As Bicklegate continues to spin wildly out of control, it was only a matter of time before Dr. Michael Brown started damage control for himself and his ministry. Now, Dr. Brown has not been an overly vocal Bickle backer. He was understandably taken aback by the initial allegations and did not want to believe them. It must be very difficult to realize we have been deceived for such a long period of time by someone we supported. He was asked to speak in November at IHOP and in my opinion was used by IHOP leadership, who we now know was trying to cover up the scandal. He was promised that IHOP would hire a truly independent outside investigative source, which they still have not done to this day because they never intended to. IHOP initially approached this to try and save Mike Bickle but once the allegations of minors were involved, they have moved on the protecting the brand. IHOPKC is a money generator. People make their livings off of it, so we should have expected people would fight for it with all carnality. The problem is that starting with his November sermon to IHOP, Dr. Brown has continued to be on the wrong side of this and has even supported absolutely reprehensible people like Steven Strang. Very recently, Brown and seven other leaders, including Patricia King of all people, put out a statement regarding Bickle and IHOP that was relatively disgusting. The second link above is to a devotional I already wrote about this statement. The first link is to the radio show Brown did last week trying to apologize for some things while absolutely not apologizing for far more and far worse. Let us reason once more and try to highlight the hypocrisies of Dr. Michael Brown during this misadventure.
"I do not like being called into these situations. I am more at home preaching to the whole body, we've sinned, we've all fallen short and all of us get on our faces together. I am much more at home calling for the refiner's fire to work in all of our lives. I do not look at myself as "I am the one who is going to fix and correct everything. This is the one thing I would prefer to not do. To call for discipline in the body. Or I have to lead a certain charge." - Dr. Michael Brown
I found this opening salvo quite telling as it speaks to the core problem with Dr. Brown. This is a completely honest assessment he makes here of himself. If there are generic corrections to be made, Dr. Brown has no problem with that. He saw a threatening error in hyper-grace, and he wrote a book against it. When the circumstances call for individual correction however, he would prefer to not do it. He does not like being called to correct individuals and refuses to do so. Joseph Prince for example, is the king of hyper-grace. That is all he preaches, and he is leading people directly to hell through his preaching. He is a wolf, pure and simple. Brown may have written a book that essentially calls all of Prince's teachings utter heresy, but he will never call Joseph Prince a heretic. In fact, when I was a guest on one of his radio shows, I got him to admit that he considers Prince a "good brother in the Lord, with some holes in his theology." No Dr. Brown. A hole in your theology might be a misunderstanding of eschatology not preaching grace to excuse sin. Either way, quite a tell in his opening statement. Brown continues:
"I am very uncomfortable but I understand why people reach out to me. I understand that I have a certain testimony in the body. But when the call is from the Lord and others in the body make the appeal for me to be involved, I step forward in that way but some say, why don't you call out this one and this one? It's not my ministry or calling to do. It is no one's calling to just sit around and call out everybody and be the policemen. What we do is we are so selective. We do it with the camps of those we don't like but we don't do it with our own camp and we often don't do it with our own lives." - Dr. Michael Brown
Dr. Brown is spiritually allergic to discernment and discernment ministries. He views them all through a lens of personal grievance because they often call him out for his refusal to call anyone false. We saw this in his recent roundtable discussion with Justin Peters. In it, he refused to call out Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and some guy who claimed Jesus once woke him up by playing a saxophone at the foot of his bed! Brown plays this sleight of hand game to excuse his inexcusable position. He tries to always set the bar for a false teacher as a hell-bound reprobate. Now, the reality is we are not to judge anyone's final destination so he then wields it to say he cannot call someone false because he is not prepared to consign them to hell. Clever, but transparent. Our job is to test everything and say what is false and what is true - that is discernment. It is not our job to say this one or that one is hell-bound. These charges of selectivism are also quite hollow. They arise from a false dichotomy that Brown operates under. To Brown, and many others, you are either Charismatic or Cessationist. It never occurs to him that both extremes are wrong. The bible does not support cessationism, but the modern Charismaniacal expression of the gifts is woefully false. When you refuse this camp theology, you do not find yourself defending your camp because you do not hold to any. Brown's notion here that no one is called to call out what is false is scripturally asinine as the entire New Testament supports such. His goal here is to lessen the value of discernment too. He views his ministry work as important and called by the Lord or demanded by the body, but discernment ministries just sit around playing policeman. We get people in the body asking for help too Dr. Brown. We too feel called to correct error so that some might be set free from the bondages of the false teachers you enable.
