The Latter Rain

The Latter Rain

….The latter rain is YHVH’s great end time ministry.  This concept comprises the restitution of the church (Body of Christ) to it’s rightful place… the soon to come, Last day revival, and the harvest of the souls before the great and terrible “Day of the LORD”.  It is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh…promised to us in the last days, and the restoration of apostolic and prophetic gifts.

Latter Rain concepts are becoming so widespread today that there are many web sites and organizations devoted to discrediting it. This is good because it spreads the controversy upward that we may all examine it in the light of truth. Anyone that understands the latter rain in a spiritual sense thinks it absurd to be accused of being part of a sectarian movement that started in 1948 because people back then had visions of the latter rain coming. True sheep recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd. Just as important, the pressure exposes the confusions and divisions of Babylon so that we can recognize her.

The Latter Rain as a “movement” began with Pentecostal power. This alarms the many conservatives or fundies that already deny the Baptisms of the Holy Spirit as subjective experiences. As long as you do not lose sight of what is most important, you can get more of God; true Christians truly love each other, the true Sons of God are those led by His Spirit, signs and wonders follow. You shall know them by their righteous fruits.

There is no way you can pigeon hole people that believe in the latter rain of the Bible, they are too varied. There are too many people in the church that get hold of a little of the latter rain spirit and then go off in their own ways to validate it in the flesh. What it really is, is a daily walk with the Lord by His spirit; when a unity of this spirit comes, it will reveal the manifest sons of God. Some that came out of the spiritual move tried to make latter rain into some kind of church or denomination or something but they all failed.

There are latter rain songs and bands

Nor can you put the latter rain into different camps like what William Branham’s followers did. Whatever Branham’s teachings is of the latter rain, it cannot compare with the fact of the promises given to us of last day spiritual power and end time harvest. Problem is that people associate Branham to a latter rain “movement.” That’s the Sharon Orphanage thing from 1948. All kinds of preachers have great ministries but when the focus is too much on the man, the false teachings get spread along with the good ones. William Branham had nothing to do with the Sharon Orphanage outpouring except to minister to a few people. Branham’s quirky Jesus only teachings only confused his followers and gave the heresy hunters improper cause to denounce the whole latter rain movement. By Branham’s life being taken prematurely, it simply showed that he was not really the final Elijah that his follower’s thought him to be and the fact that people still believe him to be so, proves his followers as being decidedly off themselves.

Latter rain detractors have been getting me mad for years and I keep thinking that I should do something about it but I don’t. It hurts as well as gets me mad because we don’t believe these heretic notions that they say we do. You can believe in the latter rain with or without all those false doctrines. It is hard to stay mad though, laugh out loud when you think how stupid it all is.

The heresy hunters are fiercely anti-pentecostal. There is damage being done because the good is condemned with the bad. The Pentecostal move on a person is experiential, an objective and subjective spiritual power manifested where God is revealed in a mighty way. It is good to expose the false doctrines within pentecostalism but when pentecostal power itself is denied, it denies the third person of the trinity by quenching His spirit. As soon as apologetics is used as a club to suppress God’s truth and power, apostasy is clearly evident as well as the delusion and deception, that’s the good news. Apologetics without the spirit of love is of the letter, not the spirit at all and if the doctrinaire is so extreme or too strict to see where the Lord is speaking outside of their own narrow theology, a bias sets in and a false spirit of supposed rightness causes them to lash out with anyone in disagreement. That is true in any theological discipline and it is a false spirit every time.

We have a power that these detractors cannot even hope for unless it comes from the true source and accepted by faith in love. I think that it should be mere fear than jealousy because if we are truly right, they are in deep trouble. More often, it is just ignorance, paranoia and kookiness. The heresy hunters don’t seem to get this partand need to take some wisdom fromGamaliel, “and now I say unto you, refrain from these men and let them alone.  For if this consel or this work be of men, it will come to nothing. but if it be of God you cannot overthrow it: lest haply you be found to fight against YHVH.

Giftings in the body of Christ should not divide us, but it does. We should always keep this thought that no matter how bad the body of Christ gets, there are those among the remnant that can put these things under their control. The fact of a sovereign God aside, He will not stand in our way if we choose to disobey Him, The Bible is pretty clear about how we should conduct ourselves with the spiritual gifts and give examples of what happens with the abuse of them.

I looked through some of the sites around, here is a list of teachings that are charged to the Latter Rain Revival:

• Belief in healing
• manifest sons of God
• emphasis on spiritual gifts, fasting, prayer and prophecy.
• allegiance to the five-fold ministry of Ephesians 4:11
• a distrust of denominations
• a last day revival
• an outpouring of God’s spirit in the last days
• Joel’s army