Excerpt: You can watch this dilemma live in the wake of the devastation of the IHOPKC scandal as the prophet persona of Mike Bickle disintegrates. His followers (victims) are trying to manage the radioactive fallout with pitifully inadequate means like a thousand calls to “do better” or “have more accountability” resounding from the corners of the internet. Ideas for how to do so range from watching for red flags, to more mental health resources, to asking more questions of leaders, to demanding formal procedures for reporting abuse. It is heartbreaking to see what fragments people cling to as their ship of faith splinters in betrayal and fraud. For so many, the movement-ship was God as they knew Him, and so their shipwrecked cries for help don’t go to Him but to the world: seeking psychological insight into predators and cults, media exposure, legal recourse, institutional accountability and even retribution. It’s not that those things are wrong; it’s that what’s TRULY wrong is much more fundamental.
God wasn’t the ship; He’s the Rock the ship is breaking upon.
He hates the lies, hates the fraud, and didn’t send the Prophets. In fact, He warned His people urgently against them. But this is the strange paradox. The people who received the so-called Prophets, unlike cessationists, thought that God would want them to receive someone who claimed to come in His name eagerly, deeply, and naively. You know, like an enchanted young lover who meets someone in a bar…
I am watching people say with hindsight of the supposed Move of God, “We should have asked more questions.” Huh? If God had truly sent and spoken through Bob Jones and Mike Bickle, there were no questions to be asked. Now that we are a couple decades into the grand experiment of 24/7 prayer (not found in Scripture) the fruit is being exposed as rotten, destruction of lives, and a cover for wickedness. Did God mandate it or not? Is He is a man like us, who needed help brainstorming His choices? What questions can we bring to God if He is giving directives through His prophetic mouthpiece?
The prophets called for fast after fast after fast, and earnest people destroyed their bodies trying to obey. How can this be “done better?” If God had truly required such fasts to usher in His return, was there room to ask questions? Conform His mandates to some “Best Practices” or health constraints? Is there some chart or checklist to make sure we don’t violate labor laws when the Apocalypse is nigh? Should the Intercessors have unionized? Could some version of the Billy Graham rule help End Times Prophets keeps their hands off child-maidens?…
I have faced the question after wholehearted belief in half-baked lies: what was really true? I understand that such a tsunami is far more powerful than a human psyche, and the fear of being engulfed and drowning is real. And by real, I mean real. The people who thought the most deeply, believed the most genuinely, and studied the most intently are in real danger of being mentally destroyed. This is not just a little bad fruit, or mixture. This is demonic fruit.
The reason is that rather than ushering the flock of God into the Green Pastures of obedience to the Word of God, the Prophetic Movement beckoned frail little humans into the devil’s playground…
Desiring power from the spirit realm is not Christian. Instead, throughout history, these desires have played out in witchcraft. From Greek mythology to Aztec games to Hindu rituals, though the demons and methods vary, in the people we find the same motivations at work.
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