In a Grace Ministries tape, November 1988 called, "My Father's House," Kansas City Vineyard Pastor, Paul Cain, expresses this eschatological view:
I don't know what the second coming is to you, ...but let me tell you he's coming to you, he's coming to his Church, he' s coming to abide in you, to take up his abode in you... I want you to know he's coming to the Church before he comes for the Church. He's gonna perfect the Church so the Church can be the Image, be Him, and be his representation.In this talk, Cain defended himself that he wasn't denying the rapture, but spoke of Jesus coming again to indwell His Church as a corporate body where the whole body experiences Him all at the same time. This is Latter Rain doctrine. Allegorical Pentecost to the Latter Rain adherent is a coming of God to the individual -- it is a personal experience. To them, the allegorical Feast of Tabernacles is celebrated when God comes to the entire Church and fills it with the manifest Glory of God. Cain told his audience,
We are not just looking for glory in God, we want God to be glorified in us. Oh, let God be glorified in us, let this be your intent. Everybody in this room tonight that has the intent to follow through and act accordingly, the Lord says I will truly visit you, and I will make this real to you. The Lord will commit himself to you.Then he tells us how to follow through and act accordingly so this glory will be made real to the Church before Christ returns.
Just dump all that stuff, just dump all that carnal knowledge, and dump some of the stuff we have learned through the years.Is he saying dump your doctrine and your hope and go for this unbiblical experience? Tricia Tillin of Banner Ministries in England has noted these peculiar doctrines:
The Glory, in the Latter Rain understanding, is the visible manifestation of the Spirit. Now, in light of the satanic nature of this deception, it is not surprising that deceived Christians are being led to expect a manifested spirit and not the visible return of the Lord Jesus. I believe the way we are headed is into teaching about the return of the "lord" to his church, in glory, before (or perhaps even instead of?) the physical return of Jesus.This doctrine, once declared a heresy, is finding a place in all denominations through the unity of charismatics with other faiths. Cain says out of this unity will come an army, Joel's Army, a Latter Rain belief based on the book of Joel:
I told you about ...this recurring [35 year-old] vision I had...The angel of the Lord said, "You're standing at the crossroads of life. What do you see?" And I saw a brilliantly lit billboard which reads, "Joel's Army now in training." ...I believe one day soon Joel's Army will be in training ...until it graduates into the stadium ...But a right understanding of the plan of God for this generation brings this tremendous inclusion... God's offering to you, this present generation, a greater privilege than was ever offered any generation at any time from Adam clear down through the millennium.Paul Cain claimed this was the plan of God for this generation -- everybody -- all denominations -- because it is the plan of God for the "last of the last days." On a Grace Ministries tape of a talk given by Cain some years ago in Missouri, he told his audience,
I had a vision of you people coming from ...a circle of maybe a hundred miles and I saw people coming from every major city within that circumference and a great conclave was taking place, and it was the training of Joel's Army...I believe that people are going to come together by the thousands and train for the Army of the Lord. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I mean, that's long overdue.When enough pastors and other leaders are trained, for the Army of the Lord, he expects the greatest revival of all time to result. During his talk in Missouri, Cain described his vision for this endtime revival:
All of the stadiums and all of the ballparks are filled with hundreds of thousands of people. They have hearses lined up, ambulances lined up. They have hundreds of stretcher cases and all that. And there are men standing there in the pulpit, there are women standing there that haven't had a change of raiment in three days, they haven't had a drink of water, they haven't had any food and they're preaching under the mighty power. "Why, did you see that last night on ABC? Did you see that man levitated? Did you see all those preachers levitated? Did you see that fixed pose? They stood there for 24 hours in a fixed pose, worshiping and praising God, and hundreds of thousands came by and fell on their face and nobody pushed them. And nobody shoved them. They fell under the power of God." And everybody everywhere is crying, "Oh, this is God! Jesus is Lord!" It seems like the whole world is turning to God.Recently, Cain spoke at Christ Chapel in Florence, Alabama, and shared a dream he'd received when he was 19 years old. Again, the emphasis was on huge numbers of people in stadiums:
I had a dream that became a recurring dream, and it was about all the stadiums -- and we've told this hundreds and hundreds of times all across America, all over the world, in fact -- and I saw these stadiums and football fields, soccer fields and sports arenas, all of them filled with thousands of people, sometimes over 100,000 in each place. (August 30, 1995, evening session)In the Alabama meeting Cain connected his prediction of stadiums-full of soldiers in his Army of the Lord with the reality of stadiums-full of warriors in the Promise Keepers army. He said,
We call it "the last days ministry," ...I believe we're on the threshold of it...And I know the Lord is coming to His Church and he's going to prepare us...We're closer to it than we've ever been before. Who would think that there would be a group like Promise Keepers who'd already be setting the stage and filling stadiums with tens of thousands of people, ...They'll be over 100,000 in no time, and maybe they already are. I think an event's already planned that way. So, what if God shows up at just one of those meetings? That could just be the kick-off for "last days ministry." Think about that...What if 120,000 get together and then the fire comes from heaven and the glory of God...Cain was probably referring to the 70,000 to 100,000 pastors expected at the February Promise Keepers' meeting in Atlanta, but what if his words came true concerning the PK goal of filling a stadium in each of the fifty states in the year 2000? In a Promise Keepers gathering in the Detroit Silver Dome stadium in April 29, 1995, Promise Keeper founder Bill McCartney also spoke of a great army:
We have a great army that we are assembling. They're the Christian men of this nation. However, our leadership, our clergy are not uniform. Our clergy are divided...There's no unity of command...there is tremendous division in our clergy. We have to assume that responsibility. We have to say, "Are we impacting our clergy in a way that's going to take them and make them all that they have to be in order to lead this army?" Because the shepherds are the ones God's chosen to lead us out of here.McCartney later continued,
This gathering in Atlanta should exceed 100,000 clergymen. Why? Because we have many more than that, and every single one of them ought to be there. We can't have anybody pass up that meeting. If a guy says that he doesn't want to go, he needs to be able to tell us why he doesn't want to go? "Why wouldn't you want to be a part of what God wants to do with His hand-picked leaders?" ...I think Almighty God is going to rip open the hearts of our leaders. I think He's going to tear them open. And I think he's going to put them back together again as one. One leadership. We've got to have one leadership, one leadership only. We've got to have everybody hitting on all cylinders. There's only one race. It's the human race. There's only one culture. It's Christ before culture. Christ culture -- that's all that there is.Cain said we are on the threshold of God's glory possibly coming upon 100,000 pastors who want to be Promise Keepers. When you read this in conjunction with Latter Rain proponent Francis Frangipane's new book, The Days of His Presence, there is reason for concern. Is Promise Keepers the catalyst for the anticipated Latter Rain "revival"? In a write-up on the book, Frangipane himself says,
The Spirit of the Lord is moving on so many fronts. In just the past ten months we have seen racial reconciliations take place among Southern Baptists in Atlanta; in Memphis, leaders from Pentecostal denominations, once divided along racial lines, are now reunited, while white Evangelical leaders repented with blacks in Chicago. We can truly say the Lord is moving mightily on his people. Mix in the March for Jesus and the 750,000 Promise Keepers, and we are seeing the stage set for what I believe will be the greatest awakening of this century. [emphasis mine]March for Jesus drew 20,000,000 this year. Promise Keepers is currently drawing 750,000. That adds up to 20,750,000 Christians, and Frangipane is saying that this multitude will set the stage for revival because of reconciliation of racial issues and Christians ministering to one another in unity. Frangipane describes this next great awakening in his book:
This book chronicles the vision the Lord gave me in 1971...The Holy Spirit revealed the baptism of glory that the Father has prepared for the end of the age.Notice this: God's visible glory will rise and appear on His people prior to Jesus' return. This is new revelation -- it's Latter Rain teaching, and Frangipane says 20,750,000 members of Christ's body are being prepared to have the visible glory of God come on them! This prophetic word says that the Church will be glorified and changed to be like Christ Jesus our Lord -- not when we see Him face to face, but when we reconcile our differences. This appears to be the goal of the ecumenical unity movement. Jesus can't come back until everybody agrees and gets along. Promise Keepers seems to be openly embracing this theology.Prior to Jesus Christ's physical return, His living presence will companion the church in ever-increasing power. During this time the visible glory of the Lord will rise and appear upon God's people.
Paul Cain said, "You can look ... for the Glory of God to appear just as soon as our lives and everything are in order." What does it take to "get our lives and everything in order"? In the Fall 1993 PK magazine, Men of Action, we read,
We believe that we have a God-given mission to unite men who are separated by race, geography, culture, denomination and economics...We are dedicated, then, to addressing the division that has separated the Body of Christ for too long. [emphasis mine]Notice that racial harmony is cleverly lumped together with demoninational unity as if they were equatable concepts. While there is nothing harmful with racial reconciliation, doctrinal unity is being forged at the expense of truth. The PK Ambassors training manual tells Ambassadors that they "must avoid negative political, doctrinal, and denominational remarks and discussion" in order to build this "relational bridge" of unity (p. 3).
Frangipane says we are on the verge of a manifestation of glory because of this "unity":
The Lord revealed to me He would first unite His church, reconcile the racial issues in Him, and then fill the church with glory! The first two phases of this restoration are well under way! The last phase, the preparation for glory, is at hand. Indeed, in several places manifestations of God's glory are already occurring.Both Promise Keepers and March for Jesus are dedicated to this type of unity. Frangipane's "new" revelation states that the first two phases of this restoration are underway -- and are being fulfilled by PK and the MFJ. Promise Keepers and March for Jesus are ripe for a visitation by the Latter Rain spirit. Cain said so and so did Frangipane. What makes this unity dangerous is this:
(a) Doctrinal differences are being set aside in order to tear down denominational walls for the sake of demonstrating what is being called biblical unity.
(b) This is the door through which Latter Rain "manifestations" of "glory" enter!