Third Wave Legacy – An Eye-Witness Account

by Ethel McLenachan

When I look back on my years of church life, I am able to see the advance of the false teachings of the super apostles and prophetic ministries movements. In the eighties we were singing songs like, “I Am a Part of the Restoration; that God is doing in the earth”. We were involved in all night prayer services pulling down strongholds and singing militant army songs. It started back then and I was unaware. My husband & I had just been baptized in the AOG Church .

Our church became involved with Yonggi Cho and the positive confession movement. In our morning prayer meetings we would point to the East and point to the West affirming our victories and we attempted to build a prayer tower like Yonggi Cho had. We also had a banner on the wall, about reaching the world for Christ by the year 2000. Ha! Ha!

We were encouraged to attend the yearly John Wimber seminars. Vineyard ministries began to set up congregations in New Zealand under the guru teachings of Peter C. Wagner.

Something new was happening in the church. We all felt it but didn’t recognise it. Now I know that the Third Wave was being ushered in. We had come into church life toward the end of the Charismatic Movement and were part of the beginning of the Third Wave,the Signs and Wonders Movement.

The church in which I was involved during the Charismatic Movement was a large Church. It began as a Bible based Church that preached that Jesus was coming soon and all of the “old fashioned” doctrines like sin and repentance were weekly food.

When the change came we were hearing terms like kingdom , restoration, taking the cities, pulling down strongholds and becoming

of power”. The light went out of the church and the sheep scattered. That church is not even a shadow of its former self.

The Apostolic Church in New Zealand subsequently gained the strongest foothold.

The move was toward the apostolic way, the way of establishing through Christian politics the Kingdom of God on earth. We were being taught that we must take back what was lost to Satan and restore the earth for Jesus. We were spiritually stomping on Satan’s head and doing damage to Satan’s kingdom (so we thought).

Christians began to hunger, not for the Word of God but for emotional experiences. Christian Psychology became the order of the day with churches ministering to their people through their minds rather than their spirits. No longer when a person came for counselling was it suggested that he repent. The advice was “God loves you”, I’ll pray for you, believe and you will live happily ever after. “Just believe and you will receive.” Oh yes, there was the one about reaching back to the time when you were in the womb and we would pray for the healing of whatever took place there.

No wonder I got confused and decided that I wasn’t sure where the church was heading and walked away. I have been out of it except for slight attendance for approximately twelve years. I have been watching from the sidelines.

The Kingdom Movement has magnified and grown in those years. I am now up to date and in the present time I don’t see the fruits of the labours of the church to establish the Kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth . I see darkness enfolding as people’s minds become dimmed through drugs, alcohol and gambling. I see promiscuity, homosexuality, violence and cruelty abounding and engulfing society. I do not see the love for one another in the church of which Jesus spoke.

Efforts to establish the Kingdom has increased. I see the kingdom seminars and conferences being filled up. I see a move to get men to become better husbands and fathers, I see churches arranging dinners so that people with problems and hang-ups can be made to feel good about them selves. I see nations being called to repent, not so much for the sins of now but for past wrong doings.

I don’t see the call for individual repentance. I see people joining the club and becoming “Christian” and I see man made programs building churches but not building the body of Christ.

Along with the efforts to establish the “kingdom” has come a wave of apostles and prophets. Super Apostles are running the churches with their fanatic desire to control the members of their cult like congregations. They use mind control tactics such as, “if you don’t give you won’t be blessed” (to put it simply).

Then there are the “prophets”. These ones bringing prophecies to the churches and the nation. The words that they bring generally come from something they claim to have heard directly from God. They say things like this:

“This is the word of the Lord – ‘You’re going to be a first fruits nation for this. I’m going to raise up apostles, prophets, and intercessors You are to gather the prophets I’m going to mix them with the apostles I’m going to put a communication system in place There’s an early-warning device that I’m going to put in New Zealand Not only for New Zealand, because from the rising of the sun, the Son of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings.’

‘And the Lord is going to use you to warn the nations of the earth “For I’m going to connect you with other prophets” But the Lord says, “New Zealand, I have created you for this day, to put the government upon My shoulders, to lay a foundation, to see those islands transformed New Zealand, you are a jewel in My hands, and I’m going to use you to affect the whole world”, says the Lord.'”

Prophetic Word for New Zealand

Spoken by Cindy Jacobs over Mike and Jeannie Knott

Global Congress on Community Transformation
Guatemala – 31st October 2002

I have witnessed certain people of both sexes in a Baptist Church passing around such prophecies and hanging on to every word as if these words were Scripture themselves.

I witnessed in an Apostolic Church a “prophet” from Britain come to tell us that Lake Taupo would erupt, by a certain date, frightening the congregation into preparing for the event by storing food. It never happened but the Church leadership just ignored it. Everyone just thought, “Oh Well!

These prophets and prophetesses of today have a global agenda and network because their desire is in establishing the global kingdom of God on earth.

Church Goers actually get excited about these prophecies. It is a word that fits in with the program of kingdom establishing and a word upholding the Restoration Movement’s desire that these things be so.

A move of the Third Wave that has become very noticeable is an over emphasis of a so called move of the Holy Spirit. The “Christians become emotionally involved in seeking a thrilling experience to the point that they bark like dogs ( so I hear). I haven’t actually seen it. A Pentecostal service that I attended recently babbled incessantly in some sort of tongue and another one said if we don’t “get into it” we will “miss it”. I am happy to report that we missed whatever it was we were to get into.

This move has been going on in the church now for many years, I went back as far as I could with the growth of it. I can see that the generation of now is already born into this. They are being taught about being part of a band of people that call themselves, Joshua’s Generals, Elijah’s Army, Joel’s Army, “Generals of Intercession”.

The latest event in New Zealand is a spiritual army dressed in black, doing the Haka and marching on Parliament. They call themselves Destiny Church and are led by Brian Tamaki.

They can’t, in other words help themselves because they are unable to discern the truth from the false move that is sweeping the Church today. They are caught up in the excitement and emotion of it all.

There is another fast growing movement in New Zealand at the moment. It is the Movement of the Unchurched Christians. Those

who are unable to sit under the teachings that is bereft of the power of the word of God.

1Jo 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world