To their credit, the Assemblies of God initially resisted this excess, having seen it all before in the "New Order of the Latter Rain" movement, which they had renounced as heretical in 1950. At one point, they could see plainly that the Vineyard movement, out of which the Toronto phenomenon grew, was influenced by the very Latter Rain/Manifest Sons of God errors which they had once refuted. They were particularly cautious of the Kansas City Prophets of the Vineyard . Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before an Assemblies of God version of the "Toronto Blessing" "flowed" forth at the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida. That particular outpouring became the turning point at which the bulk of the AG movement was brought into what became known as "the River". In spite of protests to the contrary, the Assemblies of Godversion of the "New Anointing" is identical to the Vineyard's version. This is because rather than having had this "New Anointing" come down out of heaven as a "rushing, mighty wind", Steve Hill brought it to Brownsville from England. This followed his asking his British hosts, "where is the Holy Spirit moving in London?", then being directed to the Holy Trinity Brompton church, and finally having hands laid upon him by the vicar, Sandy Millar. (Holy Trinity Brompton is nearly synonymous with the Toronto Blessing in the British mind, having done more than anyone else to blanket the churches in the United Kingdom with this phenomenon. In fact, the expression "Toronto Blessing" was coined by someone on staff at HTB.)Steve brought "it" back to Pensacola, Florida, and to the Brownsville Assembly of God. Perhaps another million people have since made pilgrimages to this location get "it" and take "it" back to their own churches.In this way, what was once primarily a Vineyard and then a Charismatic phenomenon has been brought into the mainstream of the classical Pentecostal - and even the Evangelical - worlds.

A prominent example within the Assemblies of God denomination of a pastor and church radicalized by this "New Anointing" comes out of the testimony of Pastor Steve

The manifestations of this spirit, as you can see, go far beyond the commonly understood gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is not about speaking in tongues, nor even very much about prophecy or divine healing. The manifestation of this "New Anointing" is more likely to bring people into an unmediated experience of power. Joseph Chambers' End Times Digest, March 1997, quotes John Kilpatrick of Brownsville Assembly of God as testifying:
"I have hundreds of times laid hands on the unsaved and I have watched them being thrown across the ground. I mean I have watched them fly through the air, fall to the ground to where they couldn't get up again for an hour or two hours.The next thing you know is, "what shall I do to be saved?" ...Friends, I am not talking hundreds anymore; thousands this has happened to.Thousands have been convinced by the power... We have had people, agnostics and God-haters, businessmen coming into our meetings and they have been thrown into the air up against a wall and hit the ground when we shook their hand."

What are we to make of this "New Anointing"? Is this the Holy Spirit of God doing a "New Thing" among us? Or could this be something fleshly and human, or perhaps even something more sinister? Since the mid 1990's when the Assemblies of God mainstreamed "The River" of blessing, this "presence" that people have been willing to embark on pilgrimages to various locations to find has swollen into a floodtide of unusual manifestations and experiences! Nor is it any longer to be found solely in Toronto or Pensacola. Hundreds and even thousands of other churches are reporting their own manifestations of this "presence". Here is just a sampling of New Wine testimonies reported on the Internet:

Automatic finger pointing - "It was prophesied over me that I was a weathervane... all of a sudden my finger starting pointing at people and in the air towards heaven...I was in a very conservative church and during the service, there went my finger. I sat there for a half an hour that way... The pastor got up to give the altar call for those to get saved.He also fell laughing to the floor.The first pastor managed to pull himself to the podium, still laughing, and said "If you want to get saved, see that lady's finger? Follow that finger..."

Braveheart anointing? - "That night the place (church) was full with two thousand plus persons, and there was a real spirit of anticipation... Pastor**** got up... as he began to exhort the people during the announcements, he took hold of the large Braveheart sword that was there from the night before. He began to get bolder and bolder as he pointed the sword towards the congregation, and charged them to a revived spirit...after two hours...(he) suggested the whole church "Pass under the sword through a fire tunnel". The two senior pastors... would hold up two swords, so as to form an arch...all two thousand of the congregation waited patiently for the chance to be prayed through the fire tunnel".