Latter Rain: Redefining Prophets and Prophecy

The Latter Rain movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s redefined what it means to be considered a “prophet” or to have a “prophecy”. In Biblical terms, a “prophet” is a person used as a mouthpiece for God, in many cases speaking of current or past events with the purpose of correction, blessing, protection, and towards the end of the Old Testament, to describe curses of the Mosaic Law for failure to keep the Commandments of that Law.

Leaders in Latter Rain redefined this term to be “seers of the future”, which the ancients would have called “fortune tellers” and associated with sorcery — a crime punishable by death under the Mosaic Law. Latter Rain “prophets” defended this by equating their ministries to that of Christ, and referencing passages from the New Testament describing the Jews condemning Jesus by associating him with “fortune telling”. Unsuspecting converts did not realize the difference, and as a result, put these “prophets” in such positions of authority that many of them formed cults of personality.

Worse, the Latter Rain movement redefined the term “prophecy” in such a way that it resembled trying to shoot a target in the distance with scattered buckshot from a 12-gauge rifle. If most of the “prophecies” missed the mark, but one single ball happened to strike a target of some sort, their alleged “gift of prophecy” was “accurate”.

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