Detangling IHOPKC: The Urgency of the Hour

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-brannem.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith, former member of the International House of Prayer, and together we are detangling IHOP KC in the new Apostolic Reformation. Brantley is good to be back and to talk about all things IHOP KC for those who aren't aware that's the International House of Prayer in Kansas City and going to take a deep dive into what is the International House of Prayer. We mentioned right before this for

the sake of this episode and the series of episodes pretend that I know nothing because as I explained from a person on the outside if I'm talking to people on the outside I know quite a bit but if you were in it there are things that you know or even sometimes perceive in a different way than I do and so it's somebody on the inside would say what John knows nothing and in fact I recently had a person tell me this you know nothing about IHOP KC and I'm referencing I'm referencing scholars and what they're saying about IHOP KC so

pretend I know nothing and today let's take a deep dive examining the creation of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be fun conversation I'm really excited that we're then we're getting to do this series of of episodes on IHOP KC everybody seems to be responding to it well I've really enjoyed interacting with everyone in the comments around our episodes and stuff on YouTube channel and so I'm excited today to dig into kind of the origins of IHOP KC and you know it's always the founders myth the lore that sets the foundation for these movements and I know

you're very familiar with that and as I was going through and giving myself some refreshers around Mike Bickle and in the early days and stuff I couldn't help but think about whenever you talk about William Branham and his many personas. Yeah that's one thing that really surprised me and honestly it took a while to develop that notion that idea because the The problem that I was having is I work with this guy who was trying to detangle what was a lateral range message.

He had created these timelines and the problem was he was creating a timeline and then he would find statements by Brandon or others in the movement that defied their own timelines that they had given.

You can't have two competing timelines with completely sometimes years of difference and dates and everything's out of order and then we would find more and more and sometimes there would be, I don't know, 10, 15 different accounts of timelines, not of which could possibly fit together.

And I came to realize that, you know, if you're making stuff up, you're not going to remember the timeline and that was really the essence of this. Sounds like the prophetic history in I-Hot.

Exactly. So I came to realize that, no, you know, when there's another word for it that begins with BS, but whenever you are creating your own perception of your history, your own perception of your own history and it's all fictional, it can never match and it is a stage persona.

So that's why I started using the term, but it even goes far beyond that because in some cases, and I'm referring to the brannemism, in some cases it was just outright lying for the sake of hiding and concealing the history, which is interesting because as we get into this, I'm wanting to see the similarities between even that and I-Hop KC.

Yeah, for sure. The other thing that stuck out to me that really isn't super relevant to the grand narrative today was that there was, Mike had a newspaper interview and whenever he was around 18 years old and there was one phrase that we had talked about.

I think in our first conversation that Mike pops out in this newspaper article with at 18 years old, which was they said, what Mike Bickel refers to as the urgency of the hour. And I was like, man, this guy has been saying this stuff from day one.

I was like, where do you, as an 18-year-old, where do you come up with this? It was their own take of, we called it, the message of the hour. And that was the phrase that was used all through Laterane.

And so to conceal the past of it being directly from William Brannem, it was called the urgency of the hour instead of the message of the hour. Man, so I guess we can dive in and kind of talk about Mike's early life because I mean Mike as the founder of IHOPKC is kind of the figurehead, I mean, through its whole existence until he was quote unquote permanently separated in December of 2023, but we'll see how all that shakes out.

But one of the interesting things about Mike, you'll hear people turn. throw around this label of Mike being the son of a boxer. And so Mike had a upbringing in a house where his dad was actually an Olympic boxer.

Back in that days, people speculate that boxing had some ties to organize crime and stuff like that. But there's not really a lot of clear connections or evidence around that. But Mike was one of a handful of kids.

He had one brother, he's got a handful of sisters and two of them are prominently involved in the IHOP KC world. His sister Lisa leads and her husband, I think his name's Ray, lead the Hope City Prayer Room in the inner city, Kansas City.

Which what's curious about that is they claim that they're no longer affiliated in Hope City and IHOP KC. Whenever I was IHOP KC, I used to lead sets in the Hope City Prayer Room as part of my requirements.

And so it was very much a part of IHOP KC. But they do inner city ministry and stuff down there. And Mike and Misty Edwards and a couple other people have been spotted down there.

Since Mike was permanently separated from IHOP and then he has another sister, it's been pretty prominent through all this, which her name's Tracy. And she lead, I can't remember what her official title was, I think she was a pastoral care, a restoration and recovery.

I've seen a couple different terms thrown out, but if you get close to the IHOP world, you'll start hearing ministries like pure heart and living waters were some things. It caused a lot of harm to people that were interhealing things.

And I believe that they participate in gay conversion therapy within those programs. And so it's very much a family affair. And in modern day, IHOP, Mike Bickel's wife ran a realty business that was actually in the Red Bridge Center, which is where the prayer room was.

That was what we referred to as the mission's base, which now, I think, man, we might have had a cult compound and not realized it with a full apartment complex next door. We had a coffee shop, a bookstore, all here in the strip mall.

And then we had Mike's wife's real estate business that was there, which quickly closed down once all the allegations and stuff broke in 2023. And so that's been interesting. But Mike lived in this house with the boxer, as a dad, had a rough upbringing.

People speculate it was an abusive household and different things like that. But from what I've gathered, his mom was actually Catholic. didn't actually have a quote-unquote salvation experience until he was about 15 years old.

And he was a big football guy and big wrestling guy Mike was and what I thought was funny about his conversion story was actually Roger Stoback of the Dallas Cowboys was responsible for delivering the message at a FCA event in Colorado when Mike gave his life to the Lord and air quotes if you're not watching the video. You know you mentioned the real estate business and I'm not going to go too deep with that there might be a little bit of risk with that but real estate businesses are a good way to move a lot of money and it's a good way to move a lot of money off of the books

so that that gets interesting I'm not saying that they are you know I'll let you researchers who want to dig big different that but if you go to my website and you have dug deeply through it you've noticed that there are a lot of real estate businesses and entities and a lot of the legal documents that I have published and there's a reason for that so I'll let the let the researchers dig through that but you know the fact that it closed down that's that's another red flag for me but whenever you when you just take a step back from away from all of that you've got a movement

that is claiming that it's the end of the world and you know we're building Joel's army all of all of the rhetoric that they push on you and get you into this hype and then you start to see things like the real estate business while you're in it you're kind of scratching you why do you need this man if this is if Jesus is about to return why do I need a real estate business and I you know even though I didn't have any of the information that I had now I have family that were pretty pretty big into real estate and had some ties to some football

teams also the Dallas Cowboys so they're there's some weirdness there too which I also want to get into but all of this to say there are so many similarities beyond just the religious aspects of it if you just look at the structural integrity of iHOPKC and compare it to what spun off of latter range you're going to see all of these weird things and it doesn't mean they're all bad you know maybe somebody wants to make money with a real estate business but it does make you ask some questions because why did they need it yeah the scope of these organizations I think is

the hardest thing for people to grasp you know I've went down some of those research rabbit holes and even outside of you know real estate business you start looking at all the LLCs and non-profits and for-profits and the different things that pop up it's it's hard for people to wrap their head around how massive iHOPK was organizationally with its own marketing teams with its own security teams, you know, you had a whole team that was dedicated to running the prayer room. You had people who were dedicated at team for processing donations, another team for fundraising. Like, I mean, we're talking vast, different projects that they're

doing at one time. And then you got your businesses, the coffee shops in the bookstore that we talked about a minute ago. I think that's the hardest thing when somebody's first approaching IHOP KC is realizing that it's more than just a church. I think a lot of people think that it's just the little prayer room in Kansas City. And you start seeing that it has tentacles everywhere, even internationally. And so one of the big things in Mike's early days that I think is crucial for us to talk about, especially as hopefully future episodes will start diving into the prophetic history and stuff. With Mike's upbringing is his brother

had an accident playing football when I think the brother is probably around 17 years old or so. And he was, it made him a quadriplegic. At the time, Mike was off at college in St. Louis when Pat Pickle was his brother's name, when he had the accident. From what we could tell, Mike went to go help take care of him. His dad died shortly after of a heart attack after Pat got hurt. But a lot of the prophetic history hinges on the promise of Pat being healed. If you don't want a spoiler, you can mute for the next five seconds, but

spoiler alert, Pat passed away in 2007. And he was not healed, which is really interesting because I came to IHOP in 2008 right after that had happened. And I hardly ever heard anyone talk about Pat. It was very discouraging, I think, to the community there because all these prophetic promises and stuff. So it was kind of the elephant in the room. And I think what led to one of the many revisions of the prophetic history, just for calling from memory. I mean, there was what they called the encountering Jesus series, which was about 12 episodes, I believe. And then I think

it was in 2009, 2010, when I was there, they rerecorded an eight episode version. But what you see through the evolution simply is the removal of some of the problematic figures from the central narrative. Pat Pickle not being healed. You start to see distance being made between Paul Kane and Bob Jones at times. To the point that like some of the Kansas City prophets don't get mentioned at all in the prophetic history anymore because of their own problematic issues. And so that Mike always, always moved around a lot.

in the early days, it seemed that one of my friends, Allie Henney, and she's an author and stuff she helped put together a timeline of pretty much IHOP's history and tying it in with all the abuse allegations that were made and where Mike's been and different things like that.

And it looks like between 77 and 82 before Mike came back to Kansas City, he pastored three different churches. And prior to that was doing a large campus ministry. And so he had his hands all over and didn't stay in one place for too long, which sounded familiar as well from conversations that I've heard you have.

And that's one of the things that really is mind-boggling to me, the fact that so much was built around Pat Pickle and his healing. And then whenever it failed in the normal world, whenever somebody is claiming, hey, I'm going to do this thing and then when it doesn't happen, everybody just kind of dissipates and they leave.

They don't think about it. But in these religious scenarios, they're so wrapped up in it, in the group thing, that it's like they absorb the false thing and then just keep on going and ignore that it ever happened.

Mentally they ignore that it happened. And we saw the same thing in the Brannemism, which all of this spring from. And before Brannemism, during the latter reign, time and time and time again, there were people that didn't get healed.

There were people whose family members were quote-unquote prophesied for their healing. And the family members watched them die and they stayed in the movement. That gets really weird. Why did they stay? What was the reason why they did?

And what happens is the future generations after those older generations died off, they don't know that history. They don't realize that it's not all true. But they're told it is. And the person who's making the prophetic claim, they're repeating phrases like it's 100% accurate every time.

It never fails. It can't fail because God never fails. That kind of thing. And so the younger generation who is unaware of the failures, they assume that it has never failed until they wake up and go look.

And it's mind-boggling that people can entertain the even the notion that somebody can make a claim like this without even having to look. One of the things that has been super helpful for me and detangling all this is being able to interact with those people who were involved in these different generations of Mike's ministry.

And so Mike's ministry and the things that he's been doing went on before I hop even existed with the eschatology, the emphasis on prayer, the prophetic. And so during all of the allegation process, we saw a lot of networking happen.

I've been able to connect with a lot of people who were there at Metro Vineyard, which later became Metro Christian Fellowship in Kansas City, which was Mike's church. And here in the stories of some of the stuff that they would talk about with us that they're like, man, I can't believe Mike's still saying that.

We saw through it back then and now he's brought it back around or even hearing some of the teachings that they heard that I would hear. And I was like, why did you guys believe that?

And so you've seen that things were always evolving and always changing. But it was really rare to see those figureheads, though last, you know, from the 80s to the 2000s, whenever I was there.

And those families were pretty well known and were cornerstones in the community there, as mentors and arguably Mike's enforcers at times. So it's really interesting when you start diving into that stuff. But the Kansas City prophet era, that's the one era that I didn't get to witness.

I was born in 91. So I was just a wee lad whenever they were in their heyday. But Mike comes because of a Frederick word to Kansas City in 82, which we'll get into sometime about Bob Jones, meeting Bob Jones.

And there was the story about the snow that would come in the spring. And then when the snow melts, Mike would accept Bob as a prophet. And that has ties to Pat Bickle and Mike's dad dying and a promise that Mike made to his dad on his deathbed to take care of Pat.

And so he claims Bob tells him stuff that only God would have known. And his dad, who was no longer with us. And so once he gets in Kansas City, you start seeing all these prophetic figures come in.

And so much of this stuff feels like it's been scrubbed and it's hard to find kind of what happened during that era. How Mike became connected to Paul Cain. I've heard there's a couple different theories around that of how he came into the picture.

And I don't know if you are aware of any of those stories or not. I wish I was. You know, part of the other reason why I use the term stage persona with Brannum is that the persona that has been created has a completely erased and fictional history.

We have been able to piece together some of the things that have been erased. And we've built literally a completely different view of the man's life than what he claimed in his stage persona.

And his stage persona had many different versions of what he claimed was his past. Mike Bickel is fascinating to me. In fact, it's part of the reason why I started digging into IHOP KC.

because it's as though that era has just been completely wiped from the slate. Nobody can look into it. If you go to any critical source online about the IHOP, the formation of the IHOP KC, they will mention that the Kansas City prophets exist, but how that came to be, it's like this big mystery to everyone.

And why is this? And so I, as I noticed that, and I noticed also that Paul Cain was a big influencer, I realized that they're trying to do the same thing Brannum did and create this illusion, this mirage, if you will.

And what happened in that history, I don't know if we'll ever have all of the details, but I can say that some of the men who were getting into this worked with the greatest of masterminds of creating a stage persona.

Yeah, it's interesting because whenever you look at the Wikipedia, you never know what you're getting with Wikipedia, but if you look up the Kansas City prophets on Wikipedia, they list a laundry list of people who were involved as the Kansas City prophets, the ones that most everybody, if you were IHOP, you knew Bob Jones, Paul Cain, like those were the ones you knew.

But Rick Joyner had some proximity. One of the other primary ones you hear a lot about was John Paul Jackson, which honestly, I knew very little about. I've been told he was a dream interpreter of sorts, so we'll have to dive into him a little bit.

But Bill Heyman was a name that stuck out to me because I think he's got involvement a little bit everywhere, correct? Yeah, he does. And James Gal, Jim Gal, which he's still, I think he's up in the Pacific Northwest, and he had some interesting things to say once the allegations broke against my pickle on social media last year.

So there's this whole cast of characters in Jill Austin was another one, which she popped her head up at IHOP around the time that I got there. One of the things that people probably don't realize about IHOP being a charismatic church, people have a kind of expectation in their heads whenever they walk into a pinocostal charismatic environment and expect it to be very lively and demonstrative.

And honestly, IHOP was kind of like the opposite of that to a certain degree. It was very subdued to be a charismatic place. I mean, you're doing your long hours in the prayer room, and I mean, it could go from meditative to militaristic over the course of an hour or so with the worship and the music.

And I remember Jill Austin being there whenever I first got there and it was a huge deal because she had prophesied over a certain worship leader who had just arrived and also has connections to the executive leadership.

game and, you know, I hope it's a lot to unpack there, but what I remember was the chaos that Jill brought with there. So like what's normally the subdued, orderly prayer room, this place turned into what looked like the Toronto Revival, like people just rolling all over the place and very demonstrative. And so I think that's a very common misconception with IHOP. And even me walking in as someone new to the culture, growing up in Pentecostum or so assembly god type churches was, you know, worship. You stood on your feet, you lifted your hands, you clapped your hands, you danced a little bit, you know, you engaged

your body, you sang. If you went to a weekend service at IHOP and they do corporate worship usually for an hour and then Mike would preach for an hour is usually what would happen.

And you would walk in and, you know, they'd be playing an upbeat song and you'd look around and probably 20% of the room was sitting on their butts and staring at their bibles. And it was just, it was just a odd thing because I'd never encountered that and probably still haven't to this day in any kind of religious environment that I've walked into.

I'm surprised that you're able to keep talking because as you're talking, the audience can't see this, but I was off, off looking on another monitor. You mentioned something in my brain went squirrel. And so in the brand, I'm called the William Brandham Wikipedia page.

If you read through it, it's actually fairly accurate now. It's got a lot of stuff in it. But if you click on the history tab, you see that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of edits where there are cult drones that drones meaning people who are pouncing on anybody who adds critical information and they were reverting it, continuously reverting it. And so when you mention Mike Pickles of Wikipedia page, I just had to pull it up and click on the history and reverted, reverted, reverted, reverted. These people are cleansing the history. And some of those are like reverted, removed. One of them I was

reading here says reverted, removed all references. Why would you do this, man? That's the kind of tactics that the cults take. I don't have the exact at it. So I can't see what it was.

But I know that I have, I've worked with people who've tried to get the critical information into some of these cult Wikipedia pages. And I think the cult must pay people to sit on the pages and then keep it cleansed so that if any cult member were to look, they don't get the critical information. So I'm assuming that's what's going on here. But anyway, that's why I was looking here while you're talking. I had to know. I've speculated a lot of the same stuff with with IHOP KC through all this. We've, we have a term for we don't, we don't

call them drones. We call them dickobots is what we call them. Who, who are people who, who seem to be loyal and non-stop, specifically whenever it comes to the Twitter verse. And so you, you, you spree one thing about Mike and all of a sudden here comes about five of them.

coming to his defense. And in today's world, it's chat GP Bickel. Yes, yes. That is what it seems. That is what it seems. Oh, man. So I guess going back to the profits, the, the one, the one piece of information that that I would like to, to find out would be how Mike's church in Kansas City, you know, the, the profits start to gather.

They start doing some things. There was a prophecy called the blueprint prophecy where, which I think John Paul Jackson was involved with the execution of this. I think it's part of the reason why we don't hear a lot about him now, but they really tried to make a one city church, if you will. And so kind of trying to set Mike up as the apostle of Kansas City or the greater Kansas City area. And they had prophetic words about congregations on like five different parts of the city. And there being one central hub. And, and from what I've heard,

which you know, again, you can't find a lot as far as research on it, but that there was a lot of hostile takeovers of local church congregations from what I've heard. And some of these guys that, that got brought into the movement and became leaders. And so for pastors of these churches, that willingly kind of like handed their keys over over to, to the profits. But the thing that I don't know is, is when they became a vineyard church. I do know that, we talked a little bit about John Wimber before, but John Wimber was the

one who was responsible for platforming the Kansas City profits. And I think that the Kansas City profits had had done some things for Wimber that were very meaningful to him personally. And in words that they'd given him and some other results that he had seen because of that to where he became firm believers in these Kansas City profits.

And another fun bunny trail there, though, is that the vineyard churches were probably the ones who pioneered what we know as like the modern worship movement. You had like those worship courses and stuff that were coming out of the Jesus movement. With the hippies, you got Calvary Chapel and vineyard, people all all down there and that when they ended up parting ways, which is also a big piece of thy hop, the music and the songwriting. And we see it in any ministry, quote unquote, worth their salt right now is writing songs prolifically, Bethel is writing songs, elevation churches, writing

songs, hill songs, been writing songs for decades that we've been singing in our churches. And so I think we see vineyard as one of the first denominations, if you will, who start doing that. But where that vineyard connection originated, I'm not quite sure because the Kansas City Church became Metro vineyard, and we're later, I think kicked out of the vineyard by Wimber.

From what I've been told Wimber on his deathbed, pretty much said his relation to the Kansas City Prophets was like his biggest regret in platforming them. Wimber was also responsible for them to get some worldwide recognition.

They used to do a lot of tours through the UK with the Kansas City Prophets and during that time Mike had local pastures because the hostile takeovers were going on. There's a guy that we'll have to, we could probably do a whole episode on Ernie Grewen and all the things that he had to say about Mike Bickle and his sermon and his open letter that he wrote about what he called apparent practices of the Kansas City Prophets or something like that.

They kind of critiqued a lot of their theology, but that's really when Mike got his worldwide momentum where Mike started to become a well-known national leader was because of John Wimber and the influence of the vineyard churches.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon and others with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. One of the things that I did early on whenever I began the Brannum Research, there's only one of me, and it's very difficult to dig through archives, you know, it's very time-consuming.

And so I just, you know, put a call out there, anybody who's willing to dig and if you're in the area and capable, then send me some information, I'll compile it and organize it for you.

I'll do the same thing here, so I'm off for a blanket statement for IHOPKC if you're in the area and you're able to dig. One of the things that I've been wanting to do, and I just simply don't have time to drive there, when you go to these old Pentecostal churches, it's very interesting because they keep complete histories.

They're so proud of their history, they archive everything. I mean, right down to... Somebody, somebody, some lady needed prayer, sometimes you'll find that in one of their archives. It was Sunday and she needed prayer.

That kind of thing is in existence. And many of the apostolic churches that Mike Bickel was involved with, if they are on the up and up, they will have that archive because that's the way Pentecostal churches are behaving.

When he took them over, if the archives are erased, that in itself is a tail-tale sign. There's something going on here. So if you're in the area and you probably see my videos, you can look at some of the names of the churches.

These people are very friendly. I went to one in Misha Waka for the Brandham churches. They opened the door up, the minister. He was helping me bring stacks of books open on the floor so I could take photographs of it.

And I got quite a bit of history that completely overturned the stage persona. And I have a feeling that if you dig into some of these apostolic churches that Bickel was involved with, if it is a stage persona, then you should be able to find some things like that.

So I'll make a call out there to anybody who's willing to help, we'll gladly accept it. Absolutely. It's been interesting to see what we've been able to pull together just since the alley. Whenever the allegations broke, that was kind of a watershed moment, I think, for the post-IHOP community because somebody was banded together as I mentioned earlier.

And one of the big things there was the research and such that was happening and tying stuff together. I'm in a couple of group chats with friends or former IHOPpers and we're always discussing this kind of stuff.

And like one of the things that I found out last night as we're just kind of digging around is one of the guys that's on Morningstar's board and IHOP's board, we've tried to run for president in 2016, which none of us were aware of.

And so we're always running across like fun nuggets like that that just helped paint a picture of who these guys are. And so what stands out to me though, as your time up, Pentecostal churches, is during my time at IHOP, it seemed like there was a distancing from the Pentecostal label.

And some of that is I wonder if they were starting to see the pieces put together. I remember there being statements on the website that they did not believe in lateral range theology and different things like that, which may be in a 17-year-old, I had no idea what lateral range theology was.

They say they're not believing lateral range theology. I take them for their word and sign up to be in Joel's army, you know? So this is just how that went. And in our groups, they covered it up as well.

I had no idea until after I left that it was involved with lateral range and come to find out the guy spearheaded the whole movement. So it's, you know, There probably is a separation and I think that's why that's one of the most One of the one of the areas I really want to focus on because if there is that separation Some of that history can likely exist in those archives, so it'd be good to dig into that But I have started digging from what I what I can piece together and there is a clear

sign There's a clear evidence that Mike Bickle was influenced by people who were influenced by latarine So the foundation was there. He was aware of it whenever all of this happened and then you combine We I don't have a lot of history, but I do have some history on Wembur when you combine those two together and then Bring Paul Cain into the picture now you've got this Triad that gets really really odd because Paul Cain was trying to recreate branemism Bob Jones is the one that for me it's just mind-boggling Boggling because I look at him and I think

He's the odd ball of the bunch. He's he doesn't look completely sane to me He's a country bumpkin that's what he was yeah, and just you know came somewhat out of nowhere He I would like to dig into his history a bit further and see where all of his influences are as well because from what I've heard He was he was there in the Kansas City area just pop bouncing around churches That's the story that's told is that he would pop into these churches just local small little Baptist church or whatever church He stumbled across and they kept running him off because he kept you know spouting off these prophecies and all these things

I would say and they're like the skies crazy getting him out of here and then finally I guess he walks into Mike's office and Mike's on I don't know if Mike's on as an opportunity You know, I can't I can't piece it all together there, but It seems like most of the Kansas City metro area had a pretty good idea of what Bob Jones was and reacted appropriately Yeah, Mike they will decide to weaponize him it seems And that's why I think there has to be more to that story because whenever you've made a name for yourself like this

You don't choose that guy to be one of your founding fathers of the organization. That's not how it works My gut tells me that he was connected to Cain somehow and Cain was helping helping push that influence, but I You know until I dig into him further, which I haven't yet had time to do I think I think it will probably speak for itself when we get his background Yeah, yeah, for sure There was one story that came to That just had remembered and the reason I'd remembered it is because this person this figure was significant in my life personally

Because he ended up coming to my home church at one point. There's this worship leader From the St. Louis area and he was kind of in that same vein as like the vineyard guys and that may have been honestly It might have been vineyard Maranatha kind of stuff that he Got started with a guy named Kent Henry. I don't know if you'd heard of him before I reckon he was pretty popular in the 80s, but he still has ministry today, but the story that Mike would tell is because Kent ended up showing up at IHOP whenever I was there during

the awakening. And I think his daughter was going to the ministry school and I had a brief interaction with him and he remembered I was a little kid at church and I was staying at the product table after the service and he gave me one of his CDs for free and he actually remembered that moment and stuff.

But Mike talked about, because the first one of my guys saved, I think he was just like just hard-lined evangelical, like he wasn't really charismatic, wasn't quote unquote spirit-filled. I don't know if that, did that term get thrown around a lot in the random circles of spirit-filled churches versus non-spirit-filled churches?

Absolutely. Those that were non-spirit-filled were apostate. They were the bad guys who are good guys. They were the evil Christians. We were the good Christians. I think I would have had better luck picking up a girl off the street than bringing a Baptist girl home in my family.

I think that would have been the ultimate saying there. But Mike ended up, I guess, going to these prayer meetings with that Ken Henry was doing in St. Louis, which this could be a founder's myth of sorts, he's constructed, but he talked about that he would go to these meetings and they would be singing in tongues and praying in the spirit in this meeting and he'd never been around that.

I think that's when Mike claims that he became open to these things. There's figures like that that I look at and it just makes me want to ask more questions because Henry, somebody that I've seen all over outside of IHOP, was it just a person that Mike could use just for his story and to lend credibility to himself?

I'm not quite sure. Apparently that's whenever he became charismatic is what he would tell us. Yeah. I went through, whenever I left the brand name called and I began researching, I went through a phase where I was literally searching the transcripts for names so that I could go dig into the names and figure out who is this person, what do they have?

I did get, there was some value in it. I'm not going to say that it's always bad, but what I learned, at least from the brand upside is when you have a stage persona and you're telling, you're creating fiction, you're creating world of fiction, one of the things that the deceivers like to do is to throw out names because they're red herrings.

As they're talking, they can throw out a name and there's two kinds of names that they throw out. One kind of name that they throw out is somebody who has some claim to fame, some famous guy or whatever, who was connected to the ministry.

They love name dropping, so that's a distraction. Your mind goes to the famous name and you're thinking, oh, this is legitimate because I recognize that name. The other one is they drop names of very insignificant people so that if you go try to dig on the side story, you come up with nothing. You come up empty handed. And while the name is dropping and you're thinking of the name, the BS can flow from the mouth as fluently as it can flow. And you're going to absorb the BS while you're thinking of the name. And again, I can't say that that's the

case for all of it. But I can't say that a huge part of it was just the mechanics of how somebody who's pulling a con like this operates. There's a lot of red herrings. And if you're caught up in trying to find the red herrings, you'll miss the bigger picture is what I found.

I think the prophetic history functioned as that distraction for us a lot. There was a lot of buzzwords that were totally extra biblical and phrases that we would have staked our lives on. So I'm trying to think of some of them that got thrown around a lot was whenever I was there.

Because in 2008 to 2012 when I was there, that was probably IHOP's biggest season of growth. And arguably the largest point of the ministry. Because right after that is whenever Bethany Deaton, she passed away after that time and there's tons of speculation around that and the cult that operated within the cult that IHOP. And I was in class with all those people. I saw most of those people on a daily basis. But that was the time when IHOP saw the most growth.

Yeah, I would agree. The prophetic buzzwords, as you call them, it's much like Brannum's name dropping. And Bickel had that to his advantage, I think, because there was this laterane healing revival that developed in the charismatic movement. And he was writing that wave.

And so he had a lot of names that he could drop. And the fact that Paul Cain came into this and was Brannum's protégé, it gave some significance to the movement. And again, I'm a bit baffled at the Bob Jones connection because everything that I've read and studied about him is just odd.

It's not somebody you'd normally pick. Well, it doesn't make sense. But the fact that you have somebody like that, like Paul Cain in your influence of the group, it builds the names around it so people like Bob Jones can function in the way that they did. And you know, just taking a step back, it's the setup for disaster, if you really think about what's happening here.

What's funny is if you ever listen to a recording of Mike and Bob together, which there's videos you can find on YouTube and stuff of them talking. Half of what Bob says is about Incoherent you hear him use these flower these flowery language and stuff and and we had mentioned My favorite reference. I think with from that great profit rock opera album We were talking about that that talks about the Kansas City prophets cup weeks ago was the English interpreter of English Because that's exactly what Mike might did for Bob Bob would Spout off in coherent things and every once in a while he would land a phrase of some sort

I'm not sure if if the I'm thinking through those buzzwords and stuff. I'm not sure if this one originally would Bob, but They would always say that no disease known to man would stand before these people So there was all these different phrases like that and then Bob would say something and then Mike would come in and tell you what it means I don't even know Bob knew what he was saying half the time. It's just Mike would come in there And he almost works as like a Apache or something like to be honest like the way that he he plays the middle man of like Bob says

The chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl It might goes when the chiefs win the Super Bowl revivals coming You know fill in the blanks in such odd ways, but those those buzzwords. It was the the no disease known to man It was the people without mixture and give the spirit without measure The 500 to 5000 that's what I was really thinking about when I was talking about the explosion of growth that I hop Because at that time we had I think it was about a thousand people Between I think we had about 500 students. We had about 500 staff somewhere in that ballpark

It was close up to a thousand so all of us are sitting there looking like Okay, 500 what like do we need 500 full-time staff Or like 500 people total and then the awakening happens and in the awakening man I thought I was witnessing it like first hand that day whenever the awakening happened we dived Come into that one day, but What started is like a class of like a hundred people at 9 a.m. In the morning by the end of the day There was 2000 people in the building Wow that were people from from the community not not even just I hop community, but from from Grandview, Kansas City area

um and so these that those buzzwords were always in the back of our head and and you always had this fear that you were going to miss out on it You were going to miss out on something that you were going to And that's that's what kept you there as well is is that you didn't want to miss out on those promises Of the coming revival of the 500 to 5000 and of the coming rain of You know the day whenever god mysteriously gave us the power that no disease known to man would stand like those were the things that that stayed in front of us all the time

um That we saw as godly aspirations, and I think it distracted us from From the crazy yeah, I've come to the conclusion examining some of these Revivals and how they break out They They've almost made an art of this they will build up the hype to the extent it will get people from the outside just like you said, to come in and see what's happening because they're curious.

And to the people who are on the inside, when they see this massive growth all of a sudden, it gives it some sort of a significance in your mind. It makes it feel legitimate because you've seen the growth.

And the funny part about it is half the people there really, they're just curious, what is this weird thing that's happening here? And then they kind of leave and it turns into something else.

I recently published some information on the Azusa Street Revival, the big one that started Pentecostalism and they were talking about how there were more people who were skeptical in the revival than there were an actual group of people who were legitimately believing in the thing, to the extent that William Seymour, as they're holding this revival, he's pronouncing unathomers on the heads of the people who are there and joining into it.

And that's not familiar, that sounds familiar, is it Greg Locke doing that nowadays? Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, when you're told these stories in your mind, it gives a completely different perspective. Whenever you're thinking about this, they talk like it's this big, holy thing and it was attracting all these people to God.

They don't tell you that they were placing unathomers on the heads of the people who were being attracted to it. So I have it in my mind, I'm trying to form, in fact, this may be the subject of one of my future books, but the mechanics of how to create a revival, because in many cases like we've examined, it's not really a move by God, but there is a series of things that these ministers have learned that they can do to create a revival.

And if it's created by man, is it really a movement by God? Did you see with, with Brandham, because I know like the tent meetings and all that kind of stuff, the revival means we're big with him, during the awakening, one of the things that would keep things going was the sharing of testimonies.

Did that kind of stuff happen with the Brandham stuff, or did they keep it, like they would hand the microphone to anybody to talk about what God had done to them and they would coach them and kind of lead them and that was, it was very peculiar.

That was straight out of the playbook of John Alexander Dowey. Dowey was, Dowey was the prototype for all of this in the United States. He was the big man. He was the, in the Marvel universe, he would be the kingpin, right?

He, Dowey would enter into a city and he would have a satchel that he would open up with printed testimonies and people, he would tell people that you too can be healed and here's a testimony of somebody just like you who was healed and nobody in the city ever got healed according to some of the newspaper reports.

Then he would leave and go to the next city, well he would have testimonies from the city he had just left where nobody got healed. But in the new city, he's claiming that they were and they have to...

testimonies. Here's some testimonies. So it changed from written testimony to now if you look to the voice of healing There's some really really odd things in the voice of healing magazine that Laterane used one of them I was reading this lady said and brother Brannum came and prayed for me and praise God I am healed to this day and I was so surprised because I did not even know that I had cancer whenever I went into that line Which means that he's he declared that she got cancer and a healer

You know, this is not gonna fly in today's world, but back then people

People back then could be so duped right and then you know, it's carried forward They're still doing testimony things today and in fact They're we've published so much critical information about not just Brannumism, but all of these cults all of them that Whenever the cult defends it they can't defend the critical information. So what they do is they launch testimony campaigns Instead of here's the here's the evidence that proves you wrong. It's no we have this person who either is healed or Got saved or whatever it is. It's a testimony It's been interesting a couple thoughts there, but the most recent kind of thing dirt since everything broke with IHOP KC

their social media has been full of Spontaneous courses that are saying in the prayer room, and so it gives this illusion of This is where our people are because this was something we did in a corporate environment It didn't come from a leader. It was just a spontaneous chorus And some of it's been some of the most tone deaf stuff But I think it's that same kind of thing of trying to distract from from what was going on, but As you're talking about Dowie collecting the testimonies The one thing I would love to get my hands on I've heard other people talk about this too is during the awakening

They kept binders full of all the testimonies So they actually took the they they would have people fill out papers before they would share on the platform and stuff and they Stortle them in these binders But I had somebody ask me actually yesterday What I thought about the miraculous now and if I you know if I still believe that that miracles happened or if I had seen any Miracles and stuff and and I told them when you know during that time of the awakening like I saw A lot of people who were quote-unquote healed But I honestly don't know if any of them were legitimate

The most dramatic one that I saw was one of my friends who now whenever he looks back on it He has a very different recollection of things and how things played out He was dealing with the illness that lasted months and it's a thing it was an illness that has flare-ups and episodes and It's normal after a couple months to start filling better and then maybe later down the road than have another flare-up and so I'm I'm not sure if I ever saw a real healing At the awakening or at I hop but That the explosion that happened is very interesting but

because I suspect there's a couple things that happened in the 2000s that caused IHOP to take off. One of the biggest ones was their connection with God TV. So whenever God TV came onto the scene, God TV wanted them to do their nighttime programming. So God TV would play the prayer room from midnight to 6 a.m. the night watch and then they produced some kind of daily devotional kind of thing that Mike would do and usually it would have a brief portion of misty Edward set or something like that they would do in the mornings on God TV. And so that did a lot

to popularize IHOP KC. So by the time that I decided that I was going to go to IHOP, my mammal who was a frequent watcher of God TV was very familiar with Mike Bickle and Misty Edwards and all these people. But what I found out is that my mammal didn't know about Mike's eschatology.

She thought that was kind of weird what she started hearing that. So they would use very mass appeal friendly messages I guess on those things. And then the other piece was the influx of

internationals to the mission space there. So at some point they worked it out to where internationals could come on feces as students and as staff there. And in that brought in brought in tons of people. I would hate to speculate what the percentage of internationals to you know US citizens were that were that were in Kansas City but it was significant. I wouldn't say they were a majority by any means but it was definitely significant presence but then you had IHOP you was taking off they had their internships and their conferences and I mean they had so many

recruiting arms to help refill the ranks like it was it really took something like the Deaton mess to stop it in its tracks. The Deaton mess that's another thing that we'll have to explore in the future. There's so many elements to this man it's so crazy and from me you know I'm still even though I'm researching and digging into it I'm still kind of an outside person looking inside this weird box and it's weird because I open up the box and I see things that are familiar even though this is an unusual and weird box so it's all the more interesting for me but

we've got a great start we've got I don't know how many I mean there's countless episodes that we could do that we could really go anywhere from here but I'll repeat the call out that I had earlier in the show if you are a researcher and you're wanting to dig and help us piece things together you can contact us on the web at www.Williamdashbrandom.org and I'll share them and we'll you know we'll categorize them and organize them I know that there's some other groups who are doing this already with IHOP and we're working with some of those groups so hopefully we'll piece together some

of this history and if there are people who want to dig and find pieces that were unable to just because of the location that would be helpful. So I'm excited to get into this and there's so much more that we can talk about. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. 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 information about the dark side of the NAR you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on

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