[UntoHim]

Excerpt from Hank Hanegraaff's statement about the Local Church:

"I actually started my own journey, with respect to going back and looking at the ancient church, as a result of being president of CRI, and being a leader of an organization that believed that a particular group that known as "the Recovery", was cultic. We had position papers on them. When someone would contact us we'd give them those position papers. I met with the leading ones in that movement of the Holy Spirit, and the very things that we said they denied, they affirmed in that meeting, so I pulled all of the statements we had about that organization out of circulation.

We started a six year primary research project on this group (we didn't know it would take that long) . That took me to many different places in Asia where the group is largest, particularly China. And many other places in Asia - Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. And at the end of that research project we came to the conclusion that we were wrong. Well, we splashed in large letters across our flagship magazine, Christian Research Journal, "We Were Wrong". And we told the story of how we were wrong - how what we said before was wrong. Through that we became not separated brothers, we became united.

So we have differences to this day - significant differences - perhaps on secondary issues. But I have no doubt that these are brothers in the Lord. And that their whole move of the Holy Spirit is a move of recovery. It's called the Recovery! (It's called the Local Churches in some places, but it's called the Recovery.) Why? Because they're seeking to recover the truths that were taught historically in the ancient church, and then to apply them today. And one of the great truths that they have uncovered, as part of the recovery, is deification. And that was the very thing that was foremost in our mind, and in the minds of many cult experts, that made them a cult. They say that "we can become God". They do say that, but they don't ever say that like a Mormon would say. They say that in that we can become a God, but not as God is in the Godhead. Meaning we can partake of the energies of God, we can partake of the essence of God, for God is ennoble in his essence. And so they're recovering truths. Well that started me....They're looking back throughout history at the church and recovering truths that had been lost. Maybe there's some truths that I'm missing as well.

And that really became not only a point of unification (instead of carping from the fringes and saying "that's a cultic group") we met together and it changed our perception, in fact, it was people in that move of the Spirit that I saw in far-flung places around the world that gave me a hunger for life. I knew about the Lord, and I knew doctrinal truth, but I did not experience the life that some of these people, who may have had less intellectual or spiritual or theological acumen that I have, but they had a living, vibrant relationship with the Lord, which I pined after, and that opened the floodgates for me."
-
-