Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. - 1Thessalonians 5:20-22 (ESV)
The Charismaniacal world is quick to cite the first verse from today's key verses - do not despise prophecies. They use this verse as a cudgel to silence correct criticism of the bastardized version of prophecy they support and promote. This abomination is not prophecy at all of course and is a stench in the nostrils of God because it pretends to be Him. It represents lies to the sheep of the Lord but worse, it pretends God Himself said the lies. I know we speak sometimes about false prophets in the abstract and we can tend to minimize exactly how egregious a sin this is to our heavenly Father. Know this beloved, there are always real victims of false prophecies. There are people who will shipwreck their faith because of it. There are those that will fall away, never to return to the faith. There are those who will believe and be deceived, ending up as those in Matthew 7 who will say, "Lord Lord" on the last day. Realize that when you constantly hear people defending the wolves, they do so by absolutely not caring about the sheep. I am always amazed at the tone-deafness of criticizing those that practice discernment by calling them unloving. I have no love for wolves who are devouring the sheep of the Lord. There is ZERO biblical proof that God changed the fundamental understanding of what prophets at prophecy are under the new covenant. Any attempt by man to do so has been clumsy at best and transparent at worst. Prophecy is claiming to have heard directly from God and speaking therefore on His behalf. The bible lays out the rules quite clearly. If you are wrong, you are false. There are no oopsies and mulligans. You are to be marked and branded as false, permanently. Speaking on behalf of the creator of the entire universe should have stringent rules. The bible represents the final revealed will of God. All prophecy is found within its pages. God did not ensure His complete will and then realize 2000 years later that He forgot something that He is now entrusting to Jennifer LeClaire. Or Troy Black. Or Benny Hinn. Or any of these other hucksters and biblical fools. Clairvoyance is not prophecy. Fake psychic parlor tricks are not prophecy. Anecdotal tales designed for oohs and ahhs are not prophecies. I say this all as an important backdrop before we go back to Kansas City and check in on Bicklegate.
For those who may have been on vacation for the past seven months without social media, there was a problem at the mega-church-fiefdom known as the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOPKC). It was revealed in October that the founder, Mike Bickle, was a serial adulterer, sexual abuser, and as it turns out, at least two of his victims were children at the time of the abuse. This all spanned decades. The first victim was 15 at the time when Bickle was an unmarried 20-year-old intern. It lasted for a few years until Bickle had moved on. Later in his 20's and after he was married, Bickle started a relationship with a 14-year-old. He would show up at her high school and was known to be her "boyfriend." This also lasted for a few years until he again moved on. Fast forward a few years and the then 42-year-old Bickle seduced a 19-year-old, who was the daughter of a friend. He spiritually manipulated her, as he did with his prior two victims, by falsifying prophecies regarding their relationship. The last two were told that God showed him his wife was going to die so they could be together. This third relationship lasted at least four years, as Bickle started to build the IHOPKC dynasty and the abhorrently false 24-7 prayer model. The strategy from the IHOPKC leadership has been deny and eventually concede while avoiding any real investigation into events that may also expose the faults with leadership. They have fought the advocate group at every turn and even commissioned a fake investigation by one of their congregants. The leadership and their cohorts such as Steven Strang and his lackeys at Charisma News have smeared the advocates as attempting a coup in the middle of a nasty church fight - which was absurd. They have also disparaged the victims at every turn, even claiming they were only being used by Satan.
Eventually however, the pressure from all sides has forced leadership, which continues to change, to alter course. As being reported here consistently, they are only trying to protect the brand. Initially, they all tried to save Bickle but once minors were involved, they all cut bait and switched to trying to salvage the money-making operations. This past week saw the final service at Forerunner Church, the flagship church of IHOPKC. In the grand scheme of things of course, the actual church is not as relevant as the 24-7 prayer room, which is continuing. As for the service, The Roys Report has reported that Forerunner pastor, Isaac Bennett apologized for the pain and difficulty they had to go through. While I am sure on some level, he is sorry, it was Bennett who was caught last month at a meeting saying that IHOPKC was going to close and open under a new name to avoid liability. Cause you know, what assets would Jesus cover. When the audio leaked, Bennett tried to walk it back by saying it wouldn't close but would begin a "transition and reorganization process." Gee Isaac, that kinda sounds like the exact same thing. Bennett praised the church leaders claiming they have "born the burden of others." No Isaac. They have been complicit in covering up the sins of others to the great detriment of the same people you are claiming to apologize to. There is no honor at IHOPKC. It was founded by the devil, it was run by the devil and the devil is trying to salvage what he can now that God has laid waste to it and exposed the his works there. We only arrived at the closing yesterday because of the massive cover-up that still continues. Remember our opening and the discussion of the true victims of false prophecies and teachings. We are talking thousands of lives not to mention the growing list of actual direct victims.
Bennett is also reported to have claimed that IHOPKC has a "new anointing." He claimed that the Lord is releasing a "new wineskin" and that He will give "strategic insight in how to construct that wineskin because there is new wine." Are you kidding me? Have we learned nothing from the last forty years of Mike Bickle's esoteric and mystical nonsense? Walk through this absurdity with me for a minute. In order for this to be true, in response to Mike Bickle sexually abusing countless women and children, lying about the prophecies for four decades, and creating an unholy 24-7 prayer model that has corrupted prayer across this world, God is going to reward this? Despite the fact that the leadership Bennett claims God is going to be giving this new wine to has spurned justice and fairness at every single turn? It is bad enough that this Charismaniacal mess has never understood the scriptures about new wine and the parable of the wineskins but to carnalize it to this point is so transparently ridiculous. New anointing? IHOPKC was never anointed to begin with! It was all lies! God is actively razing IHOPKC to the ground and as it all falls all around them, they are pretending to prophesy again about new wine? You want godly direction? Burn IHOPKC to the ground and build a memorial there to the memories of the lives destroyed by lying, predatory men, who pretend to hear from God to fill imaginary wineskins which in the end are only filled with the abomination of their own sins, passed off as "strategic insight."
Not only was the current version of IHOPKC satanic, but the entire history is as well. Perhaps no false Christian institution relied more heavily on its own made-up history than IHOPKC. Students who managed to escape all told how they would have to endure hours on indoctrination by watching videos of Bickle and Bickle-ites extolling the prophetic history of IHOPKC. This of course is what cults do, to reinforce the absolutism of their cult leader. With the benefit of history now however, we can know that the entire premise upon which Mike Bickle built IHOPKC was false as well. Roys has also reported this week that one of the key prophecies that was leveraged throughout the last four decades as proof of the God-mandate for IHOPKC and the 24-7 nonsense, is actually false itself. Since the inception of this debacle, Mike Bickle has always told the tale of how he visited the 104-year-old mother of fellow false prophet and predator Paul Cain, when she was in the hospital, in a coma. The tale continues that the mother awoke out of the coma long enough to "prophesy" that "Paul, God is giving to you the world, Luke 4:18." This scripture is when Jesus read the scroll of Isaiah in the temple about preaching the Good News to the poor. The yarn from Bickle then claims that he look up and the clock read 4:18 pm on April 18th, can I get a hallelujah! Can I get an offering plate! Bickle would use this story to fundraise and build the empire that IHOPKC is today. The story concludes that the mother fell back into the coma and died shortly thereafter. When Bickle preached on this he would declare that she died at 4:18, on 4:18, after prophesying Luke 4:18. Bickle referred to it as "divine poetry." Except it really was satanic lies. It turns out the mother's gravestone reveals that she actually died April 19, 1990, and the death certificate indicates the time of death as 9:50 pm.
This is on top of another false prophesy Bickle taught about from Bob Jones, in the early 1980's. Bickle would recount how Jones told him that a "youth movement of prophetic singers and musicians would be raised up." Bickle of course pointed to IHOP as the fulfillment of this false prophecy. Throughout the years Bickle has manipulated people into giving based upon the belief that everything at IHOPKC was divinely ordered directly by God Himself. Except none of it turns out to be true. Let's start with who we are dealing with. Bob Jones was once a highly respected prophet within the Charismaniacal world. He greatly influenced the fake revivals at Toronto and Pensacola. He had claimed to have died in 1975 only to be sent back by God to "reach the multitudes with His love." Well, in 1991 it became apparent that the love Jones was trying to reach the multitudes with had nothing to do with God. He was busted when part of the Vineyard movement as having women undress in his office to stand "naked before the Lord" in order to receive a "word." It is quite telling that even in 1991, the goal was always to protect the brand as this excerpt from John Wimber announcing the removal of Jones from ministry reveals:
