- 4 months ago
John and Jed examine the shocking new Firefly report that brands Mike Bickle—a central figure in the International House of Prayer (IHOPKC)—a chronic sexual predator. They trace how unbiblical ideas of “holiness” and the so-called “Moses model” of leadership create fertile ground for abuse in Pentecostal and charismatic circles. Drawing connections from William Branham’s theology to the modern New Apostolic Reformation, they explain how these movements elevate leaders beyond accountability, distort the fruits of the Spirit, and silence whistleblowers under the threat of “touch not God’s anointed.” Together they discuss IHOP’s attempts to erase its past, the continuing danger of its theology, and the likelihood of a new “Joshua figure” rising to carry Bickle’s mantle.
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Defining “Holiness” in Cultic Movements
07:00 Mike Bickle and the Firefly Report Findings
10:30 The Moses Model and False Authority
17:00 Jed’s Personal Experience with a False Prophet Father
23:00 Touch Not God’s Anointed: The Weaponization of Holiness
27:00 IHOPKC, Denver House, and Ongoing Abuse Patterns
33:00 Consequences of False Leadership Models
38:00 Reading from the Firefly Report
43:00 IHOP’s Attempt to Rebrand Without Repentance
49:00 Mantles, Succession, and the Ghost of Mike Bickle
56:00 From Bob Jones to Modern Prophets: The Mantle Tradition
1:01:00 Closing Thoughts: Why the Cycle Keeps Repeating
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Defining “Holiness” in Cultic Movements
07:00 Mike Bickle and the Firefly Report Findings
10:30 The Moses Model and False Authority
17:00 Jed’s Personal Experience with a False Prophet Father
23:00 Touch Not God’s Anointed: The Weaponization of Holiness
27:00 IHOPKC, Denver House, and Ongoing Abuse Patterns
33:00 Consequences of False Leadership Models
38:00 Reading from the Firefly Report
43:00 IHOP’s Attempt to Rebrand Without Repentance
49:00 Mantles, Succession, and the Ghost of Mike Bickle
56:00 From Bob Jones to Modern Prophets: The Mantle Tradition
1:01:00 Closing Thoughts: Why the Cycle Keeps Repeating
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of
00:00:46a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.
00:00:51Jed, it's good to be back, and after me having spent a one-week podcast as a lone gunman,
00:00:58which has a—I don't know if you're familiar with the X-Files, but there was this group
00:01:03of IT guys that were the lone gunmen.
00:01:05That actually is a term of pride for me and everybody else.
00:01:08It may not be, but we—you know, there's this thing of holiness.
00:01:14I know you probably haven't heard the podcast yet, but there's this aspect of holiness that
00:01:19we talk about often.
00:01:20And I have people ask me, well, what is holiness?
00:01:22Because we were taught it was one thing.
00:01:24The Bible says something else.
00:01:26What is your opinion?
00:01:27And I've actually wanted to do something by myself on that for a long time for two reasons.
00:01:33By myself, as I mentioned in the podcast, I avoid things that open people up to attack.
00:01:40And if I talk about holiness, every single cult that every single one of the people who
00:01:45are working with me came out of, they will attack them.
00:01:48You're unholy.
00:01:49You're unclean.
00:01:50You left because you were unclean.
00:01:51And there's this variety of insults that, ironically, every single cult is programmed
00:01:58with the same exact insult.
00:02:00And they just—it's a barrage that comes.
00:02:02So I figured I would take the heat on that one.
00:02:05And interestingly, it was such a big topic.
00:02:09I thought, you know, there's probably 20, 30 minutes.
00:02:12How can I fill an hour with it?
00:02:14I actually only got through about a third of what I had to get into.
00:02:18But the summary, which I'm bringing this up because it relates a little bit to what we're
00:02:23talking about today.
00:02:24The summary, if you study all of the different aspects of what is holiness in all of these
00:02:30varieties of cults that have emerged, holiness really equates to two things.
00:02:35Number one, if you support the leader, you are holy.
00:02:40And number two, if you remain within the group and you never, ever criticize the group, you are
00:02:45holy.
00:02:46Neither of which of those two things are biblical.
00:02:48So you can't say that it is biblical holiness, but that is the standards that have been set.
00:02:54Where it comes into play with what we're talking about today, especially with regards to supporting
00:03:00the leader, what happens is when the leader falls, even though they're falling outside
00:03:06of what is biblical holiness, the group has this false sense of what is holiness.
00:03:10So there is this naturally programmed, indoctrinated nonsense in their head that we must lift up
00:03:18the fallen, even though he is unclean and unholy.
00:03:22And in many cases, like we will discuss today, may be unfit to be a leader.
00:03:27That aspect of holiness, which is totally unbiblical, is what the group uses to bring the person back
00:03:34into power.
00:03:35So what we're seeing today is literally, what you and I are going to talk about is literally
00:03:40an example of failed holiness, which is unscriptural holiness.
00:03:45It's interesting that you, the word holiness, as soon as you started talking about it, I thought
00:03:52very similarly, like along the lines of the two qualifications, are you supporting the leader
00:03:59and you're staying within the group and that being the sort of boundaries of what holiness
00:04:06is.
00:04:06And it's interesting because there are a lot of other virtues talked about in every community.
00:04:14I mean, every community, every form of moral language, you need to sort of use these virtues
00:04:22to talk about what is good behavior and what is bad behavior.
00:04:25That's just how language works.
00:04:29But there are terms that are much more fungible than other terms.
00:04:34If you talk about patience, people know what patience looks like.
00:04:41And there's this sort of universal characteristic.
00:04:45Of course, all of these in any community are going to be a little bit fungible based off of
00:04:52who is talking about it.
00:04:53Like, honesty is a good example.
00:04:59In politics, there's going to be a whole lot of people who talk about dishonesty, but
00:05:03it's sort of always dishonesty is only sort of looked at the other group and not my group.
00:05:13There's people can be inconsistent about the way that they uphold these particular virtues.
00:05:20But I think, largely, there's a lot of virtues like honesty, patience, compassion, even these
00:05:28are things that are tied to specific types of behavior.
00:05:33And you can look at these types of behavior, and whether it's the leader who's doing it, or whether it's the follower, the lowest in sort of the social standing, there's this sort of conceptual accountability
00:05:49that you can hold to different individuals by appealing to these virtues.
00:05:56But something like holiness isn't, like, it's not tied to anything.
00:06:02When I say holiness, like, as soon as I started thinking about that, when you said holiness, I was like, man, that has meant so many different things for so many different religious communities that I've been a part of.
00:06:17And outside of a religious community, it is pretty meaningless.
00:06:23If I went and was talking at, you know, my work, and I was like, okay, we want this work atmosphere, we want our teachers to always be patient, kind and holy, people would be like, what?
00:06:37Okay, that clearly that last one doesn't fit in the group, because holiness is a very specific thing to religion, and religious communities.
00:06:50And as you pointed out, like, it is clearly used to sort of give reverence, not to God, but reverence towards the community leaders and the community itself.
00:07:06And then I think it's very fascinating.
00:07:08I think this is totally germane to what we'll be talking about today, because we are now in a situation where Mike Bickle has been, again, very clearly weight measured and found wanting, according to so there was just a new kind of report or a Firefly report that was done by several different
00:07:35religious communities and religious communities and religious leaders and religious leaders and this has been a long time coming there was an investigation that's been, they did an initial report of this back, oh, I want to say back in January, and we talked about this report back in January, and that sort of gave the first glimpse, there were some problems with that first report.
00:08:00And so they worked on it and now have released, I think this was a few weeks ago, they released this report that says in no uncertain terms that Mike Bickle was a chronic sexual predator, and kind of just confirm a lot of things that we have been talking on this, this podcast about.
00:08:28So this isn't going to be new news to anybody who's been following this podcast or this series, but it is nice to have a more salient sort of confirmation of what has been said.
00:08:45So two different things I wanted to summarize that and I can go into that in more detail.
00:08:52And two, I wanted to also talk about IHOP because IHOP still exists, John, like it's still going, they didn't, they didn't shut down, there's a new leader who's talking about vision and casting visions for the future with it.
00:09:08And I think that this idea of holiness is going to be very germane to the sort of attitude that IHOP is presenting in the wake of this Mike Bickle scandal.
00:09:25Absolutely. And the parts that I really didn't get a chance to go deep with, because it literally would turn into a masterclass on holiness, to go really far with this.
00:09:37But Pentecostalism, if you study the history of how Pentecostalism progressed, it introduced the false notion of what holiness means.
00:09:46There was a period of time in which if you could speak in tongues, that was considered holy.
00:09:51You had to have, you had to be filled with the Holy Ghost, which they said was, if you spoke in tongues, you either did or you did not.
00:09:58Then some people realize that that's not quite biblical.
00:10:02So Pentecostalism split over this notion and continued to grow and split.
00:10:07But in the end, there's two things at play here.
00:10:11Pentecostalism trained charismatic leaders, which I gave that history in the podcast, on the notion that a leader inside of one of the Pentecostal type groups, and later the charismatic groups, the leader is more of a Moses model figure.
00:10:30He has to be the Moses who led God's people out.
00:10:33And you find people like Chuck Smith, who whenever there are sexual problems going on, Chuck Smith says, you guys cannot judge this person.
00:10:42He's outside of your judgment.
00:10:43He's to be judged by God because we follow the Moses model.
00:10:47And for me, that model, it was not new to Chuck Smith.
00:10:52It was carried forward by others, John Wimber and others, even though I know the Wimber group will deny that.
00:10:57If you look through history by his own statements, he's carrying the same model forward.
00:11:03But you go to today and look at the extreme examples that we have of this because of leaders who are abusing their power.
00:11:10And it all comes back to this.
00:11:12There's a verse in 1 Peter that says,
00:11:15For the pastors, be shepherds of God's flock that's under your care, watching over them, not lording over it, over those who are entrusted to you, but being instead examples for the flock.
00:11:27In other words, lead by leading, don't lead by governing, lead by teaching others to lead themselves.
00:11:34But what we have is the model was flipped upside down because they could not get correct the views of holiness.
00:11:42And so after the speaking in tongues, this developed and it transitioned into, you can tell if somebody's holy by whether they're wearing long skirts if they're a woman, long pants if they're a man.
00:11:53And it's in defiance of 1 Samuel, you know, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.
00:12:00And they just totally reject this.
00:12:02The irony is, when you look at the fruits of the Spirit, and there's this big debate, are you cessationist, are you not?
00:12:10I see the whole debate is irrelevant because each time you talk to people on either sides of the debate, they're specifically talking about speaking in tongues and visions.
00:12:20They're not really talking about the fruits of the Spirit.
00:12:23One of the fruits of the Spirit, for example, is servanthood.
00:12:26How many of them are going to argue, I just really want to serve somebody else.
00:12:31And I am not a, I'm a continuous.
00:12:34I want to serve and I want to always serve others.
00:12:38You don't find that as one of the gifts of the Spirit that they're arguing over.
00:12:42So once you set up the false idea of what is holiness, you've eliminated the fruits of the Spirit.
00:12:47You have flipped upside down the leadership model for the pastor.
00:12:51Well, now what happens when the pastor has severe personal issues or mental health issues that are causing them to do things that are dangerous and harmful to others?
00:13:01Regardless of, you know, in Mike Bickle's case, I realize the nature of the allegations.
00:13:08I understand what that is.
00:13:09But take it further than that.
00:13:11You have people who are either preying upon the emotions, preying, some of them physically abusive.
00:13:17We've seen all kinds of examples.
00:13:19And it all comes back to the fact that a false foundation of holiness was set up.
00:13:25A false set of leadership was set up where people are to be followers, not trained to be leaders themselves.
00:13:31And people were given full power and control over the body of Christians.
00:13:39Well, and I think that if you look at it, what is being prioritized to?
00:13:44So you talk about the fruits of the Spirit and similar to like what I was talking about at the beginning of there are virtues.
00:13:58I mean, the fruits of the Spirit, I am trying to remember.
00:14:03I'm sure I'm forgetting, but like kindness, patience, peace, goodness, gentleness, joy, self-control.
00:14:10I know that generosity, these are all ones that I'm pretty sure are, I know that I'm missing a few.
00:14:19But those are sort of like the characteristics and virtues of like, this is something like, you know, the tree by its fruit.
00:14:27When people are demonstrating these fruits of the Spirit, there's, they're demonstrating these sort of virtues that are universal,
00:14:36that are both something that leaders do and something followers do.
00:14:41And if it's something the leaders are not doing, it's just as big of a deal as, as those who are following.
00:14:50Like everybody is accountable to demonstrating these sort of fruits of the Spirit and maintaining these virtues.
00:14:58But when you get flipped upside down, and I think that this is what I'm hearing from what you're talking about with the term holiness,
00:15:08is when you basically, you have this sort of nebulous virtue that gets to supersede all of these other ones.
00:15:15And now that everything comes after that.
00:15:21So whether you're being peaceful, whether you're being patient, whether you're being gentle,
00:15:27whether you're demonstrating charity and generosity,
00:15:32obviously, all of these probably co-leaders would say, hey, those are all good things.
00:15:38But it's, it's sort of secondary to the larger sort of virtue of holiness, which is, or reverence for the community and for the leader,
00:15:50which is totally dependent on the individual.
00:15:54And I think that this is a really good explanation for why, in particular settings,
00:16:00with someone, particularly a leader, is called out for either poor character ranging to like outright abuse.
00:16:16Because there can be this defense that rises up against whoever is calling them out,
00:16:25where the individual who's calling them out suddenly becomes the one who is committing the wrong
00:16:32and not the, not the leader who is being criticized.
00:16:39So a good specific example of this is, which I know that I've mentioned on this podcast before,
00:16:48but in 2000, I believe it was in 2015, there was a man who was a part of the board of directors on my father's ministry team.
00:17:03And my dad had like appointed this man, like he was, it's not like this was just some random guy.
00:17:10But this man was like very a ministry sort of partner with my father and worked for my father
00:17:16and in conjunction with my father for quite some time.
00:17:19And he, along with other individuals, it wasn't just him.
00:17:23And this man started seeing a lot of the abusive and deceptive and immoral behaviors that my father was demonstrating.
00:17:38This was just right at the beginning of when he was starting to demonstrating some like sexual,
00:17:46what was called at that time as sexual indiscretion.
00:17:49And it is unclear exactly what my dad was doing, but there were red flags.
00:17:54Basically, there were red flags in, in during that period of time.
00:17:58And then there was massive red flags about prophetic manipulation and how my dad was deceiving people.
00:18:08And that was something that was well known to me at that time and well known to other individuals who had kind of interacted with my father at this time.
00:18:17Now, this is, this is well before some of the more egregious things that happened with my father, but this was sort of in the lead up to it.
00:18:26And so this man, although I'm not naming him because I don't think that he, he wants his name out there.
00:18:32Um, and, um, but I've spoken to him about this story, um, even quite recently.
00:18:38And, um, he contacted, he sent out a letter to Mike Pickle, um, and to Bill Johnson and basically Bethel, IHOP,
00:18:48and then some of the other churches, um, that my dad was ministering towards.
00:18:55Um, and I've read this letter and it was clear, um, it was probably a little bit understated, um, because he was wanting to still protect and respect my dad.
00:19:09He is sort of that tension of trying to not break this holiness or reverence for the leader while also being like, Hey, these are all of these things that he's doing, um, that are not acceptable and not okay.
00:19:23Um, and basically, so he, well, he first confronted my dad about it and my dad did not repent from these things and, and, um, blew them off.
00:19:33And then, so then he went to, um, the leaders about this and, um, I've talked with this man and he told me that he immediately started getting phone calls from people he didn't know who were like these enforcers.
00:19:48Um, there was this church in Florida, um, where, um, some high up leaders were calling him and doing some like pretty intimidating stuff, talking about like, um, how he was coming against, um, God's chosen and sort of the repercussions that would happen for speaking against God's chosen.
00:20:09Um, and the consequences that, um, that, um, might incur both, both for this sort of whistleblower and for my father.
00:20:20And so rather it being my dad's behaviors leading to the consequence of his own actions, it's suddenly the whistleblowers responsibility.
00:20:30Like, look how you could destroy this man's life rather than, well, he's the one who's doing these horrible behaviors.
00:20:39And he basically got, I don't know if I, I shouldn't say this, um, for sure, because, because, I mean, he spoke up, he did, I think that he spoke up.
00:20:50He was clear, he sort of washed his hands of the situation, um, he resigned from being on my dad's board or my dad kicked him off one or the other.
00:21:00I can't remember.
00:21:01Um, but nothing really came about of it from it because he warned several different leaders, but if these leaders don't care, um, then nothing is going to happen.
00:21:12And then, and then of course, um, some of the more egregious behaviors of my father, especially when it comes to sexual abuse, um, in the following five, six, seven years, um, it really went off the rails after that.
00:21:27And I think in part, some of that was because my dad, there was like he, a lot of his failures suddenly did come to the surface.
00:21:36A lot of, um, accountability was brought to him where it was like, Hey, these are all the things that you're doing.
00:21:44You can't, you shouldn't do this.
00:21:47And then basically no consequences happen.
00:21:50And I, I do believe that that led to my father becoming way more egregious in his, uh, behaviors because it was sort of, it's like, well, if there's going to be no consequences, why not just keep going with it?
00:22:03Um, but I give that all as sort of an example of, um, this flipping when you have a sense of holiness.
00:22:13Um, and that is, that is very much the language, um, that these enforcers and intimidators use.
00:22:20And it's been something that has, uh, was directed towards me too.
00:22:24I've heard it firsthand of basically like, how dare you speak against God's chosen?
00:22:32This is the same thing that Lisa Stribling is saying about Mike Bickle and, and this sort of about, um, Deborah and, and, um, Tammy and my mom and other, um, individuals who are coming forward and speaking about Mike.
00:22:46Like it's this, uh, sense in which it doesn't even matter if what they're saying is true because it's breaking this holiness, um, uh, construction.
00:23:00Uh, and it's, uh, it is disrupting the sort of, um, reverence of the community.
00:23:08And so therefore it doesn't matter everything else.
00:23:12All that matters is that you're violating the sort of artificial, um, construction of holiness that was created very much for the purpose of, of empowering the, uh, cult leader and, um, the boundaries of the cult community.
00:23:29Well, one of the real problems is that the, whenever a leader falls to sex, it usually makes bigger news.
00:23:38That's really one of the problems because yes, the leader did something awful and yes, it's horrific and probably should be broadcast so that there are no further victims.
00:23:47But that's not usually the only area in which they fail because, so if I'm, if I have a carpenter crew and we're doing trim carpentry and I find this one guy who can carry nails like nobody's business.
00:24:00He's got big old arms and he can carry a whole bucket of nails and I want to teach others how to be a trim carpenter and I choose him because only his only saving grace of being a carpenter is he can carry nails.
00:24:14Well, when he gets up and teaches them to hammer and he's breaking through drywall and destroying the house, I've chosen the wrong person for the job because I focused on one single area that he's good at and ignored everything else.
00:24:27And a lot of these leaders, they will, the people will focus on, well, he had a vision.
00:24:31He can see a vision.
00:24:32So therefore he's immediately a teacher, a mentor, a spiritual guide, in many cases, a mediator between God and man, the leader, the, he's the all in wonder.
00:24:43He's, he's the Swiss army knife of a pastor because he can, he can have a vision.
00:24:47And, and frequently we find that the visions themselves also aren't really true.
00:24:53And so they try to defend him in other ways.
00:24:55And it, it turns into this mess because they've chosen the wrong person for the job, but nobody is willing to admit it.
00:25:02It's, it becomes a, another analogy, the, the one Bob uses, the emperor with new clothes.
00:25:07Once everybody starts to see that the person's naked, they just continue in the nakedness rather than, wait a minute, let's get this guy some clothes.
00:25:15We don't like this and it turns, you know, it turns devastating for the victims who are wanting a better life, but they're being led by a person who's really incapable of giving them the better life.
00:25:29Well, and I think that you're totally right where sex scandals are the moment where it's sort of kind of all falls apart.
00:25:40Unfortunately, not, not even that can show the emperor has no clothes at times.
00:25:50Like what we've talked about Bob Jones and other people where there were sex scandals.
00:25:55And then two years later, he's back within the prophesied and doing everything.
00:26:01And then, um, so clearly it's, it's something that even, even when these sex scandals happen, that in of itself, um, doesn't always jar the community loose to, to ask questions about the leaders.
00:26:15Um, but I mean, with Mike Bickle specifically and with others, there are a hundred different red flags that happen before the sort of sexual indiscretion too.
00:26:30And, um, um, because people don't want to speak up and don't feel the freedom to speak up, um, only in instances where there's like really over really extreme abuse.
00:26:46Do have, have I personally seen, um, people within the church communities have the sort of, uh, freedom and authority to speak out and for change to actually happen.
00:26:59Um, one, one example of this, that this is happening right now and happening with people that I know, um, there is the Denver house of prayer.
00:27:10I think it's just called Denver house now.
00:27:12Um, but, um, the leaders of it are, are Brian Kim and, and Corey Russell.
00:27:18Um, the, these are former international house of prayer ministers, um, who, who sort of migrated to, um, Denver.
00:27:28Uh, they had some questions about, um, their behaviors and some, some ethics that was going on with the leadership about making decisions that, um,
00:27:40um, ruling the group specifically, Brian, um, was ruling the group and making decisions that without like consulting the rest of the board and team.
00:27:51Um, there was some discussion about just, uh, uh, abusive sort of verbally abusive and intense, um, behaviors.
00:27:59And there was, um, a lot of, a lot of questions that were rising up about them back in 2023 and, uh, uh, uh, ironically, um, and perhaps bleakly, uh, they had Mike Bickle on their board of like, they were, they put together a board of, um, basically like an over oversight council.
00:28:20It might've been oversight was the term.
00:28:23Um, and Mike Bickle was of course, one of the members of the oversight team in 2023, um, which at the end of 2023 is when the Mike Bickle scandal surfaced itself.
00:28:36So, um, that's not great.
00:28:39But then in, I think it was 2024, there was an online petition that had 200 different signatures for people for transparency and for accountability, um, with the, the Denver house, um, this church about basically just about abuse and, and, um, about the sort of character.
00:29:03And I've seen this too with, I don't know with Brian, but with Corey, I remember seeing just like the disregard that Corey had for volunteers.
00:29:14And, and, um, there was a couple of instances that I remember seeing specifically of him being extremely like demeaning to staff members and to volunteers.
00:29:26And this is like, this is something that is a huge red flag, but you're not going to see any change.
00:29:33And from, from what I understand, I looked this up, um, over the last week, I wanted to check back in about this.
00:29:39I don't think that anything has ever come about.
00:29:42There was like these 200, um, signatures about, Hey, we need to have sort of a, an investigation about the, the, uh, procedures and, and the behaviors of this leadership team.
00:29:55Um, and I'm pretty sure nothing has ever happened from it because there isn't a sex scandal involved.
00:30:02There isn't, you know, the smoking gun.
00:30:05You're not going to have, um, people outside of the church take notice to, if there isn't a sex scandal.
00:30:11This is another huge problem with the IHOP stuff is that everyone has hyper-focused, especially news organizations and media outside of the International House of Prayer,
00:30:23have obviously hyper-fixated on the sex scandal aspect of it.
00:30:28Um, but that's just one, uh, symptom, uh, obviously a very huge symptom, but, uh, a larger underlying disease that has a lot of different symptoms of, of, um, prophetic abuse, of, um, verbal abuse, of, um, coercion, manipulation, of, um, uh,
00:30:50demeaning, uh, demeaning behavior, like, uh, a lot of really domineering, I should say, domineering behavior that was demonstrated with, um, a lot of the leadership.
00:31:03And that I still see demonstrated with all of these, uh, leaders, like, until this is addressed, this is going to be something that continues.
00:31:11You're going to continue having leaders who speak to their staff with, like, outright contempt and disregard.
00:31:19And I don't, I don't know of a whole lot of people who are really talking about that because it doesn't grab headlines, of course.
00:31:25Um, but it's one of these things where it's, like, it's, it's violating all the sort of fruits of the spirit.
00:31:31And in a Christian community, especially, these should all be red flags.
00:31:36And hopefully, if people are paying attention to those red flags, you are, um, going to cut off some of the worst behaviors before they become these horrible behaviors.
00:31:48You're going to see the red flags in an IHOP or a Mike Bickle or a Forerunner Christian Fellowship.
00:31:54And it's never going to become this big cult that it became because people are going to say, hey, this is not good.
00:32:00I mean, it should have happened way back with Bob Jones.
00:32:03Bob Jones should have never been a prophetic leader of multiple religious communities because he was, he was abusing his wife.
00:32:13He was physically abusing his wife during all of this different time.
00:32:16And he was kind of open about it.
00:32:18A lot of people knew about it.
00:32:20And not just that, but prophetic abuse and all these different things.
00:32:25And, but if you, if you say that, of course, people are going to say, well, you can't, you can't question God's chosen.
00:32:32And God used Moses.
00:32:35God used David.
00:32:36God used this individual, this individual who are all fallen and fallen short of the glory of God.
00:32:42And just because they're broken doesn't, or just because they've done these bad behaviors doesn't mean that God won't use them.
00:32:49One, totally discreet.
00:32:51Let's have a higher standard for these individuals just in general.
00:32:58And two, how do you know they're God's chosen?
00:33:03They could just be liars.
00:33:05And a big, a big indication that they're liars is because they continually lie and abuse their staff.
00:33:12Like that is a big red flag.
00:33:14Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started?
00:33:18Or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
00:33:28You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:33:35On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
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00:34:14You know, I grew up under the same type of mentality.
00:34:18Touch not God's anointed.
00:34:19That was the phrase that we always use.
00:34:21And to find that it's used today, and we were stuck in the 50s and 60s in the Branham cult.
00:34:26To find out that here in 2025, they're still using that same phrase.
00:34:31It's a little bit unbelievable.
00:34:32And they do exactly what you do.
00:34:35Whenever somebody who is great falls to either sex, money, power, any form of abuse, they say, well, look at all of the bad examples in the Bible.
00:34:45And the real problem comes with the – as I mentioned, they've twisted the meaning of the fruits of the Spirit.
00:34:52Well, they've also twisted the meaning of the passages.
00:34:54Because if you read and understand the Bible for the very examples they gave – like you mentioned King David.
00:35:01They'll say King David had his issues, yes.
00:35:03But look, our King David has the same kind of issues.
00:35:06He's falling to whatever is the case.
00:35:08But because the people aren't taught the context of the Bible, they're very seldom will mention, well, the consequences of what King David did impacted the entire nation of Israel.
00:35:21This was a big deal.
00:35:22This was not something small.
00:35:23And yes, he did continue.
00:35:25But was it the right choice?
00:35:27We don't know.
00:35:28The Bible doesn't necessarily mean that it was the right choice.
00:35:32It's an example of this very bad thing happened and it impacted everyone.
00:35:37That was the example given in the Bible.
00:35:39Well, in today's world, the people have the same impact on their churches.
00:35:45They can do something devastating that impacts the entire church.
00:35:49And in many cases, that whatever it happened, whatever situation it was, could have been avoided had they not had full control and authority over their church.
00:36:00Yeah.
00:36:01In the mainstream churches, there are usually sets of checks and balances which prevent things like this from happening.
00:36:07Yeah.
00:36:08And, you know, the power is shared among several people.
00:36:11So when a leader gets steps out of line or has some sort of a mental health issue, other people recognize it and say, hey, you probably need to step down.
00:36:19Let's let's correct this.
00:36:21And the very sad part about this, as it relates to not just Bickle, but many of the others, had some of these things been taken care of early on by the people, had those checks and balances been in place, he might have remained fit.
00:36:36But this whole thing that we're talking about today may have never happened.
00:36:39He could have corrected himself.
00:36:40And I'm talking very early stages because once you turn into a predator, you are unfit forever, in my opinion.
00:36:48But there were some very early signs, warning signs that I think could have been caught and weren't by some of the leadership.
00:36:54Where it gets really problematic is that as the leadership starts to turn like this and it turns into a defense, you can watch it come out into their sermons.
00:37:05They're defending themselves in the sermons.
00:37:07They're issuing new prophecies.
00:37:09You and I have talked through some of those before.
00:37:12So the spiritual nature of the group actually molds itself to fit the defense arguments against the person who is a predator.
00:37:21And that molds the whole culture.
00:37:23Just like the consequences of King David, the culture in the church has a consequence that comes with uplifting these leaders and putting them into authority and to defending them afterwards.
00:37:34Yeah, and so this segues well into what's happening at IHOP now because International House of Prayer is still cooking.
00:37:48So just to take one step back, I just want to read very quickly the Firefly report.
00:38:00I know I mentioned it at the beginning, and before I forget to sort of conclude that thought, I'm just going to read directly.
00:38:12The Firefly report provided testimony, findings, establishing, concluding that Mike Bickle is a long-term and chronic sexual predator who used the power inherent in his leadership position
00:38:28to control, groom, to control, groom, manipulate, and intimidate people so that he could sexually abuse them for his personal gratification.
00:38:37This abuse included victims who were minors.
00:38:40His tactics included spiritual and emotional abuse, as well as explicit sexual abuse.
00:38:47The Firefly report further notes that Bickle conspired to keep these abuses hidden for many years.
00:38:54It appears Bickle's ongoing sin and behavior during and before his time at IHOP KC was influential in the spread of abusive behavior through other staff members who then victimized more unsuspecting victims.
00:39:10While Mike Bickle has admitted to some of these actions, we note that the admission lacks genuine marks of confession, including that the confessions were not voluntary, complete, or to date, accompanied by any signs of genuine repentance.
00:39:25So that's sort of their concluding paragraph.
00:39:28There's much more to this document.
00:39:31But that was sort of the overall summary of the document.
00:39:36Which that should be the end-all, be-all of this conversation surrounding Mike.
00:39:42If anything, this investigation might be, I don't actually think that it was particularly lenient on Mike, but this is, there's a lot of individuals who are in this sort of same Christian circle as Mike.
00:40:05And I think that there's no doubt that this is a true and accurate conclusion.
00:40:16And I believe that some of these could have been even stated with more veracity, especially in the focus was on Mike Bickle, but the sort of systemic nature that this was pervasive in IHOP leadership and that there was abuses going on that weren't just perpetuated by Mike.
00:40:35There was a sentence in there about that, but I think that there was, there is still much more to be said about the culture of the abuse that was developed at IHOP.
00:40:50So this is, this is the, that is the sort of conclusion that was made of the independent investigation that went on about IHOP Casey.
00:40:59IHOP Casey has not said anything publicly about this, um, report, um, from my knowledge, uh, there has been nothing spoken of on pulpit about any of this fallout.
00:41:17Um, and from what I can tell too, the name, Mike Bickle has not even been mentioned in the last, um, year or even year and a half, um, because they are now moving on.
00:41:33Um, and, um, I watched this, um, video, um, by, um, Joseph Taylor, who is, um, now become the, I can't remember what he said.
00:41:46It's not, not lead pastor, but he is sort of the lead of IHOP.
00:41:51Um, um, I don't know if it was the president.
00:41:54I can't remember what his, his title, um, was, um, director.
00:41:59Maybe it was director of the International House of Prayer.
00:42:02Um, but Joseph Taylor, who I've never, I don't know.
00:42:06I don't know who is like, I think I'm somewhat familiar with the name, but, um, it wasn't like he was around the International House of Prayer when I was there in the aughts and, um, 2010s.
00:42:19Uh, but anyway, he, I watched this whole video, um, that was released, um, on September 17th.
00:42:28So about a month ago, um, about the visions and values for next season.
00:42:33And he talks about vision for IHOP and it's really eerie because on one end, there is less of the sort of Mike Bickle prophecy.
00:42:45Um, it leans, it leans less of, of aggressive than what I, I mean, for so many years, IHOP was so aggressive in its stance about everything from whether it be the end times to Israel to, um, just, um, prophecy in general and sexuality.
00:43:08Um, and, um, all of the sort of points that the, about revival, all of these things that Mike Bickle and Bob Jones and others would, would slam and hit that.
00:43:20It is softened quite substantially, um, and Joseph in this video is talking almost like you would see someone talk at a funeral where it's very, um, solemn, um, but hopeful.
00:43:39It's very look forward, not look back.
00:43:42Um, it is very, um, um, mourning a loss without ever talking about what that loss was.
00:43:52And I think it's really interesting because, um, you were saying, you know, with, with these falls, like when, when, with David, like it affected the whole nation of Israel because of the decisions that he made, like the consequences of those actions were felt not only in his life, but within the life of the entire history of, of Israel and the kingdom there.
00:44:20Like the, like the, there were demonstrable consequences to the horrific behaviors of King David.
00:44:28And in this same sense, you have this international house of prayer, which is clearly a shadow of what it once was.
00:44:35It is, it is far less, um, financially and, um, sort of the community is, is, is, uh, thinned, the financial backing is thinned, the people who are on the pulpit are not recognizable, are not important figures in the new apostolic reformation movement.
00:44:58You don't have the same gravitas, gravitas and authority, both in the way that they're speaking and just who's speaking.
00:45:05Like it clearly is a church that is, um, limping.
00:45:11Um, yet there is no discussion about why that's the case, uh, which I think is a terrible, um, a terrible indication that there, if the international house of prayer continues to exist, I do not believe that there is going to be any substantial change.
00:45:32And there's any reason just because you've removed Mike Bickle doesn't mean that in his place, another Mike Bickle will rise up.
00:45:40I mean, if, if the international house of prayer gains more authority and recognition in the future, um, I, it probably will be because a new cult leader sort of, uh, assumes, um, position within the community because the vehicle that they built is still there.
00:46:04Um, and they're not tearing out the building and, and rebuilding from the ground up, they're not establishing what went wrong.
00:46:14It's this sort of like, oh my goodness, Mike Bickle did this horrible thing and it's separate to this whole, um, identity of the international house of prayer.
00:46:27Like if you go on to the, their website, um, the whole thing is scrubbed.
00:46:32There's not a mention of Mike Bickle on, um, the international house of prayer website, which I understand on one end is good because it's like, they're removing him.
00:46:42They're no longer revering him.
00:46:44They're not like digging, like different than what, um, Lisa Stribling is doing where maintaining that he is, um, a victim of, of that.
00:46:59Mike Bickle is actually the one who was, um, right.
00:47:03And, and that he was the victim of a smear campaign or something like that.
00:47:07Like at the very least IHOP is not doing that.
00:47:11Um, but they are, it very much is trying to like scrub and whitewash everything, all of their history to sort of, um, ignore all of the negative and horrible things that have happened.
00:47:27And in doing so, there's not accountability, there's not healing.
00:47:31Um, there is not opportunity for growth.
00:47:36There's not opportunity for vindication.
00:47:38There isn't like the people who were wronged within the community do not to get to have any sense of, um, healing from knowing that like, okay, these wrongs have been made right.
00:47:51And these things that were horrible, um, these victims either directly of Mike Bickle's, um, abuse or indirectly of Mike Bickle's abuse or other abuse from leadership, none of that is being communicated.
00:48:06Um, and I just think that it's so eerie how you have this sort of ghost town, um, that is on its early stages of trying to swing back up into a cult again.
00:48:22I mean, that's, it's, it's, it's the cult leader has died.
00:48:25They're waiting.
00:48:26It's like the King is dead.
00:48:27Long live the King.
00:48:28Someone let's reestablish a new King in, in the wake of Mike Bickle.
00:48:35Um, let's still talk prophecy in it.
00:48:38Several times, Joseph, um, Taylor talks about what the Lord has been speaking to him, which is pretty common in that, in the charismatic world in general.
00:48:50So like, I don't want to critique that, um, as something that is uniquely horrible, but just the, the cavalier way in which they use this language around prophecy and about, this is what God is saying to me about the next chapter of our story without any sense of like reckoning with reality.
00:49:12It's so, and I think that's what, it's just so disconnected from reality.
00:49:18So disconnected from the consequences of Mike Bickle's behavior.
00:49:23So disconnected from the consequences of the systemic abusive behavior.
00:49:28Um, that was at IHOP since its beginning, that was independent and in conjunction with Mike Bickle.
00:49:35Um, Mike Bickle was not the only abuser within that community.
00:49:40Uh, and it's hard because like, I see individuals like Ed Hackett.
00:49:44Ed Hackett is a prophetic leader of IHOP who is still on the board, who I grew up with.
00:49:50I went to his house when, when I was a kid, I was friends with his children.
00:49:55He was friends with my mom and my dad.
00:49:58And the Hackett family was like very close to, um, the hoods and to Artleys and to all of these sort of, um, central families that grew up at the center of IHOP.
00:50:12And to see him getting up there and acting like nothing has happened, if not worse, acting as if they have had a loss, like that they're sort of, which I mean, to some extent is, is true.
00:50:26Um, but this, it's this sort of like languishing in the sort of, it's like licking the wounds without realizing that you were the one who wounded yourself sort of thing.
00:50:38Or without having any sense of accountability of like, well, how did these wounds come about?
00:50:44How did, how did this happen?
00:50:46And with no indication that it's not going to happen again, because what is, what are the policies being changed?
00:50:54Like, I think that, um, Ed Hackett and Joseph Taylor, like, I think that they owe it to their congregation and they owe it to their former congregation.
00:51:04All of the individuals who used to be a part of the International House of Prayer to actually deal with the reality that went on for decades at the community that they helped, um, establish and create.
00:51:20And the sad truth of the matter, because the way that people are indoctrinated and because the leadership has been trained in this method, this Moses model, the sad truth is it really doesn't matter what this report states in the first place.
00:51:37Nobody's going to really adhere to this report when you're in that type of mentality, when you're being trained that it is a Moses model, the leader cannot fail.
00:51:46The leader is God's appointed.
00:51:48He, he is beyond question.
00:51:50You cannot question the leader.
00:51:52Well, these people on the outside are questioning his leadership.
00:51:55So the entire mechanism that is trained, manipulated into their heads, it is such that they will, they will just deflect anything that comes from the outside.
00:52:06The change has to come within.
00:52:08And how do you do this?
00:52:10How do you break through the minds that have been programmed in this Moses model?
00:52:13It's very difficult because it's not a scriptural model.
00:52:17And even, you've probably had this experience, I know that I have, when you take somebody who is programmed in, in the cult and you actually show them what the Bible says in context with regards to whatever this is, whether it's Mike Bickle's situation or anything else, they will always go to the leader over the Bible because it is the Moses model.
00:52:38He's the one who's bringing the new fresh word that is superior to the word that is written.
00:52:44So in the end, it's not a New Testament church.
00:52:46This is an Old Testament, Moses model, law-abiding church.
00:52:51And in many cases, they're not abiding to the laws that are written in the Mosaic law.
00:52:56So it turns into a mess of pure chaos.
00:52:59And there's a book, I think it's, I'm drawing a blank, it might be Jude.
00:53:04It says that if you try to uphold the law and you fail in one single point of the law, you have failed the whole law.
00:53:10So if you're living under that model, you're literally, you're living outside of God's grace.
00:53:16And that's what this church model has become.
00:53:19Well, and when you have this sort of broken model, if you're not fixing it, if you're not addressing the things that went wrong with it, you're leaving the sort of vacuum for the character of this cult leader to be replaced with another.
00:53:37I don't think that it is a coincidence that in the latter rain movement and in sort of the worst examples of the Pentecostal movement in general, since Gaui, there have been this sort of clinging to mantles.
00:54:04There's, there's been taking on the mantle of Elijah, like that was a huge thing that Branham and Bowie and all of these different individuals sort of tried to walk in a particular authority and spirit.
00:54:22And I saw a lot of that when Bob Jones died, my dad and Bobby Connor, another prophet.
00:54:30So I'll name Bob's, which make it all more confusing.
00:54:36But when Bob Jones died, Bobby Connor and Bob Hartley both started prophesying that Bob Jones was coming and visiting them in after he died, like his spirit was coming and visiting them in their dreams and in person to like share the mantle of.
00:54:58So Bob Jones, so Bob Jones, the mantle of Bob Jones was being given to Bob Hartley and Bobby Connor.
00:55:05I don't, I don't know if they were in disagreement with each other.
00:55:08I don't know if only one person can, can fill that mantle.
00:55:11But like, I know very specifically, my dad saw the sort of like character that Bob Jones was, how he was able to like hide mental illness in a very, I mean, this is very extreme.
00:55:32Emperor has no clothes situation where someone is acting in literally insane, not in a, not in a, that's not hyperbolic.
00:55:42Like someone is genuinely detached from reality.
00:55:46The things that they're doing and things that they're saying do not make sense.
00:55:50And it is still revered and worshipped, um, as prophecy.
00:55:58That's, I mean, that is very much this, this, the emperor has no clothes where it's like a bunch of people are being like, oh, wow.
00:56:05It's so incredible what he's saying where I and my mom and others are like, none of this makes any sense.
00:56:13Which both, and I say that both about my dad and, um, Bob Jones, um, and the way that he was able to abuse his wife, Bob Jones, and get away with it.
00:56:25The way that he was able to minister to different churches and, and he could kind of go around and have this huge prophetic authority without having to like always speak up in front of congregations and have his name, um, revered by all of the leaders.
00:56:43Like my dad saw the character and persona that Bob Jones developed and was like, I want that.
00:56:53I want to be like that.
00:56:55And I want to emulate that.
00:56:56And it's not a coincidence that he starts sexually abusing people, um, within that same year, uh, the same year that Bob Jones dies.
00:57:06Uh, or maybe it was a year after is when some of those first accusations of, of sexual abuse, um, surfaced about my father.
00:57:14Um, what, or they didn't surface, but now retrospectively, um, testimonies have now surfaced that, that lead back to that sort of same timeframe.
00:57:26Um, and, uh, I think that that's sort of the same thing that's being happening at IHOP is that the identity of Mike Bickle is kind of unsalvageable unless you're in this very fringe world, like Lisa Stribling, where there are people who are still pretending like, like Bickle is some wholly anointed individual.
00:57:53Um, despite all of these accusations against him, um, I think that that is the larger minority of people who, um, believe about Mike Bickle, but there's this sort of preservation of his spiritual legacy and the mantle of Mike Bickle.
00:58:12And IHOP is very active in that, in which they're trying to sort of remove the name of Mike Bickle while holding all of his prophecies, um, still using a lot of these prophecies.
00:58:27It's now just like a sort of unnamed prophet behind all of these different things at the International House of Prayer.
00:58:33Even, it's so funny because, um, the title of the sermon, um, that Joseph Taylor did was vision and values for the next season.
00:58:46I know vision values, a lot of like businesses and organizations will talk about visions and values, but Mike Bickle would talk about visions and values all the time.
00:58:55My dad would do it too.
00:58:57He, my dad added a third one.
00:58:59He would talk about visions, values, and vehicles.
00:59:01It's sort of one of those like terms, you know, in corporate terminology, like if you're a part of a corporation, you'll have everybody within that corporation just like starts using the same lingo and terminology.
00:59:13And it becomes, I mean, this is true in corporations, true in like academic circles and stuff like that.
00:59:20People just like adapt their language together.
00:59:23Well, Mike Bickle had this big thing about how he would write out about the, the visions and the values, um, and he would talk about seasons.
00:59:32He would, he would use the phrase in the days to come all, all the time.
00:59:37And you hear Joseph echoing the sort of same language that Mike Bickle established.
00:59:46And he's talking about visions and values and he's talking about the days to come and he's talking about this sort of like nebulous.
00:59:54Is it the end times or is it just, you know, the, the, the next 10 years, you could sort of interpret it both as like apocalyptic or more sort of poetic, um, description of the future.
01:00:12And it, it, it just, it's very eerie because there is this sort of like slow gradual attempt to, um, conserve the mantle of Mike Bickle.
01:00:28Um, what that will look like.
01:00:31I'm sure, you know, I might be jumping on this podcast five years from now saying, Hey John, it's, it's back up.
01:00:39Um, the international house of prayer has found their new Mike Bickle substitute.
01:00:44Here's how this person is demonstrating all of the same behaviors.
01:00:48Um, like right now it's not that, but they're sort of preparing the way for, um, them to resurrect the same sort of, um, cult community that they had established because they're not addressing any of the issues.
01:01:05Darrell Bock Well, when you have the Moses model, you've always got the Joshua that follows behind it, right?
01:01:11And what's interesting is why didn't they choose some of the other names in the Bible?
01:01:15Like Ahab had a successor, which was just as evil, Ahaziah.
01:01:19It's not always the biblical good successors that these, these guys pattern their ministries after.
01:01:25Sometimes it's actually patterned after purely evil, which is, in my opinion, whenever there's a predator who is in a ministry that will lift the predator back into power, regardless of what has, what risks are involved.
01:01:39That is an evil, purely evil ministry.
01:01:42So thank you so much for doing this.
01:01:44It's, uh, it's unbelievable to think that we're actually having this conversation.
01:01:48If you were in a non-cult church and the minister did something horrific, instantly he would be outed and you would not have this long line of people saying, we, we've got to get him back.
01:02:01We've got to get this person who did this bad thing back.
01:02:04This is not a conversation that happens outside of a cult group.
01:02:07It only happens within a cult group.
01:02:09I would venture to say also the church would get shut down in most communities when the like, uh, leader of the community does something horrific and it's not just him, but it's like five of the top, uh, officials who were working for him.
01:02:30Like all of the leadership team was defending and protecting him during that one, there would be huge lawsuits.
01:02:38So they would, it would, the place would become bankrupt anyway.
01:02:42But the, I, the, the fact that the international house of prayer has been able to stay alive through all of this is, is baffling in of itself because it's like, it just, it shouldn't.
01:02:55Um, it was built on such clear, corrupt foundation in any other setting when that foundation gets exposed, the whole thing crumbles.
01:03:05But here it's, it's built so that everyone works to support holiness and structure of the community, even when the community leader has been exposed, um, and they can't protect.
01:03:20They did everything that they could to protect the community leader, um, and still do in, in obscene ways.
01:03:29Um, so yeah, yeah, it is, it is baffling to, to think about the situation that we're in.
01:03:36Absolutely.
01:03:36Well, I look forward to it because we'll probably have the conversation when it comes.
01:03:41There will be a Joshua figure.
01:03:42So it's, uh, that's, that's the nature of these types of religions, these cults.
01:03:47So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:03:51You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:03:54For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and audible.
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