded DG 2010 conference Think: The Life of the Mind & the Love of God.

By now you’re aware that Rick Warren sought out a little known pastrix by the name of LaVerne Adams, who bills herself:

(Online source)

As you can see, Warren also did the foreword to her new book; note the “driven” in the title:

(Online source)

Since when has the Christian life, as slaves to God in Christ, ever been about living “the life of your dreams?” Answer: Never. It is, however, an easy sell in our postmodern centered on the self (cf. 2 Timothy 3:2) culture. Building our case methodically, since Dr. John Piper pronounced Rick Warren “doctrinal and sound,” then we have every reason to examine those whom Rick Warren recommends.

You need to understand what I showed you in Chris Rosebrough, Rick Warren, And LaVerne Adams, where I gave you a recent segment done by Christian apologist Chris Rosebrough, host of Fighting for the Faith on Pirate Christian Radio. During his review of a sermon by pastrix Dr. Destiny Adams, Rosebrough rightly reminds us:

Dr. Laverne Adams, the lady who Rick Warren sought out;…this is the woman who authored the book about your divine destiny that Rick Warren wrote the foreword to—you know, put his stamp of approval [on]. [He] said, “you need to listen to this woman.”… this is not guilt by association… It’s not like I’m saying, “Oh, what is Rick Warren doing associating with LaVerne Adams?” No, no, this is guilt by endorsement. Why is Rick Warren endorsing the teaching of Dr. LaVerne Adams?

That’s the key question: Why, indeed? She tells us he contacted her:

His prompting to reach out to me for counsel affirmed my calling and destiny as spiritual advisor to great people. Ours is truly a divine connection as I have always been impressed with his ministry and literary work. And now our destinies have been miraculously aligned and driven with purpose.[1]

As such we had now better look closer at her teaching, being recommended as they are by Rick Warren, and apparently even Almighty God Himself connected them together by aligning them “miraculously.” I showed you in Rick Warren, Dr. Destiny LaVerne Adams, And “Apostle” Chuck Pierce that pastrix Adams tells us in her book:

The prophetic ministry of Dr. Chuck Pierce has literally transformed my existence in very practical ways. With his prayer focuses and timely prophecies, I was able to cycle out of some very dysfunctional patterns and make stride toward my apostolic and prophetic calling to the nations. In addition, we are honored that Cathedral of Praise Community Church and International Kingdom Strategy Center, where I have served as the senior pastor since 1997, is recognized as a “Church of Zion.”

This connection with Glory of Zion International strengthens our resolve to actively see the powerful prophetic flow of deliverance transform people’s lives and help them reach their fullest potential and expand God’s Kingdom. This significant connection is also vital to helping me realize the magnitude and international scope of my identity.[2]

This means her church is also partnered together with the ministry of “Apostle” Chuck Pierce; and then later, under the subheading Destiny Clues, the Doctor of Destiny also tells us:

The ministry of Chuck Pierce helps me understand how to recognize the seasons of my life so that I can cooperate with the divine timing of God. In addition I have discovered the dysfunctional vicious cycles that kept me from my destiny and have learned to break them through prophetic decree and prayer focuses.[3]

You will find it interesting to know that our “Apostle” Pierce was also part of “the Lakeland Outpouring Apostolic Team”; you know, of the infamous false prophet Todd Bentley. Pierce’s long-time friend C. Peter Wagner, of the nafarious New Apostolic Reformation, informs us:

On my 80th birthday, August 15, 2010, I officially turned over [Global Harvest Ministries] GHM to Chuck Pierce of Denton, Texas. Instead of continuing GHM, Chuck organized Global Spheres, Inc. (GSI), a new wineskin for apostolic assignment which will carry Doris and me into the future. Chuck is President and I am Apostolic Ambassador.[4]

Wow, “a new wineskin for apostolic assignment”; mighty impressive credentials, modern day Apostles and Prophets supposedly are walking among us here in Mormonism oops, evangelical Christianity. I guess we’d best thank Rick Warren for making sure we’d hear about pastrix Adams’ book so we’d also be blessed by our new Christian leadership; after all, it is written of the early church — And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42).

Holy new revelations Batman, we’d better get onboard quick, we don’t wanna miss out now. Well, in the About section of this “apostolic assignment aka Global Spheres, Inc. [nice touch; the Lord thought to legally incorporate, way to go God!] we’re informed:

(Online source)

O Lord, if I’m found worthy to touch upon these self-appointed sent? “Apostles,” another time we’ll go further into what “Apostle/Prophet/President” Chuck Pierce teaches; but first, under “members” of the Sphere in North America we do indeed find pastrix Dr. Destiny Adams:

(Online source)

With this in mind then, we return to what Pierce says about about “Apostle” C. Peter Wagner:

Peter Wagner has spent more than twelve years helping the Body understand this changing wineskin. During this time, the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, aligned me with Peter and Doris Wagner. What an honor to have been mentored, loved, and received by these two paradigm changing saints. I was introduced to them by Cindy Jacobs, began working with them in the United Prayer Track, and have since remained loyal to their missions and ventures through the years. I have never known anyone who could change more paradigms in the thinking of the Body of Christ than Peter. (Online source)

Let there be no doubt all these are peas in the same corrupt spiritual pod, which we’ll discuss in posts to come. Here however, I’m going to bring to your attention some important background information posted over at the website Talk To Action, where we find C. Peter Wagner Explains The New Apostolic Reformation. The person who who placed this online informs us:

[editor: C. Peter Wagner (who named the movement and also helped create it) explains the New Apostolic Reformation. This article was originally published as Chapter 14 of The Transforming Power of Revival edited by Harold Caballeros and Mel Winger. It was reprinted in Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins (2000:1) [ www.renewaljournal.com ] with the generous conditional copyright extension clause, Reproduction is permitted so long as the copyright remains intact with the text.] (Online source)

So what I’ll quote below is from “The Most High Mucky Muck And Very Exalted Grand Pubah Arch-Apostle” Peter Wagner himself, as he tells us:

During my decades as a scholar, God has seen fit to focus my research energies on certain aspects of church growth for certain periods of time. As I have done that, I have tried to use what I have learned to develop new courses for my students at Fuller Theological Seminary, and many of the lessons eventually become books.

My mentor in church growth research was Donald A. McGavran, the founder of the whole field of church growth. He is now with the Lord, but for years I have had the singular privilege of carrying the title of the Donald A. McGavran Professor of Church Growth. One of the most basic lessons I learned from McGavran was that the best way to discover what makes churches grow is to study growing churches. As a result, my first season of research, spanning the 1970s and into the 1980s, was spent doing exactly that. In retrospect, I now look at this as researching the technical principles of church growth.

During that time, I began to notice something I obviously did not have the mental equipment to understand or to assimilate into my analysis of church growth. I noticed that the churches worldwide that seemed to grow the most rapidly were, for the most part, those that outwardly featured the immediate present-day supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit.

My mentor for helping me make a paradigm shift into what I now call the spiritual principles of church growth was John Wimber, founder of the Association of Vineyard Churches and Vineyard Ministries International. This began my second season of research, focusing first of all on the relationship between supernatural signs and wonders and church growth, then on prayer and spiritual warfare. This began in the early 1980s and continued to the mid-1990s.

My third season of research is now focusing on the New Apostolic Reformation, the subject of this chapter. I am very excited because the new apostolic churches, better than any I have previously studied, combine, on the highest level, solid technical principles of church growth with solid spiritual principles of church growth. I will tell more about that later. (Online source)

Wagner outlines an alleged “movement” he’s detected and then informs us:

This new movement, however, did not have a name. Because I was planning to teach a seminary course based on it, I needed a name for my course. For a couple of years I experimented with “postdenominationalism,” but strong protests from my denominational friends persuaded me that it might not be the best name. Besides many of the new apostolic churches have remained within their denominations. “Independent charismatic” does not seem to fit either because (1) these churches see themselves as interdependent, as opposed to independent, and (2) they are not all charismatic in orientation.

The name I have settled on for the movement is the New Apostolic Reformation, and individual churches being designated as new apostolic churches. I use “reformation” because, as I have said, these new wineskins appear to be at least as radical as those of the Protestant Reformation almost 500 years ago. “Apostolic” connotes a strong focus on outreach plus a recognition of present-day apostolic ministries. “New” adds a contemporary spin to the name.

Although many people were begging for a definition of the New Apostolic Reformation from the beginning, I resisted formulating one until I believed I had a more mature grasp of the movement. Now that I have taught my first Fuller Seminary course about the subject, I believe it is time to take the risk of a definition, hoping that it will not have to be revised too frequently in the future:

The New Apostolic Reformation is an extraordinary work of God at the close of the twentieth century that is, to a significant extent, changing the shape of Protestant Christianity around the world. (Online source)

Now I realize these were lengthy quotes, but it’s very important that you receive the above information about this supposed New Apostolic blight festering within the church visible from the primary source Peter Wagner himself. Ok, with this out of the way, get ready to flip open your Bibles to the book of First America, where a couple of years ago “thus spake Presiding Neat-o Supreme Apostle C. Peter Wagner.”

;) On behalf of God, of course, as Wagner’s taught us that 2001 opened the second Apostolic Age:

(Online source)

Let’s cut to the chase; Wagner and corrupt crew are certainly no Apostles. I personally fear that he and his Apostle pals and palettes are actually seriously delusional; so I’m quite concerned when I see Dr. John Piper citing this obviously false prophet favorably in his 2007 message Treasuring Christ in Planting Churches and Loving the Poor. There, under the subheading Observations on Church Planting, we find Dr. Piper include Wagner among “many leaders” he would agree with:

(Online source)

No, the single most effective evangelistic methodology under Heaven is to do what Jesus—God Himself in human flesh—told us to do: Preach the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name (cf. Luke 24:46-47) and let the Lord add to His Church those who are being saved (cf. Acts 2:47). It sure would seem, however, that the Fuller Theological Seminary connection doth runneth deep.

You may recall that in Questions Concerning Dr. John Piper I reminded you Bethlehem Baptist Church (BBC) is where Dr. John Piper is listed as “Vocational Elder; Pastor for Preaching & Vision; Chancellor, Bethlehem College and Seminary.”[5] Under Resources at the BBC website we find the Library, and then at the bottom of that page under Links we find its Online catalog.

Above our Specially Apointed Grand Poobah Apostle C. Peter Wagner just told us that he’s a former professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission. Although I brought this out months ago, in the online library of the BBC of Dr. Piper—who attended Fuller—we still find today the infamous Third Wave of the Holy Spirit Encountering the Power of Signs and Wonders by the deceived Wagner:

(Online source)

In fact, a search for C. Peter Wagner just now in the online library of BBC reveals a whopping five books by this false apostle/prophet:

Christian apologist Sandy Simpson has collected some informative articles concerning C. Peter Wagner at his fine Deception In The Church website [6]; so for now I’ll just say again, it would seem rather odd for Dr. Piper to appeal to a false apostle/prophet for teaching concerning “spiritual warfare” [7] and, worse yet, to actually encourage his flock to read his warped works:

(Online source)

Well I say, maybe there’s more than meets the eye *cough-Ralph Winter-Fuller* as to why Dr. John Piper invited Rick Warren into the “new” postmodern Calvinist camp where they are deluding themselves that they can supposedly hold to Reformation theology, and yet, practice Counter Reformation spirituality.

Excuse me for a moment while I step into the shade of some sunlight and take a drink of my warm dry ice-water. Ah yes, that paradox just hits the spot; and so, now we can return to the days of Judges: