Our Stories - IHOPKC Deception in the Leadership - With Jed Hartley

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Jed Hartley, former member of IHOPKC. Jed, so good to have you on here. I've actually had people telling me that I had to have you on here for some time now, and we've tried to connect, so it's finally happening, and right now, as you can probably tell with research on the website, all of my research into the background of IHOPKC is exploding, because I'm starting to learn that,

you know, I've studied all these different offshoots of Brannumism, and they're all, you know, they all kind of go their own way, and usually it's somebody who realizes that this thing is a scam, and so they want to scam people further, and it's usually single-man show, but I'm looking at this thing, and this is just so odd, because it's like they literally tried to recreate the laterane part of Brannumism, and pulled out all of the very bad aspects, and ran with the bad stuff. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, and as someone who's been reading a bunch of

your work, and just on the history before IHOPKC, and like the history of the movement of where I came from, I've been learning sort of the same thing, I've just seen the same threads of like, oh, this person taught the same, you know, Joel's army stuff, like all of the key phrases, it's interesting to sort of follow the line and see the different iterations of this that's been in the past, so I really appreciate your research that you've done, and having me on here, I'm super excited to be on here to talk with you about all of it. Awesome. Yeah, when you start to realize the

trails of history, and where they lead, and whenever these guys tell you about their trails of history and their religious past, and the people that built the platforms that they stand on, they paint them with this great picture, so you're thinking these are great holy men, and you start peeling up the rocks and looking under the rocks of what these guys were standing for, and oh my gosh, man, and you've done some of this, right? You've been digging into these guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's, I've been trying to find a way to articulate it, but Essentially, you have these heroes of the faith, or at least individual who I grew up considering heroes of the faith, who had these really, frankly, horrific paths of just using not just like separate from their ministries or separate from their prophetic, you know, they used a lot of their ministry and giftings to abuse course, you know, grift, get whether money, whatever, whatever they were after, you know, there was a lot of this continual pattern of people abusing power. And it's just so interesting to see here, or to think about how I

was taught about those individuals. And it's, if they could do a miracle, all of the negative things in their past suddenly disappeared, right? If they could heal the sick, if they could prophesy, if they, you know, some, that was all that was talked about. It was just talked about Wigglesworth's, you know, ability to heal the sick. And so it was just talked about, you know, Brandon's ability to heal the sick. And didn't, didn't hear about their association with the KKK, didn't hear about their serpentine doctrines, didn't hear about, you know, these things. Although some of those, some of those doctrines at different times would come up in conversations like it,

it's so, it's uncanny because I hear a lot of the, you know, things that you've been producing, read a lot about the, the previous individuals who've kind of led to, to IHOP KC ends. All of it is, is familiar. All of it seems like it's never what I was taught explicitly, but it all is familiar because it's just a reiteration of the same, same thing. At least that's what it seems like to me. Yeah. History repeating itself. Yeah. You know, the other thing that's funny, I, I love history anyway. So all of this kind of fits me. But the world we live in today is so

much different than the world that existed in the days gone by. And people today, it's not that they're smarter, but they have a lot more street smarts. They're not going to be fooled as easy as somebody back in the day, right? But then compound that with the fact that people are, humans are complex. We were manipulated to think it's good versus evil. You're either good or you're bad.

But there are bad people that do good things and good people that, you know, there's this mix, right? I was reading years ago. I want to say I was maybe 16. I was reading some studies on Jesse James and, you know, he was outlawed. But yet people loved him because he, he was kind of a great guy.

He just did some bad things and, you know, He's not a person you'd want to model your life after, but that's the way it is people people are like this But these religious figures what they have done is they have taken and it seems like the worst of the worst because I examine the bad side But they've taken only the good and brought it forward and said these people did all of these good things And they don't tell you the people problems that they had some of them were just outright scoundrels Dauy, Dauy was a carn artist from start to finish right they don't take that part

Some of the men that I examine they did bad things and some of them had Maybe good intentions to start with But if you don't bring that balance to the people You're really telling only the side of the story that suits your agenda and then you make yourself look worse when people find out Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you've hidden all of these things I find the same goes for just testimonies not even of the heroes, but just of the community and culture in general So I've been I grew up at IHOP KC My dad was

instrumental in the Foundation of it like he actually owned the building that the first international house prayer was so like I grew up Living in the house prayer and running around and you know a lot of my formative years were spent there When IHOP was just getting started, but I've also been involved with Bethel and with Y-Wam

and throughout all of these like The way that testimonies are handled and it's not even I don't I wouldn't even call it insidious or anything like that There's just this propensity to always tell the good testimonies always tell the times people were healed the prophecies that were accurate and It's very exhausting for if you grow up in there or if you live in there for several You know decades or whatever because you see a lot of the you know Hey, we prayed for this person. They didn't get healed and then they died You know what what we prayed for a young child to be raised from the dead and she didn't and you know

Way that that I mean I have some some memories of Experiences when I fully believed in healing believed prophecy believed in all of it and yet I would see Things You know, we would seem to have all the faith in the world and yet the prophecy wouldn't come true or the Someone wouldn't get healed ends when you wanted to talk about it. They're just No one was talking about it because it's only the testimonies of the good and not the testimonies of the bad so they created this false world that Didn't exist and then eventually, you know, I grew up old enough and was like hey, I like this just isn't

this isn't real. You know, you know, I look back at some of the things. I believed all of this hookline and sinker, but I was there whenever some of these things before they came to fruition.

And I'm just going to throw generic examples because, yeah, I don't want to call out names, but you've got a guy who claims that he's a prophet and he goes into this plate. Like, say he goes to Los Angeles and says, and I see the God has told me there's going to be an earthquake, and a building will fall. And well, this is a place where there's hundreds of earthquakes per year, right? Yeah. And so when a building falls, then people say, oh, that's because that prophecy, the guy doesn't even have to be a prophet to make this, right? But the way it works to the

people that are being indoctrinated, it enters into a mythology because the person who is supportive of said prophet will take the people to this building that fell, whether it was part of the prophecy or not and say, look, here is the fulfillment of the prophecy. And then as it enters legend, they'll say, and this guy predicted that that building would fall because they're connecting all of the dots. Well, towards the end of it, everybody has connected all of the dots and they don't really think about the vague thing that was initially said that could mean anything, right? And

that's a bad example. I've seen this happen multiple times, but also with the healings, this person's going to get better. We've prayed to God that they're going to get better. Well, if they do get better, they claim that it was because of the prayer and not they distracted the focus from it's because God healed them or sometimes it's just because they decided to start taking their meds again. So many plausible explanations for a lot of it.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I respect you not wanting to name names. I have no problem naming some names too, but you let me know if I should be more, keep more anonymity of this, but I mean, so my father, Bob Hartley, is a prophetic figure and was a very prominent prophetic figure in the IHOP, Bethel, YWAM world. And he would go and I would travel with him. So I saw the behind the scenes of how this sort of prophetic, frankly, this prophetic grift would work.

There are different types of how different prophets speak, just like you're saying, like someone goes into a place that has a lot of earthquakes and says there's going to be a great shaking. And then, you know, two months later, there's an earthquake and it's low and behold.

And it's like, well, this is Los Angeles. We can get earthquakes all the time, you know. But Bob Jones was a little bit like that. Bob Jones would just say a bunch of random things.

And you never really understood. It was always very, when I was young, it felt mysterious. It felt very intriguing because he was speaking riddles and stuff like that. But he would just, frankly, throw stuff up against the wall and see what would stick and then had so many people who absolutely adored him that people would pick out things and remember and detail everything and then say, oh, look, Bob Jones prophesied this.

And it's like, well, he prophesied 40 different things during that time. There's an instance where Bob Jones went into a church and he started prophesying that there was going to be deaths in the community.

I don't know if you've read or written about this at all. It was in the, do you know the Ernie Groen report on Bob Jones? Yeah. So this was in that report about him.

But so during there, I think there's early 80s. He's traveling with Michael Bickle. And this is when all of the prophecy about the international house prayer is starting to take shape and take form.

Like this is the time in which all of these, the birthing place of these movements is happening. And it was very much the critical figures in that were really Mike Bickle and Bob Jones.

And Paul came to some extent, but mainly Mike Bickle and Bob Jones. And Bob Jones is going to these different churches. And so he goes into this one church and there had just been a young couple in that community had died in a motorcycle accident.

And he used that as like an example of God releasing his judgment and talked about how he prophesied that there was going to be more deaths if this church didn't turn towards him. And then later he, five years later, hit him and Mike Bickle.

We're talking about it. And they kind of gave this testimony of a prophesied that there was going to be deaths at this church. There were a bunch of deaths that happened. And they didn't turn from the Lord.

Then you get the testimony of the pastor who was like, first of all, Bob Jones didn't prophesy that the two young children or that the two who died on the motorcycle, he didn't prophesy.

He came after they had already died. And then he prophesied, and we're congregation. And we have some old- people in our congregation and you know a few people passed away. That's not that's not unusual or whatever. And so I remember reading about that when I was like a long time ago when I was like 15 I got ahold of their earning career and report and that was the first time I was like hey some of these things look like they don't add up. First of all why are you prophesying death at all you know that's just not can't at all think of a good reason why you would want to do that

and yeah so Bob Jones had that tendency to kind of tell the story one way and then fill in the details to make it seem much more miraculous afterwards and when in reality it was miraculous at all it wasn't you know you mentioned why are you prophesying this anyway and this one of the things that hit me whenever we left the movement that we were in most of the prophecies weren't intended to help the people or even give them spiritual guidance it was more to make them realize that the the Joker was a prophet and so what's the purpose of this right why would

God do this why would God yeah pick up this man right so I wrestled with that for a long time and people don't know this when I first left this I still thought William Brannam was a prophet I just I thought one of the prophecies had failed and we have been manipulated in such a way that we didn't care if there was a failure yet the Bible is a one strike and you're out kind of deal for a prophet either you're a fraud or you're not a fraud and so none of it really hit me but the thing

that did hit me was why would I care about some of these things and so I began to examine the movements that spawned off of this and I find that there's so many people that just clone that and in fact there was here in uh it's in Shepherd'sville Kentucky it's about I want to say it's like 30 minutes south of here they had a school of the prophets where this Joker was teaching people how to do this and it's exactly like you said all these vague sayings they'll they'll use metaphors a lot they'll basically they're saying a lot of words to see what sticks and they won't they themselves won't

even claim that it's a prophecy in most cases because if it fails they're bound to it but the people listening will hear it and they'll pick up and they say oh well that that green light that you saw that looks exactly like this light over here whatever it is they they take something is very vague and pick it and run with it and say that was a prophecy and I'm leading up to a point all of this to say as I began reading through the transcripts of Branum and how he was training these other guys

to become quote unquote prophets there's one statement that hit me he said I never said I was a prophet you you the people said this. And then it suddenly clicked what's going on. They're just like you said, they're throwing things out there, throw darts to see what sticks. But they themselves aren't even producing a real prophecy. They're just producing a lot of words that people will think are prophecies and then they call them prophets. Yeah. Hey, the, the, the, brand-um saying, well, I never called myself a prophet. It's, it's home so much to me because

all Bob Jones, Mike Bickle and Bob Hartley, I mean, those were the three who I obviously grew up. One being my literal father and the other two being my spiritual fathers, you know, all have had some similar defenses of themselves of being like, no, I'm not, I never called myself a prophet. Like Mike Bickle has talked about the Kansas City prophets and he's like, we didn't give ourselves that name. Someone else gave us that name. And meanwhile, it's so gaslighting because I grew up going to prophetic conferences. Like that's, they were called prophetic conferences.

Like I was in the, and where my dad would be like, okay, we're going to go into a prophetic time. You know, like I, it's so, it's so bizarre because these men were operating within this sort of prophetic authority and often times, too, would label themselves prophetic, you know, and say, maybe they wouldn't be like, I'm a prophet, but they would be like, well, my prophetic giftine or whatever. But again, we would go to prophetic conferences. Like the conference was called hearing God's heart prophetic conference, you know, and it's like, it's so bizarre to then have

the defenses be like, well, I never really called myself a prophet. And it's like, that's the, my entire childhood was that entire thing. But, but with, with my, my dad, specifically, and some other major contemporary prophets, there's more than just the

save vague, large prophecies and that, or very generic sort of like cold reading and you go to a psychic or something like that. And they're like, I see someone in your life who is sick and that they need healing and stuff. And you're like, okay, well, everybody has a sick family member or what not. There is also a pattern in the, in the community that I was raised in, where there would be information that they would get from non divine means. In the last, you know, 10, 15 years, it's been primarily through we now have

Facebook and Instagram and have a wealth of information about specific individuals, all you need is their name. And then, you know, if I have your name, I can look you up and I can find all the books that you've written and I can find your publisher and I can find the name of you know, your editor or whoever and then if I prophesied to you, I can say, I see, I actually haven't done this so I don't know what your editor's name is but you know, I could say, I see another John in your life who is helping you do these things and you know, give a specific word

where you're like, oh, this isn't generic now. This is very specific and like, oh, God must be actually speaking to this person. And I can't, with total certainty, speak of the prevalence of this in, you know, a great number of the prophetic individuals but I know that that was what my dad did and my dad would do. He would get a lot of information. He would use me and my sisters sometimes when we were young to do research about people before these prophetic conferences and we would get a list of names of everybody who is coming to the prophetic conference and so we

would get some information and we just thought that we were helping him when we're young.

We didn't realize that we were doing anything wrong. It felt kind of icky but like it, you know, were kids. We didn't know. And we would put him on these, he would bring in these big notebooks and he would go then to the pastors of the community and he would ask questions to the pastors and he'd be like, tell me about your worship leader and they would give him specific information.

They would be like, oh, well, our worship leader's name is Craig and he, you know, he just gotten a big car accident or something like that and then we've been praying for him and his wife is in the hospital because of this and he would just write down. Right in front of the pastor, just write down that information and he had a pretty good memory and could recall and he had a flare for the dramatic too and so when he would prophesy, he would have his notebooks there and then he would call it out. He would sometimes call their phone numbers out, you know, and work that

into a prophecy somehow. You're the 813 man, you know, Psalms 813. Does the number 813 mean anything to you? And they're like, oh, that's the last three digits of my phone number. That's my street address or something like that. And so it was all, it was like, it was the next step up from going from that large sort of cold reading or these grants, you know, prophecies about the, you know, future of America that are kind of big and like what Bob Jones would do, it got into the way more specific stuff about people with very specific information. I've probably seen, I

mean, literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, be moved by prophecies that might do. I mean, he would go to these conferences and it would be 10, 15 people and every single night it would just be a line of people in and out in and out and we would go to the leaders. I mean, he, the leader of Y-Wam, Lauren Cunningham, he like prophesied to Lauren Cunningham. We were really close with Lauren Cunningham. We were really close to Bill Johnson. We were really close to Cheyenne of Morningstar, or not Morningstar of Atroc, really close to

Rick Joyner of Morningstar, just and he would prophesy to all of these different leaders and when I got older I was like, oh, dad, they're gonna find you out. This isn't gonna work. I was so concerned for him because I thought he was the fraud in the midst of a lot of honest people and that was very difficult for me to deal with with my own father and like I knew it was wrong and I wanted him to change and he would promise me that he would stop doing it and stuff like that. He would just tell stories and not do prophecy and

whatnot. But then in the last, even in the last year, there's a lot of the scandal with Mike Bickle came out. There was a lot of information that came out about my own father and I'm not sure how much you know about all of this stuff but basically just everything hit the fan within this last year and I've been talking with different religious leaders in this community and trying to inform them, hey, this really was going on. It was a grift like it was not it was not genuine and it's dangerous now. Now we see that these men were not just

using it to you know trick people and boost their conference numbers. They were using it to sexually exploit you know young and vulnerable people and this is like this is a dangerous thing like this is criminally dangerous and spoke with a bunch of leaders and I have just been absolutely shocked by how little they care. It just wasn't a big revelation to a lot of people that you either they don't believe me or a lot of them do believe me and it's just like, ah, well, I'm so hungry for what God is doing. I'm not going to focus on what God is not doing.

And it's like, how does this not corrupt everything? You just let people come into your midst and use outright deception. You have to fight against that. And like, this isn't, this doesn't seem like this is the first time you're hearing about some of this. So how many of the prophetic individuals in the past were also doing the same thing. And, you know, if you're, I feel for me and for other especially young adults who get either grow up or get kind of grafted into those communities at a young age, I mean, you, you hear all these good tests. It goes back to like hearing all the positive

testimonies hearing, oh my goodness, Paul Hartley gave this prophetic word that absolutely no one possibly could have known. And you change your entire view of the world based off of this information that is just explicitly false, not not even, you know, gray area like this is explicit lies. And you let so many people in the community build their faith off of these explicit lies.

It just is inherently deceptive. And it's awful. You know, the one thing that I've learned about con artists is that they like to surround themselves with other con artists. Because if they surround themselves with people who have moral code and moral values, they're going to figure them out. And then they're suddenly going to separate. And so they're going to lose the people closest to them. So they like to gather, you know, birds of a feather flock together, that kind of thing.

So I have a hard time. In fact, I've got emails in my inbox today talking about some of these I hop guys and people connect to die hop. And they want to defend. They want to say yes, this was bad. But let's defend figure A because he was in the group and you can't single him out because these other guys were bad. Well, they all knew, man, they all if you if you work with these guys long enough, you know the bad ones. You know that you're in a set of bad apples. And then you have

the moral decision, do I continue with the bad people if I'm a good person or do I leave? And those that stay are clearly in my at least in my opinion, these are not good people if they're if they knowingly stay. So you've got that going on. But then at the same time, they kind of lift each other up. So when one, when one is about to fall, they either create their own prophetic versions of whatever is the agenda for the for the group to make it less impactful whenever something goes bad. And I A lot of that going on, not just in IHOP,

and many of these movements that spring up from Brannemism, you've got leaders who are maybe not even in the same ministries, but they're kind of networked together. And honestly, that's what drove me to studying the NAR as a whole, because what's I realized that it's this labyrinth of networks of men, who many of which are con artists, helping other con artists to survive, then suddenly it becomes like, this is the criminal underworld man, this is not religion.

What is this mess? And it just fascinates me to no end. Oh, 100%. I was talking with a good friend of mine when some of this first sort of the first wave

of the revelations on Mike Bickle, and his sexual assault just that whole scandal just that whole scandal when that was first breaking. I remember talking with my friend and being like, was this like a, the mafia?

Like was this less of a church organization and more of like a crime family? Because you just basically what happened during that time, I started looking into how previous scandals had been handled. So same thing with Bob Jones and Paul Kane, both had their sexual scandals, where they were using prophecy to exploit young vulnerable people and seen how Mike Bickle handled Bob Jones scandal

and seen how Bob Hartley handled Bob Jones scandal and all of these different things. It's like they really are just protecting each other. And when, I don't know if you've read, I'm trying to find more information on this, but when Paul Kane was confronted about his sexual sin,

there's been mention, like my dad has mentioned it, I haven't been able to find like good research on it, but apparently during this meeting, Paul Kane went off and was like, if you come after me, I'm coming after all of you.

And he pointed at the other big, very prominent NAR figures in that time and was like, I have dirt on all of you. And I remember my dad telling me about that incident and I've been wanting to find out, well, was it successful?

Like was he able to successfully like manipulate those individuals? Like there's so much gray. There's just this veil over all of the behind-the-scenes dealings, so it's really hard to understand. Did he actually have information about each one of them?

Did he then successfully use that to his own advantage? What was the fallout from that? What was he talking about? Did he know about Mike Pickles? What was going on? Because some of the stuff that we found out about Mike Pickle was going on back at that time.

Paul Kane was the fixer, and he was trained under brannemism. Although I wasn't there, I can't speak to that event, but what I can say in the brannum cults, the ministers all have dirt on each other.

In fact, I have sat through sermons where the minister goes off against one of the other ministers and says, and I've got a file in my cabinet in that office, and he starts talking about all the dirt that he has on the guys.

Yes. That's the way it is. In the podcast that I do with Charles Paisley, he goes into that a bit because he got access to one of those file cabinets. So he knows that.

Oh, okay. Specifically, the dirt that was in there. And I've talked to, I've had high-ranking members of some of the offshoots tell me that their cult leaders, they had access to their file cabinets.

So it's not just one or two. This was a widespread thing. And the fact that Paul Kane came from brannemism, he would have been trained to do this. They apparently all trained each other to be, if one falls, then you've got a hundred fixers because everybody's got dirt on everybody.

And what it does, it's like a den of thieves, man. If you all know that you're all thieves, and you've all got all the dirt to confront one of them, if anyone steps out a line, you just raise the risk of the thief getting caught.

And that's essentially what's happening here. But Paul Kane, I mentioned he called me a few times, whenever I started publishing all the clan stuff. That's when he began contacting me. And they were trying to dig into, trying to dig into my, I think they're trying to fix me.

Yeah, yeah. They're trying to dig. And I knew a little bit about Paul Kane, but not a lot. And like I do these podcasts, I've got monitors everywhere. So as I'm talking to this guy on the phone, I've got, I'm pulling up who is Paul Kane, what do I know about?

I'm what can I see? And oh my gosh, there's the first time I came across his, the allegations of him, of him molesting small boys. And then I drove into that deeper to find his apology.

And so he was trying to dig into me. And so I threw him off guard by asking, if he knew any, asking his opinion of what happened and what they were talking about. And he denied the whole thing.

And as he's denying it, I've got his apology for it, right here on my screen. And so that's the type of mentality of these guys. If they don't think that you know the facts, they'll deny the facts, until you know the facts and then they'll call the fixer, and the fixer comes in and makes everything better.

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Yeah, that rings so true with many of my own experiences. Even in the last year of trying to call out certain, like I spoke with one of the leaders of IHOP after during this whole Mike Bickel saga.

I spoke with the interim pastor and someone who I grown up kind of being kind of grown up with. I mean, he's 15 years older than me or something, but you know, I grew up with him and his family, and I called him, and I was like, hey, this...

A lot of people are saying that what is going on with Mike Bickel isn't true, that these accusations are false and whatnot, and I just want to let you know they are absolutely true.

Like my dad confirms some of this from back in 1983 of some of his early knowing about that Mike Bickel, specifically Mike Bickel had... I don't know how much you've gotten into it yet or not, but Mike Bickel had was regularly prophesied to different young women, very young women, that his own wife, Diane Bickel, was going to die.

And the prophetic message was that when Diane died, which he believed was going to happen in an earthquake in St. Louis, a place that doesn't have a whole lot of earthquakes and hasn't had, so that one, he missed on that one.

So he prophesied that she was going to die. and that these young women, when she died, that they would then have a place to pursue a relationship with him, and then he kind of groomed them using that as the sort of excuse to condone why a man who's married with two children can develop this sort of relationship with a young woman.

Very, if you're familiar with Michael's teaching, very similar to his prepare the bridegroom teachings about preparing the bride for the return of the king, very similar reasoning of, let me prepare this young woman for when my wife is going to die and it'll open up a door for us to have a relationship.

So anyway, I knew about that instance for quite a while. My father knew about it because one of the,

one of the core women who have come forward about, Michael, who was one of the victims of this, was very close to my family. And she is still remaining anonymous right now, but I knew, I knew from her and I knew from my dad too, before even any of these accusations came about, I knew of that story.

So when the accusations came about and there was other women saying the same thing, I have absolute certainty that this happened, that there was no way that they were talking to each other, these accusations independently, three women all saying the same story that is very specific and very bizarre without talking with each other.

You can just know it's true, plus they were very, these women are very honest individuals, very well respected individuals, like they're not lying, they're not trying to conspire to bring down Michael Bickel. And so anyway, when all of that information came about, I called up the leader of, or the de facto pastor at the time of IHOP KC and I was talking to him about it.

And he acted like he didn't know any of it. He didn't know about Bob Jones. I told him, hey, Bob Jones did something similar where young women, he used prophecy to get them into a vulnerable position and sexually assault them.

That's the same case with him. And I don't know if he, and that's that really frustrating thing where they just play ignorant about it, either about their own, no, that didn't happen, or no, I've never heard about it.

I didn't know. And it's just this very confusing situation where you don't know. if you're being gaslit the entire time and there's just this pattern of people can be able to deny it and there's no proof, there's no, I don't, that never happened, you don't know this and then when you do have all of the information, they pretend like they didn't know it or it was something different and it's just so, uh, frankly insidious, like it's just bizarre and it's hard to, it's hard to have any accountability in a, uh, community where there's just is no clarity on what is happening

behind the scenes and there's no, no one who's trying to bring clarity, like they are all in it together to try to, they try to, yeah that one, I'm a writer, not a speaker, you know, I get what you're saying. Yeah, they're all, it's like they're trying to keep everything unclear and so to, to be able to cut through there and bring any sense of clarity or certainty is a near impossible task and then if you do, you totally get exiled from the community, like you're, you know, a label of backslider or whatever it is. Yeah, I'm fascinated with studies and books and even fiction of criminal

minds. In fact, there's a show of criminal minds, which is a great show if you've seen it, but I, I like to see how those people think because it's not the way the rest of us think and why do they do the things that they do? I'm fascinated by this, but one of the things that you find especially in the organized crime, organized crime is just simply there's an organization and there's a hierarchy of the criminals and the guy at the top likes a middle tier of people that he has dirt on and so I

look at the structure for the criminal minds and organized crime and I look at this and I can't say that this is the mob, you know, maybe it's the Christian mafia if you want to call it that, but the structure is so similar because the guys at the top knew the dirt on the other guys and I think that's why they chose them because it's easier to control a guy that you've got dirt on or a girl that you've got dirt on. Yeah, but so these guys perfectly chose people that they could, they could control and manipulate and if one steps that align, well, it's blackmail, you know, I'm going to release

all of your dirty laundry's going to the public, but then, you know, they twist also the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses. That no longer matters in these groups because now you've got these two or three witnesses who say that they've been abused by Mike Bickel. Well, that's the, that's the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses, but you find that the whole group that's staying in it, they're totally ignoring the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses.

Because they've been manipulated to do that yeah, absolutely and they have I mean the Bible I have never seen biblical principles ever used to hold leaders accountable I've only seen biblical principles used to help get them away from any sense of accountability you know there's the whole Matthew 18 process of the way that you need to if you want to confront a leader you first there's I don't honestly I don't even know what it is anymore because it never made sense to me even when I was within the world and it still doesn't make sense to me but it's this process in which hey there's a biblical way to go

about correcting a leader who has sinned against you and surprise surprise it involves going to that very leader and other leaders it's not going outside it's not if going to the police if that's necessary you know and it provides them with an opportunity to control the situation if you have an entire community who are beholden to this Matthew 18 process where they have to go back to the leader in order to address any you know wrongdoing they can't go public they can't you know talk to the police they can't talk to other pastors of other communities or something like that you have built in this sort

of failsafe process that you will always be able to know and anticipate when a scandal is coming because the entire community is always going to feed it back through the channels and then like you said when them okay well now we do have biblical principles of like they went through the Matthew 18 process they all of this has been you know done according to the way that you're supposed to do it and there's the more you know two or three witnesses there's so much you could look at the Bible and give so much precedent for correcting or not

not more than just correcting for exposing and addressing the the abuse of Michael and yet it's just happening and still to this day I have KC has like not investigated it it absolutely baffles me what they're doing I mean it's just completely bizarre there's just no accountability there's just and they're slowly like dying as a church and they're gonna get smaller and smaller and eventually it's just gonna become not a thing anymore because in you know it's kind of like Go down with the ship sort of situation is is the there's a hole in the ship instead of pretending trying to fix it trying to address

Okay, what was Mike Bickle doing? What is the prophetic history? What have we been manipulated by some of this prophetic history doing all of this? What is the truth, you know? They're like this is too big of a hole. We can't fix it So might as well just sink and pretend like it didn't happen while telling their community To not get on Facebook not get on Twitter to not look at these things like everybody just look at me and we'll all sink together Sort of thing and it's very it's very sad too because as much as I really do believe that many of these leaders

are Some sinister people the community members I like a lot of my friends and family members that I grew up with Genuine people who really believed you know, I I really believed that there's a lot of like good-hearted compassionate people within these communities who just Believed everything that their leaders were saying and really thought that they were a part of the end times church And that they were helping us sharing in God's final kingdom that they were a part of you know a healing revival That was going to sweep the land that they were a part of this young Joel's generation this Joel's army of people who are gonna

Be blessed ten times more than that which happened in acts where they were gonna have gifts of the spirit of healing and prophecy and What Mike Bickle and Bob Jones Bob Hartley did we were gonna do ten times more like I understand the appeal I mean I was in it like that's what that's what I felt even into my mid 20s, you know, I thought that was You're gonna be my future of my life and so I just feel so So bad for the people who are currently And I hop poor being told not to look you know not to

That everything's okay around them while the burning bill or you know or the Building burns or the ship is sinking, you know if they are just told It's all good that this is just attacks from Satan and We're still on the straight and narrow. We're still at doing the good things and Um It's pretty tragic. Yeah, these guys they like to go down to with a sinking ship because that's the ship that made them all the money Basically, right? Yeah, there's no question about it and what's really odd to me is you know the fact

It's not just that they tried to recreate a new revival or new Passion for Christianity or anything like this. They literally tried to clone Latter-Rain Which had yeah already been denounced as heresy by many Christian leaders It's like they chose the worst possible thing to recreate and said let's recreate this But then they didn't tell anybody that they were where it came from nope Like all of the people I've talked with at IHOP, nobody had a clue that this came from the Laterane and it was re-birthing Laterane Revival.

Oh, I have felt the same thing. I knew about it because I traveled with my dad to, with Bob Jones. And Bob Jones has like, all, he was more explicit. Like Bob Jones wasn't trying to repackage and rebrand.

He was just pretty straightforward Laterane, you know, talking about all of those different things. So I remember hearing about and gleaming some of this. And even when I've been talking to some individuals who went to IHOP School of Ministry, I've talked with them now.

And they're like, oh, no, we didn't actually have involvement with Laterane. And I was like, that is just not true. Like, that's just like my pickled, picked Bob Jones in to be that sort of prophetic visionary because of a lot of the like Laterane ideology, which I agree with you.

If you're picking something, I don't know why you would pick that. Like pick something that hasn't been just recently exposed as fraudulent and sinister. The only thing I can think of is that was the first, you look at what Dowie did and Dowie made a heck of a lot of money for his debt, but you look at what Laterane created and it was a platform for people like Dowie to make money.

They were basically generating a new platform where lots of men could join in. And the argument it wasn't like Laterane, well, you chose Paul Cain. He's the direct connection to his brand name's protégé, man.

Definitely recreating Laterane, but yeah, the whole thing is just so odd. And you know, having experienced myself, it really messes you up when you're in this type of religion. It's not at all Christianity, but you're told that it is.

And the God that you're given is like a rabbit's foot God. Rub it a little bit and we'll give you a healing or rub it a little bit, we'll give you a money or whatever it is.

And the whole thing is just, it's awful. It wreaks havoc on the lives. If you could say one thing to encourage the people that have been in this and have went through the horrors of IHOP Casey, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I mean, for people who, if you've done the hard work of just allowing yourself to ask the questions, which I mean, that's always the first step of it. Like if there's that terrible, awful feeling in the back of your head or thought back of your head of, hey, what if these men aren't prophets?

What if these aren't men inspired by God? Or what if, you know, there is a lot of... sinister stuff going on behind the scenes. Like, I have seen in my own life, and in a lot of others who are close to me, I've seen that that's that huge first step, just being able to kind of recognize and allow yourself to ask questions of that community.

And then once you do that, it takes time, but I've seen so many people, their lives have totally turned around. Because at the end of the day, it's not a good gospel. It's not like, none of it's, you don't want any of it to be true.

It's intense. It's, you know, sure there might be healings, but at the same time, there's a lot of fear, a lot of like hatred, a lot of, you know, game or, sorry, guilt and shame, especially like at places like the International House Prayer, where if you don't get healed, then it's your fault.

You did something wrong, and so it, I've seen so many people, my life and my sisters and my mother's life included like where once you got out of the wilderness, once you got out of that sort of terrifying, whatever it is that kept you in there to begin with, once you were able to sort of step out, there's so much freedom on the other end, there's so much, you know, self-worth, there's so much curiosity, there's so much to be discovered and found once you're on the other side.

It's just really difficult getting there. Like it's, it's going to be a process and it'll take some time, but, but it's worth it. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, the, the early Christians, as they were experiencing the freedom of not being under the mosaic law, they were like, it's free, the burdens are lifting.

What you're describing is what they felt, and the word gospel just simply means good news. It's the good news that you can have this freedom, but what these guys taught was the antithesis of this.

So it was literally the bad news, the bad news is coming and they're going to get in with us. And so you can really say that this, it was the direct opposite of the gospel.

It was the bad news that this group is bringing. Thank you so much for doing this with us. I know that there's a lot of people wanting to, to hear more from you and more about the insights of somebody who, you know, grew up in this thing and, and was close to the leadership.

So thank you for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure. Anytime. Yeah. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponize Religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and soon, audible.

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